Concert Review

Taylor Swift wows crowd at first of three sold-out nights in Arlington

Taylor Swift blew them away at AT&T Stadium in Arlington.

Photo by John Medina/Getty Images

Friday night, pop megastar Taylor Swift brought the first of three sold out nights to AT&T Stadium in Arlington, delivering a three-hour show that spanned highlights of her illustrious career.

Called the "Eras Tour," it's part of a U.S. tour that began in March and extends through August and serves as a career retrospective, featuring tracks pulled from key albums including Lover, Fearless, and Evermore.

Swift is only 33, but already has 10 albums under her belt, and has explored a variety of genres, from country to pop to indie. The show artfully displayed her evolution as an artist, demonstrating how she has matured from teen pop star to seasoned performer able to connect with a wide demographic.

Every performer has fans but a Taylor Swift show is on another level: Virtually every one of the 70,000 people in attendance at AT&T seemed to know every song and every lyric. The audience was probably 80 percent women, lending a subtly empowering aspect. (I had seats on the floor and counted a total of 10 guys in my section, which had about 60-80 seats.)

The show was impressively staged. After openers Muna and Gayle had completed their sets, Swift's entrance was preceded by the image of a countdown clock, ticking down, setting off a wave of raucous screams.

The show cycled through albums, with Swift performing a few tracks from each, though not necessarily in chronological order. It was almost like a series of well-orchestrated mood swings, from fast-paced dance hits to the more subdued music of her 2020 album Folklore.

In between albums, the show would pause for mini-interludes, oftentimes with a video, serving as a transition and giving the stage crew time to quickly usher in a new set of props, many quite elaborate.

For example, the Folklore segment featured a quaint moss-covered A-frame house, complete with a chimney wafting smoke, as she crooned to the tour debut of her hit "The 1."

Taylor Swift 3-31-2023 Set piece from Taylor Swift show at AT&T Stadium in ArlingtonGeoff Keah

During her Evermore set, a background video showed a dark, moonlit forest adorned with dark green trees reaching into the sky. Black-cloaked dancers emerged, slowly swinging glowing orange orbs as Swift crooned the haunting lyrics to her hit "Willow."

That segued into her Reputation album, summoning the fast-paced energy reminiscent of her 2018 tour, as she kicked it off with the rambunctious hit "…Ready For It?"

She also played the 10-minute version of "All Too Well" from the Red album, a song that was originally five minutes long but which she re-recorded in her effort to regain control of her music after her back catalog was sold behind her back.

Setlists for this tour are being posted hours after each performance, including shows in Arizona and Las Vegas, a fact that Swift playfully acknowledged.

“You think you can just scroll the setlist? You think you can just come prepared? Let it be said about The Eras Tour … there’s hijinks,” she said, before offering surprise acoustic renditions of "Sad Beautiful Tragic" and "Ours."

The final half hour closed out with hits from her latest album Midnights, including “Lavender Haze” and “Anti-Hero." There wasn't an encore, but after a sprawling three-hour set that never flagged, it wasn't needed or missed.

Leading up to the weekend, there were gloomy reports anticipating traffic issues, but many fans arrived early and entrance to the venue went smoothly with virtually no lines even an hour prior to the show.

She'll be in Arlington for two more nights, on April 1 and 2.

Photo by John Medina/Getty Images

Taylor Swift on Eras Tour, Glendale, Arizona

Movie Review

Much-anticipated film sequel Gladiator II tells a very familiar story

Photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures

Paul Mescal in Gladiator II.

There are some films for which making a sequel is natural, and others where a follow-up is wholly unnecessary. Gladiator, which made both tons of money and was named Best Picture at the Oscars, told an impactful stand-alone story that ended with the protagonist dead and no real loose ends. And yet because there’s always more money to be made, here we are 24 years later with Gladiator II.

The lead character this time around is Lucius (Paul Mescal), a general in a North African army who becomes a prisoner of war when the Roman army led by Marcus Acacius (Pedro Pascal) bests him and his troops in battle. Taken back to Rome, he is put in the pool of captured men forced to fight at the Colosseum for the amusement of twin emperors Geta (Joseph Quinn) and Caracella (Fred Hechinger).

Lucius is controlled by Macrinus (Denzel Washington), an ambitious schemer who bets liberally on his prized fighter and always has an eye to move up in the world. Meanwhile, Lucilla (Connie Nielsen), the sister of Emperor Commodus from the first film, is now married to Marcus Acacius and has a unique connection with Lucius that is fairly obvious from the get-go.

Directed once again by Ridley Scott and written by David Scarpa, the film commits a number of sins throughout its 150-minute running time, the most blatant of which is that, aside from a few embellishments, it essentially tells the same story as the first film. Lucius, like Maximus, is a deposed military leader who’s out for revenge on the person who killed his family. Instead of one obnoxious emperor, there are now two. And the only way for Lucius to earn his freedom is to fight his way out.

Stories told in the same world can echo each other and, if done well, overcome those similarities. But Gladiator II is shockingly boring for a purported sword-and-sandals epic. Scott and his team try to introduce new elements to the fights, like a gladiator riding a rhinoceros or a ship battle inside the Colosseum (with sharks!), but most of the sequences are inert with no propulsion to them.

The action fails because none of the relationships in the film amount to much. There are stand-out characters like Macrinus and the twin emperors, but instead of creating antipathy or strong feelings of triumph or defeat, the story just kind of happens without any sense of excitement or importance. Much of that issue lies at the feet of Lucius, who simply doesn’t inspire in the same way that Russell Crowe’s Maximus did.

Mescal is a fine actor who’s done good work in more intimate roles, but he’s not up to the task of being an action star, at least not in this film. Any bombast he shows with the character feels forced, and the story doesn’t give him enough opportunities to counteract that lack. Washington, however, fills up the screen with his charisma, and it’s during his scenes that the film comes closest to being rousing. Quinn and Hechinger are a lot of fun as the twin emperors, but in the end they feel like retreads of Joaquin Phoenix from the original.

Any sequel should have a purpose that sets it apart from what came before, but Scott, Scarpa, and the rest of their team fail in that respect in Gladiator II. It’s a mostly lifeless film that delivers scenes that would be exciting if they had any kind of good story to back them up.

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Gladiator II opens in theaters on November 22.

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