300 (2007)

(This review was originally written in July 2014.)

This film is...eh. It just goes to show you shouldn't just view a movie based on the mass thinking it's awesome and the hype it had surrounding its release 7 years ago.

I'm trying to think of a way to describe it. The historical Grecian version of Transformers, maybe? Masculine action with little substance.

It has an interesting aesthetic. Each shot is highly saturated, played against CGI backdrops. The point of this film is not a realistic depiction of the story of the 300, but a hyperbolic CGI blood-bath which lasts for two hours, based on the Frank Miller graphic novel which, as a conceit of the medium, is itself stylised. Kieron Gillen did a counter book to this called Three, which strives for a macrocosmic view of the 3, rather than the 300, and depicting things (such as the 'boy lovers') in a more realistic and scholarly fashion.

[November 2014 comment: I have a copy of 300 on reservation from the library. Let's see how that turns out.

It was decent but nor brilliant. The art's cool but I'm sure readers more involved in classics will have greater interest in mindless action, which the comic still is but at least it's not two hours long.]

[November 2014 comment: Watching films on a sick day isn't great.]

I personally like the idea of blending the animated computer world with live action to create a new one. A Russian film from last year, Stalingrad, did the same thing with the 'war movie' concept by creating this computer-lit pseudo-digital world. It isn't going for realism but going for something really cool in-between. Certainly, it's a big step up from this 2004 sci-fi travesty, its character models making the pseudo-digital world look just a couple of degrees ahead of Lara Croft on the PS1.

Historical fiction (or, I guess, fictional reality) is something that can be done well; I mean Amadeus won all kinds of awards, and that is by no means a true depiction of Mozart's life (not a film I've seen, but I've read up on it and seen the trailers.) I prefer the fictional side to endless biopics about "hey, care for this person who did an important thing in the war!) It doesn't sit with me because the focus is disjointed and just seems a bit too wanky to me.

But honestly, this film bored me. I'd like to see a non-Americanised version, where even if we don't suspend our disbelief with the fact they're all speaking English, they at least have a Greek accent and complexion rather than an American one. I can't say I'm much of a fan of Zack Snyder. Dawn of the Dead is OK; Legend of the Guardians is a bunch of anthropomorphic well-animated crap; Sucker Punch looks like two hours of schoolgirls in tight clothes, and as for Man of Steel, I liked it when I first saw it. Now, the more I think about it, it's not as great as it seemed first time.

It's miles ahead of Brett Ratner's Hercules, though. That film just looks like an excuse to inexplicably add John Hurt to the cast and show lots of naked women.

There's an interquel titled Rise of an Empire. I've not seen it, but I'd hope it's a better film than this.