So, went and saw 300 tonight. It’s a movie that I’ve been looking forward to and dreading simultaneously. The original trailer had me absolutely psyched to see the movie, but some details really rubbed me the wrong way. It seemed to overly music-video-like, and Leonidas shouted way more than I’d expected him to.
So, my hopes were high, but my expectations were low.
All in all, I liked it. I understand why they made a lot of the additions they did, though one of the movie’s problems was that it expected those bits – speeches, mostly, to be as powerful and intense as the original material – and they weren’t. I think one of the issues to me is that 300, as a graphic novel, is almost perfect – it’s probably my favorite comic book story ever, and I’m not sure how one would add to it in a way that I’d hold up to the standard of the original.
That said, a lot of the additions were there to make things clearer, or give depth where needed. In a comic book, a single sentence can be quite powerful, because a reader can linger on it for as long as they care to. There is, for instance, one whole subplot in the movie that is an expansion of something that’s only given a single panel, and one or maybe two sentences of text.
Gerard Butler, who played Leonidas, really impressed me. Obviously, he’s a lot louder than I’d imagined, but in the context of battle, it makes sense, and even where I thought it made sense for him to be quiet, he gave his lines a thoughtfulness and depth that I was really glad to see.
Easily, easily my favorite part was the first battle, in the phalanx. I won’t spoil it, but definitely had the proper intensity.
Good stuff.
huh. until i saw your post, i actually thought this movie was just more anti-iran propaganda. this is the summary that yahoo posted:
In the ancient Battle of Thermopylae, King Leonidas and 300 Spartans fought to the death against Xerxes and his massive Persian army. Facing insurmountable odds, their valor and sacrifice inspire all of Greece to unite against their Persian enemy, drawing a line in the sand for democracy.
-roopa
The original books were written in 1998, so it’s certainly not tied to the current political climate. The movie sticks closely enough to the spirit of the books that there aren’t (I think) purposeful parallels to the situation in the world today.
The Persians *aren’t* portrayed fairly in the book, or in the movie. There shouldn’t be any doubt about that. I didn’t have a problem with it, though, because the movie has a level of fantasy that makes it make some “sense” to me. The heroes are more heroic than is reasonable, and the villains are similarly villainous.
It’s not about giving the participants a fair portrayal – the whole story is in fact propaganda, but it makes sense in context, based on who the propaganda is *for* and why.
The idea is that this is the story that older generations of Spartans told the younger generations of Spartans to glorify and aggrandize their exploits and characteristics, to believe that they, alone above all others, valued honor and freedom and country, above all else. And that through valor and ingenuity, they bravely faced the nameless, faceless, evil beings who sought to rule them.
It’s the same story all around the world. Braveheart was essentially the same story.
Compared to the Spartan view of Spartans, everyone is painted as weak or evil or corrupt, including gay people, black people, Asians, Middle Easterners, people born with deforminities, absolutely everyone not as “perfect” as a Spartan was disparaged and feared.
The thing that keeps this from being an Aryan theme is that it’s about a small group of people who are revolting against a homogenizing hegemony, trying to survive in a changing world, rather than it being a large group who is trying to take over and consume the smaller entities.
That little bit makes all the difference.
It’s still xenophobic, but almost all aggrandizing stories of cultures are xenophobic. Not to support it, but it’s that kind of story, so there you go.
I think the book did a better job of portraying the underdog struggle. The movie didn’t get the feel of that underdog struggle very well, even with the visual reminders of the relative sizes of the troops.
I think none of this was spoiler-y. I hope.
Addressing the parallels to today, I think it’s completely valid to make comparisons, because the 80s brought us the Iran-Contra affair, and the early 90s gave us Desert Storm, and the movie itself was made in current times.
The movie did deviate in emphasis in very small ways from the book, as movies must when being translated to the big screen, and I think that if the director hadn’t tried to be a bit self-aware about what is going on today, it would be worse. It wasn’t a movie ABOUT the current state of world affairs, but I think it was aware of it and tried to not play into a political statement.
In some ways, one could make a case that it speaks to those that *USA* tries to take over, where we are the Persians of the movie.
Truthfully, the whole Iran debate never even entered my mind when we watched it. I think a lot of people have a hard time accepting entertainment today at face value. Everything always has to be about something else. Can’t a movie JUST be a movie?
Maybe that’s naive of me, but really … the movie was about cool effects and the fight scenese. I hardly think Xerxes was the model of any leader of Iran today. If anything, they were mocking 7 foot tall transvestites. If anyone, RuPaul should be pissed.
Sure, a movie is a movie is a movie, but real life biases creep into moviemakers’ actions too, so ignoring it as a moviegoer doesn’t mean something wasn’t going on with the moviemakers. So I find it better to go in with ears pricked up to see if there is any influence or suggestion.
Seppo recently made a comparison of V For Vendetta and The Children of Men, and there is clear reason to believe these movies have some current day political commentary. I think it’s not a stretch to assume that a story about a clash between the western world and the middle eastern world might have some influence from today’s events.
Or, barring actual content in the movie, there is still the timing behind the financial backers who decided that this would be a prime market opportunity to sell such a movie. 😀