What Have We Learned from 300: Rise of an Empire?

Noam Murro’s digitized, ultra-stylized follow-up to Zack Snyder’s inexplicably popular 300 has waltzed away with an amazingly high (for March) $45 million, despite garnering an unenviable 45% “fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes. What with this financial success perhaps already fading in our rearview mirrors, this may be the perfect time to consider what 300 means to pop culture at large.

To offer my own brief editorial (and likely piss off a good deal of readers in the process), 300: Rise of an Empire can stand as one of the slicker films in what is most certainly a wholly rotten genre; a genre, mind you, that was originally sparked by its predecessor. Ever since 300, theaters have been plagued by a steady string of pretty disposable, noisy historical epics that aren’t at all epic, and are marked particularly by historical inaccuracy, ugly digital scenery, and chest-thumping, ultra-masculine fratboy types in the lead roles. The sun doesn’t shine in these movies, and everything is muddy and hazy. 300: Rise of an Empire is a sight better than something like The Legend of Hercules, but it still celebrates war with an unseemly fervor; these are movies that play more like recruitment videos than feature films.

And while my sour opinion may synch up to the majority of critics’, it is most certainly in the minority of popular opinion, as both 300 movies have proven to be hugely successful and oddly influential. Let’s take a look at what lessons we have gleaned from Rise of an Empire.  


Witney Seibold is the head film critic for Nerdist, and a contributor on the CraveOnline Film Channel, and co-host of The B-Movies Podcast. You can read his weekly articles Trolling, and The Series Project, and follow him on “Twitter” at @WitneySeibold, where he is slowly losing his mind.

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