300 - What did everyone think?

[Rex Nemorensis]

A little something said by a guy at a BattleTech forum I frequent. Hits it spot on:

I went to see this as a Frank Miller adaptation of a true story. He was writing things from a Spartan view so over fantasizing the persians kinda fit for me. the mutants and deformities worked cause i saw that as the Spartans would. A Massive army from a distant land and all the rumors of the creapy crap they do over there. Its not like now where we see our opponents on CNN or the BBC in real time and can see they are men like us. Back then they just heard rumors and wives tales and im sure they expected to see mutants and freaks fighting them, just look at the Immortals. It said in the movie something along the lines of Rumors say they cant be killed and file there teeth into points, etc, etc. If i was a Spartan and heard that i would expect something like what i saw in the movie. I can see where Miler was comming from making the persians look how they did. I dont think he meant it as a historical adaptation but to make them look how they appeared to the greeks to try and get the person reading or watching his novel in the same mind frame as the Spartans to get them to connect with them that way. I saw Sin City in a similar light where everything was fantisized to visually represent there inner self.

He said it fairly well; I'm somewhat annoyed at how easily some people will turn something like this into something else entirely for purely political reasons. I saw Fox News attempt to turn the movie Happy Feet into a liberal anti-corporate assault on American values. Much the same as the Southern Poverty Law Center tried to turn The Lord of the Rings trilogy into a Euro-centric White Supremacists dream come true. And all of that reminds me of the conspiracy theories involving billiards and bowling as racist sports with subtle racial allegory. Clearly alot of these people don't know how the mind of the average racist works and it doesn't involve subtle racial allegory; no most of them prefer more open confrontation as opposed to anything else.

But back to the movie, I loved it. I thought it was acted very well (and I also thought that Gerard Butlers bellowing was greatly exaggerated in most of the reviews); the visuals were, of course, spectacular! The violence was a bit cheesy because all of the blood was CG but I felt that it didn't detract from the movie experience. My biggest complaint was the ending, I don't think we needed to see Leonidas and the remaining 300 Spartans impaled with thousands of arrows to get that they were dead and in my opinion doing so was a bit cheesy. But by far, in my opinion, the best part of the movie was the narration, it reminded me of a Homeric epic which is what I think they were going for.

Me and my friends joke about how manly the movie appears to be. I mean come on...300 Spartans and 1800 Abs go take on one million Persians, most of the Spartan dialog was grunting and there was even a scene involving sweet love making to your woman! Someone told me that feminists hated the movie for that reason but I haven't seen anything so I won't comment on it.