“War! War! War!” So King Leonidas’ 300 Spartans chanted as the battle cry of men that were sculpted to kill. They were built to brutalize. They were bred to maim. As anyone who saw the original 300 knows, they fulfilled their purpose. In one spectacular single-take sequence, time is warped to the rhythm of curved steel blades separating flesh from flesh. Blood smears the screen in explosions of comic book violence to punctuate the mayhem—the radical idea of slowing down time to intensify the buildup to a kill and to speed it up as the blade meets its mark. It’s crude but cathartic, and it follows the tradition of using slow motion in action movies that was partially begun by Akira Kurosawa in Seven Samurai. Such devices were used with a wink and a smile, and self-seriousness wasn’t ever one of 300‘s problems. Writer and director Zack Snyder knew better (although he didn’t on last year’s Man of Steel), and he understood Frank Miller’s graphic novel. Testosterone and manliness became satire, with the camera worshiping bulging pectorals, six pack abs, bouncing breasts, and, of course, buckets blood. It was a violent homo-erotic joke that, at the time, entertained. It began with a chest pumping montage: the grueling and barbarous training of each and every Spartan destined for battle. Like most I suspect, I recognized I couldn’t ever pass a test such as this on my own, and that kindled a feeling of deserved admiration for the towering heroes that are our good guys. This was 2006. Seven years later, I unsuspectingly found myself in an environment that rivaled that of Leonidas’ 300 hardened Spartans. It was an exercise equally as ruthless, and to some, even more sadistic, that demanded tremendous physical and mental discipline. I had to stay awake during 300: Rise of an Empire.





This is as clear an example of studio greed as any, where they manufacture sequels, prequels, and ...whatever this is... (more on that in a minute) as though they’re merely products on an assembly line. Artistic integrity is the last consideration. The movie business is still a business, one of the most lucrative in the world, but there still remains a thin veneer of romanticism for the movies. Films like 300: Rise of an Empire consume that feeling with the artificial corporatism of Hollywood. The irony is that the script, written once again by Snyder and Kurt Johnstad, is actually pretty good. The story came from Frank Miller, who’s set to make and release the graphic novel version of this film. Instead of Sparta, the prime location in Rise of an Empire is Athens. And, instead of Gerard Butler’s charismatic turn as King Leonidas, we have Sullivan Stapleton (who?) as Athenian general Themistocles. It’s not that he’s less buff or less charismatic, it’s that he’s just less. As a nearly naked speech-giving general that slashes and cuts and pierces and yells, he has to “bring it.” He doesn’t. In Rise of an Empire’s opening montage that seemed to span longer the film’s running time, we find out Themistocles shot the arrow that killed the Persian commander. His son? The future god-king, and we find out how he went from mere man to self-celebrated divinity. Xerxes sets out to exact revenge, and it’s up to Themistocles to rally the Greek nations together and defeat him.





There’s slightly more story than that, giving it a narrative edge to Snyder’s 300. It doesn’t count for much, but in more capable hands it could have. Rise of an Empire aspires to deliver a true sense of scale on multiple levels: political, city, state, and in battle. None are well developed, and dependence between them is never believably developed. Oh, there’s plenty of dialogue repeatedly exclaiming town A has to be with town G so that towns B and C help, but problems X, Y, and Z are in the way. This is one of the films gravest mistakes-- the story exists as a separate entity to the action. By all accounts this should be a non-issue, since the action/story ratio strongly favors one over the other. But the action is static, lifeless, and altogether uninspired. Although the action scenes in 300 became instantly iconic, their reproductions have almost universally been loathed. This is sometimes referred to by critics as “The Matrix Problem,” where the action within The Matrix was justified by its exaggerated setting, but it wouldn’t make sense in the real world. In other words, we had an excuse for kung-fu ridiculousness that let the crazy become thrilling. Rise of an Empire obviously takes place in the same setting as 2006’s 300, but it never feels like the same world. This is because Rise of an Empire embellishes every quality of 300 to the point of incohesion. It’s too comic and too somber, too risible and too dour. As a consequence, the action scenes are an empty rehash of what was mastered 7 years prior.



