Twenty-four years after Gladiator became Ridley Scott’s biggest movie of his career to date and kicked off Russell Crowe’s 2000s era, Scott returns to tell the story of Lucius Verus II, the nephew of Commodus in the original movie.

Played by Paul Mescal in the much anticipated sequel, Lucius walks a path similar to the man who inspired him as a boy: Russell Crowe’s Roman general Maximus, who was enslaved by Lucius’s power-mad uncle and forced to fight as a gladiator before leading a popular revolt against the emperor. Joseph Quinn and Fred Hechinger play Geta and Caracalla, co-emperors who look like they’ve only drank blood their entire lives (not a put-down), but all eyes are on the nascent relationship between Lucius and Macrinus, Denzel Washington’s character who assumed the throne after Caracalla in actual-real Roman history. But when the Coliseum becomes the site of a sea battle, and reports of Mescal fighting a pack of baboons on screen, we’re swept away by the wild, historically inaccurate delights the sequel has in store.

Gladiator is available in cinema close to you.