Wicked Glad?

This will arguably be the biggest opening weekend all year at the movies, with two ballyhooed blockbusters coming out of the gate at the same time.

And producers of Gladiator II and Wicked are doubtlessly having visions of last year’s ‘Barbenheimer’ juggernaut that pushed those films into the billion-dollar realm.

Whether they will or won’t remains to be seen, but you can bet there’ll be sellouts all around.

Wicked, which wasn’t previewed for local critics, has been dominating talk shows and promos on virtually all networks for at least a month.

With that cast (Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande, Jeff Goldblum and more), would you expect any less?

Local theaters are starting shows as early as 7:30 a.m. and scores of presentations are already sold out.

The adaptation of the hit Broadway musical is billed as Wicked: Part One, which means there’ll be another one that’s likely just as spectacular as director Jon M. Chu’s product.

There is also little doubt that fans will be singing the songs and dancing the dances long after the film’s multi-million-dollar opening weekend.

But enough about that.

The other big opener is Gladiator II, Ridley Scott’s sequel of sorts to his 2000 (yes, 24 years ago) Oscar-winner that won the Academy Award for Best Picture and snagged a Best Actor Oscar for Russell Crowe.

In Gladiator II the only actors returning for the new one are Connie Nielsen and Derek Jacobi (though Crowe and Joaquin Phoenix are in flashback cameos), but stars Paul Mescal as prisoner-turned-gladiator Lucius and Pedro Pascal as Roman general Marcus Acacius do a more than adequate job of picking up any slack

And then there’s Denzel Washington as Macrinus, the former slave turned gladiator boss who has designs of his own to overthrow the existing Roman leadership.

Washington, as you would expect, owns the screen in all of his appearances.

First, few will argue that hardly anyone alive today does an epic movie better than Sir Ridley (his credits include Alien, Blade Runner and Thelma & Louise, to name a few) and then, well, of course, there’s Gladiator.

Gladiator II doesn’t necessarily pick up where the first one left off, but all the hallmarks are there: the Roman empire is still corrupt and crumbling under inept leadership and a flaccid Senate as the nation continues its bloody efforts to conquer the world.

While its soldiers toil in battle, the sitting twin emperors Geta and Caracalla (played to repulsive perfection by Joseph Quinn and Fred Hechinger) choose to entertain the populace with enslaved gladiators battling everything from baboons to rhinos and, of course, each other in the gigantic Colosseum.

Lucius, of course, excels in the gory combat and soon emerges as the baddest of the bad in the arena, but his goal is to kill Acacius, who murdered Lucius’s wife during the battle where Lucius was captured.

The plot unfolds between graphically-gory action scenes and the audience learns that Lucius is more than he seems and, without giving too much away, discovers that among his enemies is his mother, Lucilla (Connie Nielsen), who he believed abandoned him as a child.

Though Gladiator II is obviously similar in many ways to its predecessor, this new film has enough features of its own to stand alone, in particular the subplot with the ambitions of the deceptive Macrinus.

While you might get lost in all the combat and killing from time to time (the movie definitely earns its R rating), the thread of the story runs true and builds to a vivid ending that appears to tie everything together.

Gladiator II is definitely a film that needs to be seen on a giant screen, and more than a few will likely see it more than once to catch all the action they probably missed on the first go-around.

It is visually splendid, with one breath-taking scene after another, and the Harry Gregson-Williams score provides a more than adequate sensory backdrop to it all.

Like all good epics, you might be more than a bit overwhelmed (I would recommend watching it in an IMAX auditorium), but it will certainly linger in your mind long after you’ve left the theater.

This film is definitely not for little kids, but adults will most certainly appreciate the history and pageantry.

And afterward, you might want to take in a showing of Wicked to dial down the anxiety.