300. See it!

[dangermousie]

I saw 300.

It was brutal, totally historically inaccurate and wholly simplistic.

It was also AWESOME.

I loved it.

And this is coming from someone who hated Sin City with a passion. Maybe because there was no sickening violence to women here. Any objectification of the Oracle girl was cancelled by Gorgo, Leonidas' wife. She was HARDCORE. Maybe because unlike repulsive characters of SC, you could root for soldiers fighting for their country without feeling unclean.

It knew what it was, what it was trying to be, and it did it excellently. It did not even pretend to be a historical rendition of the story, but some sort of an ur-epic, a mythic Beowulfian narrative (yes, I am mixing metaphors here). It mixed some widely recognized Spartan motifs ('with your shield or on it') into a heroic fantasy.

It made my blood pound (no pun intended), it left me breathless and mesmerized. It went straight for that 'excitement' part of the brain. It was simple, straightworward and DAMN GOOD.

The most brutal part of the movie? The brutal hotness of the Spartan men. I know what kind of battle a lot of ladies of my acquaintance would like to drag King Leonidas into.

P.S. My 'effeminate' icon is oddly amusing considering 300! :D

Comments

[winterspel.livejournal.com]

Yes, yes, yes.

Yes.

I loved it to pieces. I'm tempted to see it again, if only I had the time.

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

It's normally so not a movie I would enjoy but this just clicked... Maybe I could drag Mr. Mousie...

[kitsune714.livejournal.com]

Sin City gave me nightmares, I tell you. On one level, I was like, "Oh, it looks really cool and totally like a comic book," but at the same time, I was too busy being freaked out by, you know, the cannibalism. *shudder* This is why I went into 300 very, very cautiously, but I must say that I really, really liked it, much to my guy friends' surprise. It was definitely all the things that I didn't get taught in elementary school about the Greeks, but all the things I wanted to see. ;)

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

Exactly. Agree with every word. Also, I had a lot of moral issues with SC. Here, I was having too good a time to care :)

[rubypurple.livejournal.com]

I watched it last week... I wasn't expecting too much coz my Greek history is kinda murky but the movie is impressive... It's different from other epic movies I've seen... (if you can call it that. )

The Spartan men is just a bonus. :)

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it was fun!

And what a nice bonus :)

[booknerd14.livejournal.com]

ahh, i've been hearing so many good things about this movie, but i still can't bring myself to watch it. the brutality of it is what's putting me off. but historically inaccurate huh... that's good to now. then i can tell that to my prof =P

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

It's very inaccurate. It's also very brutal which doesn't bug me, but would a lot of people I think.

[grace-om.livejournal.com]

My son (17) went to see it with some of his friends. They loved it, although he did ask (he was kidding), "Did the Greeks really go to war wearing only leather posing pouches?"

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

LOL! I wonder what did they wear? Hmmm. At least it's not a movie about Celts in battle :D

[plazmah.livejournal.com]

WORD PIE! Everything you said is my reaction to a tee. :D

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

Heeeee

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

y'know...part of me really wants to see it...the other part remembers that the last gerard butler film i tried watching was Beowulf and Grendel, which was borderline comprehensible only because I know the play well enough(seriously, even knowing it, you can barely follow what's going on) So...I dunno. That said, dark and instense and messed up and obsessive seems to be what I'm in the mood for lately, and 300 sounds close enough to that...

Sin City...hrm...I admired it on some levels, but yeah...I mean, the only reason Jessica Alba didn't get nekkid and has something truly horrible happen to her is because she refuses to do anything her grandmother can't watch in her movies or somesuch(which, really, is a consideration other stars would benefit from having)

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

Oh, this one isn't hard to follow at all. It's like 'see bad guys? They are deformed. Kill bad guys! Strut!' Which is fun.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

That's...actually one of the few comprehensible parts of B&G *is very sad she couldn't get into B&G because she was looking forward to it sooooooo much*

[crumpeteer.livejournal.com]

I really wanted to like B&G, but frankly it was too incomprehensible and didn't seem to know where it was going. It was all "what, that's her son?" and "what, why did he sleep with her anyway?" and "what, why is Stellan Skarsgaard here?"

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Oh I know. And it was really frustrating because the setting and culture as presented were almost perfect, it's just that the story itself was incomprehensible. I mean, the only reason I was able to follow ANYTHING in the 30 minutes I watched was because I knew the story from the poem.

[crumpeteer.livejournal.com]

There were also random moments of "the hell was that?" thrown in, such as the whole sea hag thing. They'd been playing it all realistic up until that point and then the movie just threw up its hands and said "oh whatever".

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

I don't think I made it to the sea hag(unless I was so busy trying to figure something else out that i missed it)...but I know what you mean.

[janlake83.livejournal.com]

i thought 300 was good and i thought the same about sin city ( maybe because i read the graphic novel), and the violence wasn't as exaggerated like kill bill.

and may i say does spartan soldiers are bag of chips and more...

weird factoid but a few years ago during a dig the area where they thought the battle took place had a lot of arrowheads.

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen Kill Bill. Not much of a Tarantino fan. Re: SC. It wasn't even the violence, it was the repulsive characters, for me.

[octavia-b.livejournal.com]

Hmm, maybe I'll see it then. I was in two minds because I'm getting a little fed up historical inaccuracy. I'm glad you hated Sin City. I loathed it and I felt like I was the only one in the world. And really, it was SO misogynistic it made my skin crawl.

[octavia-b.livejournal.com]

Er, that would be 'fed up WITH historical inaccuracy'. Sheesh.

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

It's incredibly inaccurate. But for some reason it didn't bug me. I found SC repulsive: I agree with you on its incredible mysogyny.

[crumpeteer.livejournal.com]

The best friend and I have a definite idea about why they were called the "Hot Gates" and it had nothing to do with the temperature. ;)

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

ROFL.

Indeed.