Review of 300: Rise of an Empire (2014) by Django U — 05 Oct 2014

I'm not a fan of the logic of "if you liked _______ movie, you'll love the bigger, badder sequel!". First of all, bigger and badder is rarely what we need to see out of a sequel. Second of all, it smacks of franchise worship.

But 300, for all of its good points, felt like it could use a bit more meat on its bones. It's a big, loud movie, yes. Stylistic, politically taut, and lots of other keen descriptors, as well.

With the sequel, fortunately based on another Frank Miller graphic novel (because the last thing we want is someone attempting a 300 sequel without source material), the first scene is our hero from 300, Leonitis, exactly as we left him.

And then starts a confusing sequence of scenes that seem to jump back and forth in time. It's by far the worst part of the movie for its confusion, although it also sets up some key information--if you can figure out what is key while asking yourself WTF is going on.

But eventually things start to crystallize to an extent that it's easy to follow. Well, easiER. And really, how much storyline do you need to watch people slow-mo chop other people up?

Well, in this case the more storyline there is, the more compelling the movie. Which actually makes it different from 300, which was compelling by the heroes and their actions, not the (fairly simple) plot. Here, with 300 Rise of an Empire, we don't really have that connection with the heroes and their actions. Our strongest character connection is probably with one of the movie's antagonists, Artesmista. And HER connection with her opponent (our protagonist, Themistokles, who has the worst name ever) helps to give him some interesting color. But by-and-large this is a movie about violence and the reason for it.

Well, that and providing color and context for the first 300 movie. It does a really interesting job of being its own movie while bringing new illumination to provide a different context for 300.

All this makes it a worthy movie for people who liked the first 300 movie. It's its equal, even though it uses different tricks to get there.