Post by Return of the Thin Olive Duke on Jan 24, 2016 21:46:21 GMT -5
Dir. Zack Snyder
Premiered March 9, 2007
In the winter of 2007, I was a junior in high school, and one week, I came to school and every doofus was raving about 300. This was not expected. Movies that come out in March are not generally seen by teenagers. I didn’t see it. I knew enough about it; it was pretty hard to be blind to the film’s short-lived pop cultural impact; but it didn’t seem like my thing. How does it hold up now?
300 was based on a comic by Frank Miller, itself inspired by the real-life battle of Thermopylae, where 300 Spartan warriors, led by King Leonidas, held off a much larger force of invading Persians, sacrificing themselves so the other Greek city-states could fend them off. The comic book took this simple concept and stylized it in such a way as to seem alien as possible, which makes the semi-eugenic Spartan culture a little easier to get past (though the film is so inaccurate in every other way that there’s no point in keeping that element). The Persian invaders are depicted as variously monstrous, which of course pissed off the Iranian government when the movie came out.
We all know what happens. Casual anachronistic homophobia, crazy unexamined homoeroticism. This. Is. Sparta. Persian freak show not dissimilar from Tiberius’ orgy chamber in Caligula. Heroic sacrifice. Right?
Well, there’s actually more to it. In a b-plot that combines padding and polemic, Leonidas leads his men to battle without the permission of Sparta’s nobility, who bitterly refuse to acknowledge the Persian threat and are revealed to be nothing but a bunch of greedy turncoat rapists (to be fair, Leonidas is depicted as a war criminal even by the standards of the time, but the movie seems to endorse this behavior). I can’t find any evidence that this was in the comic, and considering the film was written during the nadir of the Iraq War, you can figure out what it’s trying to say. The subtext was as dated then as it is now, and while I’m certainly not the type to take issue with a movie’s politics, it’s still a pointless digression that has no bearing on the main plot, and I certainly don't want to be lectured.
And speaking of horribly dated, let’s talk about the look of the film. It’s got all the Zack Snyder trademarks– gratuitous slow-motion intercut with fast-motion, excessive closeups to make everything seem epic, and an obviously fake, disorientingly monochrome environment. They’re trying to go for style over realism, but it just looks chintzy. At the same time, the battle sequences are very obviously influenced by The Lord of the Rings. Only problem is, The Lord of the Rings consisted of three very long movies with tons of characterization and world-building that 300 doesn’t have (violence is not a character trait, especially when everyone has it). I didn’t care about anything or anyone in this film. The only borderline exception was Michael Fassbenders’s side character, the only person in the movie who didn’t come off as a total blank. I wasn’t expecting to particularly like 300, but I wasn’t expecting to be left this cold either, and I have no idea what the hype was about.
Also in Theaters
- The Ultimate Gift, an early foray by 20th Century Fox into the Christian movie industry. It received mixed reviews, possibly because it wasn't nearly fucked up enough to be entertaining.
Additional Notes
- Until finishing this review, I had confused Michael Fassbender with Tom Hiddleston. I think that warrants a trip to Movie Traffic School.
- Other later-famous people in the movie include Lena Heady, Dominic West, and David Wenham, playing exactly the characters you'd expect them to play.
Next Time: I Think I Love My Wife
