One of the Worst movies Ever Made.

Rating: 1/10 (1 April 2007)

If the epic genre had a downfall with films like Troy and King Arthur, 300 managed to sink it all the way to the bottom. This has got to be one of the worst attempts of epic movie making of all time. I feel sad that most likely, more and more films will resemble 300.
However, I don't know what depresses me even more, that movies like this get made, or that audiences flock in huge numbers to see them, and claim that they are the best films ever made.
This film is clearly a film for the generation of the 90s, dumb, numbed out idiot kids who what simple, packaged movie, where image and action are more important elements, rather than story, emotion, character and drama.
I think now I should clarify something, I'm 21 years old, and I'm a film student, so no, the argument that "I didn't understood the film cause I'm old" does not apply. And for the record, I enjoyed Sin City, but more on that later.
Now, regarding the film. If you've seen the trailer, you've seen the movie. Because plot wise, you get everything from the trailer, 300 Spartan soldiers take on gargantuan invasion force from Persia. That's pretty much all that happens.
The characters fall under every superficial cliché character from the epic genre, a character is introduced and remains the same all the way through the movie. Such reflects incredibly poor writing. There's just no drama between any character, no conflict, either interior or exterior. Basically a bunch of grunts fighting over other "grunts".
I say "grunts" because, one of the things it did not expect was Spartans fighting Persian Orcs lead by a Street Fighter like Dhalsim with homosexual tendencies. Which is the big flaw of the movie as well, the Production Design. The movie sets up a somewhat realistic, if historically inaccurate but realistic world nonetheless. But then we have a Gollum creature, Persian Orcs as the enemy. It's not consistent with what the story sets up.
Another flaw in the writing is the fact that the whole movie relies on a boring, simple minded voice over that seems more like Spartan propaganda. The same voice over repeating either what you see in the image, or simple stating "We are Spartans, we are bad, what you gonna do when we come for you?". Moreover, the voice over makes an incredible mistake, being a witness voice over like in Million Dollar Baby, but narrating events that the witness never actually witnesses, like the final confrontation.
The movie also fall into a huge suspension of disbelief. You don't buy into anything that you are shown, you start to believe that even the actors are fake. And the battle sequences are so over done with the now cliché slow motion, that you just don't buy into the action. This affects the film because, the audience gets so detached that you don't care for any character, or for the outcome of the scene.
The film makes the terrible mistake of trying too much to impress with it's visuals, but they become so over done, that you don't feel like you are watching a movie, or getting a story, you feel like seeing a video game, and a bad one play out in front of you.
It has been argued that the filmmakers wanted to make a faithful adaptation of the graphic novel. But that is no excuse, this is not the first time movies have adapted a story from another medium, and in the past, filmmakers have understood that film has it's own way of telling a story, and things have to be altered, changed and re invented in order to work on film. This is a perfect example on how not to adapt something from another medium into film. The excuse of "it's faithful to the comic" simple does not work at the end.
The film remains just as a display of expensive CGI, and glorified battle gore. You cannot care less for the outcome of the battle. It's also funny that despite being a force of 300, you only see a couple of guys do all the work. And at the end, the movie takes itself so incredible serious, that the over done violence becomes hilarious, but there's a catch, unlike Kill Bill, here the violence is not supposed to make you laugh. Hence, it's a failure, I don't know what is funnier, Gerard Butler killing Persian Orcs and Trolls in slow motion, or the slow motion flying of an Eddie Murphy look alike with a smile on his face.
I know that I'm gonna be accused of dumb and ignorant, that I failed to see the greatness of this masterpiece, and let them say what they want. You must face the fact that the people who like this movie don't describe it as good, but as cool, "cool" is a phenomenon that existed in school, but this wave of "cool" movies, started primarily by the Matrix has reached new level of mediocre movie making with 300. Face it, this movie appeals to the low brow culture of "cool, I want cool movies".
Lets hope that the massive deploy of publicity for 300 dies out soon, and that people quickly forget about it. Because, there's really nothing important to remember from it.