“What’s your Roman Empire?” was the 2024 way of asking about the thing an individual returns to, again and again – the subject or person or idea or artefact that captured their attention so strongly that it’s where your mind repeatedly lands when left to wander. The phenomena was so named for the frankly bizarre amount of men who revealed that they thought about the Roman Empire daily – and no doubt there’s a certain contingent of cinema fans whose Roman Empire was that presented by Ridley Scott in his 2000 blockbuster Gladiator.

A film that brought historical fiction back to blockbuster significance with a star-making turn from Russell Crowe, unforgettable support from Joaquin Phoenix, and dynamic, exciting, sword-clanging action, Scott’s film was an epic crowd-pleaser and was quickly inducted into the Hall of Classics for many. Was it a bit silly and overblown? Sure! That was half the fun!

But amidst the sandalled silliness there was not only style, but a sense of emotional intelligence. Crowe’s Maximus was driven by the love of his family and the desire for revenge; a desire that was deeply felt and portrayed. Crowe brought soulfulness to a role that could have been all brawn, bringing the audience along on his emotional journey as well as his bloodthirsty escapades.

A quarter of a century later, Scott returns to the world of Gladiator, with Paul Mescal playing a descendant of Maximus and all the expensive state-of-the-art CGI that money can buy. But you can’t always bottle magic twice, no matter how many sharks you put into the Colosseum.

In this chapter, we learn that Rome is being ruled by twin-brother emperors, Geta (Joseph Quinn) and Caracalla (Fred Hechinger), who rule their straining empire with debauchery and a devil-may-care attitude towards resources and fatalities. When an armada of Roman battle ships led by the idealistic General Marcus Acacius (Pedro Pascal) invades a North African province, the local army put up a valiant defence, but it’s ultimately a bloodbath. One of the slain is the warrior wife of troop leader Lucius (Mescal) who doesn’t have time to grieve before he’s enslaved, shipped back to Rome and thrown into a gladiator ring.

The opening battle is exciting and visually impressive – but happens so rapidly that Scott overlooks the most important requirement of a revenge story: an emotional connection. Our introduction to Lucius is him randomly snarling at a chicken, before about 90 seconds of interaction with his wife before she’s killed. He starts off intimidatingly stoic and stays there. There isn’t enough time to see him as a husband, a lover, a person outside of violence. The woman in the Roman refrigerator is killed before we can care about her or her husband – and that lack of heart pulses through the entire film.

Starting as it means to begin, Gladiator II falters in its emotional beats. For the only loving relationship that gets any screen time and underscores much of the plot development, the connection between Pedro Pascal’s Marcus Acacius and his wife is tepid and unconvincing. There’s also an emotional 180 between Lucius and a major character that is so sudden and unearned that it feels nonsensical.

Mescal’s performance is somewhat singular in his career so far. While the star has excelled in creating intimacy with other actors onscreen and portraying his characters’ inner turmoil, his Lucius is a solitary figure, driven by rage and ideology rather than connection with others. He performs admirably, conjuring a resilience and survival instinct that is palpable, and he becomes a believable leader, not driven by ego but strength. His rousing speeches don’t have the iconic bellowing of Crowe’s delivery, but a more noble understatement.

His physical transformation has been much discussed and he certainly looks like a fighter, but for an actor who can communicate so much on the level of gaze and gesture, the script misses opportunities to let Mescal’s subtlety illuminate Lucius’ interiority.

It’s perhaps no wonder then that the performances that shine are those of characters who don’t need to evoke our empathy to be entertaining. As the bejewelled, charming and Machiavellian Macrinus, a former slave and gladiator who now runs the bullpen, Denzel Washington is glorious, smiling as he schemes and marrying vanity with intelligence to create an intoxicating sense of competent, conniving confidence. Despite their distractingly bad blond dye jobs, Joseph Quinn and Fred Hechinger bring a manic darkness to their roles. Caracalla’s syphilitic madness allows Herchinger to go wild with mercurial id, sometimes to the point of cartoonish caricature, but it’s Quinn’s calmer sadism that intrigues.

Lovers of battle scenes and spectacle will not be disappointed. The opening invasion is thrilling and the Colosseum becomes a site of spectacle and species as monkeys, rhinos and sharks enter the arena (shhhhhh, no historical fact-checking allowed in the cinema). Scott brings a raw, racing energy to these ambitious action sequences that are filled with visceral violence and gore aplenty. However, the excitement of these action sequences only highlights the emptiness of the rest of the film, rendering a potential modern classic into something more underwhelming.

Gladiator II took a big swing – and might have knocked itself out.

• In cinemas now.