300: ah, OK

Cafe Society
1

Geez, was this movie over-rated or what? It’s good. I think it is good. I enjoyed it. But, it wasn’t particularly a great movie, no.

Wait, why did Leonidas reject the hunchback dude? His given reason was that the Spartans fight in formation. Except that not in one single bloody scene did they in fact do that. They run around like ninja-hoplites. I haven’t seen more bouncing around since Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. You might argue that hunchback dude can’t do that, but it’s not like his being there was going to mess up the unit. I’d have found it more plausible is Leonidas had just told him he was a freakish monster and to get lost. For ole’ Leo to be so “even” one second and spit something so idiotic the next irritates me.

The Persians are sort of presented, when they have faces at all, as either inhuman creatures or cruel tyrants. Sometimes both. Uh, what? Seriously, what?

Continuing in that vein, what was with mixing all the modern feminism in? Dude, WTF? That just doesn’t fit. Likewise all the blab about justice and freedom and reason. It freaking sounds like a militant libertarian convention in there! And not a bit of it makes any sense in the context of Sparta.

The whole reason versus mysticism bit was pretty ridiculous. The Greeks had no trouble with either. more to the point, it was done so ham-handedly that I couldn’t help but laugh:

Villain: Blah blah blah Gods.

Hero: Blah blah blah Reason.

Villain: Blah blah blah Blasphemy!

Hero: Blah blah blah Die!

(Hero busts out like an anime character and charges his power level to 9000 and unleashes the Kamehameha.)

And they do this like five times in the movie. Ok, I know this was a Frank Miller thing, and he’s not subtle. But seriously, didn’t someone notice the faux-intellectualism was a giant joke? This is like the atheist version of, say, the idiot hollywood starlet who instinctley talks about public policy in terms of “We should… um… save the whales n’ stuff!” Or country singers who declare their support for a war by wearing a flag-emblazoned cowboy hat.

Spartan-Traitor-dude-with-no-hunchback. Seriously, that was bloody convenient, wasn’t it. He just happens to be carrying around a load of gold so she can just luckily cut it off of him. Good thing, wasn’t it, cause otherwise she’d have lost her head and her case. Plus, he was so completely unnecessary. That entire subplot was pretty much irrelevant.

So, it’s the defeat of Xerxes with but a single off-handed mention of Athens? Sparta may have won the battle, but Athens won the war. You’d think that deserved just a little bit, somewhere? But no.

There were about four characters who were apparently considered important. I have no idea what their names were. Nor did I really care enough to look them up or pay attention.

All in all, I give it a B-. Enjoyable, but not really worth the price of a full movie ticket. Melodramatic, and way too full of itself , it amounts to war-porn with a faux-intellectualism veneered on top. The cinematopgraphy and SFX were nice, but all in all, it felt like watching a puppet show. Actually, I’ve seen puppet shows which felt more real.

The problem was that every time I got into the groove and started thinking, “Ok, this is just a crazy fiction thing.” They stopped killing, stood around, and started yakking like Shakespeare a Retarded Constitutional Scholars conventional. And then I started laughing.

2

Definitely one of those films that worked a lot better on the big screen than on TV. Yeah it was dumb as hell, but it looked spectacular.

However, when I rented it… meh.

3

I saw it in IMAX and never want to see it any other way.

4

Who thought it was a great movie? I don’t think I’ve seen or heard anyone anywhere claiming it was anything more than a slick war epic and action flick. It was a gorgeous film but the story was average at best.

5

Eh, I kept hearing people talk about it like it was the Second Coming. I just expected more is all. Shrug

6

Did no-one get a big gay mardi-gras feeling from it? Christ, I thought my husband was going to get all leathered up and march in Sydney! He still struts round the house at bed-time, chest out, gut sucked in, shoulders back yelling ‘For Sparta’! So if for no other good reason, it’s provided some foreplay!

7

You definitely need to see this.

8

Leonidas told him that in their phalanx formation, each man protects the guy to his left with his shield, and that hunchback guy couldn’t raise his shield high enough. So why didn’t they just put him all the way to the left?

9

Err, except for that big long scene in the beginning of the attacks. You know, right before the rain of arrows, when they spent about 10 minutes in formation with their shields up?

10

I believe the idea is to make a massive wall of overlapping shields. So putting him to the far left would still expose the man behind him to spears if he can’t get it high enough to match it exactly to the guy on his right.

11

Yep. It’s easily the most homoerotic mainstream Hollywood movie I’ve ever seen in theatres and I was not unappreciative.

12

Gaffa - I am in your debt!!! Have been crying with laughter with said Spartan - husband! That is the funniest thing I’ve seen in ages!!!

13

Yeah, but the point Smiling Bandit made was that they DIDN’T fight in formation. They jumped all over the place. They were very disorganized fighters. If they HAD actually fought in formation, Leonidas’ objection would have made sense. But since they didn’t, it didn’t. It doesn’t matter where you put the hunchbank if everybody is jumping all over the place, because no one is protecting anyone’s flank anyway.

I personally thought the movie was a disgusting piece of filth. It glorified violence and did little else. I’m sorry I watched it. I want my 90 minutes back.

14

It also wasn’t in the original Frank Miller book. Not that it matters particularly.

15

So apparently I saw an extended version?

(Yes, there was a lot of jumping about later on, but yes, they fought in formation too!)

16

I know what you mean! The first time I saw that I couldn’t breathe I was laughing so hard.

I liked the movie. Visually, it was breathtaking. Gerard Butler was breathtaking. That’s all I needed.

17

Now you need to go see Meet the Spartans …

:stuck_out_tongue:

(if you go see it wait through the credits…it’s worth it to see Leo kick Bush into the Pit of Doom if for no other reason…)

-XT

18

Because Hollywood likes to show at least a token respect for historical accuracy, occassionally. When the battle happened, the Spartans were betrayed by such a fellow. IMHO, the film’s biggest flaw was the director’s slavish devotion to Miller’s comic book. The stop-motion in the battle scenes was all so that the film could exactly match panels from the book.

But if you think the film’s bad, you should see the original The 300 Spartans, which inspired Miller to create the comic book. I only made it about halfway through before I gave up.

19

300 was ok when I saw it in IMAX. It is clearly written, produced and directed by someone with a man-crush on Spartans.

One interpretation I heard was it is supposed to be told through the eyes of the one Spartan who lived.

Are you kidding? I doubt I would make it though the OPENING credits without walking out.

20

Shouldn’t that be “EYE”? :wink: