Epic Movie Returns: ‘300: Rise of an Empire’ Trailer Released [Video]

 

King Leonidas’ corpse makes an appearance in the new trailer for ‘300: Rise of an Empire’

It’s a Greek travesty!

The new trailer for “300: Rise of an Empire,” which hit the Internet Wednesday, opens with the jarring sight of the nefarious Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro) riding over the corpses of Gerard Butler’s Spartan King Leonidas and most of his 299 loyal, doomed subjects.

From there….things get a little more epic.

“The idea of this movie was always that it takes place at about the same time of the first one,” director Noam Murro told MTV News. “It’s as if you zoomed out and saw a bigger time frame and told a bigger story of what happened in ‘300.’ The first movie speaks to the detail of this sequel.

“It is larger in scale, and it takes place on water,” adds Murro, who took over helming duties from producer Zack Snyder.

Leonidas’ fight is picked up by Greek general Themistocles (Sullivan Stapleton), who has a Persian naval armada to destroy led by Eva Green’s bow-wielding Artemisia.

Returning from the original is Spartan Queen Gorgo, played by “Game of Thrones” star Lena Headey, who vows that her husband’s sacrifice won’t be in vain.

“It begins as a whisper, a promise,” she tells her men. “The lightest of breezes dances above the death cries of 300 men. That breeze became a wind.”

A wind of hyper-stylized carnage and sultry sex scenes, apparently, judging by the rest of two-minute, 30-second trailer.

The battle of Thermopylae never looked this cool in a history book.

“300: Rise of an Empire,” loosely based on the graphic novel “Xerxes” by Frank Miller, invades theaters on March 7, 2014.