Cult-Movie Review: 300: Rise of an Empire (2014)

In spite of all the half-naked, well-oiled men and orgiastic ejaculations of spilled scarlet blood, 300: Rise of an Empire (2014) is actually a story about two women and their differing interpretations of freedom

One woman -- a Greek turncoat and general in the Persian fleet, Artemisia (Eva Green) -- views freedom as the license to do whatever she chooses in love, in war, and in life in general.  She wickedly and without boundaries practices a brand of freedom “without responsibility, without consequences.”

By contrast, another woman -- mourning Spartan Queen Gorgo (Lena Headey) -- believes that freedom is a precious flame that must be zealously guarded, protected and nourished if it is to pass successfully from one generation to the next.  

For Gorgo, freedom simply cannot exist outside the perimeters of responsibility and consequences, and she knows this truth for a fact…for she has lost her brave husband and King -- Leonidas (Gerard Butler) -- in defense of Greece’s freedom.

Only one woman -- and one view of freedom -- survives the overwhelming carnage and close-quarter, limb-severing warfare depicted so colorfully in 300: Rise of an Empire, but the film’s implicit comparison of personalities and philosophies renders this sequel to 300 (2007) more than a slapdash effort. 

Instead, Rise of an Empire is a solid, intermittently-inspired second picture in the quasi-historical/quasi-fantasy franchise that -- if it disappoints at all -- does so only because 300 remains to this day so powerful, so visceral, and so emotionally-powerful a movie-going initiative.

Occurring before, during, and after Leonidas’s heroic campaign at Thermopylae’s Hot Gates, 300: Rise of an Empire impresses not only in term of thematic complexity but also vis-à-vis its structural complexity. It’s a prequel, co-equal and sequel all at the same time, essentially coiling itself around and even through the 2007 film’s narrative tapestry.

300: Rise of an Empire also succeeds in terms of innovative and imaginative visuals, some of which give new definition to the 2000s-era stock phrase “shock and awe.”

“This is democracy, not a street fight.”

The great hero Themistocles (Sullivan Stapleton), kills Persian King Darius (Yigal Naor) during the Battle of Marathon, and immediately regrets not also killing his son, Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro).

Urged on by Darius’s protégé, a Greek traitor and naval commander named Artemisia (Eva Green), Xerxes soon plans for another devastating war against Greece. 

In Athens, Themistocles attempts to rally all the city-states of Greece to repel the Persian invasion, even as in Sparta, Leonidas leads 300 brave soldiers to the Hot Gates to halt Xerxes’ advance. 

With a small fleet, Themistocles engages Artemisia’s armada on the sea. In the first two battles, Themistocles sees great victories, but after he meets with Artemisia to discuss terms, she decimates his forces.

With Leonidas also defeated, Xerxes razes Athens.  Themistocles plots for another, final campaign to save Greece at Salamis, but he needs the sea fleet of the Spartans to beat back the defiant and revenge-mad Artemisia. 

Themistocles entreats the mourning Spartan Queen Gorgo (Lena Headey) for aid in his most desperate hour, but she is reluctant to acquiesce to his plea for help.

“How many times do you think we will repeat this tragedy?”

A number of critics derided as 300: Rise of an Empire as “a bloodbath, and nothing else.” 

Well, it is certainly a blood bath, but I would submit, it’s also something else: a parable about freedom as seen through the eyes of two women. 

Both of these women have known suffering beyond compare, but such suffering leads one woman to the light, and one woman to the darkness. The film tracks their individual (but not entirely dissimilar) journeys, and shows how their opposite philosophies impact their final destination.

There is discussion all the time in the media about women’s roles in action movies, and whether or not women are being utilized  by (male) filmmakers solely as objects, or as legitimate characters with their own distinctive personalities, needs and viewpoints.

300: Rise of an Empire is relatively unique in the sense that the two primary female characters -- Artemisia and Queen Gorgo -- initiate virtually all the important action in the film. 

Their choices, commands, and strategies dictate the direction of destiny for good or for ill.  Themistocles is an important character too, of course, but in the end, he is but a man with a vision (for a unified Greece) acting between two implacable forces of nature: noble Gorgo and the Medea-like Artemisia.  

Indeed, Gorgo and Artemisia grapple with the big moral issues of the film while the scads of young  male soldiers -- hunky men with impressive six-packs all -- serve as both cannon fodder and eye candy.

300: Rise of an Empire even features a wild sex scene between Artemisia and Themistocles that vividly demonstrates both her freedom from conventional thinking and her refusal to surrender, even in the heat of passion, to a man.

Again, some critics have termed this gonzo sex scene “over-the-top,” and I suppose it is.  So what? I’ve never seen anything like it, and that’s part of the reason I go to the movies: to encounter something new.

