For my moviegoing public -- 300!!!!!!!!
Mar. 13th, 2007 08:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
grrgoylIMAX vs. regular movie theater? Oh, IMAX, without a doubt. Even if a matinee ticket costs $13.
I was so excited to see this that I drove home after working Saturday night planning to sleep for 4 or 5 hours and going, until remembering that I was going Monday morning and it was only Sunday. "Why can't today be tomorrow?" I lamented to Tery, who saw nothing wrong with going on a Sunday afternoon on opening weekend. Shyeah. I wasn't THAT excited.
On Monday morning I was so excited that I nearly washed my hair with body soap. I also had terrible stomach cramps of anticipation on the drive over, the kind I haven't experienced since seeing Jaws in the theater and vomiting in the car.
For an 11:30 a.m. show on a weekday, the place was still pretty packed. Overall a generally considerate audience, if you don't count the stupid cow four rows in front of me who kept the blinding screen of her cell phone on for the first 20 minutes of the movie (no, this is not an exaggeration). Was she afraid of the dark? Fortunately the IMAX screen is large enough and the seats steep enough that I could eventually ignore her.
Another plus about IMAX is there aren't a lot of tiresome trailers designed for the format.
I'm not giving out any spoilers. I'll admit, the plot isn't dense enough to warrant a very in-depth analysis. If you don't know the story by now, let me be the first to welcome you out from under your rock. A Spartan regiment of only 300 soldiers fights a losing battle to keep hordes of Persians from overrunning Greece. Kind of tough to fill a 2-hour running time, unless the movie isn't so much about the battle as it is about eye-popping visuals bringing a graphic novel to vibrant, gory life. In this respect, it succeeds.
No, the dialog isn't Shakespeare and the movie is certainly no history lesson. More six packs than a Pepsi delivery truck and wall-to-wall action, it is exactly what was promised in the trailer, nothing more but certainly nothing less. It was worlds better than Sin City, which was just as visually stunning, just as violent but infinitely more confusing to me. Gerard Butler was good as King Leonidas (thank the gods he doesn't scream through the whole movie like he does in the trailer), Lena Headey was even better as Queen Gorgo, but the biggest surprise was David Wenham. Mousy little Faramir, even mousier little monk from Van Helsing? It looked like his head was superimposed on Hulk Hogan's body. He was probably my favorite.
Okay, a trio of nitpicks: The scene of Leonidas kicking the Persian envoy into the well: He fully deserved it for being stupid enough to stand on the edge of it. Or did he not see the enormous 20-foot-wide hole behind him? Secondly, Ephialtes the deformed hunchback offers his spear in battle but is refused on the basis of being unable to hold his shield high enough for the Spartan's famous phalanx formation. Which only lasts for the first portion of the battle and then it's every man for himself, but this isn't my pick. Ephialtes tells Leonidas of a secret goat path through the mountains that the enemy could use to sneak around the regiment. Leonidas turns Ephialtes away rather callously, and he's barely out of sight before Leonidas mentions the path to his lieutenant along with a prayer that "no one tells the Persians about it." Is he REALLY that ignorant about human nature, and if so, how on earth did he get to be king?
Lastly, speaking of human nature, I saw Theron's (Dominic West) treachery coming 10 miles down the pike. What I didn't see coming was Queen Gorgo sticking a sword through his chest. A handful of people in the audience actually cheered. : )
I agree with every review on rottentomatoes.com, even the negative ones, but I'm buying this movie on DVD for the same reasons I bought The Cell and The Matrix: Not much in the way of plot, but mounds and mounds of delicious eye candy (and the soundtrack wasn't bad either). And I'm seeing it again with Tabby, though probably not in IMAX. 4 out of 5
~*~
I thought the story sounded familiar, so when I got home I broke out my Xena DVDs. There, an episode called "One Against an Army," has the identical plot (with the exception that Xena faces off against the Persians in an abandoned barn, which in retrospect makes no sense as they could have easily gone around her). She even references the pass at Thermopylae. After a 20-minute battle where she pulls out all the stops, she brandishes her sword menacingly at the exhausted, bloodied men and yells, "Go home! There are thousands more like me!" which is essentially the sentiment the movie 300 leaves us on. I excitedly told Tery about it, but she was unimpressed. "It IS based on historical events" she pointed out. It didn't surprise me that the battle really happened, only that Xena was that historically accurate.
The funny thing is at the beginning of the episode Xena has a line about learning her trademark flip with the use of a staff: "Before trying the flip without the staff, I did it 300 times with it." Coincidence??
I was so excited to see this that I drove home after working Saturday night planning to sleep for 4 or 5 hours and going, until remembering that I was going Monday morning and it was only Sunday. "Why can't today be tomorrow?" I lamented to Tery, who saw nothing wrong with going on a Sunday afternoon on opening weekend. Shyeah. I wasn't THAT excited.
On Monday morning I was so excited that I nearly washed my hair with body soap. I also had terrible stomach cramps of anticipation on the drive over, the kind I haven't experienced since seeing Jaws in the theater and vomiting in the car.
For an 11:30 a.m. show on a weekday, the place was still pretty packed. Overall a generally considerate audience, if you don't count the stupid cow four rows in front of me who kept the blinding screen of her cell phone on for the first 20 minutes of the movie (no, this is not an exaggeration). Was she afraid of the dark? Fortunately the IMAX screen is large enough and the seats steep enough that I could eventually ignore her.
Another plus about IMAX is there aren't a lot of tiresome trailers designed for the format.
