Doom and Doomer: 300 (part 2)
Welcome part 2 of our discussion on 300, the movie adaptation of the Frank Miller / Lynn Varley graphic novel about the Battle of Thermopylae.
Be sure to read part 1 before continuing.
JIM DOOM: Okay, so let’s leave “character development” behind. Is there anything else you guys want to talk about?
FIN FANG DOOM: How about “the Frank Miller difference,” as Colonel Doom so eloquently put it.
DOOM DELUISE: What’s that?
JD: would you mind explaining that?
FFD: There were just certain instances inthe film that I thought “oh yeah, Frank Miller did this.”
Like the fat executioner guy.
Who by the way should have had a much larger role.
DD: Was he even in the graphic novel?
FFD: I don’t remember, I read it a long time ago.
JD: There were far fewer times that I thought “Frank Miller did this” in 300 than there were in Sin City. I think the only time I thought “Frank Miller did this” was when the 300 pushed the Persians off the cliff.
DD: I think the only time it really stood out to me was with those lecherous boily freaks who guarded the Oracle.
JD: oh yeah. Seeing those reminded me of the yellow guy in Sin City.
FFD: What about the two shots of a sevred body part rotating in slow motion alone in a shot?
Or the unexplained half-man/half-goat flutist.
JD: I guess I associate human-animal hybrids with Doom DeLuise more than I do with Frank Miller.
DD: God schmod, I want my monkey-man!
DD: How come there was so much blood and guts, yet the Spartans never got any of it on them and remained clean throughout the whole movie (other than the Captain, who rolled around in dirt after his son died)?
FFD: clear teflon bodysuits
JD: historical inaccuracy
DD: Not much of a discussion topic. Just curious. Oh, and by the way, I’ve never seen so many waxed chests since my last cruise in the Caribbean.
JD: I was taken aback by the long, protruding nipples of Spartan women.
FFD: That whole “oracle writhing underwater” scene just went on way too long
JD: Did you guys get any sense that this movie was attempting to relate itself to modern times? I felt like a lot of the references to the politicians wanting to control war, the king’s love for freedom trumping the laws of the land, etc., almost made this seem like the filmmakers were trying to say George W Bush is like Leonidas – sure, maybe his war was illegal, but sometimes you have to do illegal things to protect freedom. Almost like the right wing’s comic book movie answer to V for Vendetta and its effective modernization and adapted relevance to current political events.
DD: Well, it’s no secret how Frank Miller feels about politics.
FFD: I was literally typing that exact same thing just now
JD: But Frank Miller couldn’t have related 300 to the Iraq war when he wrote it, and he wasn’t a screenwriter here, and I haven’t read the graphic novel, but it seems like those political statements were made during the “Meanwhile, back in Sparta” scenes, which means they would have presumably been added for the film, right?
DD: From what I’ve been told, that sounds accurate, yes.
JD: And if it was indeed added for the film, it seems to set up kind of a precarious point, almost to sabotage a George W Bush parallel. Because while Leonidas was willing to break the law to fight for freedom, much of the rest of the film showed just how superficial the “freedom” of Sparta really was.
FFD: I’m not sure if any allusion to the Iraq war was intentional.
JD: almost as if it was added to placate a political audience, yet subtly undermine that same audience in the process.
DD: Interesting point.
JD: okay, just wondering. I just got that vibe, because some of the words used by the villain politician and the queen in the pre-sex scene really seemed to echo war dialogue of modern times, particularly as relates to an illegal war.
DD: I could see how you’d draw that out of it.
JD: maybe being sensitive to that made me feel the Sparta scenes were more relevant ?
FFD: I saw the same things your discussing now, but I think we inherently see parallels between movies about war and the current mindset about war.
DD: When V for Vendetta came out, though, I argued quite a bit with people, saying that the message is supposed to be more timeless than current events, so I’ll say the same thing here. Sure, you can see the connections, but, not knowing whether or not they’re intentional makes me really want to ignore any parallels. And just appreciate it for what it is on-screen.
JD: so you don’t think V for Vendetta (the movie) was deliberately built around modern events and figures? I think the connectons in 300 are far more debatable than those in V.
DD: Let’s stick to debating 300, then.
JD: I agree with your last point – I don’t appreciate 300 any less because I suspect it might be pro-GWB. But I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a compare-contrast with other genre films. Because, kind of in line with your previous point, any time a filmmaker does try to relate a movie to modern times, I think the short term gain can undermine long-term timelessness. See “A Death in the Family” for how a story can be ruined by dating itself.
