300 Rise Of An Empire Review

I watched the movie 300 Rise Of An Empire just now.I'll give you MY opinion about it.It's not the media's opinion,it's not a movie critic's opinion,nor the definitive opinion.It's the opinion of a guy who loves war history and studied about Ancient Greece,including the battles portrayed on the movie.
I warn you since now that this review has spoilers.If you don't wanna see what happens in the movie,don't read what's after the phrase "Start of spoilers".Restart reading it after the phrase "End of spoilers".You have been warned.

Start of Spoilers

Historical inaccuracies : They are present,just like in the first movie;Themistocles didn't shot a arrow on Darius II ( the good part is that they gave a hint that it was a lie in the movie ),Darius didn't died when Artemesia took off an arrow from his chest,Artemisia didn't had that much of a role in real history,Themistocles wasn't the ruler of the naval forces ( Corinth and Aegina didn't wanted to obey the Athenians,so the Spartan Eurybiades took charge ) even though the soldiers ended up following his orders,Themistocles was bribed to stay at Artemisuim ( he used part of the bribe to "convince" Eurybiades to stay,but still kept the rest for himself ),the Persians didn't had a ship with oil in that fashion,the Greek forces retreated from Artemisium instead of being almost completely defeated,Themistocles really wanted to stay to fight in Salamis but had to force the other greek cities to do so by threatening to move the whole Athenian fleet to Sicily ( Athens already had colonies there ),Themistocles actually faked to be on Xerxes side to fool him into battle at Salamis,Sparta had a small fleet instead of one that could rival Athens',Spartan Queen Gorgo didn't actually fought in Salamina to avenge Leonidas.
Rating for this factor : Since it had more inaccuracies then the first one ( which already had many ),I have to give it a 5,3 ( would have been less if they didn't hinted that at least one of them is a lie )

Special effects and scenes : It seems like a joke,but they were even better then the first one ( wasn't impossible,but very hard to do ).I saw a clear influence from Spielberg's War Horse since they put much more effort on epic horseback scenes and even the horse's point of view.The water effects are great and the battle sequences would make the producers of the game Ryse : Son Of Rome jealous.The only problem I saw was the blood effects.They tried to outmatch the first movie on that point and overdid it to the point that we can see that it's clearly fake ( on the first movie,they kept it simple and it worked very well ).
Rating for this factor : 9,6 ( if only they had kept the blood effects like in the first movie...)

Characters ( I'll leave the inaccuracies out and simply give my insight on how they were portrayed ) :
-Xerxes : Extremely better then on the first movie.The young Xerxes' parts were my favorites,since they show how the hystorical Xerxes acted ( his god king version is a Hollywood invention ) and what he had to go through on his life.
-Artemisia : They forced her character too much,but both her young and adult versions were involving to the public.
-Gorgo : Again she's shown as a key character to the story.Despite it being a lie,it was nice to see the feeling of life following despite difficulties.She isn't that much of a good narrator,though.
-Daxos : They seem to want to show him as a man up example.It may give a good surprise on the third movie.
-Themistocles : As the main character,he was the focus of the story.The forced humor ended up being funny.I dare to say that he ended up being more involving then Leonidas on the first movie.
Rating for this factor : 8,1 ( funny how both women put the rating down )

End of spoilers

Replay : I will certainly watch it again ( not just because it's a good movie,but I saw the marks of pellicle changes at least 4 times... blame the movie Fight Club,even though I love it ).After the 3 movies are released in Blu-Ray,I'll probably buy the collector's edition ( if I ever have children,it'll be a good way to entertain them and teach them history by pointing the inaccuracies ).
Rating for this factor : 10 ( the first had already become pop culture trend,and this one may become too )

Overall rating ( adding the ratings and dividing by the number of factors ) : 8,25 ( why can't Hollywood keep the movies accurate with history!? )