Saturday, March 10, 2007

   Since Bellpickle asked . . . here's a SomeGuy Movie Review(TM) . . . consider yourself warned . . .
Right now it's 2am my time. Since I got caught in a closing shift at work, we were unable to watch anything before 10pm; further, when the other guys finally got out to buy tickets for this opening night showing, the 10:30pm tickets were all sold out. Thus, all thanks to me, we got to watch "300" at 11pm at night. I only just got home about half an hour ago . . .

Of course, since I was working and not planning a movie, things did not go completely as well as they could have. Like I mentioned, our intended showing was sold out by the time the boys got there to buy 'em. Furthermore, since they didn't think too far ahead, they didn't line up for seats until much later than they could have. Thus, we were all sitting in the front-left corner of the theater, just three rows away from the extreme front - believe me, if not for the modern genious of concave cinema screens, we'd have been epically screwed. Of course, this only furthers my assertion that few people truly understand what it means to watch a movie opening night. You wanna watch it first and you wanna watch it in style, you gotta put in the effort; you gotta buy your tickets several hours before the showing, and you gotta line up for the showing at least a couple hours beforehand if you want the best possible experience. Heh, not everyone's quite as suicidal about movie nights as I am, I suppose . . . not everyone's up to the test . . . . .


Huh, I guess that sorta segways as well as I could hope all things considering . . .


So now you know where I'm sitting in the theater. Here's where I talk about how I'm sitting. I know of Frank Miller graphic novels; I've only flipped through a few, but I get how he works. I also have a Minor in Classical Studies from UBC; I've taken a couple different classes where we discussed Greek History and the Persian Wars . . . heh, hell, I own Herodotus' "The Histories"! So I get where the story came from. I also get that Frank Miller changed a whole lot from the "history" to better make his comic . . . it's his story, I'll let him do it. So how does this translate onto film?

I'll put it this way: you know how in comics Wolverine's claws come out of his hands (and into bad guys) with a "SNIKT"? According to "myTelus.com", the graphic novel uses a lot of "KUNCH!" when swords and spears go into people. As for the movie . . . . . you feel every single freaking "KUNCH" they'll throw ya, definitely. You'll get "KUNCHES" going through all manner of body parts, and those same body parts flying in slo-motion through the air. You will see swords and spears go THROUGH people; no angle tricks, nothing . . . you see a sword go across someone, you're gonna see a sword mark in that person as it happens. The power of blue-screen, I tell ya . . . blood and film violence has never been so visually appealing.


As the excited, young movie-goer lookin' for a badass good time watching movies, you get to see a LOT of blood. This is some gruesome, gruesome work; it's war, it's like that. Of course, it's also comic book war, so it's gruesome but pretty all at once. Heh, really, when you have a director who intentionally tries to incorporate as many comic frames as he can into his shots, well . . . you get a lot of really nice desktop wallpapers. I think I might need to find me some, in fact. Beautiful cinematography, practically every shot.

But let's go back to the blood, since it's still flying around everywhere. The movie plays with time a lot, speeding up blows on the moment of impact and then slowing them right back down so you can watch the blood and the mostly-severed legs float through the air. And if you notice during some of those moments, they're all done in one shot, too. That's some well-rehearsed work on the performers' parts . . .

. . . oh yeah, speaking of the performers, I still can't get over how freakin' buff every single one of them was. It's almost unfair. Coming out, one of the first things I said to my friends was, "I feel like I've been wasting my time being here instead of working out more . . ." The whole movie is larger-than-life, and consequently, the Spartans are all larger-than-life as well.

And Faramir was a Spartan too. Didn't know he was in it, but it was cool . . . and, he was also freakin' buff . . .

The Queen of Sparta? Not quite as buff, but that's okay. Her scenes feel slower than the rest of the movie (being that she's not killing things the entire movie like everyone else), but y'know, you need those breathers. Besides, she essentially backs up all her early words as she does her Queen-type work (early on she tells that one Persian dude before he falls into the well, "only Spartan women can give birth to true men..." or something to that degree). She was badass, and really exemplified the idea that Spartan women were in fact badass (as mentioned last day, they had a lot more freedom than a lot of other Greek women of the time).

