300

[featherynscale]

kittenpants, orcjohn, triadruid and I managed to see 300 last night. For the entire length of the movie, three of us sat there like Beavis and Butthead; "This is the coolest thing I have ever seen. huh-huh, huh-huh". Apparently, the thing was too comic-bookish for triadruid's tastes, and he was disappointed. The rest of us reveled in that.

Beautiful art direction, brilliant action sequences, explosions (the Persians had some black-powder bombs, which I'm not sure are correct to the period, but so what?), nice looking men, an excessively hot queen, revenge, glorious doomed gestures, and a rhinoceros. What's better than that? (Well, it would have been better if the captain's son and the blond Spartan he kept bantering with had actually had sex, instead of merely flirting, but that's apparently too much to ask for.)

The Persians were, on the whole, ridiculous. When I eventually grasped that the story was being told afterwards by a soldier to the council, it made a little more sense. I mean, that's what you'd say, right? "There were six million of them! They were monstrous and deformed, and came riding strange beasts. Giants walked among them. Xerxes himself must have been 12 feet tall, and advanced upon us on a golden throne borne by thirty thousand slaves..." All it lacked was the requisite introduction: "No shit, there I was...."

The big question in everyone's mind after the film (other than "Why is it okay to show that much blood and gore and corpses and naked women and transsexual amputees and all that, and you still get an R rating, but if you show a penis, it's NC-17?" and "Why did the Spartans call the Athenians boy-lovers?" and "Why no soldier-on-soldier sex, dammit?") was this:
At that tech level, how do you get a rhinoceros on a boat, *keep* the rhinoceros on the boat, and keep the boat seaworthy, i.e. with no holes in it from rampaging rhinoceros? Discuss.

Comments

[kellan-m-solan.livejournal.com]

I'm kinda with triadruid on this one, which is why I haven't seen the movie (though I probably will now). I don't have anything against "movies just for fun." In fact I think they are often the best kind simply because they don't take themselves too seriously (unlike say, most Hollywood flicks which have their own head awfully far up their ass). But it might be a sad commentary on our society that there is ONLY the "movie for fun, comic book version." There has never been a decent movie made about this historical event (edit: at least since 1962, apparently). Which of all historical events, probably lends itself to a little big screen heroism better than most. I would much prefer my escapism in this instance to come from a little romanticism about heroism and sacrifice and defying great odds than from mutants, giants, and wu shu.

Also, if memory serves there were something like 7000 Greeks plus a decent sized navy up until the last day when it was the Spartans and 700-1000 Thespians. So they held the pass alone for a few hours (if you consider being attacked from both sides, holding).

[zylch.livejournal.com]

700-1000 Thespians

::coffeespew:: sorry, I just had the image of 1000 hoplites miming the Battle of Thermopylae.

[kellan-m-solan.livejournal.com]

lol... meh, damn Thespis of Icaria and his etymological influence.

Men of Thespiae perhaps?

[featherynscale.livejournal.com]

I'd pay good money to see that.