300: Rise of an Empire (2014)

So … This is NOT Sparta?

It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these.  Let’s see if I still know how to do it.  So, I saw a movie.  And that was a good thing.  Movies are good.  …SHIT!  This is harder than I thought!  I haven’t written a review in a while, and I actually haven’t been to the theaters in a while either.  I don’t think I’ve seen a movie this year!  Shameful, it is!  I think school is mainly to blame.  I like to try to set up my school schedule to allow me plenty of time for sleep and other fun activities such as movies … and then I realize mid-semester that it isn’t going to work out as planned.  But then Spring Break happened, so I had two days off, and I apparently decided that I should make them Ancient Greek/Roman appreciation day.  If you know what’s in theaters you’ll probably already know what I saw, but the first movie I saw was 300: Rise of an Empire, based on a graphic novel by Frank Miller, written by Zack Snyder and Kurt Johnstad, directed by Noam Murro, and starring Sullivan Stapleton, Eva Green, Rodrigo Santoro, Lena Headey, Jack O’Connell, Yigal Naor, Andrew Tiernan, David Wenham, Hans Matheson, and Peter Mensah.

In the Battle of Marathon, General Themistocles (Sullivan Stapleton) of Athens kills King Darius I (Yigal Naor) of Persia in front of his son, Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro).  And everyone acts like he did something wrong for some reason.  I was under the impression that this is how war works.  Well, I can understand Xerxes getting all pissy that his dad died, and that’s just what he does.  His dying father tells him that the Greeks can only be defeated by a God.  I believe this was intended to get Xerxes to stop the war as that would be the simplest method, but Xerxes decides that he should become a God instead, mainly because his naval commander, Artemisia (Eva Green), tells him that’s what it means.  Well Xerxes goes and swims in some funky pool and comes out gigantic, bejeweled, and golden.  So he’s a God now.  And he wants to get his revenge on that damned Themistocles, and all of Greece while he’s at it.

The first question I had for this movie is, “Where are the 300 Spartans?”  The answer to that is, “Elsewhere.  We just wanted to use the title.”  This movie happens at roughly the same time as the Battle of Thermopylae that we saw in the first movie.  At least they were right that we’d be watching an empire rise.  This time, we’ll watch less awesome warriors with less awesome abs fighting less awesome battles written by less awesome people.  So the movie is less awesome, but it’s still thoroughly watchable.  Sure there’s some stupid writing here, but I expected no less.  I came for the fights, and we’ll get to that later.  For now I’ll just say that the story wasn’t anything spectacular.  It was a little bit historical facts, but mostly just excuses to take us from one fight to the next.  And some stupid dialogue.  Let us not act like we didn’t expect that.  And by “that,” I mean lines like, “Ferocity matched only by beauty, which is matched only by her devotion to the king.”  That shows a gross misunderstanding of the word “only.”

The fights in this movie were good, but less significant as they were mostly things we had seen before in the first movie.  Lots of topless dudes cutting limbs off in slow motion.  And boy did they love using slow motion.  I’m pretty sure this movie would be about 23 minutes long if they played the entire thing at regular speed.  But that’s okay because they included plenty enough violence and gore to hold my attention.  The nautical battles were less interesting to me, and there were a few too many of them in comparison to the regular combat, but I got by.  Plus, they had a really interesting and innovative fight between Themistocles and Artemisia later in the movie, with an entirely different kind of stabbing.  This was a battle of genitals!  A sexual skirmish!  A very interesting type of combat, and one that I’d be interested in learning.  Especially with Eva Green.

The cast of the movie all did what they had to do and I had no real complaints.  My favorite was definitely Eva Green.  She was pretty badass in the movie, and more importantly, she was pretty topless in the movie.  I found this very significant, but apparently it’s not all that uncommon within her movie career.  But it’s the first movie I had seen her in where she was so exposed, and I found it to be a blessing.  I was always confused by Rodrigo Santoro’s Xerxes in the original 300.  Why would they decide to make what is supposed to be such an intimidating figure a giant, hairless, bejeweled individual with a creepy voice and ambiguous sexuality?  When I first saw him in this movie, I was much happier that he got to be regular looking … and then they turned him back into Baldie McGayBalls again.  But he was almost a secondary villain to Artemisia in this movie, so he was much easier to tolerate.  And I suppose his performance was fine as well.  Sullivan Stapleton was fine in this movie as well, but he was attempting to take the reins from Gerard Butler’s Leonidas and that’s a high bar of badass to reach.

300: Rise of an Empire probably shouldn’t have been called 300 because it really doesn’t have anything much to do with that story, and this story probably suffered for it.  The story isn’t as good as I it jumped the gun on what could eventually be some awesome source material, the fights weren’t nearly as good because the Greeks aren’t nearly as awesome as the Spartans, but the performances were mostly good though no one was quite as awesome as Gerard Butler’s Leonidas, or even Michael Fassbender’s Stelios.  But the movie is completely watchable and an entertaining enough way to spend a few hours, but it’s also entirely skippable.  300: Rise of an Empire gets “Leonidas is dead” out of “If death comes, I’m ready!”

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0023 – Jason X Review

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WATCH REVIEWS HERE!  YouTube  OTHER JOKES HERE!  Twitter  BE A FAN HERE!  Facebook  If you like these reviews so much, spread the word.  Keep me motivated!  Also, if you like them so much, why don’t you marry them?!

