To paraphrase Game Of Thrones, when Ridley Scott makes a film, the cinema Gods toss a coin. It might be excellent, it might be dire, but it’s sure to be entertaining. This is largely the case with Gladiator II – for all its faults (and we will come to them) it is never boring.

Picking up twenty years after the events of Gladiator, Paul Mescal plays Lucius, the son of Maximus (Russell Crowe) and Lucilla (Connie Nielsen). Living a peaceful life in the small African city of Numidia, his tranquility is shattered by a Roman invasion led by General Marcus Acacius (Pedro Pascal), and Lucius soon finds himself in the gladiatorial arena. His ferocity catches the attention of slaver and arms dealer Macrinus (Denzel Washington), who buys him and promises a path to revenge.

Historically, Ridley Scott has always found most success as a director in superficially simple, conventional narratives which he manages to elevate by dint of his exceptional eye for shot composition, and his innate knack for visual storytelling. The reason Gladiator worked so well is because at its core it’s a focused revenge tale. Gladiator II has a more complicated narrative with several strands going off in different directions and it loses some of its potency for this.

I did try to put the original out of my mind, but it’s impossible when the film invites comparisons in practically every scene. The script re-purposes excerpts from the score, visual cues and even repeated lines of dialogue from the original film, and whatever the intention, this only serves to it highlight the sequel’s shortcomings.

The film has quite a convoluted set up, with lots of unconventional and intriguing potential avenues for the story to go down, but rather than capitalising on this and exploring the new territory, Scott attempts to retrofit all of this into the framework of the original film, complete with repeated story beats, which feel increasingly crow-barred in.

Paul Mescal is a solid if not particularly memorable lead. Physically, he’s convincing—his intensity and expressive eyes suit the role of a vengeful gladiator. Where he falters slightly is in the big rousing speeches, lacking the gravitas we might expect. He’s also a bit of an enigma personality-wise, and ends up feeling more like a symbol rather than a living, breathing person.

Denzel Washington gives one of the most gregarious, exuberant performances of his career. He’s never anything less than entertaining, even if his character’s development is inconsistent. He plays Macrimus as charismatic, with a smiling viper demeanour that makes him a magnetic onscreen presence. It does however veer into the realms of self indulgence at times, with character being whatever the script wants him to be, with little in the way of interior logic.

The talented cast all do their best with the material, but the characterisation is very hit and miss. Connie Nielsen is the most impressive, reprising her role as the daughter of Marcus Aurelius. She is the central figure in the film really, whose storyline dovetails with every other character, and she plays the role with sensitivity, remaining consistent with her pragmatic character from the first film and generating a great deal of pathos in her interactions with her son and her husband. Speaking of which, Pedro Pascal plays Acacius with a dignity and world-weariness that makes him an immediately sympathetic character; a reluctant hero of Rome who recalls the characterisation of Maximus, especially in his scenes with the two psychotic emperors. The early scenes promise a nuanced take on personal grudges and the exhaustion of long campaigns that sadly isn’t borne out by the rest of the film, where the conflict between him and Lucius just peters out.

The joint Emperors Geta (Joseph Quinn) and Caracalla (Fred Hechinger) are both caricatures – I never thought I would call Joaquin Phoenix’s Commodus subtle, but by comparison to these two he’s the definition of restraint! The thing with Commodus was that he was a theatrical, snivelling pantomime villain, but we also saw his insecurities, and were at least partly encouraged to understand his warped perspective. Here the two Emperors are effete stereotypes bordering on parody, with their blonde wigs and pale makeup. This is particularly true of Geta’s characterisation. Quinn makes a decent villain, and portrays his insecurities well, but there is less development beyond the surface level, and we never get a sense of the sibling’s inner dynamics until far too late in the story, when it all feels very rushed.

There is a lot more Tim McInnerny than I would have ever imagined, which is never a bad thing, although it’s somewhat incongruous to see him interacting with Washington like old friends. He essentially represents the self-serving, hedonistic side of the Roman senate, contrasted with the benevolent Gracchus (Derek Jacobi). The only other returning cast member, Jacobi is unfortunately reduced to little more than a walk-on part here, rid of the gravitas of the original character.

Where the film delivers is in spectacle, with Scott delivering an epic sense of scale. The opening assault on Numidia is a vivid battle scene that sets out the characters of Lucius and Acacius quickly and efficiently, and the scenes set in the Colosseum are just as awe-inspiring as you would hope. The film already received criticism for the anachronism of depicting a character reading a paper, something that feels a little rich to focus on when elsewhere we see sharks swimming in the Colosseum! Scott is more concerned with constructing cinematic thrills than realism, and in this respect the film is a roaring success, with viscerally nasty moments mixed with the testosterone fuelled scenes in the arena. Elsewhere he demonstrates that he has lost none of his flare for shot composition in some beautifully striking black and white dream sequences, that even surpass similar moments from the original film.

For good and for ill, Gladiator II is an epic through and through. A flawed but engaging spectacle, it’s much more in line with Napoleon than Gladiator, stunning to behold but sprawling and unfocused. There are issues with characterisation and story coherence, and it doesn’t do anything that Gladiator didn’t already do better, but the sense of scale and visual inventiveness (not to mention Washington’s electric performance) means that the film is never anything less than engaging, and demonstrates that Scott is still a master at delivering a beautifully constructed film.

Gladiator II is in UK and Irish cinemas from 15 November