Want to know what one of the major problems
is with this movie '300: Rise of an Empire'? Eva Green
is the problem. Now you're saying… Hey Moron, I've seen
this movie, Eva Green was the best thing about this movie… and
you'd be right. About me being a Moron and Eva Green
being the best thing about this movie. But here's the
thing, she's the bad guy in this movie, the heavy, the
villain. But Artemisia is so wonderful and deliciously
bad that she made me happy every time I saw her, then they
went and gave her a backstory which kind justifies why she's
so mean in the first place… then in this backstory they made
actor Peter Mensa… the emissary in the first movie… and one
our favorite actors here at the FCU… as her mentor. Now,
with this backstory, we see why she has this perpetual mad-on,
and as a result, we… or I guess me… are kind of rooting for
her. Plus in this movie they give her awesome
negotiating skills. She even put Xerexes (Rodrigo
Santoro) in his place, and he's the God King. Gave him a
backstory too. Our hero got nothing. Who are we
rooting for? Not the Athenians, even though we are
supposed to. That's a problem.
'300: Rise of an Empire', a prequel, current time, sequel to
'300', starts off with Queen Gorgo (Lena Headey) narrating
about how the Athenian Thermistocles (Sullivan Stapleton)
killed the king of Persia during a glorious battle, but
realized that this was terrible mistake as he gave birth to a
much worse alternative in his son Xerxes. Now Xerxes
used to be a bit of a punk, that is until Artemisia got ahold
of him, shaped him and formed into the ten foot tall blinged
out delusional psychopath that we have all come to know and
love. Artemisia for her part is in command of the
Persian navy, and she rules with a heavy hand and she hates
her some Greeks something awful.
Thermistocles knows that the Persian Navy is coming and
something has to be done about this, so he takes his own navy
of brave fighting men to hold off Artemisia from landing and
taking over Greece, meanwhile King Leonidus and his legion of
300 are doing their thing on land. Thermistocles
impresses Artemisia with his clever skills, but she knows it's
just a matter time, besides, we already know what eventually
is going to happen to Leonidus and his 300, so Thermistocles
is just delaying the inevitable.
Thermistocles needs help. He needs
Sparta if the Persians are to be thwarted, but the good Queen
feels Sparta has given enough. Whatever… better to die
on your feet than live on your knees… or something along those
lines. He also knows that if some way, somehow he can
take out Artemisia, then the Persians will be lost. If
only he can get close to her… a second time that is… He was
pretty close to her the first time. Can't get much
closer. But this second time, he wants to stab her… in a
different way… with his amazing fire proof horse that can swim
and fly. What is this thing, Pegasus? Anyway… I
know how it has to end, I'm just not pleased that it has to
end this way.
'300: Rise of an Empire' is probably bigger and bloodier and
crazier than the movie it follows, some eight years ago, but
alas, the novelty has kind of faded. For instance, when
I saw '300' at the theater back in 2006, it blew me out of my
seat. It was an experience. I'd never seen
anything quite like that before. Now I've seen it few
times since then, a proud owner of that film on defunct
HD-DVD, the Look and Sound of Perfect, and it gets a little
less awesome with each viewing as opposed to one of those
movies that gets better with each viewing. 'Rise of an
Empire' is even less awesome, despite the added draw of 3D
which was well implemented this time around.
Now don't get me wrong… the movie is big and loud and bloody
and it moves like a bat out of hell… it's just that this was a
sequel that probably needed to be released in 2008 as opposed
to 2014 while the concept was still fresh and minds where
still primed to be blown. Then there was the issues with
the narrative choices, that being giving all of the real
flavor to our villains. We're not completely upset with
director Noam Murro and Producer Zach Snyder about this as we
would probably pay good money to watch Eva Green knit a
sweater for ninety minutes, but actor Sullivan Stapleton is
our hero, and he needed all the help he could get since he
wasn't blessed with Gerard Butler's screen presence.
This is the character that really needed the backstory, this
is the character that needed to be propped up so that as he
was bravely fighting for his country, we were cheering for him
as opposed to wishing he would get off the screen so we could
see more of Artemisia and even Xerxes. They were the
ones having all of the fun, chewing up scenery and reigning
terror in a terribly entertaining manner.
'300: Rise of an Empire' probably is not a good movie as it's
story is a bit fractured, a little slipshod, and seems to lack
focus unless that focus was on 3D blood splatter and
dismemberments, but it is entertaining. It would be hard
for it not to be. But the villain gets to have all the
fun, and this is probably not the design, but that's the
character we identified with most in this one.
