Saw the movie 300 in IMAX the other day. The last movie I saw in IMAX was Beavers at the Maryland Science Center. I have to say that IMAX 300 wasn’t nearly as impressive as those giant beavers. Back when Beavers came out, suburban theaters were tiny. An IMAX theater was the only place, other than an old movie palace in a big city, where one could see a movie on a truly big screen. Nowadays, theaters and screens are bigger and the sound is always way too fucking loud. So the tall IMAX screen and 12,000 watts of bass really isn’t all that impressive anymore. It’s a good thing I paid for the movie and popcorn with some gift cards, otherwise I would have felt ripped off.
But I’m not going to judge 300 based on the fading relevance of a once-great theater experience. Instead, I’ll judge the film based on its highly unoriginal qualities.
Let me start off by saying that 300 is a beautiful looking film. The cinematography, makeup, special effects and the like are all top notch. Just like they were in Gladiator, Lord of the Rings and the Cinemax series The Erotic Traveler. Basically, if you’ve seen any or all of these movies, you’ve pretty much seen 300.
Like Gladiator, 300 features a badass main character fighting for something bigger than himself and augments such fighting with pithy and inspiring bravado. There are also a bunch of scenes about politics and fields of grain that really slow the movie down.
Like Lord of the Rings, there is an army making a stand against ridiculous odds, complete with two ancillary characters trading quips and insults as they try to outdo each other on the field of battle. There’s even a Gollum character, who follows and eventually betrays the fellowship.
Like The Erotic Traveler, there are couple of softcore porn scenes featuring skinny women with perky nipples that have little to do with the actual story. And don’t give me any of that bullshit about the oracle chick being essential, as her prophecy dictates that the full Spartan force cannot march against Xerxes. That might be true, but it’s no reason to have a slow motion scene of a drugged-up, barely pubescent-looking girl dancing around with her nipples threatening to poke some dude’s eyes out. That’s just exploitative trash designed to appeal to the jerkoff meth addicts in the audience. For those of us who came to see the Spartans struggle against ridiculous odds, such sex scenes are a little awkward and uncomfortable. There is a time and a place for porn, and 300 did not need to have such gratuitous sex and nudity. (I can’t believe I just spoke out against titties, but it just didn’t feel right watching the softcore scenes of 300. But that could have been because the kid sitting two seats down from me was like 8, and apparently there by himself. That’s a little weird.)
As for the action sequences, well those were pretty damn good. Or at least they were as good as I expected them to be. The problem is that director Zack Synder (yes, the Zack Snyder) never really makes it seem as if the Spartans are in any danger. They kick ass until they are betrayed by Spartan Gollum , then they basically make a pompous show of letting themselves be slaughtered. 300 should be about the struggle of a relative few against impossible odds, but it’s really about a bunch of dudes in short-shorts fighting for couple of days and then saying, “Aww, fuck it.” It’s kind of disappointing.
You know what else is disappointing? The voice-over narration. Like many modern narrations (see my Awesome Movie Review of Domino) the narration of 300 is apparently for the benefit of the blind. When not talking about how totally fucking badass Spartans are (which could probably be discerned from the whooping they give the Persians (I mean that one kid killed a fucking rhino with one toss of his spear)), the narration is repeating lines of dialogue that have just been spoken or otherwise describing the obvious. I like the way Snyder made the narrator a diegetic part of the story, but it would have been better suited as a simple framing story, rather than a full-blown narration.
Since the release of 300, there’s been a lot written about the politics of the film. In particular, some Iranians took issue with what they saw as a bias against Persians. Nothing could be further from the truth. If anything, 300 is a pro-Persian movie.
Sure, the Greeks win at the end, and the Spartans are clearly superior ass-kicking machines, but the images of the Persian lifestyle are too intoxicating to resist. Why would anyone want to side with the Spartans, who kill children and force them to fight each other, the Athenians, who have sex with children, or the Arcadians , who are apparently the leather-clad gimps of ancient Greece, when the Persians have elephants and harems of slutty, mutilated women and trannies? It’s a no-brainer . Why would I side with a bunch of loser Spartans? They don’t have elephants, which means no elephant rides. The culture without elephant rides is clearly the inferior culture, if such elephant-less savagery could even be called culture.
The one anti-Persian element in 300 is the dude with swords for hands. I’m sure you’ve seen him in the trailer. You would think that a giant with swords for hands would come in handy on the battlefield, but for some odd reason, the Persians use him as an executioner. How hard is it to cut off the head of a bound general? Not very, I would assume. Having a dude with swords for hands is a little bit of overkill. And I’m no expert in the field of ancient medicine, but I’m pretty sure that Persians would have gone through a lot of trouble to dismember a giant and replace his arms with swords. I don’t care how advanced your culture is, that’s not something you get right on the first try. So, it would stand to reason that using the sword-arm dude as an executioner is a serious waste of resources. That dude needs to be out chopping people up, not standing around waiting for someone to earn the displeasure of Xerxes. But other than that, the Persians seem like pretty cool guys. Better than those dickhead Spartans, that’s for damn sure.