So yeah, it's pretty. Picture-perfect in its setup, gut-wrenching in its execution. Their talk is all pretty simple and macho stuff, but you're here to watch them stab things, not talk.


As the former Classical Studies student . . . there are times where I just got giddy as things happened. A lot of times they were just little offhand remarks, but I loved every single one. Leonidas refers to the Athenians as "philosophers and... boy lovers..." at one point, to which I snerked. Any paraphrase from the history I applauded, including those about "fighting in the shade", the epitaph ("Go tell the Spartans..."), but especially when the Queen gives Leonidas his shield, saying, "Return with this shield, or on it." It's that kinda stuff I really enjoyed seeing and hearing from this.

Historically, Spartan citizens were all professional soldiers, reared up solely to be soldiers. This was damn uncommon. There's a part early in the movie when Leonidas and his boys meet up with the other Greeks going to Thermopylae. The theater laughs because Leonidas questions a few of the other Greeks about their professions, which are most decidedly not soldier. MOST Greeks knew how to fight in a phalanx and they owned their own arms and armour, but they were only part-time soldiers who worked their trades half the year and went to war the other. They play this fact up for a quick laugh in the movie, but that is the kind of historical touch I'm talking about.

I also liked their portrayal of hoplite warfare, where you overlap shields as a single wall and work together. They take some liberties here and there so they can get some really crazy sword-choreography in there and stuff, but the general feel of it was in there: you fought as one, protected each other, and as that single force you were stronger than the others. Yes, the reaction to a Spartan "push!" command was a bit unrealistic . . . it's a comic book movie, it looked cool, no one cares. Again, the essence of the brotherhood, protecting each other, that's where it's at.

That said, I really liked how they worked that into the Ephialtes subplot. I won't say too much on this as it's probably a pretty big plot point in the big scheme of things . . . but I knew the history of this. I knew who Ephialtes was. He introduced himself and I immediately knew what was up . . . Frank Miller did something pretty interesting with this guy, and it works well for this story. He was well done.

So how about the Persians? Yeah, a lot of them were mutants and monsters and Mumakils and stuff . . . again, comic book movie, no one cares. The essence of a gigantic imperial army with soldiers from all over the world was well implied (though Xerxes didn't have any Greeks in the movie like in real life but ah well). Xerxes himself . . . heh, he's like, 12 feet tall with a booming voice. And yes, he was a little effeminate, but he's Oriental in the Greek sense, can't be helped . . . but yeah, Xerxes was cool. The man radiated arrogance, and that's what's good for him.

Now, I WAS sad slightly about how the Spartans handled their final stand (I hope this isn't too much of a spoiler to say that they LOST the Battle of Thermopylae). In other words . . . people died in a slightly different order in the movie than the history so you don't get some crazy Homeric rush/retrievals. For this movie, though, it worked. You wanna push the whole idea that Spartans were strong physically and emotionally, you gotta have moments like that last stand. Really, though, it was as nice of a stand as you could hope for.

So yeah, everything was huge and larger than life. Those Spartans could do things normal people realistically cannot. They fought monsters, hordes of spear-fodder . . . it's okay. Because ultimately, it's the version of a story as told by a guy who was there, hyping up his fellow Spartans for the next big fight. There's narration through the entire movie, and it all leads into the next bit of history that comes after Thermopylae.

Check out that last passage from Herodotus I mentioned last day, the one where Demaratus tells Xerxes that Sparta has 8000 more soldiers like the 300 that pounded his army around for a week. Yeah, that's what comes after Thermopylae . . .


After the movie was over, I just sat in my seat, big smile on my face, just feeling really really content and happy. "300" was freakin' badass on so many levels: as a comic adaptation, as a buffet for eye candy, as an interpretation of historical events, it totally delivers. See this movie. If you can, see it in IMAX (I'll try to do that soon). But see it . . . it's a story that's 2500 years old, and it's still just as badass now as it ever was back then.


And now it's 2:45am. I need to work at 7am. This sucks.
Comments (5)