Movie: 300
Finally made it out to see the movie 300 this past weekend. I really enjoyed Frank Miller's Sin City so I was looking forward to the latest adaptation of one of his graphic novels. I should preface this review with the statement that I have a thing for movies I consider to be artistic and outside what's considered mainstream. Some people just want to laugh or not use their brain for two hours and while I'm one of them at times, I also appreciate films that use techniques, subject matter or writing that generally confuse and annoy people like my mom. Call me elitest if you will, but I just don't think everyone "gets it" when to comes to movies that aren't formulaic.
That said, this movie is like Sin City in that it's meant for your eyes as much as your brain. The colors, the scale and the cinematography are where the true impact of the film lies. Yeah it was shot mostly using green screen but do I really care when they acheive the cinematic impact they do? Hell no. There was a basic plot but not more (or less) than I expected. It won't win any awards for the storyline or dialogue but I don't see that as the intent of the film. It's a work of art, plain and simple, and in that sense I think it worked well. It's a moving comic book for grown-ups and being not quite adult enough to have out out-grown comics, I enjoyed it. To the detractors and those that say it's not historically accurate, screw you. It's a movie. A movie based on a graphic novel that was a loose adaptation of the actual battle. Creative license was taken a couple times over and I don't fault them for it. Do we fault Salvador Dali because his Persistence of Memory painting wasn't a true representation of clocks or reality? If you want historically accurate material, read the Wikipedia entry about The Battle of Thermopylae and be done with it. (I actually recommend reading it regardless because it's fairly interesting.)
The short and sweet of it is I thought Sin City was amazing and this wasn't at that level. It's worth seeing in the theatre for nothing else than the true spectacle of it and I'm certainly not upset at having spent $8 to see it.
That said, this movie is like Sin City in that it's meant for your eyes as much as your brain. The colors, the scale and the cinematography are where the true impact of the film lies. Yeah it was shot mostly using green screen but do I really care when they acheive the cinematic impact they do? Hell no. There was a basic plot but not more (or less) than I expected. It won't win any awards for the storyline or dialogue but I don't see that as the intent of the film. It's a work of art, plain and simple, and in that sense I think it worked well. It's a moving comic book for grown-ups and being not quite adult enough to have out out-grown comics, I enjoyed it. To the detractors and those that say it's not historically accurate, screw you. It's a movie. A movie based on a graphic novel that was a loose adaptation of the actual battle. Creative license was taken a couple times over and I don't fault them for it. Do we fault Salvador Dali because his Persistence of Memory painting wasn't a true representation of clocks or reality? If you want historically accurate material, read the Wikipedia entry about The Battle of Thermopylae and be done with it. (I actually recommend reading it regardless because it's fairly interesting.)
The short and sweet of it is I thought Sin City was amazing and this wasn't at that level. It's worth seeing in the theatre for nothing else than the true spectacle of it and I'm certainly not upset at having spent $8 to see it.
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