Although he’s managed to patch together a coalition of Greek states to try to ward off the Persians’ assault, his repeated attempts to persuade Sparta to join in are rebuffed by Gorgo, who insists that her city-state does not share the Athenian dream of a united Greece.īut in 300 - or is it 600 now? - 2,500-year-old geopolitics takes a back seat to ranting speeches, ripped torsos, manly-manness and the spurting, spilling and splashing blood, which is often aimed strategically at the viewer for maximum 3D effect. So while Spartan King Leonidas keeps Xerxes occupied at the “hot gates,” the non-aristocratic soldier-politician Themistokles dares to engage the mighty Persian navy with a far smaller force, but with much shrewdness. VIDEO: ‘300: Rise of an Empire’ Trailer Has More Blood, Guts and Glory It also provides some nifty illustrated backstory tidbits that the arrow that killed Persian King Darius was fired by Themistokles (Stapleton), that Artemisia (Green) is a Greek who turned on her own people for what they did to her and her family, and that Xerxes (the returning Rodrigo Santoro), in a vividly illustrated sequence, had himself transformed from man to golden god (who resembles a walking advertisement for a Beverly Hills jewelry store) so he could exact revenge for his father’s death by conquering the Greeks once and for all. Narrated by Lena Headey‘s Spartan Queen Gorgo, Rise looks at the Persian invasion of Greece, in the late summer of 480 B.C., from a different angle than did the land-based 300, concentrating on the purported 1,000-ship fleet that King Xerxes expected would have an easy time conquering the divided Greeks. Other top creative personnel are different, which hasn’t prevented the sequel from sporting the same bombastic, slo-mo, blood-in-your-face aesthetic. However, Snyder stayed around to co-produce and adapt Frank Miller‘s graphic novel Xerxes along with returning co-scripter Kurt Johnstad. Original director Zack Snyder, who moved on to the Superman franchise at Warner Bros., turned the directing reins over to Israeli commercials ace Noam Murro, whose previous feature was the 2008 independent Smart People. All the same, it’s disappointing that, after all the years, no effort has been made to augment or riff on the style at all in fact, the new film is more monochromatic and duller in appearance, lacking the bold reds and rich earth tones that are glimpsed here in brief visits to Sparta and the events at Thermopylae. Visually, there was clearly a mandate to hew close to the original’s look. PHOTOS: 35 of 2014’s Most Anticipated MoviesĪlthough Gerard Butler‘s star has significantly fallen due to the 17 mediocre films he’s made since 300, he’s missed here his replacement at the top of the sequel’s cast, Australian actor Sullivan Stapleton, just can’t bellow on a par with Butler, whose cocky, over-the-top abandon and staunch physical presence leave big sandals to fill. It would be a mild surprise if box-office results equaled those of the original, which came to $456 million worldwide (slightly more from foreign than domestic tills), but most fans will still probably want to check it out. Centering on mostly aquatic battles that historically took place simultaneously to the Battle of Thermopylae so fancifully depicted in the earlier film, this follow-up slavishly adheres to the graphic comics-meet-video games look of the original. Other than for the pleasure of watching Green try to conquer ancient Greece dressed as a distant forebearer of Catwoman, more is less and a little late in this long-aborning sequel to the 2007 bloodbath that was stylistically extreme and just different enough from anything else in its field to become an international action sensation. Given his condition, the man does not respond but, given the bestower, it wouldn’t have been surprising if he had … just a bit.
Playing the most vicious, and certainly sexiest, naval commander ever to ride the waves of the Aegean, Eva Green has a one-for-the-ages scene in 300: Rise of an Empire, in which she decapitates an adversary with two deft sword strokes, then, holding his head by the hair, kisses him on the mouth with pointedly derisive hunger.