LogFAQs > #975744125

It failed in almost every way imaginable.

* They made it way too much of an overblown spectacle. A lot of the charm of the OG version was the more low-budget, amateurish look and feel of it. Probably the biggest reason I'm skeptical a reboot could ever work in today's world where everything (especially a primetime network show, which AG is not a fit for at all) has to be incredibly slick and overproduced with tons of lights and effects and editing. The shit like the unnecessary giant pool, and fire and pyrotechnics everywhere detracted from the proceedings rather than adding to it.
* Ridiculous overspecialization of the gladiators. The whole point is supposed to be that they're good all-around athletes who could be dropped into any of the show's events and put up a good showing. This version had several gladiators that literally only showed up in like one or two different events that played to their strengths.
* Hogan and Ali's hosting was poor at best and came across as more of a "look at us, we're famous" than an attempt to have someone who knew how to conduct contestant interviews. IIRC there was someone else never seen on-camera who did the play-by-play commentary during events because they sucked so much.
* A broken tournament format. Since they had 10 episodes a season instead of 26 like the original series everything was compressed with a format that first-round winners being ranked by their eliminator times and getting eliminated despite winning if they didn't make the top four or something. Speaking of which,
* An Eliminator course that was so stupid it pretty much rendered the entire rest of the show pointless. Courses on the original run typically took contenders about a minute to finish, give or take. The one here went on forever, with swimming under a bar of fire, climbing up the pyramid, and more stuff I'm probably forgetting added on top of the stuff that was previously there. I think it took probably 3-4 minutes for a *good* run if somebody could actually do it without getting winded. But what really ruined it was
* The inclined treadmill. Like the later seasons of the original, it was at the end of the course. Unlike the original, there was no "three attempts and then you can go around it" rule, you kept at it until you did it. Which lead to several episodes where someone with a big lead spent minutes falling on it and catching their breath over and over while the tortoise slowly catches up and wins because they went so slow they're not winded enough to be unable to do it. And at least a couple episodes had BOTH contestants get stuck there to the point they had to edit out several minutes of constant waiting and failed attempts before someone finally wins with a time of something like 10 or 13 minutes. I'm sorry to rag on this point so much but this one is what really ruined the show for me more than anything else.
* Constant contestant sob stories. This is really a NBC game show thing and has been for decades now, but they feel the need to cast mostly people who have some "inspirational" reason why they're competing that they need to stop and drill into our heads constantly. I'm pretty sure nobody cares. The worst was when they had a contestant with a metal prosthetic leg competing and they acted like it was the most amazing thing ever despite the fact that he didn't do very well and literally couldn't get up the Eliminator treadmill with his leg until they shut it off, meaning as much as I or anyone else might feel for him, he really never had any chance and probably shouldn't have been there to begin with.
Also the referee was completely forgettable unlike Larry Thompson and the Gladiators in general just didn't seem very likeable or sportsmanlike but I've ragged on way too long already