Getting down to specifics, General Themistocles is the hero, and the Goth-like Artemisia is the villain. Broadly speaking, the Greeks are good, and the Persians are bad. It’s very easy to figure out who’s good and who’s bad. There’s also the emotional, rather than physical, black and white to deal with. The film’s main palette consists of sepia and gray, but there hasn’t been this much burgundy-colored blood splattering across the screen (and sometimes onto camera lenses) since, well, since “300.” There are all kinds of political and good-versus-evil machinations set in place, and then that stylized bloodbath begins. The film offers up brief introductions of the main players at the beginning, including Leonidas’ grieving but incredibly tough widow Queen Gorgo (“Games of Thrones’ ” Lena Headey), Persian leader-turned-golden god Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro) and native Greek-turned-angry, vengeful Persian Artemisia (former Bond girl Eva Green). Although “300: Rise of an Empire” opens with the results of that glorious fight, it eventually turns into a chronicle of the Greek Athenian army, under the command of General Themistocles (Australian actor Sullivan Stapleton), also going up against the Persians, but doing so out on the ocean, at the same time. “300” told of 300 members of the Greek Spartan army, under the command of King Leonidas (Gerard Butler), going up against the seemingly insurmountable hordes of the Persian army in the land-based Battle of Thermopylae. So here we are, just about seven years, to the day, since the release of “300,” with, nope, not a sequel, but another side of the same story, one that unfolds in a parallel manner. But it was also very stylized, was endlessly fascinating to watch, and it featured contemporary themes of diplomacy versus war. Sure, it was in many respects a video game version of a big-screen movie, with violence and accompanying blood galore. It’s even, according to the folks at IMAX, the film that turned a certain corner for that company, that brought fanboys aboard as IMAX viewers. Naysayers always ask the same question: Why would they make a sequel to something like “300?” The answer is always the same: Because “300” took in a cache of cash – something like half a billion dollars worldwide.
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