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300
JediBendu:
I didn't much bother to read the whole thread. Though I can guess that debates are probably raging about how historically innacurate and over the top it was. To which I'll point out:
Frank Miller wrote freakin' Sin City. It's going to be over the top.
Anyway, on to what I really want to say. I didn't think 300 was that super-duper amazing, actually. After hearing stuff from my friends like "It's better than all of the best movies combined! It's better than that!" Or y'know, crazy stuff like that. Then I go and watch it, and it's like. An above average but not great movie. And the pacing was kind of weird...
Now... Watchmen... That's gonna be super. Can I getta amen?
Johnny C:
--- Quote from: Daniel on 18 Mar 2007, 18:18 ---In any historical context the movie is laughable, at best. If you regard it as a wholly fictional work, then it's a fun movie, the problem is, the film itself doesn't treat itself like that.
--- End quote ---
Okay there are some minor spoilers if you read this.
There is a hunchback who is grossly and unrealistically deformed.
Wolves look really fucking weird.
Xerxes is eight feet tall, easily, and from the scenes which he appears on clifftops in he's apparently capable of teleportation.
There are a bunch of inbred priests who somehow live up on a mountain with naked oracles and are able to eat.
There are bizarrely-equipped war elephants and rhinoceri.
A twelve-foot tall ogre is part of the Persian army.
There is a tree of dead bodies.
There is a fat man with blades for arms.
Xerxes has a portable fleet of deformed lesbians, and an additional fleet of deformed super-warriors, but somehow their deformities which are identical to the priests' turn them into fighting machines rather than weird monsters.
Everyone can jump about twenty feet in the air.
Arrows actually blot out the sun.
If you pause for one moment to actually think about the movie the "it treats itself as history" argument falls apart under the sheer weight of the completely absurd contents of the film. Snyder treats it as history but that's because if you read any interviews with him he actually doesn't understand self-awareness as it relates to filmmaking.
If you want to make a complaint about it possibly misrepresenting a culture then you need to address the problem that our society has with media literacy and interpretation. For God's sake, Norbit was a popular movie. Our culture endorses and popularizes mindless crap because it's easy and because it's pushed on us. That Borat was a success is a decent sign although it was distressing to hear people behind me in the theatre not fucking know where Georgia is.
If you understand that 300 is an absolute flight of fancy based on actual events, like about 70% of war movies and 100% of movies about the Alamo, then the movie doesn't create a problem. Anybody who comes out of that movie feeling that they've sat through a course on Spartan history and are feeling wiser about it are illustrative more of a social issue than a problem with a film based on a graphic novel by Frank Fucking Miller, who has given us such wonderful concepts as a Batman who says, "What are you, dense? Are you retarded or something? I'm the goddamn Batman." He's responsible for an upcoming graphic novel entitled Holy Terror, Batman! He wrote the entirety of Sin City, which is absolutely laden with completely ridiculous events. The man's had an entire career of coming up with awesome concepts that also contain nothing but absolute ridiculousness*.
And at the moment? At the moment we're over-analyzing a film which features even more ridiculous and stupid elements than this and treating it as a dangerous weapon, as a ticking time bomb. It's not. If there are any politics, the politics are against expansion and invasion and imperialism - which if you consider Iran's perspective as a small country which has refused to back down to U.S. and Coalition demands, even with a completely insane but rather brave leader, suddenly becomes a fascinating element. To tell the truth, if we talk about the politics of this movie which is big and dumb and about heroes and villains and really nothing bigger than good versus evil and freedom versus slavery and blah blah blah they shoulda shot it in black and white, then honestly I'm going to keep arguing from that perspective. I can even start culling some lines from Xerxes and the rest of the Persians.
Oh and uh that article nicely skirts the Spartan-led Battle Of Plataea which drove the Persians back out of Greece but that's alright I guess, can't expect an article about history to mention everything I suppose. And as an afterthought regarding the pederasty thing, it's the word of ancient Greek comedians - these are the dudes who required dudes in their comedies to have giant prop phalluses, remember - versus Plutarch and Cicero, for God's sake. That's a history lesson from Carlos Mencia.
