[QUOTE=Swallowed My Cellphone]
You liked his digital voice? I saw 300 on Saturday and almost the entire audience groaned when he spoke and giggled because it sounded so silly. I could hear the eyes of everyone around me rolling so hard their irises were scraping their palates. Rather than coming across as some kind of tyrannical king, he looked more like a bitchy drag queen on a really bad day. (That and the putty from his fake facial piercings was really distracting.)
[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=Love Rhombus]
Since the highest Spartan ideal was to die in glory for Sparta, wishing immortality on a guy who wanted nothing more than to be accepted was telling him “You’re nothing like us and a betrayal of everything we are.” Basically it was the worst insult he could think of to a Spartan. I felt sorry for the hunchback. Talk about being screwed by society.
It was a story by Frank Miller. He writes* exciting, bloody stuff about scary people. Plot? Kinda along for the ride. I agree that the stuff with the queen was eh, but they had to have something in there. Blame Frank.
*Yes, I’m aware that it was an actual event. It was just Millerized.
[/QUOTE]
What is it that Leonidas said to Ephialtes again? I saw it, I just can’t remember.
[QUOTE=anamnesis]
These sorts of details were meant to be embellished for the sake of entertainment, and if you don’t realize this then maybe you’re not as much of a history buff as you think you are, otherwise you’d be able to forgive its misgivings, eat your popcorn, and just appreciate it for what it is.
[/QUOTE]
Oh please, talk about poisoning the well. :rolleyes:
I can’t stop thinking about this movie. I’ve done nothing at work today except read Wikipedia entires on Sparta. I want to be a Spartan (except for the fact that it would really suck in real life).
[QUOTE=Roboto]
I can’t stop thinking about this movie. I’ve done nothing at work today except read Wikipedia entires on Sparta. I want to be a Spartan (except for the fact that it would really suck in real life).
[/QUOTE]
I wanna marry a Spartan woman so that way my son will be part Spartan.
I wish I were kidding.
[QUOTE=Swallowed My Cellphone]
You liked his digital voice? I saw 300 on Saturday and almost the entire audience groaned when he spoke and giggled because it sounded so silly. I could hear the eyes of everyone around me rolling so hard their irises were scraping their palates. Rather than coming across as some kind of tyrannical king, he looked more like a bitchy drag queen on a really bad day. (That and the putty from his fake facial piercings was really distracting.)
[/QUOTE]
That’s weird, there was no reaction to him in my theater and yeah, I really did like his voice, whatever they did to it.
Xerxes did kinda remind me of the Goa’uld guy in the original Stargate movie though, and I can understand why people think he was sort of… I dunno you can’t really say drag queenish. At least I don’t think he was. Sort of effeminate maybe, but I saw it as a pompous, royal god-king kinda attitude.
I read on Wikipedia that not much is known about Xerxes later years, but he spent them mostly involved with his harems and eunuchs before getting murdered by his vizier, for whatever that’s worth.
[QUOTE=HubZilla]
I thought the guy was Michael Dorn (aka Worf)
[/QUOTE]
Michael Dorn has a real voice that sounds big. There was some odd tonal quality to Xerxes’s faux “big voice” that reminded me of Jaye Davidson’s pitch-shifted voice as Anubis in Stargate.
Rodrigo Santoro is almost 6’3" in real-life (Gerald Butler is 6’2"). If they’d made Xerxes 7’2" - 7’5" (closer to Yao Ming), he would have been an imposing and exotic conqueror. He looked about 10 feet tall and freakish to the point of silly.
I loved most of the movie, even the Cenobite executioner, but Xerxes just made me laugh and not in a good way.
I wonder if there was something amiss with the sound system when we saw it then. The audience didn’t seem to mind how he looked, but every time he opened his mouth, there was serious chortling and guffaws.
[QUOTE=Alessan]
There is a direct leading from “We will fight in the shade*” to “Yippee-ka-yay, motherfucker!”, and just for that, Western culture owes them a profound debt.
[/QUOTE]
[chanelling Darth Vader]
I find your lack of faith disturbing.
[/chanelling Darth Vader]
[QUOTE=Swallowed My Cellphone]
Rodrigo Santoro is almost 6’3" in real-life (Gerald Butler is 6’2"). If they’d made Xerxes 7’2" - 7’5" (closer to Yao Ming), he would have been an imposing and exotic conqueror. He looked about 10 feet tall and freakish to the point of silly.
[/QUOTE]
I thought Xerxes was awesome! Voice, 10 ft tall . . . no complaints. The only things that bothered me were certain disgusting creatures that I had to hide my eyes from.
[QUOTE=kimera]
The Greeks were portrayed as handsomely heterosexual (with unnecessary side comments about those “weak boy-lover” Athenians).
