Written by Harry Barber
More on those questions later. Let's get the details out of the way. The movie is based on Frank Miller's thick comic which itself is based on the real life Battle of Thermopylae, in which 300 Spartans and a couple thousand less manly Greeks held off the massive Persian army for three days. Thermopylae is the grand daddy of all desperate last stands and is thus just begging for the big screen treatment. Surprisingly, it's only been tackled once before. History buffs need not apply. Miller's work took some creative license with the facts and this movie takes those and even more.
But come on, let's be serious. Nobody is going to this movie for history lessons. Going to this movie is about one thing. Beefcake. Bulging biceps, rippling abs, heaving thighs, straining tendons, long hard spears, thrusting loins... Um... Yeah. While you might think it a bit odd to go to war wearing little more than a loincloth and a cape, the Spartans of Miller and director Zack Snyder are perfectly happy to flaunt their perfectly chiseled bodies for everyone to drool over. If you are a guy that believes being gay is a choice and not genetic, you might want to give this one a wide berth. I'd hate for you to be tempted by the generous helpings of man meat Snyder ladles over his cinematic concoction. Then again, you might want to run the gauntlet and see if you can get out of this flick without succumbing to the urge to smoke some pole. Clearly that will establish your manliness.
Anyway, there is a bit of a setup with King Leonidas as a kid, some really lame stuff with a nude breakdancing oracle and a villainous politician you'll starting wanting to see gutted like a trout 30 seconds after he appears on screen. The obvious result of all that is that Leonidas takes a stroll with 300 of his most succulent... I mean best trained warriors to try and head off the invading Persian army at the Hot Gates. And for the record, that last bit isn't a euphemism for Gerald Butler's buttocks.
Battle quickly ensues and the remainder of the movie is what happens when that movie geek who watched the bullet time sequences from The Matrix gets handed a Hollywood sized budget. Slow motion, rotating cameras and buckets of blood that evaporate in mid-air are the order of the day and you'd better like them because that pretty much sums up Snyder's bag of tricks and he dips into it with great regularity. I know a lot of people who think this is the coolest thing ever to watch spears thrusting into men in super slow mo from all angles, but personally, I get tired of it real quick. And after that I'm begging Snyder to try anything different, just for the variety. But no, he keeps pounding away without change, determined to prove his manliness by the size of his money shot. And don't you dare call him gay or he'll punch you right in that sweet pretty mouth.
Some people, and by people I mean idiots, have speculated that this movie is analagous to the battle between America and terrorists. To come to such a conclusion, you would first have to start with the erroneous idea that this movie has a brain in its head. Some Iranian official made some wild claim that the US had launched studies to determine how to undermine Iranian culture and this movie was the culmination of that effort. That may well be the funniest thing anyone says all year. To first assume that Americans stop to think about anyone else's culture and secondly assume that any level of research goes into a Hollywood historical film is the height of comedy.
I think the best question about 300 relates to the future. How long will it be before the presence of 300 in someone's DVD collection rivals the possesion of any Barbara Streisand movie as a surefire indicator that someone needs help getting out of the closet?
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Monday, 09 April 2007 16:39
Is 300 a political allegory? Does Hollywood seek to humiliate Iran by portraying them as effeminate beanpoles? Do people really watch this video game of a movie and start trying to link it to any sort of real world? Has there ever been a more homoerotic studio movie?More on those questions later. Let's get the details out of the way. The movie is based on Frank Miller's thick comic which itself is based on the real life Battle of Thermopylae, in which 300 Spartans and a couple thousand less manly Greeks held off the massive Persian army for three days. Thermopylae is the grand daddy of all desperate last stands and is thus just begging for the big screen treatment. Surprisingly, it's only been tackled once before. History buffs need not apply. Miller's work took some creative license with the facts and this movie takes those and even more.
But come on, let's be serious. Nobody is going to this movie for history lessons. Going to this movie is about one thing. Beefcake. Bulging biceps, rippling abs, heaving thighs, straining tendons, long hard spears, thrusting loins... Um... Yeah. While you might think it a bit odd to go to war wearing little more than a loincloth and a cape, the Spartans of Miller and director Zack Snyder are perfectly happy to flaunt their perfectly chiseled bodies for everyone to drool over. If you are a guy that believes being gay is a choice and not genetic, you might want to give this one a wide berth. I'd hate for you to be tempted by the generous helpings of man meat Snyder ladles over his cinematic concoction. Then again, you might want to run the gauntlet and see if you can get out of this flick without succumbing to the urge to smoke some pole. Clearly that will establish your manliness.
Anyway, there is a bit of a setup with King Leonidas as a kid, some really lame stuff with a nude breakdancing oracle and a villainous politician you'll starting wanting to see gutted like a trout 30 seconds after he appears on screen. The obvious result of all that is that Leonidas takes a stroll with 300 of his most succulent... I mean best trained warriors to try and head off the invading Persian army at the Hot Gates. And for the record, that last bit isn't a euphemism for Gerald Butler's buttocks.
Battle quickly ensues and the remainder of the movie is what happens when that movie geek who watched the bullet time sequences from The Matrix gets handed a Hollywood sized budget. Slow motion, rotating cameras and buckets of blood that evaporate in mid-air are the order of the day and you'd better like them because that pretty much sums up Snyder's bag of tricks and he dips into it with great regularity. I know a lot of people who think this is the coolest thing ever to watch spears thrusting into men in super slow mo from all angles, but personally, I get tired of it real quick. And after that I'm begging Snyder to try anything different, just for the variety. But no, he keeps pounding away without change, determined to prove his manliness by the size of his money shot. And don't you dare call him gay or he'll punch you right in that sweet pretty mouth.
Some people, and by people I mean idiots, have speculated that this movie is analagous to the battle between America and terrorists. To come to such a conclusion, you would first have to start with the erroneous idea that this movie has a brain in its head. Some Iranian official made some wild claim that the US had launched studies to determine how to undermine Iranian culture and this movie was the culmination of that effort. That may well be the funniest thing anyone says all year. To first assume that Americans stop to think about anyone else's culture and secondly assume that any level of research goes into a Hollywood historical film is the height of comedy.
I think the best question about 300 relates to the future. How long will it be before the presence of 300 in someone's DVD collection rivals the possesion of any Barbara Streisand movie as a surefire indicator that someone needs help getting out of the closet?
- This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Last Updated on Monday, 09 April 2007 16:42