Spartacus: Blood and Sand, Season 1 (2010)

After the last two movies I watched, I required a palate cleansing and, quite frankly, I think you all need one as well.  So I will do a few macho manly reviews to help.  Also, I will do my very first TV review at the very same time.  So grab/scratch your balls, break wind, and join me for my review of season 1 of the Starz TV show Spartacus: Blood and Sand, starring Andy Whitfield, Lucy Lawless, John Hannah, Peter Mensah, Man Bennett, Nick Tarabay, Viva Bianca, and Jai Courtney.  There’s a lot more, but I’ll probably name them as they come up.

Spartacus should be a fairly familiar story but, as I watched this show at the behest of my roommate who had not seen the Kubrick film and did not even know the name of the main star, the plot will still warrant explanation.  But, be warned, as I watched this all at the same time as it’s now on DVD, I will go through the entire plot of season 1 and there will be spoilers.

Spartacus: Blood and Sand starts with an unnamed Thracian (Andy Whitfield) joining the Roman auxiliary against the Getae to protect his land, but he’s soon betrayed when he realizes the Getae move towards his village (and wife) and the commander Claudius Glaber (Craig Parker) won’t assist them.  The Thracian and a few others beat up the commander and head towards the village, but they’re too late for the bulk of the village.  The Thracian does, however, meet up with his wife who was outside the village when the attack happened.  But Glaber has followed and takes the Thracian and his wife Sura (Erin Cummings) into custody and slavery.  For his mutiny, he’s sentenced to be executed in the gladiator arena in a fight against four gladiators in Capua, Italy.  Somehow, the Thracian defeats the 4 gladiators and is given to Lentulus Batiatus (John Hannah) to be trained as a gladiator.  Batiatus names the Thracian Spartacus after a Thracian king and ferocious warrior.

Now at the ludus for Batiatus, Spartacus is put under the tutelage of the Doctore (Peter Mensah) but refuses to train.  This gains him the disdain of other gladiators, most notably Crixus (Man Bennett) the undefeated and Barca the beast of Carthage.  He befriends Varro (Jai Courtney) who is only competing as a gladiator to pay off his debts and support his wife and child.  Batiatus gains Spartacus’ performance by promising to locate and purchase Sura if Spartacus can earn the money and fame to gain their freedom.  He tries to rush his fame by challenging Crixus but is nearly killed by him.  Then Spartacus must earn his way back to fame by fighting in underground arenas and it nearly drives him mad.  But he regains popularity and becomes the “Champion of Capua” by teaming with Crixus against Theokoles, the shadow of death.  The only man that has survived an encounter with Theokoles is the Doctore.  Crixus is nearly killed but helps Spartacus defeat him.  Batiatus delivers Sura to him, but she has been mortally wounded while being transported, allegedly by bandits, as told by the driver.  Casting off his old life as a Thracian, Spartacus owns his fate.

Spartacus becomes the best of the ludus and handily defeats anyone in his way.  At what is supposed to be an exhibition, the magistrate’s son, Numerius – driven by Glaber’s wife Ilithyia (Viva Bianca) – calls for Spartacus to kill Varro, who has practically become Spartacus’ brother.  Spartacus is grief-stricken and it’s made worse when he sees that the driver of his wife’s carriage has no scar on him, and forces him to confess that Batiatus ordered her murder to untether Spartacus, then Spartacus kills him.  Spartacus enlists the help of the gladiators, including Crixus and Doctore (now revealed to be Oenomaus), and together they kill everyone in the ludus except for Ilithyia, who escapes.  And that leaves us to the events of season 2.

First, let me tell you what I expected of the show.  I expected this to be vaguely interesting with a bunch of tits and buff jock dudes fighting.  What I actually received was an enthralling story … with a bunch of tits and buff jock dudes fighting.  This is a really good show, which hopefully won’t fall now that Andy Whitfield has died.  I can’t remember the movie very well, but I had looked up Spartacus on Wikipedia and I suppose the story sticks pretty well to the story of Spartacus.  Moreover, who cares, it’s an awesome story.  And there are a great many titties in this show as well, and a couple of unwelcome dicks too.  Why wouldn’t you watch a show with an awesome story, lots of blood and action, AND Xena’s titties appearing frequently.  Problematically on this end, they cut a dude’s wang off in one episode as punishment for trying to kill Spartacus, but the dude actually didn’t give away that it was Ilithyia that told him to do it.  Which I don’t understand.  I will give up ANYBODY for ANYTHING if the threat is the removal of my wang.

The look of this show amazed me most of all.  I don’t watch TV very often so I must’ve missed the steps in between TV as I knew it and being able to almost recreate the look of 300 on a television show.  It looks almost identical to the movie, and has tons of realistic blood and gore to go with it.  It astounds me that there was a time that one or two episodes of this show would’ve been the most expensive movie ever, if the technology was even possible.  But now we’re at a time when they can do this on TV.  Though hard to explain, the transitions they often use of blood spraying and battle happening is very well done.

I’m down with all the performances in this show as well.  Everyone performs, at the very least, adequately.  The wording they use and accents they attempt would draw on the nerves if not for the often clever dialogue that is delivered by it.  But I feel that I was pleasantly surprised by the ability of the cast.  Generally I wouldn’t expect that much out of super attractive women and overly buff jockish dudes, but all of them are great.  I think I was most surprised by Manu Bennett, who has the look of someone that could barely string words together, but he has a very difficult performances of falling in love with a slave girl but having to hide it because Xena wants him and that would mean the death of them both.  He has a lot of good performances in this show.

I definitely recommend you all check out this show.  If you’re a lady like my roommate Richard, you may become unnerved by some of the gore and may perhaps not appreciate the very sexual nature, but don’t let it scare you off from enjoying a good show.  I give this movie “I AM SPARTACUS!” out of 1165.

And, as always, please rate, comment, and/or like this post and others.  It may help me get better.