DD: In that case, yes, you’re probably right. The parallels in V were quite a bit more overt, although I think it’s more the timing of the movie than anything else, since the book makes a lot of the same points as the film.
FFD: I think some of the things in V just coincidently had a lot of relevance to modern politics. Domestic wiretapping was still in the news when it showed up in V. With the length of time it takes to make a movie, it seems unlikely that stuff was added specifically to comment on current events.
JD: Another thing I wanted to bring up was the category of tough-guy one-liners.
FFD: I’m so bad at remembering lines from stuff.
JD: There were a lot of lines in Ghost Rider and 300 that were probably somewhat interchangeable, but when a total badass maniac says them, they are infinitely cooler and more forgiveable than when Nicolas Cage says them.
DD: Imagine Nic Cage saying, “Give them nothing! But take from them…EVERYTHING!”
FFD: Yelling things helps drive home the point.
JD: I would like to see Leonidas made a comment about jumping helicopters.
DD: I’d like him to yell, “Mercy? I’m all out of mercy!”
JD: So anyway, I thought 300 was awesome. Never once was I pulled out of the movie by inconsistencies, stupid lines or anything. I was sucked into that world and forgot that I had to pee during the previews. It was a fantastic action movie that could have rested on good choreography and props, but instead it used advancing technology to make the fights works of art. Superficially, it was about bravado and pride and yelling and fighting, and in those realms, it excelled. But I felt it was also a statement about the underlying meaning of Spartan freedom, how the concept of freedom is relative, and how much freedom people are willing to sacrifice in order to not necessarily maintain freedom, but their concept of it.
If the parallels to modern-day USA were accidental, they were still there, and I think it illustrates in both cases how arbitrary our concept of freedom and our belief in our laws and systems of meaning can be.
It was more than it had to be, and I’d love to see it over and over.
Even though all the boobs were pointy and weird.
Well, not all. just the women’s. The men’s breasts were all supple and round.
DD: Downright chiseled!
FFD: 300 was good, but not great. Maybe the fact that I went in the mindset that it could very possibly be great is what led to my disappointment. Unlike Jim, I didn’t see anything beneath the surface of the film. It was blood and guts with a little b-plot thown in to help it along. But it didn’t help.
Being familiar with the story, I knew the 300 would die. I knew no help would come. So I knew that everything back in Sparta didn’t matter to the main story. Maybe the subplot had merit, and I was just predisposed to not wanting to see it.
The look of the movie and the action lived up to the hype. But the rest of it did not.
Oh, and the Spartan who was beheaded played an effeminate flight attendant on the BBC soap opera Mile High, so I couldn help but laugh every time he was on screen.
DD: I think that 300 took itself too seriously in all the wrong ways. On its surface, it’s a loud, intense, blood-fest, with over-the-top bravado and machismo. And, yes, in that respect, it excelled.
However, anything beyond that seemed a bit too forced. The subplot back home should’ve been scrapped for some more character development of the 300 at war. There should’ve been more reasons for me to care that these guys died. I wish I could say I felt something when they did, but, sadly, they were nothing more than chiseled tough-guys dying in a pretty computer game.
The movie is far from without merit, however, and, for me, the greatest aspect of the movie that stands out can be summed up in one single shot. When the 300 are standing by the shore, being beaten down by rain, watching the Persian ships buckling in the waves, that scene summed up the toughness and the bravery that these guys were displaying.
Anything else this film was trying to get across rang hollow and without worth.
Oh, and was I alone in the thought that it never really felt like there were 300 guys out there? It seemed like maybe twenty dudes showed up, and somebody was like, “How many of you are there?” And they were like, “Oh, probably like 300”
JD: maybe the other 270 were cooking or something.
DD: cooking ducks?
FFD: And what was up with 300 plus however many of those other good guys there were?
DD: Well, historically, in addition to the 300, there were 7,000 other good guys.
JD: I thought it was just 700?
FFD: well historically, Sparatan queens didn’t look or dress like supermodels
DD: I thought the History Channel special said 7,000.
JD: oh. I was watching on closed-caption so they might have had a typo.
DD: Oh, well, I was drunk
A few quick thoughts: The Persian beheader wasn’t in the book.
The scene of the Persians pushed over the cliff (along with Leonidas and the wolf) were the most directly pulled from the book.
