What to ecpect really? It was Naked Dudes with Swords 2, basically. Much style, no substance, and of course a delicious rape of real history, just like the first one.The homo- eroticism is strong in this one (like in the first). However there are reasons this movie simply isn't as good as the first installment. The style was new in 300, but now it just felt like a rehash of the same, and no new daring experimentation. Where the first one was WOW, this felt like bland, like I've seen it before and was not impressed.
When it comes to characters I also feel like Leonidas was a stronger protagonist than Thesticlotes. He just felt like a Leonidas Lite to me. Admiral Eva Green also fail to really convince me as a strong villain. Xerxes was great though, like in the first film. Not sure if I felt Queen Cersei Lannister was needed though. It felt like she was used just so they could have as many references as possible to the original 300. Her presence felt very forced, and not belonging to the story... wait, this movie had a story? Well let's rehash it: Naked dudes fighting and killing each other. Simple, done. Nothing more really needed, this movie is all about the visuals anyway. But when the visuals feel like a tamer rehash of the first one the movie can only give one impression: meh.
Not saying it doesn't have cool stuff, but as a sequel to a Visual Spectacle, this one should have exceeded the first one visually. It didn't.