I should have mentioned this earlier, but I’ve never read the comic book version of 300. Some of what I’ve criticized here might be the product of a poorly-made comic, rather than a poorly-made movie. But I don’t care. Taking the derivative content of one medium and transferring it to another, more prestigious, medium is inexcusable. Frank Miller is absolved from the mistakes of Zack Snyder, but as writer-director of 300, Snyder must answer for the flaws he willingly brought over from the comic book. So no bitching about that in the comments
On my scale of one to five tiny heads of Sergei Eisenstein, I give 300 one and a half tiny heads of Sergei Eisenstein. I love the look of the movie, it’s perfectly suited to the over-the-top grandeur that any film about the Battle of Thermopylae should posses. Unfortunately, the film doesn’t capture the epic nature of the battle, at least not in any way the distinguishes it from any other epic sword-fighting movie. Although I will give it credit for showing the superiority of the spear as a weapon. It always bother me the spears suck in all role-playing games. But that’s neither here nor there. If you’re interested in the Battle of Thermopylae, Amazon is selling Herotodus’s The Histories for $8, which is three bucks less than I paid to see 300.
I heard Bindi is bringing her dad back from the dead! I knew she was evil the moment I saw the happiness with which she greeted the death of her dad, but using Voodoo to bring his impaled carcass to walk amongst us is a new low.
Xerxes was no Cyrus the Great, not even a Darius the Great.
It took me a while to catch the Bindi reference. Us Yanks don’t really know much about the Irwin family. Anyway, a zombie Steve Irwin would be a breath of fresh air in the Voodoo zombie comedy genre. I think all of us were a tad disappointed with Weekend at Bernie’s 2–it was good, but it could have been much better. A reanimated, and presumably dancing, Steve Irwin to bring much-needed charisma to the role of dancing Voodoo zombie.
As for Xerxes, I think you have to feel bad for the guy. After all, he came after Cyrus the Great and Darius the Great, so even though he’s Xerxes the Great, that’s not really saying much. When you come from a family of the Greats, being a Xerxes the Great is more like being a Xerxes the Bare Minimum.
Spears are pretty cheap weapons. I mean, how hard is it to sharpen a stick? If spears were the tops in melee technology, no one would ever bother with swords, halberds, maces, or anything else like that.
Don’t knock the spear because it’s cheap and efficient. It might not be the perfect weapon, as it is not so useful in fighting in close quarters, but it certainly hasn’t been giving a fair shake in the RPG world. And remember, even though the spear might seem simple, it’s the weapon upon which all of civilisation was founded. We’d still be rooting around for roots and berries if it weren’t for the spear. It’s no wonder that the sinister monkeys have already begun their spear training. They wish to bring about the downfall of man using the very weapon that allowed us to rise above the animals.
The spear is perfectly fine for a first technology, as it is both ranged, melee and eventually anti-cavalry. When you get down to it, though, it just lacks the distance effectiveness of a long bow, the armor-crushing ability of a mace, and the all-around deadliness of a sword in the hands of a skilled wielder. It’s basically the second-best option for any task you want to accomplish.
Spears used in a Phalanx > a mace.
The spears in 300 were a little short, so let me use this example.
In the time of Alexander the great, phalanx spears were around 4 metres long, and going against them was like running at a wall of spears. Seriously, kind of daunting.
Maces are for clerics and clerics are, by definition, pussies. Unless, of course, the cleric is a dwarf fighter/cleric, in which case he’s alright by me.
As for the phalanx of spears, honestly, if I saw just one dude holding a four meter long spear, I’d be pretty damn daunted. In fact, I’d most likely turn and run the other way. Maybe it’s just because I grew up in the suburbs, rather than on the mean streets of 500 B.C. Sparta, but any type of sharp metal object attached to a long stick scares the hell out of me.
I finally saw this movie and I really hated it, while the person I saw it with loved it.
My make the Spartans something they are not. The movie failed to mention that the Spartan kids are not out beating each other up to steal things and survive but beating poor undernourished Helots to a pulp and murdering them to steal their stuff. That is a much better. The only Spartan to Spartan beatings I can recall reading are administered by older men to younger men when they are caught trying to sneak out to see their wives.
Leonidas’ line about philosopher boy lovers should have been said while he was oiling the body, and combing and setting the hair, of one of his Spartans companions – then it actually would have been a funny line; though no doubt less people in the audience would have laughed.
The sword for sword play of Spartan politics was so obvious that the bribed councilor should have seen what was coming to him a week before that council meeting and not turned up; what a clown!
One and a Half heads was too much, given the close resemblance of the fight scenes to the Brad Pitt Troy and the oddly unnecessary re-writing of history similar to the opening of Lord of the Rings or the end of the most recent Pearl Harbour movie.
The more armor your opponents are wearing, the more useful a mace becomes.