Not a sequel, and not so good
“300” was an innovative and imaginative action film, but the follow-up, “300: Rise of an Empire,” is nothing but a disappointment. Zack Snyder directed the original, but the new entry is directed by Noam Murro, whose only previous feature was about an emotionally repressed English professor (“Smart People”). And no — a sequel to “300” is no place to get started as an action-movie director.
Like the best of Snyder’s work, “300” wasn’t all about action. There were subtleties in the performances that suggested an entire distant culture, in this case the warrior culture of ancient Sparta.
The movie’s muted colors and Snyder’s use of a digital rose-petal effect, instead of blood, in the battle scenes, evoked the story’s origins as a graphic novel, while suggesting something far away, as though we were seeing, not the events themselves, but their memory.
But as is often the case with a novice action director, Murro overcompensates for his inexperience. Trying to out-Zack Zack, he replaces Snyder’s rose petals with gushes of blood and muted colors with murk. “300: Rise of an Empire” becomes a succession of battle scenes, filmed in tight medium shots, so that all you see is commotion. If you want to know who’s winning, the only way to tell is to see which general is smiling.
The movie’s one genuine point of interest is perverse, and that’s Eva Green’s performance as the evil Artemisia, the naval commander heading the Persian attack on the Greek city states. With her black hair, pale white skin and murderous ways, she looks like the women in Edvard Munch’s lithographs and acts like a vampiric femme fatale of the early 20th century.
A caricature
It’s curious that a misogynistic stereotype from a century ago could still be offered to the public as an example of strong, powerful womanhood. (If you punch a woman in the face, is it a feminist statement to show that she can take it?) Green is fun to watch — she always is — but there’s a point at which the caricature becomes the career, and that point is drawing closer.
Still, it’s hard not to enjoy the absurd spectacle of Artemisia’s person-to-person meeting with her Greek counterpart, the Athenian general, Themistokles (Sullivan Stapleton). A tense peace conference turns into an interlude of scary sex, in which the two blast through six positions within 30 seconds, banging into walls and slamming into tables, looking like they’re trying to kill each other — but no, they’re not doing that, not yet. Later, Artemisia implies that Themistokles’ lovemaking was too soft. If it were any harder, they’d have to put a hole through the wall.
“300: Rise of an Empire” is based on a graphic novel by Frank Miller called “Xerxes,” after the Persian king. The movie is not, strictly speaking, a sequel to “300,” in that it covers events concurrent with the previous film. “300” showed the land battle, in which 300 Greeks attempted to stop a massive Persian army at Thermopylae. “Rise of an Empire” shows the sea battle, happening at around the same time.
Setup is a letdown
On the one side, there’s Themistokles, trying to forge a legion of Greek states and getting trouble from Lena Headey, reprising her role as Sparta’s Queen Gorgo. Unfortunately, this movie’s effort to convey the life and mentality of ancient Greece is perfunctory, and so her role is simplified from that of someone emblematic of a cultural mind-set to someone who’s merely tough by nature. Likewise, unaided by the director, Sullivan Stapleton as Themistokles has none of the complication and mystery that Gerard Butler had in the earlier film. He’s just a generic hero, so noble that he doesn’t quite appreciate Eva Green’s allure as much as he should.
In the end, if “300: Rise of an Empire” is not technically a sequel, it’s a sequel in spirit — an attempt to do something a second time, but with none of the same feeling, inspiration or vision. At one point, Themistokles tries to inspire his troops, and we sit back and expect some statement that might give us a glimpse of this earlier time. Instead he talks about how soldiers don’t fight for a cause, but simply for the guy next to them.
That’s something you hear all the time and can know — and put in a character’s mouth — without having ever been in battle.