Saw the movie last night. Hands down the worst movie of the year...and quite possibly the millenium. The action sequences were okay (if repetitive) but the dialogue scenes were so laughably awful that I thought I was going to bust a gut listening to such overblown drivel. Movies like this are what MST3K was made for.

The voice they came up with for Xerxes was unintentional funny and flat out strange. It was like listening to a person's voice on the phone after it gets digitally modified to sound lower and slower.

This goes back to my question earlier in this thread, but what were you expecting when you went to see this movie? The trailers showed nothing but action or slo-mo sequences and the only dialogue consisted of "This is SPARTA" or "Tonight we dine in Hell" or "Arrows will blot out the sun...then we will fight in the shade" I mean what kind of witty dialogue were you expecting?

It was meant to sound like Xerxes was a god. I believe at the very end they should have had him screaming in his regular voice (after he gets wounded) to his men to finish off the Spartans. Then finally after the battle was over his troops would just stare back at him realizing that he was not a god but only human.

If anyone read the original run of the series (the single issues, not the trade paperback), there was an explosion of reader mail about this very same line.

And again, I think that people were just misinterputing it. I had a theater minor, for Chrissake. Half of my very good friends are gay, so I'm very sensitive to the issue. It's to the point where the "faggot" line in Clerk's II even made me cringe. The "Boy Lovers" line didn't even make me bat an eye, because I knew the historical context. If people did their homework before bitching, they'll realize that Leonidas was criticizing the pedophilia going on in Athens, not the homosexuality, which the Spartans in fact practiced regularly.



Doc

OK, I'll chime in:

Over the last few months, I've thought it looked pretty cool, but I wasn't anxiously awaiting it's release. I figured I'd check it out at the theater if it got decent reviews, and I got a good opportunity. Then I got the Best Buy preview disc, and got a little more interested in it. After seeing them rave about it on Ebert and Roeper, I was very eager to see it, but that was tempered by the mixed reviews once it was released. I lowered my expectations a bit, grabbed my free ticket, and headed to the new Imax theater nearby.

Well, I was pretty blown away by it. I would say that it exceeded my (admittedly lowered) expectations in almost every way. There were a few minor things that didn't quite work for me, and the slow-mo/fast-mo was a little bit overdone for my taste, but overall I thought it was pretty fucking awesome.

Two things I especially liked (maybe not really spoilers, but):



I thought the movie succeeded very well at what it was trying to do, and was pretty economical in it's dialogue at setting up certain characterizations (like the aforementioned "Soldier!" scene).

What does the trailer have to do with whether or not the finished product is a well-made movie with some sign of intelligent life behind it?

Didn't you read my post about this subject? I think I made it pretty clear.

Very well said. Good points all around. I agree whole-heartedly about the ending and the I also have to thank you for explaining your take on the Cheers.


Doc

Another thought on "May you live forever":

I also liked the realistic way Leonidas dealt with these two things:



I understand how someone could miss the meaning of the "May you live forever" line, and I liked the subtlety of the exchange. As for whether Leonidas intended it as "his name will live in infamy", I think that's reading a bit much into the intention of the line when spoken, although for those who know about it historically, it certainly adds a deeper meaning to it.

Can't wait to see it again, Imax style!

Interesting. Another level of depth that I dig.

Agreed. And enjoy the Imax, I've seen it in both DLP and then in IMax, and I must say that while Imax isn't always a marked improvement for every film, the Imax certainly adds to the experience for 300 which seems particularly well suited for it.


Doc

Meh. Just didn't work for me. I just chuckled every time he spoke/was on screen. Takes you out of the movie when you laugh at the main bad guy, giving him a more imposing demeanor would have been much more fitting with the character IMO.

Most of the crowd at my theater was laughing at Xerxes when he appeared onscreen, and by most I mean me.

That's cool, to each his own. I totally accepted Xerxes the way he was and I was never taken out of the movie. I saw no reason to laugh and again, the movie was adapting Miller's vision of Xerxes from the Graphic Novel. It was a stylized film so to me over the top and weird shit like that fit in well.

True, but again he doesn't have a voice in the graphic novel, so that was a decision for the movie, and one that just didn't work for me.

I guess my problem is the stylized and over the top stuff just didn't work for me. Unlike Sin City which was all out that type of movie, 300 was half stylized and half serious drama in the vain of Gladiator etc. with all the politics, other stuff in the village etc. As such the stylized over the top stuff took me out of the "epic" part of the film, or vice versa. Just didn't work for me I guess.

I'd have to say that his voice didn't work for me either. I wouldn't go so far as to say i laughed when he spoke, but it certainly made me feel he wasn't as bad ass as I imagined.

:thumbsup:

Just saw this in IMAX. Unlike most IMAX movies I've seen, this one still had a WS ratio. Good flick. Lena Heady shows some nice acting and even nicer skin. I thought Gerard Butler was in Patriot Games but I didn't see him listed on IMDB.

My one complaint; I thought they went a little overboard on the "unusual" characters like the priests, the hunchback, and the warrior. It started to be a little like Beastmaster but overall I give the movie an A

Had the same type of attention been brought to the rest of the film, I think this would've been a classic on the level of The Matrix (not a great film, but a standard-bearer for years to come). Action-wise, it is. It has the panache. But it lacks a consistent undercurrent of substance that would make it truly great.

I liked the film overall, I just feel the need to dial down the "best movie ever" encomium that this film is getting from some.

And I actually liked the different "monsters" --- it gave me the feeling of an old kung-fu movie where each opponent had a different cliche or niche (the guy with claws in his hands, the guy who can jump like a frog, etc).

Good point. Never thought of it like that.

http://i74.photobucket.com/albums/i2...nk9mm/07-2.gif

:D

I thought it was pretty damn good. Better than good, not great, but pretty damn good. I had fairly high expectations and was not let down. I like Sin City better however.

I've never read his comics, but so far, I'm really liking every movie that is based on Frank Miller's work.

I think the whole Sparta philosophy of a "glorious death" is another thing that turned me off and a lot of critics. The Spartans throw away their weak, take their kids away to train for years and years (though the Romans did this too) and live their whole life to die on the battlefield. For what? I don't understand that kind of philosophy because they weren't the type of nation that was trying to take over the world. They were supposed to be the heroes of the movie. That whole thing seems to come off like that's what the bad guys would do. They would dedicate their lives to fighting. I simply don't understand how a peaceful nation would raise up their children so brutally.