Throughout the following years, she was trained by the best Persian warriors and her adopted father. She was rescued and nursed back to health by a Persian emissary who then adopted her as his own. She was taken as a sex slave and subsequently left for dead in the streets. Themistocles later reunites with his old friend Scyllias, who infiltrated the Persian troops and learned Artemisia was born Greek, but defected to Persia as her family was raped and murdered by Greek hoplites. Themistocles then travels to Sparta to ask King Leonidas for help, but is informed by Dilios that Leonidas is consulting the Oracle, and Gorgo is reluctant to side with Athens. He returns to Persia and declares war on Greece to avenge his father.Īs Xerxes's forces advance towards Thermopylae, Themistocles meets with the council and convinces them to provide him with a fleet to engage the Persians at the sea. Xerxes finally reaches a cave and bathes in an otherworldly liquid, emerging as the 8-foot tall "God-King".
Darius's naval commander, Artemisia, claims that Darius' last words were, in fact, a challenge and sends Xerxes on a journey through the desert. Darius's son, Xerxes, witnesses his father's death and is advised to not continue the war since "only the gods can defeat the Greeks". Queen Gorgo of Sparta tells her men about the Battle of Marathon, in which King Darius of Persia was killed by General Themistocles of Athens ten years earlier. It grossed over $337 million worldwide from a $110 million budget. The film was released to mixed reviews, with critics praising the action sequences, music, cinematography, visual effects and Green's performance but criticizing the story and overstylized gore. The film's score was composed by Junkie XL, being the first film in an ongoing partnership with Snyder. It was released in 3D and IMAX 3D on March 7, 2014. The cast includes Lena Headey, Peter Mensah, David Wenham, Andrew Tiernan, Andrew Pleavin, and Rodrigo Santoro reprising their roles from the first film, alongside Sullivan Stapleton, Eva Green, Hans Matheson, and Callan Mulvey.
It is a sequel to the 2007 film 300, taking place before, during, and after the main events of that film, and is loosely based on the Battle of Artemisium and the Battle of Salamis. Our hero is now Themistokles (Sullivan Stapleton, "Gangster Squad"), a generic Greek general who shifts the battlefield from land to sea.300: Rise of an Empire is a 2014 American epic action film directed by Noam Murro from a screenplay by Zack Snyder and Kurt Johnstad, based on Frank Miller's graphic novel, Xerxes. The Persian king Xerxes, memorably played by Rodrigo Santoro as a kind of antiquity-era RuPaul, with facial piercings and a swinging codpiece, has been reduced to a bit part. For starters, the first film's enjoyably overpumped star, Gerard Butler (as King Leonidas) is gone, leaving his widow, Queen Gorgo (Lena Headey), to help deliver the rousing speeches. Some fans of "300" might consider that good news, though surely even they can spot a knock-off. To stretch the porn analogy, the old "300" now looks like a reel from the 1970s with its endearing attempts at story and character, while "Rise of an Empire" is the kind of stuff that sweaty teenagers now consume via broadband: a plotless montage of anonymous bodies. It was battle porn, basically, and, like most porn, it made money, earning $456 million worldwide.Ĭompared to the new follow-up, "300: Rise of an Empire," the first movie feels positively quaint. The story of 300 Spartans who held back the Persians at Thermopylae, the movie was a highly stylized orgy of violence filled with bare-chested male warriors writhing in crimson gore. Way back in 2007, Zack Snyder's "300" hit screens like the blood-spray from a freshly sliced jugular.