In many ways, 300:
Rise of an Empire is just more of 300.
Set before, during, and after the ancient Battle of Thermopylae as slowed-down,
amped-up, and all around exaggerated in the first film, this sequel has the
same rhythms in cluttered battle sequences, obviously fake CGI backdrops, and unwavering focus on masculine
bodies in motion. It has the same attention to chiseled abs, bulging
loincloths, big swinging swords, and geysers of digital blood. The Greeks are
still presented as wholly good, dudes fighting for nothing more than freedom
itself. Their Persian foes are still the darker-hued, effeminate others who
want nothing more than to kill because they hate freedom. Setting up such
divisions as essentialist markers of good and evil obliterates nuance and grows
awfully queasy.
Last time we watched Persians slaughter 300 Greeks, Spartans
making a doomed stand for their country. So dedicated to their
dunderheaded ideal of authentic masculinity as combat alone, the film was a
loud and monotonous gargle of stylized bloodlust. Noam Murro (whose only other
film is the 2008 Sundance movie Smart
People, for whatever that’s worth) may have taken over the director’s chair
from Zack Snyder for the sequel, but Snyder remained co-writer and producer on
the project. There’s a consistency of vision here. It’s easy to imagine cutting
both 300 films together into one long
four-hour slog. Both are almost perversely head over heels in love with
martyrdom to the point where the insistent glorifying of war is hard to take.
But where Rise of an
Empire manages to best its predecessor, slipping past some of the inherent
ugliness, is in its marginally better modulation. The violence is spread out
enough to create some emotional dynamics. It’s not all blustery machismo and
stop-start slow-mo. We have time to see the new characters, some of which
actually stand out from the sea of bare chests and scruff. A blandly noble Grecian
naval officer (Sullivan Stapleton) gathers men and boats to meet a Persian
fleet heading their way. Eva Green of Casino
Royale and The Dreamers plays his
Persian counterpart. She’s given a bloody awful backstory and dressed in
stylishly flowing battle gear. She storms through every scene she’s in, slicing
and dicing her enemies while chewing up the scenery and scene partners with
equal vigor. I knew intellectually that she was the villain of the picture,
hell-bent on burning Greece to the ground and impaling our freedom-loving
heroes to the masts of their ships. But there’s such a delight in watching her
storm about, ready to behead anyone who annoys her, quick to snap and growl her
threats and strategic decisions with equal venom. I wanted to be on her side.
If the film was leaner and more focused on the clash between
the wild-eyed Green and the beige Stapleton it would’ve been quite a kick of
bloody artificiality. You’d think it’d be harder to mess up something as simple
as bland good guys plus interesting bad guys equal big battle scenes,
especially when the screenplay isn’t leaning so heavily on its root xenophobic
political undercurrents and embracing its homoerotic visual interests. Instead,
we have to sit through endless convolutions. We see the backstory of Persian
king Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro), as if we were all yearning to see how he was a shrimpy,
stubbled heir who mourned his father by taking a dip in a magic hermit cave
pond and emerged a waxed and bejeweled giant. We also have to listen to Lena
Headey grieving husband Gerard Butler by giving a pep talk to her troops in
voice over exposition that seems to last about half the movie before finally
disappearing, only to return near the end.
But if its greatest sin is boredom, that’s still a great
deal better than its predecessor. It’s still an amped up expression of pure
violent id, but it’s not as ugly. Because there are characters who are more than
reductive warmongering symbols, it’s easier to get invested in their plights. The
gender dynamic is far more palatable, even gripping at times in its breathy
intensity. Green and Stapleton have a scene of tense negotiations in the middle
of the picture that has a curious sensual charge, a spark of physical
attraction between them that then filters into their armies’ clashes over the
rest of the movie. It’s a love-hate magnetism that’s a welcome undercurrent to
the sometimes-exciting over-the-top action surrounding it. And because both armies are balanced in
this way, all the shouted prejudices don’t seem so icky. Murro shoots it all in
imitation-Snyder style, all gleaming filters and gauzy grain, but instead of
simply copying 300’s brownish sludge
he invites a bit more color to the palate, using the film's trading the desert location for ocean to his advantage. If we must have a sequel to 300, at least it’s easier on the eyes
and not quite so hard on the intellect.
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