300: Rise of an Empire

By: Robert Murphy

Hey guys and girls, so this past week I had the opportunity to see the sequel to the honestly spot on historically accurate film 300 with 300: Rise of an Empire. The kidding aside though, we all know these films weren’t meant to be historically accurate we go to them for the action and frankly the epicness of guys hacking and slashing their way across the battlefield. This film I found wasn’t so much of a sequel though but more of a side by side film that plays out events alongside the acts of Leonidas and the three hundred Spartan soldiers he marched with against the Persian army. Although Leonidas (Gerard Butler) doesn’t make a return to his character, he is shown in the film for a few brief moments and shows how the slaughter of the 300 spurred on the coming war with Persian and gave birth to the forming of a whole free and Greek state. This is led on by our new main protagonist in the film Themistocles (Sullivan Stapleton) and he will lead Greek attack to stop the Persians but will the stubborn Spartans join? Let’s find out.

Themistocles is a very popular Athenian solider who was at the first battle with Persia as they tried to land of Greece’s shores, he led the attack then and was the man allegedly responsible for shooting an arrow the impossible distance from the shore to a moving boat, in a storm, right into the heart of the Persian King, the father of Xerxes, bum bum bah!  This opens the door to our other new character to the film, Artemisia (Eva Green), who plays the leader of the Persian navy and the mastermind behind everything set forth in both films. Artemisia is quite the snake and an unorthodox military leader, she’s cruel, cunning and frankly gorgeous which is what makes her so deadly, she wove the seeds of war against Greece for her own twisted reasons and made Xerxes into the “God-king” that he believes himself to be. This is something that wasn’t so played up in the first film but gets more back story and entertaining in “Rise of an Empire” and makes for one of the faults I have with the film, both have their faults but entertaining and not only giving a back story behind the “God-king” nonsense was really ridiculous. We had a moment of mysticism in the 300 when Leonidas went to see the Oracle for guidance but it can be dismissed as smoke and mirrors as the corrupt oracles are just as such.

The rest of the film goes as about you might expect, Xerxes and the Persian army make their way into Greece, Xerxes on the land against Leonidas and the three hundred and Artemisia by the sea against Themistocles and his rag tag team of ships and united Greek offense. Artemisia develops a hate/love relationship with Themistocles as he best her best men and maneuvers with just the few ships he has at his command. This culminates quite nicely for him later on but I won’t delve into it that too much, I’ll leave that for you all to enjoy. Something about the Rise of an Empire though just wasn’t as engaging as 300 was for me, Themistocles character was interesting but just he felt kind of bland, I don’t know if it was the acting or the fact that I was expecting more but he was no Leonidas. The best the movie has to offer is in the action and the incredible performance of Eva Green as Artemisia, she runs circles around Xerxes playing the perfect puppet master and honestly I feel she should done the same against Themistocles but she somehow fails. That’s the other thing as well, in 300 I rooted for the underdogs, the Persians rightfully were getting their arses handed to them but this time I wanted the Persians to win both because of the strong leadership of Artemisia and the fact that they still had the numbers and strength, they weren’t trampled like Xerxes was on the land.

All in all, 300: Rise of an Empire is what you would of expected if you’ve seen the first the film, every single sword stroke sends blood all across the screen and across half naked warriors like a splash of water at Sea World. Where I think the film failed though is trying to make the story what it’s not, intelligent, characters try to have an intelligent dialogue outside the blood and battle and it just doesn’t work. There’s still the bloodiness and some characters return to the screen as well as some new more interesting ones, especially Artemisia who I really cannot undersell as she leads the movie with her excellent performance. In conclusion don’t write your history papers after watching this movie and if they’re going to make another one let’s hope they stick to their strengths.  

Good:

- Still as bloody as it ever was

- Artemisia is a strong and engaging character, she made the movie worth watching till the end

Bad:

- Not a strong male lead like Leonidas this time around

- The back story on Xerxes was just ridiculous and furthers the nonsense about him being a God

- The movie should have stuck to the blood, gore and guys slashing about not making an intelligent dialogue because it didn’t work

- Nothing quite like the original 300

Scully Rating: 4.5 out of 10