March 28, 2014

 

Not really a sequel and not really a prequel. This installment of the 300 series is appropriately called Rise of an Empire, because it actually takes place before, during and after its predecessor and shows how the Greeks fought the Persians.

 

It begins with Queen Gorgo (Lena Headey) telling her men about the Battle of Marathon and the ultimate rise of Persian God-King Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro). Once Xerxes emerges a self-proclaimed God-King, he declares war on Greece. Xerxes allows Artemisia (Eva Green), a former Greek-turned Persian, to lead an army to defeat the Greeks. And she is a woman with a vengeance. We learn that her loyalty lies with Persia when her family was raped and murdered by Greek hoplites. She was then turned into a sex slave until the Persians rescued her when she was left for dead. She was trained to fight and rose to be a leader until Xerxes’ father.

 

Meanwhile, Themistocles (Sullivan Stapleton), the leader of the Greek army, seeks council so he can go to fight the Persians at sea. He travels to Sparta to seek help from King Leonidas, but Gorgo informs him Leonidas is seeking advice from the oracle and she’s reluctant to help Athens. Themistocles heads out on his own with his own army, where at first it looks as if Artemisia will win, but he uses more brains than brawn to defeat them, several times. Frustrated with her constant defeat, Artemisia invites Themistocles on her ship to convince him to join the Persians and be her second-in-command. They proceed to have a very hot and weird sex scene, but after he keeps refusing, she kicks him out. The next battle, the Persians seem to win, when they spill tar into the sea and send in suicide bombers to destroy the Greek ships. It appears that Themistocles dies, but rather he’s saved. Artemisia retreats, thinking she’s won.

 

It’s at this point that Themistocles learns of the death of Leonidas and his 300 men by Xerxes. He goes to Sparta to offer his condolences and learns that Xerxes now has his sights on Athens. Before he leave Sparta to save his city, he leaves Leonidas’ sword with Gorgo and urges her to seek revenge on his death, in the hopes the Spartans will join the Greeks and make the army even stronger.

 

When Artemisia learns that Themistocles is alive, she prepares her ships and goes to battle with the Greeks. After all the ships slam into each other, the two fight each other and just has he plunges the sword into her, killing her, he makes sure she sees that the Spartans are on their way to defeat the Persians. Xerxes just walks away on land in disappointment.

 

Perhaps it’s my new love of epic battle scenes or all that Spartacus that I watched, but I actually enjoy this film better than the first. I thought the story was pretty decent and moved along nicely, while acknowledging the previous film’s battle and then moving into the future. While it was a bit on the bloody side (these films have to be), still really liked it. Plus the way that the Greeks beat the Persians the first couple of times adds a slight comedic touch to an otherwise serious film.