I heard they didn’t really have a script for the first Gladiator and it turned out great.

But I think it’s a thing where if you have some actors that can contribute a lot, that kind of thing can work out. When you don’t, you get Gladiator 2. Denzel was pretty entertaining in it though, the rest of it was pretty meh. Seeing the ship battle in the Coliseum was cool, but I don’t remember what it added to the plot. In the first one the fights all added to the plot and characters.

Not that it’s the actors’ fault they aren’t supposed to be writers. But maybe the first one just worked because of dumb luck, who knows?