Zack Snyder makes truth stranger than fiction

Rating: 4/10 (11 March 2007)

Perhaps this is the history major in me talking, but when I go to see any war film, especially a movie on one of the most epic battles of all time, I expect a little more than men running around in underwear stabbing ogres with what appears to be an attempt to make lord of the rings believable. Zack Snyder has essentially taken Braveheart, replaced Mel Gibson with an English Arnold Swarchenneger, and taken out the real world the viewer relates to and replaced it with a surrealistic CG world that looks like they are in the middle of a video game. I give the movie 4 stars instead of none because granted, the numerous fight scenes were certainly gory and enjoyable, and as a teenage boy I cant help but like blood, gore and sex in a war movie, especially when appropriate, like in the story of Thermopylae. But the idea of making the entire movie CG was completely ridiculous and added to my main complaint with the movie: Zack Snyder and Frank Miller were handed a story that in itself is incredible, that 300 men (800 with Arcadians) could stop a huge force of Persians for three days, only to be betrayed by a Greek. Make that film, and you have a great action film. But to make that story surreal by utilizing monsters and demons from the east not only detracts from the credibility of a true event, but in effect cheapens the story of Thermopylae forever. The CG graphics of Sin City worked very well for Sin City and fictional action films. But keep that garbage out of my war movies that have potential to be historically accurate. I am not saying that a director should have no freedom to be inaccurate in war movies, I am simply pointing out that the amount Zack Snyder was historically inaccurate in this movie likened him to a bull in a china shop, wrecking an already lovely plot. Maybe if I were drunk at the movie I would have enjoyed it more.