Spectacular Movie

Rating: 10/10 (11 March 2007)

Usually, a movie is good because it has a good story line and good acting. This movie adds another dimension - art. Although 300 is a spectacular movie on the first point alone, the art aspect is so absolutely amazing that it has to be mentioned.
1. Plot/Acting - the plot of this movie is not unique. 300 against many. But, 300 takes that storyline and makes it its own. You get unique character development, plot twists, and unique battle sequences. That being said, it is a movie about war. There are a lot of battle scenes. The movie is not overly bloody and violent to the point where it becomes grotesque or distracting, like Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but there is plenty of blood and violence. The acting is good. There were never any parts of the movie where the acting was lacking or the bad acting was distracting. The acting was convincing and led into the great character development.
2. Art - Chances are, you've seen a trailer or pictures from this movie. The art design and rendering is absolutely amazing. The whole movie is a piece of art. It's like 1 billion carefully created painted masterpieces made into movie film. Every scene is amazing. There is some cgi, but it is done really well and it does not dominate the film like you see nowadays. The creatures/mutants are great. The colors play a good role in this movie. The Spartans have dark red cloaks and it just looks really cool on the back ground of the battle scenes and the sunsets. Sparta and the Greek buildings are done really well.
I also want to address some of the negative comments that have been left about this movie. When I got home from the movie theater, I immediately checked IMDb to see what rank this movie got. For the first time in my life, I could not imagine anyone not giving a movie a 10. I was surprised to see that it was only about 8.5. I checked the negative comments to see what the people who didn't like it were saying. Once I read the comments (they all hit the same couple of topics), it all became clear. There are a few main issues that people have with this movie.
The first is the alleged gay bashing. There are I think two references to gay people. They are both derogatory. They are both made in the context of something like, "I'm glad we have solid soldiers on the field and not those gay philosophers from Athens." First of all, without ever addressing whether that is appropriate to say or not, this is a statement made by a general and a king from Sparta, probably the most testosterone driven society in history. Secondly, if you were going into battle, who would you rather have at your side? A gay philosopher or a Spartan? I'm not saying that being gay makes you weaker, but empirically, gay people are more effeminate than straights.
There were also a few related comments about sexism. There are a few moments where the politicians make comments about how the queen should stay out of the political affairs because she is a woman. First of all, it is believable that that is how politics was run back then. Some cultures still believe that. Is there anyone out there that can say that it is a coincidence that in the last 200 years, all of the US presidents have been men? Imagine how it was almost 3000 years ago in villages and tribes. It is no more offensive to depict women as having no say in politics 3000 years ago, as it is to make a movie about slavery 200 years ago. That's just the way it was. No one is saying that is the way it should be now, but they are just depicting the way it was. Secondly, The queen is given a very powerful role. The king respects and loves her and seeks her advice and listens to her as do the other politicians. This was the dumbest argument I saw.
The next argument is that this movie depicts Iranians in a derogatory light. This is absolutely ridiculous. It's a movie about one side against the other. The Persian army was huge and to make the movie more interesting, they created strange creatures/soldiers from the opposing army and there were myths about the sorcery of the Persians. I cannot imagine one person walking out of 300 thinking, "Man, I sure do hate Iranians more now." It's just as ridiculous as saying that the movie the Ten Commandments paints present day Egyptians in a bad light. Everyone knows that Arabs had a great culture back then and that they invented a lot of things. Baseless argument.
The next argument is that this movie is not historically accurate. This is also a stupid argument for one reason: it's a movie. If there were a disclaimer in the beginning saying, "This film is meant to educate you about actual events," then the whining might be better understood. But, 300 takes something that happened a long time ago and puts a unique spin on it and adds a few interesting characters and plot lines to create a 2 hour feature film - just like Tombstone, Braveheart, and Ten Commandments. Who cares if things actually happened the way they are depicted in the movie? I can't imagine anyone expecting this movie to accurately depict history.
The next argument is that this movie is politically based and represents America's war on terror against Arabs. They were really digging from the bottom of the barrel to make this argument. No one thought that about Alexander, so why do they think that about this movie? It's ridiculous.
Overall, this is a spectacular movie. I can't wait for the behind the scenes footage.