Like many red-blooded males, I have a soft spot for the original 300. Its blend of blood-soaked battles, rah-rah speeches, larger-than-life characters, and lush cinematography holds up extremely well no matter how many times I watch it. But like any movie that generated a truckload of money and internet memes as far as the eye can see, the question of a sequel was not "if" but "when." Every element I've listed has made a return in 300: Rise of an Empire, some triumphantly and some with considerably less fire. And therein lies the problem. This has more the rhythms of a remake than a sequel, and while it's not a bad movie by any stretch, very little of it (with the exception of the main villain, more on her later) inspires and pumps up the viewer the way its predecessor did.
300: Rise of an Empire has a little fun with the timeline. A battle depicting Themistocles of Athens (Sullivan Stapleton) killing King Darrius of Persia takes place before the events of the first movie. This is done so that Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro) can be provided with a brief and economical backstory showing his rise to "God King" status. Shifting forward to events running concurrently with 300, he sends his chief naval officer, Artemisia (Eva Green) to deal with Themistocles' band of resistance warriors while he takes on the 300 Spartans from the first film. Themistocles displays superior strategy and wins a few skirmishes, but as the attacks become more brutal and Queen Gorgo of Spara (Lena Headey) refuses to help, he soon discovers his fate may be similar to that of the Spartans.
Many of the best lines from 300 came from Gerard Butler's King Leonidas, and his absence leaves a gaping void requiring Herculean efforts to replace. They're not impossible shoes to fill, but Themistocles doesn't come close to getting the job done here. The character is provided with numerous opportunities to inspire the troops and defy the odds, but actor Sullivan Stapleton handles it perfunctorily rather than with pizzazz. He's boring. This is classic pulp material that demands a commanding screen presence and a larger-than-life approach. When 300: Rise of an Empire depicts battle, it comes close to the original's orgy of blood, dismemberment, slow-motion, and ballet-like combat, but the film is disappointingly dry when the armies aren't clashing.
If there's one area where 300: Rise of an Empire exceeds the first installment, it's in the chief villain. Eva Green is tremendous here, a true man-eater of a warrior who commands our respect in every scene. She relishes every line, no matter how ridiculous, and appears to be the only one among the cast who transcends this material. Even during a hilariously over-the-top sex scene, she's still the one in control. The screenwriters even give her a tragic backstory, but that doesn't do much good since it inevitably focuses a disproportionate amount of the film's energy on the villain, much like Joel Schumaker's two Batman films from the '90s did. During too many scenes, I kept wondering how much more invigorating this conflict would've been with a more charismatic hero. In fact, my dream version (albeit an unconventional one) of this movie would involve making Queen Gorgo the lead and having the awesome sight of two all-male armies led by women. Think about it.
With Zach Snyder focusing on grander projects, director Noam Murro fills the breach and does an adequate job. If there's such a thing as a 300 formula, he follows it to a T. But that's the problem. Big-budget, gorgeous-looking action films are becoming easier to finance, so there has to be some real passion involved for one to stand out from the pack. The R-rating is nice, but it's not enough. Give us some rush-worthy sequences and endlessly quotable lines. Do something unique with some of these characters instead of repeating the first film's structure. With the exception of Artemisia's scenes, 300: Rise of an Empire doesn't rise to the occasion. Given Hollywood's fetish for sequels and franchises, we'll probably see a third installment, but perhaps it's best to let sleeping Spartans lie.
Rating: **1/2 (out of ****)
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