After watching 300, Zach Snyder’s hugely stylized adaptation of Frank Miller’s already hugely stylized graphic novel, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the ludicrously muscular historical epic could only have been a one off. However, eight years after Gerard Butler bellowed about the wonders of Sparta from beneath a Brillo pad, another rose to take its place in the form if 300: Rise Of An Empire.
Itself based on Frank Miller’s follow up, Xerxes (which oddly wasn’t actually published until 2018), Rise Of An Empire strove to not only act as a prequel to Snyder’s grandiose sword swinger, but also manages to continue the tale the moments after the last Persian arrow thudded into the oiled pecs of King Leonidas. However, despite new director Noam Murro taking up Snyder’s visual battle and loosely tackling the battles of both Artemisium and Salamis with the same bloodthirsty gusto as before, is there any story left to tell that could possibly eclipse the legendary battle Thermopylae?
As the smirking Leonidas and his personal guard act as a living, sweaty barrier against the endless hordes of the God-king Xerxes, we take a step back and look at the events that preceded and followed this near-mythical feat.
We start with Sparyan Queen Gorgo as she waxes lyrical about the battle of Marathon and the slaying of the Persian King Darius and the hands of Themistocles, whose fatal, pin point accuracy with an arrow incurs the seething wrath of both Darius’ son Xerxes and the absolutely terrifying Persian naval commander, Artemisia. Thanks to the scheming of the latter, Xerxes hopes to upgrade his measly, pre-God form into something that can crush Greece once and for all and so, after a quest across the desert, the young man manages to level-up into the bald, gold-dripping, towering God-King we saw in 300.
Convinced at their superiority, Xerxes and Artemisia enact a duel pronged attack, but while the former sees men, monsters and various exotic beasts slowed by the efforts of the brave 300, the latter directs her forces through the Aegean Sea, hoping to score a decisive victory on the waves. However, opposing her is Themistocles, the guy who started this whole mess to begin with and as he matches wits with an enemy that would deeply enjoy fucking him just as much as she would enjoy killing him, boats collide, swords are drawn and we treated to more of those super Slo-Mo moments that sees gore spray across the screen like a Formula One champion opening an oversized bottle of champagne.
However, when word gets out that Leonidas and his men have fallen, it seems that Sparta will soon join the fight fully, but if Artemisia has her depraved way, she’ll lure Themistocles to her side with every means at her disposal.
While it was sometimes easy to chuckle at the preposterous, ramped up style that Zack Snyder injected this visual extravaganza with, you couldn’t complain that it was forgettable or dull. Exaggerating history into a mythical orgy of chiseled abdominals, tree trunk-necked berserkers and camera-speed shifting battles, its fiendishly cool visual language was the perfect next step after what Robert Rodriguez managed with Frank Miller’s Sin City. Meeting Snyder’s keen eye was a appropriately puffed-up lead performance from Gerard Butler, whose cocksure swagger and illogical scottish brogue managed to make perfect sense in this hyperbolic world the director had created. However, if you ever needed proof how perfectly both these aspects complimented each other then its presented on a silver platter with the release of 300: Rise Of An Empire. With no Snyder behind the camera (he co-wrote the script, which admittedly the best news) and no Butler in front of it, the sequel to 300 ends up as a weirdly forgettable affair despite heaping yet more scrumptious, digital, carnage upon you with reckless abandon.
Following in the sandaled footsteps of Butler was always going to be a daunting task, but Sullivan Stapleton doesn’t even seem to try as his forthright Themistocles barely has a fraction of the weapons grade charisma that his predecessor brought to the party. This unfortunately leaks down through to his comrades in arms as it starts to get tough telling them apart during the dialogue scenes, let alone amid the moments of frenetic battle and if you don’t care about who is fighting, then it’s kind of tough to care about the fight.
300 benefited from its rather myopic, revisionist take at history, keeping its focus solely on Leonidas’ insurmountable struggle, but when we’re introduced to a larger canvas, that tries to cram the surrounding events in a rather shallow 102 minutes, no amount of startling imagery can prevent the attention from wandering off like a daydreaming child in a supermarket. We’re furnished with the occasional cameo to help slot this adventure around what has already gone before, of course, but the familiar faces of Lena Headley’s Gorgo and David Wenham’s Dilios only serves to remind us at how mind numbingly forgettable all the new cast is in comparison despite them inudingvsuch names as Jack O’Connell and Callan Mulvey.
However, bow down and give thanks to Eva Green who, in her second turn in a belated, 2014 sequel to a Frank Miller adaptation after Sin City: A Dame To Kill For, is the sole thing in the movie that proves worth watching. Stalking about the place dressed like a Goth belly dancer and caked in eyeliner that suggests that Hot Topic once had a branch in ancient Persia, she’s a feral, fucking delight as she makes out with freshly severed heads and chucks out such emasculating zingers as
“You fight much harder than you fuck.” as she walks away with the entire movie.
In fact, the enjoyably dubious moment where a meeting between Themistocles and Artemisia turns into an unsettling “love” scene that borders on mutual rape is one of the rare bits that actually stands out amid action beats that feels more like a video game than anything out of Spartacus or Gladiator. While the shift from ground battles to the sight of hull-ramming naval skirmishes does a lot to expand on the original’s clashes, it can’t save your interest levels from sinking beneath the waves.
Arriving too late to capitalise on the original and too bland and empty to make you give a damn about why everyone is running around, spilling all this digital blood, 300: Rise Of An Empire may be a lot of things, but it’s certainly not Sparta…
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