Since the day it came out, I have been withstanding a barrage of questions relating to the movie 300 and my subsequent seeing thereof. Just about everyone who has seen the movie has asked me if I’ve seen it too—including people who know full well that I don’t watch many movies and am largely ignorant of popular cinema. Apparently, I’ve been missing something. Well, I finally got around to seeing the movie, which gives me permission to discuss and/or make fun of it.

“I finally got around to seeing 300, which gives me permission to discuss and/or make fun of it.”

Based on what I’ve heard from almost everyone else, 300 is a really awesome movie full of blood and killing and other guy things like, um. Half naked men? I guess. (The men were more scantily clad than the women. That must be a Spartan thing.) The movie did contain a lot of stylized killing with stylized blood and many stylized men. It had plenty of hype. What it was lacking was the awesome. I think this was the worst movie I’ve seen since Battlefield Earth.

People have already attempted to explain to me how awesome this movie was before I saw it. Allow me to address those specific points individually.

1. The Blood

Come on, you’re kidding, right? The only “blood” in this movie was some sort of posterized ink-splatter effect that happened to be red. I suppose that it erupted from bodies made it blood, but there the resemblance ends. The battles show hundreds of people getting slain—a messy undertaking, no doubt—and yet, at the end of the scene, the amount of visible blood anywhere is a little cut on someone’s forehead. The movie was not “gory” and the blood was not “crazy” or “cool”. It was “nonexistent”.

2. Leonides’ speeches

Before I talk about what Leonidas actually says, I have to talk about the way he says it: with a Scottish accent. What? I wasn’t going to make fun of the intentional historical inaccuracies in the movie because I know it’s not intended to be 100 percent true to the facts. But come on! There must be dozens of manly men with a suitable beard and shouting voice who also do not have a funny accent. Why they were not cast for this movie is the source of much bemusement to me. Whatever the reason, we’re left with King “Lucky Charms” Leonides who manages to come across as even more unintentionally hilarious than the Lucky Charms guy in Austin Powers.

As for the speeches themselves being memorable: Let’s see. Um—I really can’t recall any. Either I was laughing too hard with the Mystery Science Theater-like atmosphere of the screening, or they weren’t actually that good. I do recall the “This Is Sparta!” scream, followed by the kicking of the messenger guy into an apparently bottomless pit. But the impactfulness of the scene was ruined by my wondering what the hell a giant, bottomless pit was doing in the middle of the goddamn town square.

What purpose does this serve? Why is it there? It would be stupid to make a well that large; the water would evaporate. The only thing I could come up with is that it must be a form of social darwinism. The Spartans were all big on that eugenics thing, anyway. I figure if someone was stupid enough to wander into a giant pit in the middle of the town, they must not have been smart enough to be a true Spartan. As a bonus, it also comes in handy when you need a dramatic area in which to kick insulting messengers.

All that to say that Leonidas’ speeches were overrated. If anything, Queen Gorgo (despite being real, that’s a name straight from a Buck Rodgers serial, if I ever heard one) had the ultimate smack down when she told the messenger “only Spartan women give birth to real men.” That real-life line is good for at least ten bottomless pit kickings as far as I’m concerned.

3. The CG

I am convinced that we are in a CG dark age. I know exactly when it started, too. It started with Star Wars: Episode 2 and the Lucas “Cram ‘er Full o’ Crap” style of CG direction. Ever since then, I have been consistently underwhelmed at the computer graphics in cinema. There have been a few things that are really fantastic, and there’s always going to be a lot that you don’t recognize as blatant CG, like enhancing explosions in action movies, but for the most part: suckage.

300 is the no exception to this rule, showing off computer graphics which would have looked awesome in 1998. My first laugh of the movie happened when the wolf showed up. That thing was so awkward looking I can’t even make a joke about it. The rest of the background plates were passable enough—rather monochromatic, but they didn’t interfere with the action in the scenes, so I can respect that. But over all, the entire presentation was just “acceptable”. It wasn’t great; it certainly wasn’t “awesome”. It was just meh.

A few people commented on the slow-motion battle sequences. I have this feeling that the slow motion battle routine was done before, but I can’t say specifically where. It was kind of cool for about eight seconds, at which point I checked my watch for the 43rd time. They handled it well enough, but I’m not sure it was original. Regardless, the slow-to-fast motion has become a cinematography cliche, so it looked tired, although not entirely pathetic.

4. The Enemies

I have to be honest: the enemies are really what made this movie dumb. I mean, the easily-led wise counsel was pretty bad. The random bottomless pit was pretty bad. The Quasimodo guy was funny (and bad). But the enemies? Priceless. I was still giving the movie credit right up to the point where they introduced the suicidal samurai. When those guys showed up, I lost it. What the hell? I guess the battles had to be made more interesting with a diverse range of enemies, but a horde of supposedly immortal samurai guys? I don’t get it. The monster with the arm-blades was more believable than that. After all those random monsters, I kept waiting for centaurs or cyclopsi to show up. I was actually pretty disappointed when they didn’t.

All those things were problems I had with the movie, but what I really don’t get is just the whole, overarching idea. First of all, this was a pretty important and inspiring battle by itself. I think you could make a really inspirational flick that would be even moreso considering that it actually happened. Instead, you have this hyped-up version which, I know is based on the comic, but it obviously loses some of its real impressiveness because it’s so over the top as to be a mockery of the actual battle.

Any historical movie is going to deviate from the actual event for dramatic purposes, but the inspirational aspect comes from the fact that these things actually happened. 300 isn’t this. It’s so far removed from real events that it becomes pure entertainment. But it’s pure entertainment based on a true story. In other words, somebody (and I’m pointing the finger at Frank Miller here, too)—somebody took real, actual happenings where real, actual people gave their lives for a cause, blew it all out of proportion, made these people into caricatures, and used it to sell T-shirts and DVDs and whatever other crap they can milk it for. It no longer tells a story worth hearing. It certainly doesn’t honor these guys in any sort of decent way. It’s lame.

This is exacerbated by the monologue at the end. The one guy says of King Leonidas: He did not wish tribute, nor song, or monuments or poems of war and valor.

SO WHY MAKE THE MOVIE? Except to make a buck, of course! Insert Head-Slap of Stupidity here! Not only did these guys turn the Spartans into laughable caricatures and make their battles completely unrealistic—they did it against the King’s will! Way to honor memories there, Hollywood. Except nothing is sacred and these guys are all dead anyway, so it doesn’t really matter. I expect in another hundred years that this movie will look tame, and we’ll have an even wilder, stupider, more absurd version with the intent to make even more money off these guys, all the while ignoring the entire point.

Plato really would be displeased.

-Ted