300: Rise of an Empire is part prequel, part sequel, and part different angle, to the original 300 movie. Pretty much the whole movie timeline stretches before, during, and after the 300 Spartans fell to Xerxes. This movie is loosely based of the graphic novel Xerxes, written by Frank Miller, but Xerxes gets a brief origin story, and that is about it. This time we get Greek warriors taking on the Persian army, led by Eva Green’s character, Artemisia. Sullivan Stapleton plays Themistokles, and he leads the Greeks much like King Leonidas did.
300: Rise of an Empire is a decent sequel to the original movie, but it does feel like these guys are the B-squad. Stapleton holds his own, but he is no Gerard Butler. Sometimes he had this look on his face like he just shit his loin cloth, which he very well could have, considering the high protein diet he had to get on. Eva Green stands out in this movie the most with her villainess character. She’s evil, shows no remorse, and is got the prettiest evil eyes you will ever see. Sometimes she could be a bit over the top, but I still think her character was strong, and a movie like this needed a villain like that.
The fight scenes are nothing too new when it comes to the visual aspect of the flick. Zack Snyder started the slow-mo fight revolution with the original 300, and it has since been used time and time again. Nothing wrong with using the style at all, just as long as you add a little flavor to it. There are buckets and buckets of blood in this movie, which is a given of course, but I don’t know what the directors obsession was with dust particles. Seriously, he wanted to show that there were pathogens floating around in every frame of film, which must have been annoying to see in 3D.
Overall, the movie is still a good time, and there were some pretty cool sequences within the battle scenes that I enjoyed. If you are a fan of the first film, you will most likely like this one too. It doesn’t touch the first one, but still holds its own in shiny, buff guys in loin cloths fun. Check out my video review below, and let me know what you thought about the flick if you saw it.