300: Rise of an Empire

There was a certain something to the original 300. It had a ridiculous amount of style, getting the success it managed through a striking and unique visual style and the sheer fun of its simple, hypermasculine design and fast pacing. It told a time-honoured story of a grand last stand in a direct and supremely enjoyable manner. 

So there was plenty of opportunity for Rise of an Empire to be good, despite not really being needed. There is, after all, a whole more good story to tell. The elements that come from Greek history are compelling - a victory at sea over vastly greater numbers; the alliance of the squabbling city-states; and of course, Artemesia, one of the most interesting and powerful women the ancient world can give us. The great tragedy of Rise of an Empire is that it makes one of the most fascinating clashes of history dull. Dull in terms of storytelling, dull in terms of presentation and dull in terms of pacing. 

Our story is of the larger conflict between Greece and Persia that led to Leonidas' death. It starts with the battle of Marathon, where many fanciful elements are added - Darius I himself comes to the battle and dies to an arrow shot by Thermistocles, steeling the young Xerxes to not only invade Greece again later, but to become the outlandish god-king we saw in the original. As the second invasion looms, Thermistocles goes about Greece attempting to unite the city-states, with limited success. Some sea skirmishes introduce the soldiers to Artemesia, here not a shrewd queen betting on what she thinks is the winning side, but given a ridiculous angsty backstory as a young Greek girl whose parents are for some reason raped and killed by hoplites, who then tie her up as a sex slave and eventually dump her somewhere to die, whereupon a Persian ambassador picks her up and gives her a new life - which of course allows her to become a master of the sword and rise up the ranks to become this film's posturing femme fatale. She delegates men to do her bidding and kills them when she fails, commands stupid anachronous oil tankers and seduces the upstanding Thermistocles. Eventually her plots allow victory over the smaller forces of the Greeks (effectively the film's Artemesium) and facilitated the capture of Athens. What follows is the battle of Salamis, here framed less by disaster for overcrowded Persian forces and more as a last stand averted by the intervention of other allies, particularly Spartans - which I have to say is one of the better storytelling decisions. The film leaves open the possibility of a third film, though presumably for a satisfying final part they'll need to alter Xerxes' story to have him stay rather than withdraw with the satisfaction of having taken Athens (on Artemesia's advice). On the other hand, it will be interesting to see how they deal with Thermistocles' defection and persecution at the hands of the Spartans, given how noble he is here and how he doesn't rely on lies as he did in the versions from antiquity. 

None of this damns the film - what does is how deeply ordinary it is, compared with its predecessor. Gone is the striking look of the piece, all saturated earth tones. Gone the outlandish extremity of the Spartans, replaced by the much more relateable Athenians. The inventive and bizarre combat is replaced by by-the-numbers Hollywood action sequences with daft Mortal Kombat blood gushing everywhere in very juvenile schlock. Both Thermistocles and Artemesia are dull cliches, which Leonidas actually managed to avoid, and the attempt at a human element that comes from a father-son pair of soldiers is just horribly tacked-on and shallow. 

This is some of the finest storytelling material in history, and even worse, I don't mind that it is not the best script in the world. What stings is that this is a property needs to look and feel unlike everything else, and have some brilliance to its comic-book presentation and it fell well short of that. Disappointing.