Taking place before, during, and after the events of the first film, this side story follows the war adventures of Athenian general Themistocles (Sullivan Stapleton), who gets to nearly repeat the same story and battle structure of Leonidas except this time around, he gets to be more sexually aroused by his Persian opponent, for she is a woman (Eva Green). We also get to see the origin story of The God King Xerxes and a highly disappointing finale, for it chooses to conclude the film with the last battle in mid-progress because Warner Bros. want a third one. There are no truly great reasons to watch 300: RISE OF AN EMPIRE, especially since director Noam Murro is no Zack Snyder, let alone MAN OF STEEL Zack Snyder. In need for some bloodshed and gore? The movie does offer both from wall to wall but it's never very exciting due to its proliferation, several video game-like sequences and the sheer fact that all of the CGI blood spilled leave no traces on any of the warriors. What about cheesy quotability, which the previous film had in spades? Not present here, largely thanks to the non-contributing efforts of Stapleton, who has no charisma, no aura of a leader, and routinely hampered by his own Aussie accent. Even the homoeroticism is nil, as all of the Athenians are certainly no Magic Mikes. The only strong contributing element is Green, who get to indulge her fiery, amazonian side as Xerxes' right-hand woman/puppet stringer. But the makers even screw that up by having her sit on the sidelines for the majority of the runtime until the very end. This is just a plain ole stupid movie; how else can you describe this work when it possesses a scene where a soldier perfectly survives a bomb explosion, with no new scars or even a burnt cape, despite being five feet from the detonation zone?
FINAL REVIEW: 2 / 5
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