"Let it be shown: we chose to die on our feet rather than live on our knees!"
Hello everyone!
Happy New Year!
I hope you rang it in well and that you've made all your resolutions and such. Me, I've never really been one for those, but I have made myself a few promises that I intend to keep. That being said, however, it's Tuesday again, and do you know what that means?
Another movie review!
And since there's literally no holiday cheer left - I wrung it all out in December, regardless that I kept on watching some Christmas movies after Christmas - I picked a VERY different movie for tonight.
I'm not entirely sure you can go any more different from cute and fluffy than covered with gore and blood.
Having more time for movies now means I catch the occasional one on television, and 300: Rise of an Empire aired a week or so ago, making sure I hunkered down, got my nibbles, strapped myself with a safety helmet, and watched the Greeks and Persians duke it out.
I have to admit first and foremost that 300, the original movie which inspired this sequel (or is it prequel, or midquel, or whatever? It covers everything!), was one of the first I watched in cinemas as a young adult. At the time I was still in school and my mother's younger sister somehow convinced said mother to allow me to tag along with her to see this.
It was awesome.
Also because the movie was spectacular, obviously.
So when news hit back in 2013 that there'd be another one of these, covering some of the other battles from the Greco-Persian wars, I was all HELL YES GIMME.
As you may have noticed, I have a thing for Ancient Greece.
Anyway, while this movie didn't garner the same kind of success as its predecessor, it still managed to launch Sullivan Stapleton into a broader American orbit, for which I am thankful. Knowing that's actually his abs you look at during the movie is also a thing to be thankful for, by the way, so make sure to praise it accordingly.
Now, to the actual review!
The first movie, 300, narrates how the Spartan King Leonidas took just 300 men to defend the Hot Gates before the Persian God-king Xerxes, and he actually manages that for quite some time until he's betrayed by one of his own, at whick point 300+1 are dead.
Go tell the Spartans, passer-by: that here, by Spartan law, we lie.
Ugh. I still get chills from that alone.
Meanwhile, in 300: Rise of an Empire, the story begins BEFORE Xerxes' invasion of Greece, at the Battle of Marathon (for those of you who just went 'hey! we run marathons today!' that's because one (un)fortunate Greek ran roughly 42 kilometres without stopping to bring news of the Greek victory to Athens, then died on the spot), during which Themistocles, our would-be hero, is leading the Greeks. He orders a surprise, suicide attack while the Persians, led by King Darius, Xerxes' father, are disembarking from their ships. He also manages to kill said Darius, prompting naval commander Artemisia (Greek by birth, Persian by upbringing, played by Eva Green) into grief and rage, twisting his last words.
See, Darius counsels Xerxes not to continue the war with Greece, saying 'only the Gods can defeat them', but Artemisia interprets this as an encouragement, and with some weird voodoo magic transforms Xerxes into an 8 foot tall monstrosity who's actually just her puppet. Then she has him declare all-out war on Greece.
Huzzah.
Ten years after Marathon, the Persians come a-knocking, and Leonidas is off to deny them passage on land. Meanwhile in Athens, Themistocles is trying to convince the fickle senators to issue a nation-wide order to give him ships and men to defend Greece at sea. See, he has an idea: a united Greece.
Not that it's working at the moment, but he'll get to it. Eventually.
So while that's being debated, Themistocles is off to fight the Persians with the ships he DID wrangle from the city states. He tries his luck with Sparta, but Queen Gorgo isn't so hot on this united country idea and Leonidas is busy, so she sends him packing. Themistocles has more luck when he meets up with his friend Scyllas, who just narrowly escaped with his life from Artemisia's navy. He's a good spy, see, and he learned that her family was raped and killed by hoplites back in the day and she was sold as a sex slave until she was left for dead, found by a Persian, and adopted by that nation to become a servant of Death himself.
Knowing who's coming at him now, Themistocles decides on a plan. He takes his fifty warships and his men (including one son of Scyllas to provide comic relief while his dad is trying to figure out what he did wrong to encourage his kid to join this army) and meets Artemisia at sea during the Battle of Artemisium.
For a starter course, Themistocles organises his ships in a circle which can't easily be broken, then rams the bigger and clumsier Persian ships, gutting several and having his men slaughter Persians until dusk falls. The second meal is served when he lures the portion of Persian fleet attacking him to a crevice too narrow for them to navigate properly, where he again manages to defeat them.
By this time, he's got himself a fan: Artemisia, who's on the look-out for a right-hand man (read: slave) invites him over for sex and dinner, I mean, negotiations and dinner. She attempts to seduce him and lure him to the Persians, but he refuses her offer and she promises to rain hell on his head.
Because, you know, Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.
Someone should have told Themistocles that.
Pissed beyond belief, Artemisia has tar flung to sea; since it floats, it's the perfect flaming agent for her fire-arrows, but the Greeks kill one of the guys with the boom packs on their back and BOTH sides get the whooping from the explosion. Themistocles is thrown into the sea, and, thinking him dead, Artemisia and her fleet withdraw.
Themistocles doesn't die, however; he survives to say goodybe to Scyllas, who was mortally wounded, and to realize he's only got about six ships left for the defense of Greece. Oops.
Receiving news that Leonidas and his 300 have been betrayed and that Xerxes is marching on Athens, Themistocles races to that city and confronts the Spartan traitor, who says that Athens will burn. The General sends him back to Xerxes to tell the God-king that the Greeks will wait for him at Salamis. Meanwhile, he takes a detour to Sparta to offer condolences to Gorgo, urging her to avenge Leonidas, but she's too overcome by grief to respond then.
Risking everything, Themistocles brings the remaining ships to a last stand, once again facing Artemisia, who (against Xerxes' better judgement, because he wanted to wait and figure out a better way, without suffering losses) is enraged to find he's alive. The Greeks and Persians fight the decisive battle, and Themistocles actually duels Artemisia, only to end with a stalemate as a wind blows.
This, my friends, is a wind of sacrifice; of freedom; of justice; of vengeance.
In other words, Queen Gorgo and her Spartans, and ships from other city-states around Greece, arrive to kick some serious Persian butt. Themistocles offers Artemisia surrender, but ends up gutting her instead, while Xerxes turns his back on his navy, acknowledging the loss and continuing his march. And the rest of the united Greeks? They charge the Persians.
The end.
I thoroughly enjoyed this movie mostly because it was situated at sea, and while riddled with historical errors, it was still awesome to watch the tactics and planning which Themistocles employed to defeat his enemies. Stapleton really brought the arrogant, proud general to life, but he equally showed the vulnerable side of this man who devoted everything to his country and dreamed of a united Greece.
I won't talk much about the gore - it's 300, or a version of it, so there's bound to be buckets of the stuff. I'll just enjoy the return of fan-favourite Lena Headey as Gorgo, who narrates the movie to the Spartans before going in to save Themistocles & Co. She's a fantastic actress, always lovely to watch!
Maybe I should rewatch the original 300 and review that one, too, just to have them both. There's talk about a potential third movie as well, and if it happens, I'll definitely watch that one, too.
To think: when I initially saw Rise of an Empire, I disliked it. Now it's one of those movies I have to watch a couple of times. Just goes to show how your tastes can change overtime, after all.
xx
*images and video not mine
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