And yet, if you break down what actually happens during the graphic sex scenes, it’s surely a metaphor for the battle on the sea, and power-struggle between the two diametrically-opposed characters.  Neither Artemisia nor Themistocles will submit.  

Accordingly, they go at each other like rabid animals, but when Themistocles pushes Artemisia face-down on her map table to take her from behind, she rebels. She twists around, mounts him, and seeks dominance that way. She. Will. Not. Submit.  Their entire relationship -- in sex and in war -- is about this battle for dominance.  

And Themistocles loses rather definitively this challenge because by seeing him in such close quarters, and taking his measure (so-to-speak), Artemisia determines his weakness…and capitalizes on it in their next engagement.

Indeed, one of the movie’s best lines is Artemisia’s cut-down that Themistocles fights "harder" than he fucks. That hits him where it hurts, and knocks him off guard, for certain.  Even in the heat of battle, Artemisia is asserting her dominance.

My point isn’t that 300: Rise of an Empire is some deeply feminist tract, only that in ways both unexpected and not a little courageous, the film forges strong female characters, and by doing so explodes the old Madonna/Whore duality. Artemisia uses sex for her own purposes. Not because she is a slut, but because she seeks total dominance and total control in warfare, and deploys the best tool to achieve it.  Usually such Machievellian tactics are reserved for cinematic men. But Artemisia is all about freedom, and for her freedom means fucking who she wants in the way she wants, when not devastating her opponents in battle. 

There will be those who say that men like to watch women having sex, and so to feature Artemisia in this role -- having sex -- is de facto a sexist portrayal.  I would respond that women also like to watch characters on screen having sex, and that Artemisia’s refusal to submit to Themistocles speaks to some core aspect of her humanity, character and strength.  Sex has been used as a weapon against her as we learn in a disturbing flashback, and now she uses it as a weapon against others.  She has appropriated that tool has her own.

By contrast to Artemisia's freedom without morality Gorgo must balance her responsibility as leader of the Spartans with her responsibility to an ideal she doesn’t totally believe in: a unified Greece.  

Why should she send her son to die, after already losing her husband? 

Why should she send the Spartan fleet to battle when Sparta as yet isn’t directly imperiled?  

These are questions of leadership and morality, and again, there simply aren’t that many genre films -- even modern ones -- that showcase a woman balancing these hard choices.  Usually, it is a man who is so wounded by loss (usually the death of a child or a wife) that he backs away or retires from the world, and must be roused to action.  

Here, Gorgo plays that role expertly, but her motivation is not only vengeance, for certain (despite the posters crying out "avenge him!").  Gorgo, as she reports, also wants her children to grow up to know freedom in the future, and that means, simply, fighting for it in the here and now.

Even beyond the cracked mirror comparisons between Artemisia and Gorgo -- two women who have suffered loss and tragedy -- 300: Rise of an Empire features other flourishes worthy of praise.  

The story’s structure winds serpentine like around the first film in the franchise so that the two narratives become deeply-intertwined.  Accordingly, it becomes more difficult to write off this picture as a rip-off or poor sequel, because considerable thought and precision has gone into how it interacts and plays against its predecessor.

I was also impressed with many of the film's visualizations.  There are some unforgettable sights in 300: Rise of an Empire, including a black death barge spewing oil into the tempestuous sea before the water ignites into searing flame. And then there’s an underwater graveyard after the sea battle, stretching as far as they can see, and as deep as the eyes can register. 

In comparing 300 to 300: Rise of an Empire, my reservations about the sequel involve to an extent, the necessity of telling different kind of stories. 

300 set up a remarkable love story between Leonidas and Gorgo, and then went to one setting -- the Hot Gates -- and pretty much remained there (with a few trips back to Sparta and Gorgo) for the remainder of the picture. 

There was a purity and simplicity in the storytelling there that the sequel, by necessity, lacks.  But I missed it. 

300 was immersing, I felt.  You were there with Leonidas following every move and counter-move.  300: Rise of an Empire showcases some brilliant intellectual and visual flourishes, but I never got swept up into the narrative the way I did in the earlier picture.

Here, there are a lot of scene changes and time changes, and some essential simplicity or purity is sacrificed in all the back and forth.  Again, I don’t see another way to have come at a sequel to 300, so perhaps my criticism isn’t entirely fair or well-placed.

Still 300: Rise of an Empire is a respect-worthy sequel, and the memorable female leads -- battling between the “ecstasy of steel and flesh, and life and death” and the responsibilities that come with real freedom -- inch it a bit closer to greatness. 

In the end, this 2014 sequel manages to seize just enough of its own brand of glory, I suppose you could say.