I guess I'll be the single disenting voice.
I thought it was
only OK.
CG blood doesn't do much for me, and the movie was just too slow and overly dramatic. I didn't need to see the queen looking for her son in slow motion, and what slow motion lacks is SPEED. hahaha.
They get an A for effort, but by the end of the flick I was ready for some real life again, and to move
quickly out of the theater. If I don't see a slow motion sequence in the next 4 movies I watch, I'll be good.
Show us ONE battle in slow motion, OK. But I don't want to see every single solitrary moment of every battle in slow motion. Let me see these guys pound on the persians in real time for
half a battle?? Maybe? I want to see how FAST they are, and how powerful they are in real time too.
The other thing that killed it for me were the speeches. EVERYTHING had a speech. I was suprised we didn't have speeches for bathroom breaks, and lunchtime.
"SPARTANS! THE TIME HAS COME FOR US TO RELIEVE OURSELVES ON THESE WEEDS. LET OUR MANLY WEE WEE MAKE THE WEEDS TREMBLE AND SHAKE BENEATH OUR MANHOOD, AND IN DOING SO, LET THEM KNOW WE ARE SPARTANS!!! AHHHHHHH PEE FOR YOUR SONS AND WIVES SPARTANS PEEEE!!!!!!!!!"
We had one for breakfast though, didn't we?
And the final speech, by the guy from LOTR was the worst kind of exposition. He was literally explaining what was happening, how many Spartans were there, and how many people they were commanding, and how much time has passed since the last battle, ALL in his speech. I felt that was pretty weak, given that CG money shot at the end of it, I think we could have figured out what was happening, thanks.
Otherwise, I said this to myself alot during the film.
"Yeah, we get it."The 300 Spartans are hard men, bred to be warriors, they don't surrender, they don't give up. They live to die in battle. That was driven home
so often in dialogue, and enough occasionally in visuals, that it got tedious for me. Really tedious. Some times once a thing is established it never needs to be mentioned again. In this case, it just didn't need to be mentioned again after the entire opening drove it home so well.
I'm not even going to get started on the mutants, or why the mutant stuff was weird. It was just out of place and felt like it belonged in a different movie. I understand it was a visual metaphor (the persians were some wierd people). It just didn't click for me.
On the flipside, the movie certainly had some amazing CG work in it, and is one of the best visual FX movies ever made. It was a visual film to behold too, very artistic and cool. The sequence with the "oracle", for instance, was great. A simple visual trick done to very good dramatic effect.
It's also one of the best stunt films ever made, even though some of those battles were composited, and the people were not fighting each other, it was solid stunt work throughout.
I don't know if I'll see it again, but I am interested to see how it was made once the DVD hits. I know it was shot on stages with limited set work and lots of blue screen, and I know they really tweaked the footage in post to bring out the shadows and contrast. I dig that kind of stuff.
I like Zack Snyder, and I think he will make Watchmen a very good film. I hope so anyway
Not so sure how I feel about Butler playing Snake Plissken either, but I thought he did well in 300, and hey, a STAR is born. He owned this film from start to finish.
Edited by: [url=http://p220.ezboard.com/bthealienslegacy.showUserPublicProfile?gid=noeland>Noeland[/url] at: 3/25/07 4:37 pm
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