Phew! I think I've said enough serious things about the completely silly movie. I wish people would just treat silly movies as silly movies! I don't understand why everyone feels a need to do otherwise when there are quite enough movies which aren't silly already that they can choose from.
*except for the "goddamn batman" bit, that's just stupid and not entertaining at all
Mnementh:
Johnny, for all it is supposed to be, I enjoy it.
The problem I have is with the director making claims about how this is the battle as it would have been re-told right afterwards (as Ozy said as well). We have Heredotus for that, whose histories are rife enough with ridiculous claims that would have made sense in his world, and don't in ours. I just don't buy it. I take issue with Zack Snyder making claims like that and turning the movie into something it shouldn't be.
As for the Battle of Plataea, the Spartans made up only perhaps 10-20% of the total Greek force of one hundred thousand, and I wouldn't claim that they lead, the Athenians and Teagans played as big a role as they did. The Spartans did kill Mardonius, but their obstinacy regarding things like de-camping without a fight because the Persians had cut off the water supply could very well have cost them the battle had smarter voices not interceded.
I'm also thoroughly annoyed at how the right wing in this country is making it out to be some analogy about the west confronting Islam.
--- Quote ---The analogy between the war on terror and the death struggle of ancient Greece with Persia has not been lost on some high administration officials either, especially Vice President Dick Cheney. (A White House spokesman declined to comment about the film.) In the months after 9/11, a classics scholar named Victor Davis Hanson wrote a series of powerful pieces for the National Review Online, later collected and published as a book, "An Autumn of War." Moved by Hanson's evocative essays, Cheney invited Hanson to dine with him and talk about the wars the Greeks waged against the Asian hordes, in defense of justice and reason, two and a half millennia ago.
The movie is a cartoon, based very loosely on historical fact. The Persians are depicted as either effeminate or vicious abusers of women, while the Greeks are manly men. The bad guys in "300" also include corrupt Spartan politicians who refuse to send more troops to the battle. Some right-wing bloggers have likened them to liberal Democrats voting against the surge in Iraq. Moviegoers may be a little confused by other cultural echoes in the film. The Spartan heroes seem to be in love with what one of them calls "a beautiful death." Just like, er, Islamic suicide bombers.
--- End quote ---
That's for another day.
Johnny C:
--- Quote from: Daniel on 19 Mar 2007, 00:08 ---I take issue with Zack Snyder making claims like that and turning the movie into something it shouldn't be.
--- End quote ---
See this is completely fair. A quote from him describes the movie as "90% accurate." Apparently he's shown it to some "scholars"* who consider it such. That's a ridiculous and untrue claim, unless they are Frank Miller scholars.
Also seriously the movie looks more like a decrying of Western imperialism than it does an anti-Islamic tirade. Hell, Xerxes is a god-king and the Spartans are polytheists so there aren't even analagous religions in the movie. But taking a movie with the line "ONLY THE HARD. ONLY THE STRONG." as if it was making a political statement is almost as silly as the movie.
*hobos
TheBoredOne:
--- Quote ---The movie is a cartoon, based very loosely on historical fact. The Persians are depicted as either effeminate or vicious abusers of women, while the Greeks are manly men. The bad guys in "300" also include corrupt Spartan politicians who refuse to send more troops to the battle. Some right-wing bloggers have likened them to liberal Democrats voting against the surge in Iraq. Moviegoers may be a little confused by other cultural echoes in the film. The Spartan heroes seem to be in love with what one of them calls "a beautiful death." Just like, er, Islamic suicide bombers.
--- End quote ---
So, if I'm getting this right, the liberal Democrats are voting against sending manly Islamic suicide bombers to battle feminine terrorists? (I kid)
300 would have rocked harder if it had the moving qualities of Braveheart.
That said, I still think 300 rocked.
>.> Maybe someone else will make a different movie about it?
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