Review: Seize your glory!

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I insisted that Anna join me in watching 300: Rise of an Empire (2014) on Saturday. I saw 300 during the week on cable so I was really keen on seeing the sequel.

The director used the same color scheme as the previous movie... He also used the similar effects, like the slow-mo shots that pepper the screen. But somehow, there was something missing...

Right. King Leonidas and his three hundred were dead... and being trampled on by the self-proclaimed god-king (who Leonidas had personally reminded of his mortality), Xerxes. 

Leonidas regarded the leaders of the other city states as weak so he opted that he and his Spartan soldiers to die gloriously in battle. The Athenian leader (the protagonist in the sequel), on the other hand, while perceived to be less commanding than Leonidas, I think, was the wiser one: he knew that the sacrifice of the 300 at the Battle of Thermopylae had the potential to unit the Greek Army. All he had to do was to stop the invasion of the Persian navy while Greece was getting its act together.

A difficult task under a democracy, with lots of bickering going on, if I may add...

The movie showed a glaring difference in the warring armies: Greeks were freemen who went to war with their consent; the people rowing the boats on the Persian side were servants who moved at the crack of a whip. And the longest whip of the, all, ironically, was being lashed by the cold and ruthless commander Artemesia. She's above even of the god-king himself!

So many characters, so little time. By the middle of this complex movie, I got confused already. When the movie ended, I was scratching my head, lost in the events of the naval battle.

I should probably watch it one more time (but I'll wait for it to air on cable) to understand the plot better.

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