300 seems like a
really bizarre film to make a sequel to.
It is a fairly self-contained story about the fall of the forces of
Sparta against the invading Persian Empire, and it was some decent action fluff. A lot of criticism has been brought against the
film for being little more than an ultra-stylized hyper-masculine power
fantasy, but for what it was, it succeeded.
I never really thought it was a great movie, but I do think it is Zack Snyder’s second-best film, for what little that compliment is actually
worth. So, going into 300: Rise of an Empire, I had my
expectations of what I was getting into; not something particularly smart, but
probably with some good computer-generated action to keep me entertained for
ninety minutes. And for the most part,
that’s about right. However, I found
this film’s story to be much more problematic in its subtext than its
predecessor was, and I think Rise of an
Empire suffers greatly for it.
The film takes place before, during, and after the events of
the original 300, following the tale
of Athens’s commander, Themistocles.
Athenians are not a warrior people like Spartans, so Themistocles instead relies on a
ragtag team of farmers and craftsmen to man an armada of warships against
Persia’s naval fleet. So, essentially,
replace the Spartan army’s small numbers with vast inexperience, and the
hand-to-hand on-land warfare for naval ramming and maneuvering, and you
essentially have a rehash of the original storyline. There isn’t much to say for it except that
Themistocles is a much more understated protagonist than Leonidas, and because
of this he doesn’t really have much of a character to him other than his
motivation of taking down the Persians.
At least Leonidas had some personal establishment as a king who cared
for his people and his family.
Themistocles really only gets established as a mythic hero who killed
Xerxes’s father, but that doesn’t really tell us anything about him as a
person, so it’s hard to care for his struggle a whole lot except in the context
of the evil he faces.
And that evil villainess is my main problem with this film. I want to make one thing clear, first,
though: Ava Green gives a stellar performance as Artemisia. She’s vile, cunning, and sexy without any of
those traits conflicting with one another, and she’s incredibly sympathetic
and, in a weird way, likeable. But the
way her backstory is written is incredibly problematic, going so far as to be
blatantly anti-feminist. Say what you
will about 300’s romanticism of the
so-called masculine ideal, at least it never went so far as to villainize
women. Artemisia turns out to be the
corrupting influence that placed Xerxes on the throne, manipulating him from
being a proud bearded masculine figure into a bejeweled pretty-boy. Her role as a villain is centered around the
theme of her feminine influence being a threat to the masculine values and
power-structure that are in place. She’s
even established to have a rape-revenge motivation, going so far as to blame
all Grecians for her treatment by a few Greek men. This undermines any sort of credibility she
has a leader and symbolically turns her quest for dominance over Greece into a feminist
seeking to take down all men because some men are bad. When I said earlier that Artemisia is
sympathetic and likeable, I meant that only in the sense that Green makes her
so with a great performance. The film’s
script, on the other hand, clearly places her in the role of a villain with no
chance of redemption or tempering, which is a problem when that creates a thematic undercurrent that femininity seeks to wipe out masculinity and that men must protect themselves from its corrupting influence. This
could have been a much better film told from Artemisia's perspective, with her role as
the villain painted with more shades of gray.
Alas, instead we get a great performance in a problematically-written
role.
EDIT: A Facebook comment asked me to clarify why I use the term anti-feminist rather than anti-female, which they thought my description of the film implied. The reason I would use the word anti-feminist is that I don't think the film is consciously anti-female, for it does attempt to make Leonidas's wife a prominent character presented in a positive light (not very well, mind you, for she acts primarily as a supporting role to masculine strength, but still). It may be anti-female in its execution, but my bigger criticism is of the purposeful promotion of masculinity's natural place as superior to femininity.
EDIT: A Facebook comment asked me to clarify why I use the term anti-feminist rather than anti-female, which they thought my description of the film implied. The reason I would use the word anti-feminist is that I don't think the film is consciously anti-female, for it does attempt to make Leonidas's wife a prominent character presented in a positive light (not very well, mind you, for she acts primarily as a supporting role to masculine strength, but still). It may be anti-female in its execution, but my bigger criticism is of the purposeful promotion of masculinity's natural place as superior to femininity.
So, yeah, I didn’t really like 300:
Rise of an Empire all that much.
Admittedly, some of the action is pretty cool, but it’s not
really quite on the same level as the original film, even if the nautical setting does
provide some pretty cool set pieces.
However, the story it’s trying to tell ends up being even more
problematic than the first one, and even if you overlook the plot, there isn’t much
here beyond an unnecessary cash-in on a franchise that didn’t really need a
continuation.
How’d you feel about the original 300? Love it or hate it, leave a comment below.
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