Movie Review: 300 Rise of an Empire

Remember who we were. The simplest order a king can give. Remember why we died. He didn't want tributes, or songs, or monuments, or poems of war and courage. His wish was simple: Remember who we were», so he told me.

There was a time when Zack Snyder gave life to pure epicness, a time when he was able to take the highest comic book material and bring it to the cinema in images and emotions and sounds and words that spoke straight to the heart. 300: Rise of an Empire remains one of the highest moments of his cinema. Not a perfect film, perhaps, but a very successful experiment in transferring a comic book work to film.

Exactly as it is, with just a few slight additions (which are indeed noticeable in their later nature but which, in any case, don't hurt) and carrying with it all the trail of possible controversies aimed at historical plausibility and, above all, at the themes and moral and pseudo-political orientations of the story in question.

We want to leave all that controversy behind us and enjoy the film (and its sequel) for what it wants to represent artistically and narratively, and sorry if that's not enough.

Eight years later, here is a new chapter in the saga: 300: Rise of an Empire. Was it needed? Maybe not. Also considering that the initiative has grown in step with the creation of the new graphic novel, which presents the same plot but it is not certain that it will be slavishly similar to what we can already see on the big screen.

In short, the operation smelled of commercialism and the fact that it was not Snyder himself who directed (too busy with the problems of Man of Steel) but the semi-unknown Noam Murro did not bode well. In short, what was left to praise?

Leonidas and his 300 sacrificed themselves. Xerxes won the battle, but he lost morally and that is a weight on the heart that a god-king cannot ease even by conquering all of Greece.

  Themistocles vs Artemisia

But no: historically there is much more to draw from, and new heroic characters to introduce. 300: Rise of an Empire is a so-called midquel, meaning that it not only offers a look at the background and the end of the Second Persian War that saw the Persian Empire and the alliance of Greek city-states opposed, but it is mostly set at the same time as the events of the first film, as historical reality teaches.

While Leonidas and his handful of very aggressive Spartans were engaged against the overwhelming armies of Xerxes at Thermopylae, the bulk of the Greek forces were engaged in the naval battle of Cape Artemisium, which then led to the decisive Battle of Salamis.

Among the many heroes of this war, the Athenian Themistocles is certainly celebrated, the protagonist of the film: already victorious at Marathon, the brave Greek warrior opposes with tenacity and cunning the Persian armies, governed by the devious Artemisia. Xerxes' army is ruthless and apparently infinite, but brute force alone is not enough to bend a free people without effort.

  We chose to die on our feet, rather than live on our knees

By seamlessly fitting into the continuity of the first chapter's story and recovering real historical elements here and there, Murro, Miller (still working on the paper version) and Snyder (here in the role of producer and screenwriter) expand the universe of the series in a way that is not dissimilar to what Koei periodically does with its video game series Dynasty Warriors - Sangoku Musou.

And in some moments, in this new chapter, it really seems like we are facing a cinematic version of the game (or, better, of Warriors: Legend of Troy, the 2011 spin-off based on the Iliad) rather than a new chapter of Frank Miller's graphic novel. Let's be clear: the film is made with the same technique as the 2006 one, even refined in some places, and Murro is very good at following in Snyder's footsteps.

In fact, there is more Snyder in the first five minutes of Rise of an Empire than in the whole of Man of Steel. But it is still a work of small-time "manual labor" and, as functional and spectacular as it is, it does not have a true and personal artistic value. Untied from the "obligation" to reproduce the comic strips panel by panel and constrained by being forcibly a Snaiderian film, it loses some of the characteristic nature of the first title.

Considering also that the accentuated violence, which in the first film was a narrative expedient, here is simply a graphic expedient in itself, with splatter notes greatly made explicit by the stereoscopy.

  History is made by men

Furthermore, the new film does not boast the cohesion of the first, focused on the handful of 300, an extension of Leonidas' heroism and seen as a unicum at the center of the story. Here the characters are instead disconnected from each other and each protagonist of their own battle, as in any other film.

Which is certainly not a flaw in itself, however, and indeed gives breadth to the story, which juggles, among other things, between different and well-crafted political and personal visions. In short, the adventure boasts a greater breadth, which however makes it less characteristic than the previous one.

The cast sees the return of most of the main characters from the first film still alive: Queen Gorgo (Lena Headey now famous for Game of Thrones), David Wenham's Delios, Andrew Diernan's Ephialtes and of course the statuesque Xerxes by Rodrigo Santoro. Gerard Butler, on the other hand, decided not to participate in the film, and so Leonidas (and all the Spartan martyrs, including Fassbender's Stelios) appear only in "recycled" footage and in CG.

A sin, this, but definitely venial. Among the new characters, on the other hand, the ones who steal the scene are mainly two: Sullivan Stapleton's Themistocles and Eva Green's Artemisia. Both actors are absolutely in character and we can safely say that they carry the film on their shoulders, given that they are the most explored and interesting characters, not only for what they do on screen, but also for their pasts.

The brave Greek warriors return to fight against the invading god-king, and they do it in style. Created on the table to fit in with the first film but resulting, in all respects, distant from an artistic point of view and from the development of the plot but not in the tone of the story, Rise of an Empire enthralls and at times excites its audience, thanks to an excellent technical realization, the adult themes and the exceptionally in-part cast. Less cohesive and significant than the first 300, certainly, but still epic and worth watching.