The scenes of back home in Sparta were added, so any similarity they shared with current events also were added.
However, I don’t think the filmmakers or Miller were trying to instill the film with any kind of pro-Bush sentiment. For one, Bush wasn’t in office when Miller wrote it. Two, Bush is far too unpopular now for any studio or filmmaker to uneccessarily include an ode to him in the plot. Also, I don’t see why they would take an inordinate amount of steps to mess with the plot of the film just to include a terribly complex criticism of Bush that 99 percent of fans wouldn’t pick up.
Mostly, I saw the book as Miller trying to turn Leonidas as the sort of Christ of Democracy. I mean, he sacrificed himself to the greater good of freedom among men. His dialogue repeated this point again and again.
The movie only augmented this point by having the Queen spout stuff like “freedom isn’t free” (hello, Team America) and having Leonidas lying dead literally in the position of Christ. I mean, come on!
The main problem with that point is that it’s utter crap. The Spartans weren’t democratic. They had a duel kingship, and only later moved toward a sort of republic. Still, their strength relied on subjugating the individual to the greater good. Democracy, on the other hand, is the true celebration of individuality.
That inconsistency was only hammered home by the Spartans being undone by the hunchback, very much an individual who was sacrificed for the greater purpose. Neither Miller nor the filmmakers treated the hunchback as a hero, instead as a villain, which reveals their true intent.
To me, this was unneccessary and served only as distraction from what was an otherwise good movie.
I was also distracted by the extreme pointy-ness of Spartan nipples. I don’t know why the queen pulled the sword on the bad guy. She could’ve just hugged him.
As I said before, I think the story of the 300 is more about the triumph of bravery in the face of long odds. There’s nothing wrong with a story focused around that, so I don’t understand why the change was made. It smacks of hidden agenda.
James Pinkerton brought up the connections between Bush and Leonidas in his column this week – not as a Bush endorsement, necessarily, but he picked up on the careful wording.
I’d say this is a case of being able to find whatever message you want in a film. While some could argue that it was pro-Iraq war, you could also argue that it was an Anti-American film if you wanted. I mean, it celebrates a small group of fanatics, taking on the most powerful army of their time, willing to die for their cause as long as they take as many of the enemy with them as they can.
I guess my point is, people often find the message they want to find in art and media.
JCVD –
You seem to rule out the possibility of deliberate modern parallels based on unpopularity, as if that has ever stopped people from making a point – particularly one they feel needs to be made. I would argue the unpopularity of that point makes its intended presence more likely, considering that the points were made not in Miller’s original story, but in the political scenes added for the sake of the film.
When do people use art to make popular points? It has the potential to be subversive – to make the unpopular seem like the obvious truth. I think on a lot of the politics we completely agree – particularly with Spartan “freedom” being far from that. I guess where we disagree is in whether or not the film was trying to relate to now – am I right?
To quote Pinkerton’s column, “The film’s most sinister figure is a politico who specifically identifies himself as a ‘realist.’ And so go the parallels today, where for many Americans, ‘realist’ is code for ‘cynical,’ ‘cowardly,’ or, worst of all, ‘French.'”
I agree with you completely on the deconstruction of Spartan democracy. I just think it’s too big of a coincidence that the scenes added for the 2007 film adaptation so neatly relate to a neocon’s view of the war against “terror.”
I’ll concede the possibility that the movie was trying to make that case. But if I were forced to make a wager on whether that was the underlying point or not, I would bet against it.
In the book, however, there’s no possibility of that parallel. I just saw it as the director going too far in the direction of continuing the misguided notion of the book. Either way, to me, it’s a distracting false-parallel.
Anyone else find the narration of the cycloptic Spartan to be ridiculously annoying? I didn’t mind the overwrought dialogue in the book, but it just didn’t translate to the screen.
On the other hand, the actor playing Leonidas did a great job. He had some lines (as you guys said) that could’ve been schlocky as all heck, but he made it cool. He needs to be an action movie star. If only he didn’t look like crazy, bearded Mel Gibson…
I would watch 2 hours of nothing but that guy shouting and fighting.
I completely agree. To me, he carried the movie.
I realized that you guys didn’t much get into the artistic aspect of the movie/book. Both had a very unique style with the CGI/painted background and overripe colors. Did you dig it?
300 i think is very good the best shot of the movie for me would be when all of them run out to kill them with the music it was tight
Fair enough.