I'm not giving out any spoilers. I'll admit, the plot isn't dense enough to warrant a very in-depth analysis. If you don't know the story by now, let me be the first to welcome you out from under your rock. A Spartan regiment of only 300 soldiers fights a losing battle to keep hordes of Persians from overrunning Greece. Kind of tough to fill a 2-hour running time, unless the movie isn't so much about the battle as it is about eye-popping visuals bringing a graphic novel to vibrant, gory life. In this respect, it succeeds.
No, the dialog isn't Shakespeare and the movie is certainly no history lesson. More six packs than a Pepsi delivery truck and wall-to-wall action, it is exactly what was promised in the trailer, nothing more but certainly nothing less. It was worlds better than Sin City, which was just as visually stunning, just as violent but infinitely more confusing to me. Gerard Butler was good as King Leonidas (thank the gods he doesn't scream through the whole movie like he does in the trailer), Lena Headey was even better as Queen Gorgo, but the biggest surprise was David Wenham. Mousy little Faramir, even mousier little monk from Van Helsing? It looked like his head was superimposed on Hulk Hogan's body. He was probably my favorite.
Okay, a trio of nitpicks: The scene of Leonidas kicking the Persian envoy into the well: He fully deserved it for being stupid enough to stand on the edge of it. Or did he not see the enormous 20-foot-wide hole behind him? Secondly, Ephialtes the deformed hunchback offers his spear in battle but is refused on the basis of being unable to hold his shield high enough for the Spartan's famous phalanx formation. Which only lasts for the first portion of the battle and then it's every man for himself, but this isn't my pick. Ephialtes tells Leonidas of a secret goat path through the mountains that the enemy could use to sneak around the regiment. Leonidas turns Ephialtes away rather callously, and he's barely out of sight before Leonidas mentions the path to his lieutenant along with a prayer that "no one tells the Persians about it." Is he REALLY that ignorant about human nature, and if so, how on earth did he get to be king?
Lastly, speaking of human nature, I saw Theron's (Dominic West) treachery coming 10 miles down the pike. What I didn't see coming was Queen Gorgo sticking a sword through his chest. A handful of people in the audience actually cheered. : )
I agree with every review on rottentomatoes.com, even the negative ones, but I'm buying this movie on DVD for the same reasons I bought The Cell and The Matrix: Not much in the way of plot, but mounds and mounds of delicious eye candy (and the soundtrack wasn't bad either). And I'm seeing it again with Tabby, though probably not in IMAX. 4 out of 5
~*~
I thought the story sounded familiar, so when I got home I broke out my Xena DVDs. There, an episode called "One Against an Army," has the identical plot (with the exception that Xena faces off against the Persians in an abandoned barn, which in retrospect makes no sense as they could have easily gone around her). She even references the pass at Thermopylae. After a 20-minute battle where she pulls out all the stops, she brandishes her sword menacingly at the exhausted, bloodied men and yells, "Go home! There are thousands more like me!" which is essentially the sentiment the movie 300 leaves us on. I excitedly told Tery about it, but she was unimpressed. "It IS based on historical events" she pointed out. It didn't surprise me that the battle really happened, only that Xena was that historically accurate.
The funny thing is at the beginning of the episode Xena has a line about learning her trademark flip with the use of a staff: "Before trying the flip without the staff, I did it 300 times with it." Coincidence??
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no subject
Date: 2007-03-14 03:04 am (UTC)I'm not going to claim to know what you do or don't already know about the actual historical event, but I will say that one of the things that made me squeal was how many of the lines in the movie are taken directly from history. A lot of the long dialogue was, well...crap, but so much of the laconic verse was kept in, and that is sexy. And it was obvious where they embellished and stylized portions of the story, such as the scene with the well. Leonidas and his men DID (historically) throw the persian messenger and his buddies into the well, and said that "you'll find plenty of both at the bottom" bit, but they probably did it without the badass kicking. Who knows. Sorry about the rambling. I'm not trying to be pretentious or anything; I think that learning about these things makes one appreciate the movie a bit more, especially since the the movie's presentation of the real story wasn't so great. And I'm no history buff, but my dad told me about the Battle of Thermopylae a few years ago and I've been hooked on it since.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-14 05:01 am (UTC)Ramble away! At least it was faithful to Frank Miller, and that's something, right?
no subject
Date: 2007-03-14 05:15 am (UTC)Yeah, it's not perfectly accurate. Although, one of the reasons that I love Frank Miller's (and the movie's) version is because, for a comic book, it's actually surprisingly accurate. At least, it is compared to many adaptations of historical events. A lot of facts were...well, twisted, but that tends to happen when someone's trying to present such an old story to a new or young audience.
I love researching these things, though. Any story that's as exciting to read about as it is to watch gets two thumbs up from me. :D
no subject
Date: 2007-03-14 03:40 pm (UTC)There's all kinds of trash talk on IMDb. One guy insisted he was the authority because he was a "direct descendant" of Leonidas. You can imagine the crap he got for that.
It was me Sir
Date: 2007-03-14 03:08 am (UTC)Re: It was me Sir
Date: 2007-03-14 05:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-14 01:41 pm (UTC)My housemate was even more distrought than me. I don't think she ever watched Xena but she's used to seeing my mug around the house and screamed 'No! Not Xena!'
no subject
Date: 2007-03-14 03:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-23 08:18 pm (UTC)The 300 underdog story reappears all throughout history. The French have an epic poem with the exact same plot called, "Song of Roland."
no subject
Date: 2007-03-23 08:24 pm (UTC)