Eva Green 300 Rise of An Empire.JPG

Eva Green stars in "300: Rise of an Empire."

(Courtesy photo | Warner Bros)

Some of the same criticisms levied at "300" can be applied to its sequel, "300: Rise of an Empire." Both films are superficial, violent, self-important, over-stylized and humorless. But where the first film was audacious, a visual stunner, its successor is campy and thematically repetitive. The original's King Leonidas and his band of burly Spartans proved, even facing the certainty of death, they would never surrender. The new film shows us how their contemporaries will never, ever, EVER surrender. Never ever. Never.

Ever.

“Rise of an Empire” is both prequel and sequel to “300,” its narrative wrapping around the 2007 film’s story. It revisits the final shot, with Leonidas’ warriors dead, peppered with the arrows of Xerxes’ Persian army. Then it flashes back, then further back, then back forward, then back again a few times, until we have no idea what’s past or present. The constant time-jumps require so much exposition, via voiceover or character dialogue, it nearly suffocates the entire picture.

Not that anyone is exhaling very much, anyway. It’s all very breathless in the sense that the entire cast sucks in his or her guts and puffs out their chests, posing rigidly, half-naked, like Crossfit propaganda posters, reading their lifeless and leaden declarative lines. When characters aren’t reciting impossible dialogue laden with multisyllabic names and titles, they exchange monosyllabic grunts and howls as they hack each other to bits, digital blood spouting in gleeful orgasmic spurts. The script surely was written in all-caps. Words are either bellowed or whispered – and yes, even whispers can be capitalized, because addressing “A MOMENT THAT WOULD RING ACROSS THE CENTURIES” in mere plebian lowercase would not properly convey the great drama in flinging an arrow across 1,000 yards of thrashing ocean, directly into the heart of your enemy.

FILM REVIEW

'300: Rise of an Empire'

1 ½ stars (out of 4)

MPAA rating: R for strong sustained sequences of stylized bloody violence throughout, a sex scene, nudity and some language

Cast: Sullivan Stapleton, Eva Green, Lena Headey, Hans Matheson

Director: Noam Murro

Run time: 102 minutes

“300” is an adaptation of writer/illustrator Frank Miller’s graphic novel, inspired by the 1962 film “The 300 Spartans,” about the legendary Battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C. “Rise of an Empire” is derived from Miller’s follow-up, “Xerxes,” as yet unpublished. It’s significantly broader in scope than its relatively simple and focused predecessor. But it’s a lesser film, because, despite its complication of plot and introduction of new characters, the result is the same: grisly warfare and carnage, rendered in relentless and tiresome slow-motion. Director Noam Murro simply apes the style of “300” helmsman Zack Snyder (who co-writes the new film with Kurt Johnstad). One character cannot eat a snack without Murro decelerating the film, adding hokey drama to the crunch of an apple slice. If he normalized all the slo-mo, the run time would be cut by a good 40 percent.

The story entangles the great Greek metropolis of Athena in the Persia/Sparta conflict. Athenian men pose and flex exactly like Spartan men – both are fleshy hunks of muscle with armoresque abs, their faces rough and hairy, but their chests meticulously waxed. We can tell them apart only by the color of their capes. The Athenians are led by Themistokles (Sullivan Stapleton), a generic slab of sincere heroism whose discourse is primarily thrice-removed “Braveheart” pre-battle speeches. He is the man who shot the aforementioned arrow into Xerxes’ father, which allows the narrative to indulge the origin of the Persian giant (Rodrigo Santoro, reprising the role). So we have two legends intersecting with the Spartan legend, kept alive by Queen Gorgo (Lena Heady, another “300” holdover).

But three legends is not enough for this screenplay. Artemisia is a Greek woman by birth and a former slave, her family raped and murdered by Spartans, and now the adoptive sister of Xerxes. She commands his immense naval fleet. She’s played by Eva Green, apparently the only cast member aware of the script’s inherent campiness. Her eyes are crazy-woman wide and caked with gallons of black eye shadow, her expression an emotionless, arrogant sneer, her dresses shredded at the hem like the Wicked Witch of the West, or studded with dragon spikes down the spine. She decapitates a prisoner, and kisses the head on the lips. Artemisia and Themistokles halt the noisy warfare for a moment to negotiate surrender – not that anyone will ever, ever, ever do that - and what follows is a howler of a sex scene, offensive and stupid, surely a humiliating moment for the actors.

“Rise of the Empire” attempts to up the ante with massive set pieces, naval battles in which humongous oarships ram each other, wood splintering and bodies flying, or spew oil into the water, to be set alight with flaming arrows. Murro doesn’t skimp on the hand-to-hand combat either, which is staged like pro wrestling with swords and shields, thunder and lightning rumbling and crackling in the background, for these are the battles of men spawned by gods. Murro replicates Snyder’s copper-tinted CGI world, where hazy fingers of sunlight filter through the clouds and the full moon lingers impossibly huge on the horizon.

Outnumbered again, the good guys rush headlong into certain death (or maybe not), blood spattering on the camera lens, the choral score exhaling like a million zillion singers completing a set of a million zillion abdominal crunches. Characters often stare past the camera at an undetermined point in the distance, perhaps dreaming of a better script in a better movie in which the dialogue is not burdened with phony gravitas and the wardrobe is more than a leather speedo and a snatch of cloth. The film is deeply, irredeemably silly, an exercise in extremity rendered exquisitely dull.

John Serba is film critic and entertainment reporter for MLive and The Grand Rapids Press. Email him at jserba@mlive.com or follow him on Twitter or Facebook.