300

[andygates]

Well, I've finally seen 300 and I think I agree with the detractors.  The "you can't trust appeasers / support the troops" subplot was entirely added and even used lines the American political right have used, verbatim; the "Hooah!" Spartans were really silly; the clean-cut = good, simpering dark pierced weirdo = bad schtick was way overplayed; and I hated hated hated what they did to Xerxes, who's just your overweening god-king in the original but turned into some sort of pervy Stargate mutant freakoid.  Oh, and they got rid of the whole Stelios/Stumblios thread and humoured-up the Spartans so they weren't such hard icy bastards, just to be sure we emoted.  And they conveniently underplayed the baby-killing psycho part of the Spartans to overplay the "flower of democracy" - even while saying "we do what we were bred to do" with no irony.

The war rhino was crap too.

In good: The shield clash was perfect, some of the fights were a delight, the Spartans' magic leather pants of invulnerability were nice eye candy. 

But mostly, the eye-candy left me cold.  I like silly war porn, I like comic-book cheese, but this did leave me with that dirty, you've-had-your-strings-pulled-by-Leni-Reifenstahl feeling.  I wanted to rave about it; I came out ranting instead. 

Now Wash Your Eyes.

Comments

[thudthwacker.livejournal.com]

See, I thought the detractors were crazy. The massive, imperialist invading force are the bad guys. The good guys are the small band of olive-skinned folks using every guerrilla trick in the book to beat the invaders off. I will note that I never read the graphic novel; if the exposition really was tacked in attempting to be pro-USA propoganda, somebody should get their money back -- I came out surprised that the right-wingers weren't shouting that it was propoganda in the other direction.

I suppose I should also note that I went in fully intending to ignore any and all dialogue, as all it did was get in the way of the action sequences. I do the same thing in Jackie Chan movies.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

That's the only thing they had, though; the Spartans were the uber-elite, the other guys were just tides of slave flesh and some mutant weirdos hopped up on their own reputation. And a war rhino.

The exposition - hell, the entire Sparta plot - was tacked on. It was probably intended to be filler and a change of pace, because movies can't sustain a Big Stupid Fight the way comics can, but it stunk the film up real good.

For mindless thrills, I'll wait for Transformers.

I'm also getting hypersensitive to gratuitous Arab bombers tossed in for yuks. There's the guy in Pirates of the Carribean, with his little fizzy bombs, and in 300 there's the - again, added - "when their weapons failed, they used their magic" with robed dervishes and gunpowder grenades. It seems Hollywood just loves Arabs who blow shit up, and the stereotype is grating really, really badly. But maybe that's a rant for another time...