Based on Frank Miller's latest graphic novel Xerxes, 300: Rise of an Empire is produced by Gianni Nunnari, Mark Canton, Zack Snyder, Deborah Snyder and Bernie Goldmann, and directed by Noam Murro from a screenplay by Zack Snyder & Kurt Johnstad. It’s all extravagantly daft, moves at a fair clip and is over before you expect it to be – one suspects the actual Battle of Artemisium was rather different.The action adventure 300: Rise of an Empire is the highly anticipated follow-up to the 2007 international blockbuster 300. We learn how Persian god-king Xerxes came to be (short version: he took a bath and emerged as both members of Right Said Fred), while a token father-son arc serves only to give British star-in-the-making Jack O’Connell a few extra lines. Storytelling is left to Headey’s wordy voiceover it’s flesh and carnage that the audience is here to see, and Murro delivers it by the glistening ton, pausing only for stray bits of backstory. Their fleet, in turn, is commanded by warrior queen Artemesia, played by the splendidly vampy Eva Green as a kind of Xena/Joan Crawford hybrid who lops off heads in gold lamé. Stepping in for the slain Gerard Butler is the strappingly named Sullivan Stapleton as Themistocles of Athens (and, to judge by his accent, Melbourne), chosen to lead the allied Greek states in naval battle against Persia. The oppressive red-and-sepia styling of the original has been tempered a bit – manly charcoal hues are in this season, with burgundy blood now sloshed generously across the screen in 3D.

Even lighter on story than Zack Snyder’s 2007 predecessor, with an even more imposing array of beardy-yet-waxed male specimens on display, ‘300: Rise of an Empire’ essentially cops to being an equal-opportunity droolfest: as homoerotic or empoweringly macho as you want it to be, with more women in play this time round.ĭirector Noam Murro is at the helm now his first film, the smug campus comedy ‘Smart People’, was an odd training ground for this.

She may as well be speaking to the audience. ‘You’ve come a long way to stroke your cock while watching men train,’ spits not-so-merry widow Queen Gorgo (Lena Headey) to the hero of this swords-and-sandals sequel.

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