Review of 300: Rise of an Empire (2014) by Brandon W — 09 Jun 2016

300: Rise of an Empire is a prequel and a bit of a sequel to the first film, and it stars Sullivan Stapleton and Eva Green in a comic book adaptation about another leader name Themistocles that lead an army in the naval battle against Artemisia and her army that's bigger than Themistocles's.

I was looking forward to it, but also worried at the same time as it's not directed by Zack Snyder, even though he co-wrote it, and it has been years since they finally made this, so I thought that it wouldn't have the same effect as the first one.

Even though it's not quite there as good as the first one, but it's a lot of fun to watch. The acting is good, and Eva Green is one of the best parts of the movie as her character is way more interesting than the heroes of the film, and she acts very intimidating in this that she is really trying to own her performance, which works here.

The action scenes are entertaining to watch, and while the score by Junkie XL doesn't have the same epicness as the first one does, I don't think it was trying to do that, and it does have some of the epic songs in here that gets some people hyped for it.

The special effects look really good still, except for the gore effects which I don't understand why they added more of it here while the first one doesn't unless it's trying to really transition the comic book to movie, but the gore effects don't look that good, and honestly made it look really cartoony.

The main character sadly isn't nearly as charismatic as Gerard Butler's character is, and there really wasn't much character development on him either, making him bland. The only character development that I like, was Eva Green's character, and that's because the movie spent time on creating the character, and what her reason is for being the villain.

300: Rise of an Empire is a great prequel-sequel that has most of the epic stuff that made 300 so popular.