Hey, so I forgot that this was supposed to be a Side-quell to 300. It’s a movie. Basically Rise Of An Empire explains a little more of Xerxes and his back story. After which, it is before during and after the events of 300. While we had the glorious-ness of Gerard Butler to keep us going in this movie. In this one we have Themistocles, played by Sullivan Stapleton.
Kind of interesting that the writing of the movie states that the entire war is brought about by Themistocles himself. As Xerxes and his father once attacked Athens before, and when Themistocles was merely a solider, he took aim with a bow and arrow, and killed Xerxes’ father. So the entire war is based on revenge, interesting to say the least.
I love pseudo-historical movies based on mythology. Some work, some don’t, the 300 movies work for me. Even though this one has issues. The first movie left me inspired, where as this one is a bit of a bland mess. The movie’s only saving graces are the action scenes, and well Eva Green. The action scenes are good, but sloppy, with relying on CG blood to try to “Enhance” the 3D experience. All it does is make the movie look fake and uninteresting. Although some practical effects exist, just not many.
As I said, the only saving grace is Eva Green and her delivery of a completely insane woman, hell-bent on revenge. Her character, Artemisia is a Greek woman, whom was orphaned by her fellow Greeks, and sold to a slave ship. There she was beaten and raped until she was cast out on the streets of Persia. There she met her mentor, the Persian Emissary, played by Peter Mensah. Here we get the best fight scenes in the movie.
Which show off Artemisia being trained by him to fight as the Persians do. Later on, we see Eva Green light up the screen in both her acting talents and her exhibitionist way of going topless in the movie. It’s nothing new for her, as she filmed a movie completely nude previously.
The movie does set up for a possible sequel, but I doubt it will happen as this one flopped, and rightly so. It took them so long to make this movie, that no one cared to see it. If they had released only a year or two after the first 300 and kept Gerard Butler in for some more scenes, except those from the first movie, it would’ve done better.
Then they could’ve done their pseudo-trilogy with it and made a ton of money. Overall I’d say give it a rent, or a stream on Netflix if you’re either really bored, or into the first movie. This was short I admit, but the movie isn’t that enthusiastic, aside from Eva Green.
I should point out the music is done by Junkie XL, and he does a great job of making good battle music, and he even took the main theme and blended it with the lyrics from Black Sabbath’s War Pigs. It sounds pretty cool, give it a listen on YouTube. There are plenty of videos for it.
With that I’ll sign off and work on the next review.
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