Many, many times throughout Elizabeth: The Golden Age, we half-see the action around corners, through windows, peeking through a doorway. The idea is to give us the impression of peeking in on the private life of a very public figure, as it might be seen in short bursts by the faceless servants of her castle. Here is a woman, we are made to consider, who wields power so immense only a dozen other people in the world can match it. And for that power she must sacrifice all semblance of a private life and embrace the persona of “the Queen” in all the minutes of her life. Given who (a woman) and what (a Protestant) she is, her every concession to normality can be taken as weakness, and reason enough for her many enemies to strike. Her private life is half-observed, and so is it also half-lived.

Unfortunately, this visual motif extends to the story, too. Here we have a story with at least two potentially great plot threads, but in competition with each other neither becomes realized. King Phillip II of Spain (Jordi Molla), a Catholic zealot, is building a massive armada. Mary, Queen of Scots (Samantha Morton), the next in line for England’s throne and a devout Catholic herself, languishes in the prison of her castle – but she does not wait idly for her time to rise. At home, kindred spirit Sir Walter Raleigh (Clive Owen, making a compelling case for being the handsomest man alive) seems intent on courting Elizabeth (Cate Blanchett), who maneuvers her favored servant (Abbie Cornish) to win his charms in her place. Elizabeth cannot marry a commoner; why this is the case is never explained. Sir Francis Walsingham (Geoffrey Rush), the man who orchestrated a Godfather-like elimination of rivals in the first movie, has become old and by turns bitter and sentimental.

All of that, coupled with returning director Shekhar Kapur’s lush direction, should add up to a powerful melodrama, if nothing else. The key weakness is Elizabeth herself. In the first film, Elizabeth was a carefree woman thrown into the most unforgiving crucible in the world, and by nerve and luck she rose to the top. She was empathetic and admirable. Elizabeth has become another creature entirely in The Golden Age. She is by turns shrill, pompous, arrogant, and childishly willful. Her makeup and wigs make her look vampiric. Every gesture, smile, laugh, or mournful word in a private moment seems as calculated as anything she says when holding court.

The problem isn’t necessarily with Blanchett. The character of Elizabeth feels phoney, not Blanchett the actress. Does the blame rest with writers Michael Hirst and William Nicholson, for giving Blanchett no options other than to be unpleasant? Is it that by this point in time, Elizabeth no longer resembles a person anyone can relate to, no matter how admirable her accomplishments? But then the same could be said for Rush’s Walsingham, a man once possessed of a sinister intelligence now relegated to grumping about how no one listens to him anymore. When the central returning characters from the original film have been pushed nearly to the sidelines and made pathetic, you are in trouble.

There are points of interest. Even the barest glimpses we get of King Phillip and a shadowy Jesuit mastermind (Rhys Ifans) are intriguing. Owen, a civilized man’s pirate, hints at layers and hidden depths that Elizabeth may understand too well. But the center doesn’t hold, and so the movie never truly takes flight. Throughout, I could think of nothing but how superior the original Elizabeth was, how involving, how complex, how singularly driven. Elizabeth: The Golden Age is an unworthy successor to its throne.