300: Rise of an Empire
300 ways of dying in the cradle of western civilisation in which more than 300 ships stop(?) an empire from raising. The title is just stupid. What empire has risen, Persia? Greece ends up united in defeat! Or do they mean the Gondor cavalry at the end actually made a difference? So confusing.
Strictly worse than 300, which was already pretty poor. There is much less politics, more speeches, and much, much, much more fight scenes.
It’s as homoerotic as 300, full of glistening abs and ridiculous pectorals, with skimpy armour. But this time there’s a preposterous scene with Eva Green too, for the straight boys at home. Her whole character is as sexually charged as it gets.
Looks like an Aardman film, armies of people made of plasticine. Grazing arms with bronze swords can rip them apart, or do the equivalent of a paper cut, depending on the plot armour.
Just like 300, the Spartans are maligned as pederasts, when that was a common practice all around the Greek islands at least. It makes no sense to mock your enemies with something you do yourself.
Most of the cast returns, but not Gerard Butler, he is always away at some other thing when they meet. Then he is dead in Thermopylae.
Eva Green was bizarrely praised to Olympus for this. Even Casino Royale allows for her to showcase a larger range, and that’s a freaking Bond film. There are only two modes here: smouldering with generic rage and taking there hero’s penis up the arse.
This is my place for ramblings about sequences of images that exploit the human visual limitation know as persistence of vision.