300: Rise of an Empire (2014)

The original 300 movie has always been high on my list of favorite films. Visually it is in a league of its own, with highly stylized, brightly lit and often spectacular, slow motion imagery. The story of 300 men fighting like brothers against a huge army appealing to the raw instincts of the primal man inside of us. Can another movie, set in the same universe, repeat that formula successfully?

The heart of the first movie was the story of king Leonidas, who had to survive growing up and earned the respect of his fellow Spartans. Gerard Butler was charismatic in the role, making the viewer feel he was also a Spartan, fighting shoulder to shoulder with his army. This movie, which is set around the same time as the events of the original film, follows Themistocles (Sullivan Stapleton). Problem here is that there isn’t much of a backstory to this character. The movie assumes that because he, together with other Greek men, are fighting the same enemy that is enough to pull you in. More time is spent on telling the origin stories of Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro) and Artemisia (Eva Green). This makes the ‘bad guys’ more human and although you will still be rooting for the Greek, it does not make the battle as black and white as it was in the first movie.

Just as in the original the main part of the movie are the epic battles. Land has now been replaced by water which makes the fight quite different. The speed ramping and extreme violence Zach Snyder used is something director Noam Murro copies and the results are almost as awesome. When rewatching the original movie this past weekend I did notice that compared to it this movie unfortunately hasn’t got the same slow buildup and moments of extreme heroism. Still it is a movie I really enjoyed, despite its story being a bit weaker.