Yet, in the manliest man-world imaginable, it’s Eva Green’s film. This is an exaggeration of 300, in body count, style, size and violence.ģ00’s hyper-style universe, where the moon looks like the Death Star and the Persian base like Mordor-On-Sea, is just asking for hyper-style performances. He is, for the sake of franchise continuity, a proxy Snyder, connected to an intravenous drip of Snyder juice, Snyderfying scenes with billowing slo-mo and gory overkill.
Noam Murro, a commercials director, sets the action at ramming-speed with great visual confidence but little personality.
MOVIE 300 RISE OF AN EMPIRE MOVIE
The increase in scale results in a shift in genre: this is a superhero movie in a different cloak. Set before, during and after Sparta’s last stand, this is the same war on another front - a maritime duel between Sullivan Stapleton’s heroic Themistokles and Eva Green’s psychotic Artemisia who, in a scene of breathtaking gratuitousness, seduces her rival with a pre-battle revenge shag.įrom the first naval campaign, it becomes clear that Zack Snyder’s 300 is, in comparison, a model of restraint. This is epic cheese, feta from the gods, and clearly proud of it.īased on Frank Miller’s still-in-the-works graphic novel Xerxes, Rise Of An Empire is not a follow-up but a ‘side-sequel’. Fearlessly reviving prehistoric zingers like, “Seize him!”, the heat of battle eventually turns the cast to fondue.
What Headey fails to notice is the tsunami of camp poised to thunder through this hack-and-slash spectacular. In a portentous opening voice-over, Lena Headey’s Gorgo warns of death and war and “a tidal wave of blood” - a rare moment of understatement, as it turns out.