Pip: Welcome to Wanderings and … wonderings., where today we ask the eternal question: is anyone actually making good epic cinema anymore, or are we all just suffering together?
Mara: Ben Gould has been watching, and he has thoughts — on Roman spectacle gone wrong, and on biker drama that lost him before the halfway mark. Let's start with the films that aimed for grandeur.
Epic Films And Historical Spectacle
Pip: Two films, two attempts at the kind of sweeping historical cinema that used to mean something — and both apparently fell apart before they even got going.
Mara: The Megalopolis review sets the tone early. The setup is a film based on the Catilinarian conspiracy, and the verdict is blunt: "Some of the images here catch the eye, but they never coalesce into anything resembling a coherent narrative."
Pip: So you have one of the most dramatic political episodes in Roman history — Cicero, Catiline, the fate of the Republic — and the film somehow drains it of all intrigue, political stakes, and, notably, any actual Cicero.
Mara: The characters, as the post puts it, "have arguments you can't even connect with or understand; they bicker for the director's benefit." It ran 56 minutes before the television was turned off. The closing line is: "Life is too short for this shite."
Pip: Fifty-six minutes is generous, frankly. That is a man trying his best.
Mara: Gladiator II gets even shorter shrift. That post calls it "pathetically, absolutely futile cinema" and argues it is essentially a verbatim copy of the first film, with a siege sequence lifted from Game of Thrones and a scene that mirrors the famous Ben Hur chariot moment — except here it just reads as cynical recycling.
Pip: The post's question — "Why does anyone still have dealings with this director?" — is not rhetorical.
Mara: It really isn't. Both reviews land on the same underlying frustration: these are films with resources, historical material, and recognizable talent, and they squander all of it on spectacle that never earns its scale.
Pip: From ancient Rome to open American highways — though the road ahead is equally bumpy.
Modern Biker Drama
Mara: The Bikeriders promised atmosphere and a committed Tom Hardy accent. The post is direct about what derailed it: "My ears are in pain. I hate folk on motorcycles."
Pip: That is a sentence that contains an entire film review.
Mara: The lead performance is described as "Marge Simpson scraped down a blackboard with a bit of Karen Hill from Goodfellas chucked in the vernacular mix" — and that was enough to end the viewing at thirty minutes. Hardy and Michael Shannon together, and it still couldn't hold.
Pip: When the scenery is the most praised element, and the recommendation is to remove the story, the bikes, and the accents, you're left with a landscape documentary. Which might actually be an improvement.
Pip: So: Roman conspiracies without intrigue, sequels without purpose, biker films without listenable dialogue. The bar is apparently on the floor.
Mara: And yet someone keeps making these. Next time, maybe something clears it.
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 