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livingdebI saw "300" today about a heroic battle involving ancient Spartans. Everyone around me agreed that it was great fun if unsubtle. The men liked the action. The women liked the muscled barely-clad male bodies.
I really liked a couple of scenes where everyone worked together so effectively making one shield of many.
However, I had a lot of problems with the movie that can be summed up by the phrase
First, the bad guys weren't good at fighting. The good guys could use their swords over the top of shields, but the bad guys couldn't. The good guys would run with their swords in front of them; the bad guys with their swords to the side. This kind of disparity is quite common in movies although by the end you usually get to an enemy with actual skills.
Second, when the good guys were surrounded and therefore doomed, the situation looked exactly the same to me as when they weren't surrounded. It's possible I missed something here. Perhaps people were now on the hills to their sides and above them in a way they weren't before. But if so, they could have backed into their cave and fought from there.
Also, once they were "surrounded," they started fighting poorly. They had broken their shield formations earlier in the movie many times, but they got downright stupid after being surrounded, and it had nothing to do with how tired they must have been by then.
The queen would not have given in like that. If Spartans were all about being free, you don't enslave yourself to someone even for one night to get what you want or need. She totally would have stabbed that guy, though. That was good.
And that guy's son had plenty of time to get his sword out and stab that horseman. And his father never would have gone into a stupid rage like that afterwards if he was as well-trained as they described. And he wouldn't have been upset that he hadn't told his kid he loved him because he had, at least twice in the movie alone, first by bringing him along to begin with and again right before the horseman came.
And that's not really how I picture Spartans. I think they were more bad-ass than that.
Most of the plot problems were inconsistencies that even I could notice and that easily could have been fixed without adversely affecting the movie. That's just annoying.
I'd still give the movie 2 stars, mostly because they went through so much trouble. Lots of action, costumes, plummeting large animals, enemies falling off cliffs and into a well, etc. It would have taken just the tiniest extra effort and it would have been a good movie. But no.
For a very different viewpoint, see Mac the Mike's review. "'300' is far superior to 'Sin City', however, which seemed to be an exploration of violence and depravity for its own sake. '300', in contrast, depicted violence in the cause of defending the West and its traditions of Reason and Freedom as against superstition and slavery."
I really liked a couple of scenes where everyone worked together so effectively making one shield of many.
However, I had a lot of problems with the movie that can be summed up by the phrase
First, the bad guys weren't good at fighting. The good guys could use their swords over the top of shields, but the bad guys couldn't. The good guys would run with their swords in front of them; the bad guys with their swords to the side. This kind of disparity is quite common in movies although by the end you usually get to an enemy with actual skills.
Second, when the good guys were surrounded and therefore doomed, the situation looked exactly the same to me as when they weren't surrounded. It's possible I missed something here. Perhaps people were now on the hills to their sides and above them in a way they weren't before. But if so, they could have backed into their cave and fought from there.
Also, once they were "surrounded," they started fighting poorly. They had broken their shield formations earlier in the movie many times, but they got downright stupid after being surrounded, and it had nothing to do with how tired they must have been by then.
The queen would not have given in like that. If Spartans were all about being free, you don't enslave yourself to someone even for one night to get what you want or need. She totally would have stabbed that guy, though. That was good.
And that guy's son had plenty of time to get his sword out and stab that horseman. And his father never would have gone into a stupid rage like that afterwards if he was as well-trained as they described. And he wouldn't have been upset that he hadn't told his kid he loved him because he had, at least twice in the movie alone, first by bringing him along to begin with and again right before the horseman came.
And that's not really how I picture Spartans. I think they were more bad-ass than that.
Most of the plot problems were inconsistencies that even I could notice and that easily could have been fixed without adversely affecting the movie. That's just annoying.
I'd still give the movie 2 stars, mostly because they went through so much trouble. Lots of action, costumes, plummeting large animals, enemies falling off cliffs and into a well, etc. It would have taken just the tiniest extra effort and it would have been a good movie. But no.
For a very different viewpoint, see Mac the Mike's review. "'300' is far superior to 'Sin City', however, which seemed to be an exploration of violence and depravity for its own sake. '300', in contrast, depicted violence in the cause of defending the West and its traditions of Reason and Freedom as against superstition and slavery."
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Graphic novel
on 2007-03-26 02:46 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2007-03-26 11:36 pm (UTC)At they end when they were surrounded, I thought the dome of shields was a neat idea. It retains some of the advantages of the phalanx, although it's not very mobile.
I didn't care for the Queen's sub-plot. They should have cut it.
no subject
on 2007-03-27 09:07 pm (UTC)I loved that shield dome too. Too bad they didn't stick with it.
The Queen's sub-plot would have been just fine if she had said no. The whole scene with the council could have remained unchanged.
re: "300"
on 2007-04-17 12:43 am (UTC)It wasn't just that the Spartans were so much better than the Persians, but that pretty much all the Greeks were. I think it was about a hundred years earlier that Xenophon and "The Ten Thousand" were stranded in the middle of the Persian empire and manged to fight thier way out... They were mercenaries employed in a some sort of power struggle within the empire. Also, if I remember right while Alexander was conquering the Persian Empire awhile later the only serious opposition Emperor Darius could throw at him was greek mercenaries. And of course, as the end of "300" showed the combined Greek forces routed an army of Persian about 3x thier size at Platea later on...
Victor Davis Hanson has some pretty good books on the subject especially _The Western Way of War_ and _Carnage and Culture_.
Kyle