300: Rise of an Empire

Why on earth are we reviewing 300: Rise of an Empire on a comics website? Why, because, as the credits tell us, this movie is based on a graphic novel by Frank Miller. What the credits don’t tell us, of course, is that Miller hasn’t been able to actually finish Xerxes, despite having been working on it for nearly four years.

This makes it difficult to assess this as an adaptation of the comic book. One of the things noted about 300 was the manner in which it put Miller’s comic on screen (though as Nick Lowe commented, it even more effectively put Lynn Varley’s colours on screen). It was also noticeable that when the movie deviated from Miller’s text, as it did in most of the scenes featuring Gorgo, the quality of writing diminished dramatically. We can’t do that here. We can assume that Zack Snyder and his team (and this is Snyder’s movie, even though he doesn’t actually direct) has seen the two issues Miller had actually finished, and perhaps some other material, and presumably Miller has talked to Snyder about the broad outline of what he was planning. But all the rest of us have seen are a few black-and-white pages in Dark Horse Presents, from which we can only really conclude that the movie follows Miller in beginning with Darius’ expedition to Greece in 490 BCE, ten years before that of Xerxes. None of the images in those pages look particularly like anything put on screen. Nor can we reverse-engineer the movie, and deduce that the best bits of the movie are based on Miller, and the worse bits not – because 300: Rise of an Empire is terrible all the way through. (This may of course mean that Xerxes will be to 300 as the dreadful DK2 is to Dark Knight – a sorry attempt to revisit past glories by a creator who can no longer really be bothered.)

So, what can we say about 300: Rise of an Empire? Well, it’s actually marginally less racist and quite a bit less homoerotic than 300, and marginally less sexist, given the expanded role given to Gorgo, and the important role of Artemisia (even if she is a bit of a cliched “kick-ass villainess”, with Eva Green demonstrating that she would rather have played Xenia Onatopp than Vesper Lynd, and, of course, her motivation has to rely on having been raped a lot in her youth). But it is much, much more rubbish. True, I laughed through much of the movie, but I was laughing at it, not with it.

It’s hardly worth describing the plot, as it doesn’t really have one – just a flimsy excuse to go from each absurd set-piece to the next. The objective seems to be to try to repeat as many of the tricks of 300, only more so. Great fields of wheat at Sparta? Check. Everything looking very dark? Check. Images that look a bit like comic panels put on screen? Check. Blood everywhere? Yep. Lots and lots of slooooooooo-mo? Oh yes indeedy.

The trouble is, 300 was barely on the right side of credible, and this sequel gallops so far beyond that line that it is impossible for the viewer to keep up. Xerxes is even more of a fantasy evil wizard god than before (we get his “origin” this time, which does look like a Miller idea). The sea battles look like they are taking place on the North Atlantic, rather than the Aegean. The Persians deploy oil tankers. There are plesiosaurs* eating the drowning sailors. At the end the doomed Athenians put on death masks – but it looks like they are going to the Black and White Minstrel Show.

I found myself thinking about comedy movies as I watched. There’s a moment in a cave full of hermits that made me think of the Monty Python line “there’s one thing about being a hermit, at least you meet people.” And once I noticed that the Athenian soldiers are wearing kilts (to distinguish them from the speedo-clad Spartans), I could only think of Carry On Up The Khyber‘s “Devils in Skirts”.

The funniest moments, however, are one shot of Gerard Butler from 300, with a smirk that says “At least I’m not in this movie”, and the final line of the credits, asserting that this movie and all the characters and events are fiction, and no similarity to persons living or dead is intended or should be inferred. Which says everything that needs to be said, really.

Xerxes can’t be as bad as this. Can it?

Not recommended.

*Actually, they are prehistoric fish. As if that makes a difference.