I was 16 years old when “300” arrived in theaters in 2006, but I might as well have been 6. After viewing the highly stylized fantasy-action film, which sees Gerard Butler as King Leonidas leading a charge of 300 Spartan soldiers against the advancing Persians, I immediately began having nightmares of the movie’s villain, Xerxes.
And I still do. While others may spend their nights staring at the ceiling, quivering at the thought of Freddy Krueger or Jason Voorhees murdering them for sport, I am kept up by thoughts of the 7-foot-tall Persian “god-king,” played with aggressive creepiness by Rodrigo Santoro.
And now, Xerxes is back. He’s not even the main bad guy in the sequel — Eva Green takes that honor as femme fatale Artemisia — but he’s still there and terrifying as ever: The movie opens, after all, with Xerxes making sure Gerard Butler’s body is good and dead by striking a blow to the carcass.
But it’s not Xerxes’ deadly handmanship with a labrys that haunts me. It’s his demeanor. The androgynous, bass-voiced man, draped in elaborate gold jewelry, revels in mysticism. Like some sort of handsome Gollum, he uses his graceful giant stature to demand attention.
And although Hollywood has tried to position the Brazilian Santoro as a heartthrob in movies like “What To Expect When You’re Expecting,” he’ll always be a menace to me.
Case in point? The scene from the first film in which Leonidas meets Xerxes, who attempts to persuade Leonidas to betray Sparta and join his ranks. How does he do it? By walking up directly behind him and placing his gold, manicured hands on Leonidas’ shoulders.
“Your Athenian rivals will kneel at your feet, if you will but kneel at mine,” he practically moans through his metallic lips.
Leonidas does not shiver — but I would have. I’d cry, throw on a gold lamé loincloth and slaughter a couple hundred Greeks — anything to keep him from touching me again.
In the end, we are to believe that even though Leonidas died, Xerxes failed because he “has betrayed a fatal flaw: hubris.”
I beg to differ. Hubris is insecurity’s enemy. Consider me scared.