mishalak

When I see the trailers for 300, I see a movie that's incredibly faithful to the look feel and spirit of the comic. Which is to say that it will be a gigantic load of total crap dumped on the screen. 300 is among the worst comics ever produced and I say that knowing that Marvel is currently trying to outdo their own Spider Clone story arc and DC's Death of Superman marketing scheme with an event where they kill off Captain America because he's not hip with myspace and American Idol. Can I get a 'What Were They Thinking' brothers?! Amen!

When the comic 300 was about to come out way back in 1998 I remember being terribly excited. "A comic based upon one of the great moments of ancient Greek history? Wow!" Of course it was less based on Greek history than Xena Warrior Princess was based upon Greek mythology. It is Frank Miller's ode to the triumph of a small white heterosexual group fighting for freedom against the evil dusky hordes. Never mind that in actual history the Spartans were legendary for their buggery, they were about as dark skinned as Persians, and by the way they were the elite of their own little empire where they ruled over their serfs by right of blood. Not to mention there were more than 300 Spartans making their stand at Thermopylae. (700 Thespians, 400 Thebans who surrendered after a while, and unknown numbers of Spartan servants.)

But forget the history. A movie can be really good and play magic mix and match games with history, so could a comic book. But this comic book, and undoubtedly the movie based upon it, is just another Frank Miller mix of softcore pornography and violence without any plot or point. 300 (movie or comic) is part of the tradition of movies like Barbed Wire, Judge Dredd, Heavy Metal, Sin City, and Kill Bill. Movies made by men who never grew out of thinking that big tits, motorcycle flames, and the biggest gore/body count made something cooler. These people are the Spinal Tap of moviemakers, a viewer can practically hear them saying just off screen justifying their work by saying, "But this one goes to 11!"

I was like that (except for the tits part) because all boys are like that when they're sophomores in high school. We think that more is more. If the last cool movie you saw featured vampires then it would be even cooler to have a movie with vampire gods. If there were vampire gods then the only place to go to is to think up some sort of super vampire that is even more bad ass, as proven by a higher body count, than the vampire gods. To the sophomoric mind subtlety is something do with kinky sex. Or restraint for that mater. But at some point I discovered bigger explosions, invasions, bad guys, and apocalypses (can you pluralize that word?) didn't do it by themselves. If there was not some cake to go with it I didn't want to sit down to eat a bunch of frosting for a meal. For that matter I discovered a guy or gal could be a hero without going up against the biggest bad in the whole universe.

So that's why I have no interest whatsoever in seeing 300. I became an adult. Not that I don't love movies with some of the good ol' red ultraviolence or simple action fun with popcorn (bring on Goodfellas, The Godfather, Akira, etc., etc., etc.), but there is a difference between a bunch of 'way cool' sequences strung together and a movie where there is a bit more body holding the thing together. The sad part is that it really isn't any more expensive to make a movie with good writing than it is to make one without any thought. Writers are about the least expensive part of a movie's budget.