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It’s a drab and uniform look that is screaming for the barest flashes of color. This style needs a balance to attract the eye, and that’s missing in Rise of an Empire. Accentuated lighting further accentuates the visual style, with piercing rays of sunlight that stand out against the drab and largely colorless backgrounds, leaving entire armies silhouetted in darkness. That isn’t the case in Rise of an Empire, and the bronze color scheme frequently overwhelms. The Spartans in 300 (and in the original comic) wore bright red capes because it created a sharp visual contrast that added color to a desaturated world. It gives the film an ethereal look, but it also creates a few issues. Like its predecessor, Rise of an Empire was shot almost entirely against bluescreens before several layers of CGI were added to create the world around the performers. Part of the muted feel of the characters comes from the muted look of the film. Lack of personality haunts the film throughout Artemisia is a complex villain that you almost want to root for, and that complexity, paired with a solid performance from Green, makes her shine like a beacon.
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Green dominates each and every scene she is in, and has a far more interesting personal story to work with than anyone else in the film, beginning with her mistreatment at the hands of the Greeks that put her on the path to fighting them. The exception to this is Eva Green’s Artemisia, a ruthless Greek-born naval commander that fights with Xerxes and the Persians. If you walk out of the theater knowing more than three or four of the characters’ names throughout the entire movie, consider yourself well ahead of the curve. He’s there so Themistocles has someone to unload exposition on, then he disappears. Another Greek, Aesyklos (Hans Matheson), is equally forgotten after a film’s worth of irrelevance. There is a meager attempt to introduce a father and son that have a nonsensical personal conflict and a forced emotional moment, before being promptly forgotten. The Greek soldiers under Themistocles match the Spartans ab for ab in looks, but they lack any spark personality, and are little more than background. That lack of personality haunts the film throughout. He is the center of the film, and a hollow one at that. As far as tactical genius goes, the character never earns that honor in the eyes of the audience. There are even moments when the enemy repeatedly refers to Themistocles as a tactical genius thanks to the earlier battles in the film, but those same battles are generally as simple as the Greeks kill more Persians. You learn very little about him, nor will you care. He begins as a one-dimensional warrior, and the film ends on the same note. Themistocles doesn’t have a character arc or any endearing quirks for the audience to cheer for. Like so, so many of Snyder’s characters, he’s an archetype, and a dull one at that, which means the bulk of his scenes are generally dull themselves, especially in comparison to the action-packed battles. He doesn’t have any memorably goofy lines like “This is Sparta!,” and the speeches he does give are dripping with clichés could be cut and pasted from any of a dozen other war movies. He’s an unremarkable character in a film that needs someone audiences can root for as they wade through buckets of blood.
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is the center of the film, and a hollow one at that.By comparison, Themistocles is much more stoic. (Don’t be surprised to see a sequel, box-office permitting.) It defuses any sense of horror the audience may be feeling from watching people butchered on screen with body parts flying everywhere, and allows them to cheer the brutality in what is essentially the middle part of an ongoing war. During the bloody moments – and there are many – that slowdown effect is also used to over-accentuate the spray of blood, which often comes out like a geyser, making it borderline parody. Murro follows Snyder’s playbook, infusing scenes with a mixture of slow-mo and close ups in a single shot. While the story is somewhat convoluted, the highlight of Rise of an Empire is the action. Eventually it does settle into a single, linear story, but that comes later in the film. Resolutions are achieved before the conflict is explained, and characters are introduced in the past by others in the future who themselves are then reintroduced at an earlier point in their timeline, although the audience won’t instantly know this. The highlight of Rise of an Empire is the action.The film jumps around in time, which frequently confuses the narrative.