[/QUOTE]
When the original comic books were coming out, somebody commented on a letters page about calling the Athenians “boy-lovers.” Frank Miller replied, saying that the Spartans were certainly not above hypocrisy.
[QUOTE=MacSpon]
When the original comic books were coming out, somebody commented on a letters page about calling the Athenians “boy-lovers.” Frank Miller replied, saying that the Spartans were certainly not above hypocrisy.
[/QUOTE]
Wow, what a disingenuous answer that was (Miller’s). At any rate, the context for the average theatergoer was prideful homophobia; only the educated viewer knew it was hypocritical.
I thought it played like a conservative wet dream: all the muscley white dudes in man panties, fighting a horde of every different size and shape–and ethnicity–of creature. Diversity as nightmare. It was like the Spartan version of Falling Down, or Edmond: white “straight” male paranoia of being overrun by people who are not like him. Mostly, though, it reminded me of Small Soldiers, where the “good” guys are all white and square jawed, and the “bad” guys are exotic and foreign, if not downright primitive. The difference being that in Small Soldiers, the “good” guys were the aggressors, and the “bad” guys were pacificists, making it a more obvoius satire of American militarism. *300 *reads more like a celebration of it: painting the strong-jawed white guy with the shield and cape as wholly justified in his militarism. It might read like Bush-war apologism, except it was just so dang over the top and *silly *that I’m not entirely sure it wasn’t making fun of such apologism. The man panties make me wonder.
I have never been a fan of comics, but I am thoroughly enjoying the manifestations of comics/graphics to film in recent years. I don’t think one has to be a longtime fan of the 300 comic to enjoy the film. Interpreting comics to film is a whole other artform, imho.
And this film was awesomely good at it. I found the makup in Sin City just didn’t sit well with me when scenes of those characters were on-screen, but I totally dug the merging of the live-action and blue screen in the scenes where the actors are not wearing prosthetics. That’s not to say that there aren’t obvious special effects and cgi, but I feel that they enhance the raw footage, again in an artform that I am enjoying seeing such advances in thought from.
My girlfriend is a composer, and the soundtrack opportunites for comic/graphic film scores are really something she could be quite good at.
[QUOTE=lissener]
Wow, what a disingenuous answer that was (Miller’s). At any rate, the context for the average theatergoer was prideful homophobia; only the educated viewer knew it was hypocritical.
I thought it played like a conservative wet dream: all the muscley white dudes in man panties, fighting a horde of every different size and shape–and ethnicity–of creature. Diversity as nightmare. It was like the Spartan version of Falling Down, or Edmond: white “straight” male paranoia of being overrun by people who are not like him. Mostly, though, it reminded me of Small Soldiers, where the “good” guys are all white and square jawed, and the “bad” guys are exotic and foreign, if not downright primitive. The difference being that in Small Soldiers, the “good” guys were the aggressors, and the “bad” guys were pacificists, making it a more obvoius satire of American militarism. *300 *reads more like a celebration of it: painting the strong-jawed white guy with the shield and cape as wholly justified in his militarism. It might read like Bush-war apologism, except it was just so dang over the top and *silly *that I’m not entirely sure it wasn’t making fun of such apologism. The man panties make me wonder.
[/QUOTE]
I think though that there were several items that don’t quite fit. For example, there was one line where the narrator said (paraphrasing) “that the Persians showed desperation when they suddenly resorted to use and waste their best and most elite forces so early”. That sounded to me like a jab directed to what the US did in Iraq.
Not to mention that the larger force that is invading are the bad guys and the followers of Leonidas (that have also a justification to fight because they are defending their people) are fanatics.
And there is also the bit showing lots of [del]dollars[/del] gold Persian coins being thrown around to “persuade” powerful locals to follow the Persians.
Regarding the actor who portrayed Xerxes: His name’s Rodrigo Santoro and his voice was remixed. If you want to see the actor as he really is, go borrow or rent a copy of Love Actually (which I think people should see on its own merits anyway) and look for the scenes with Laura Linney’s character Sarah. Karl, Santoro’s character, is her love match in that movie.
I popped it in to show my fiance and her first reaction was, “I thought that guy was way taller in 300.”
:smack:
I didn’t say it was an allegory. I only meant that the attitudes and concepts seemed to be the kind that might be more comfortably appreciated by a more conservative audience member, due to this or that parallel with a conservative viewpoint. I’m not even really sure I believe that was the filmmakers’ intention; Rorschach tests reveal much, though they started out as random inkblots.
I meant to add:
As for whether or not 300 is a critique of the war in Iraq… I dunno. According to Herodotus, Xerxes did throw his elite guard at the Spartans in his second wave of assault. Besides, the movie is very faithful to the graphic novel which was written a good three years before the WTC attacks and five years before we invaded Iraq. Obviously the timing of the movie’s release may be significant, but I’d say it’s more because comic books are finally spawning (mostly) decent and profitable films.
