300

[Pidesco]

No, but I was wondering what Azarkon was getting at.

[Guest The Architect]

No, but I was wondering what Azarkon was getting at.

 

Well he did say I must say Gerard Butler was excellent in the movie, and then went on to say it could do for him what the Gladiator did for Russell Crowe, so that should

Edited March 18, 2007 by The Architect

[Pidesco]

Russel Crowe was already a respected actor before Gladiator. In fact, he did better work before Gladiator. What Gladiator did was make Crowe an Oscar star. And again, fat chance for Butler.

[Guest The Architect]

Russel Crowe was already a respected actor before Gladiator. In fact, he did better work before Gladiator. What Gladiator did was make Crowe an Oscar star. And again, fat chance for Butler.

 

Yeah, and? Who said otherwise here? No one here is arguing that Russell Crowe wasn

Edited March 19, 2007 by The Architect

[Oerwinde]

What did Gladiator do for Russel Crowe, exactly?

 

Before Gladiator, Russel Crowe wasn't a very well known actor. Gladiator raised the public's awareness of him and got him tons more offers for films and such.

 

Being the lead in a huge hit will likely do the same for Gerard Butler.

[Azarkon]

No, but I was wondering what Azarkon was getting at.

 

Gladiator did more than win Crowe an Oscar. It put him in the public eye as a major icon of Hollywood. Of course, the Oscar helped him tremendously in attaining that role - but there are similar actors who have not won an Oscar. See Keanu Reeves, who basically got to where he is via The Matrix, and Viggo Mortensen (Aragorn from LOTR).

 

In short, I'm talking about a star making movie. Crowe was established as an actor before Gladiator (so is Butler), sure, but not in the sort of roles he's taken on since, and not with the sort of publicity he's gotten since. It's not so much that his acting was bad before and suddenly became stellar with Gladiator; rather, the public just didn't know/care about him because they can't point to some key role in a major blockbuster and say, "yeah - that's him."

 

To get this sort of publicity, you need to be able to take a lead role in some blockbuster that everyone watches - and this is often the biggest hurdle to fame. 300, I think, certainly qualifies as one of the most publicized, hyped, and successful films of this year. It's still no Titanic, which made Leonardo DiCaprio a pop culture fad, but it's far more popular than anything else Butler has ever played an important role in.

Edited March 19, 2007 by Azarkon

[Pop]

Gerard Butler will never, ever outlive Phantom of the Opera in my eyes. He will forever suck.

[Tale]

I will always remember him from the second Tomb Raider movie.

[Hell Kitty]

I'll always remember him from the movie with dragons and Batman.

[astr0creep]

I will always remember him from 300... :D

 

 

 

Virtuosity, with Denzel Washington, is the only movie in which I recall Russel Crowe in before Gladiator.

 

And Tomb Raider is the only movie I remember Gerard Butler in before Phantom of the Opera.

I've never seen Phantom but I remember thinking "why?" when I learned Butler was playing the title character as I remembered him in Tomb Raider, a very sucky movie in it's own right.

 

He is definitaly climbing that ladder.

[metadigital]

Grom, I think Moriarity stated in the review you quoted how easy it was to interpret the film politically, which is my point all along - it's not the critics who're looking too hard, but rather with this film it *is* easy to make political parallels. Moriarity made this point in his review by suggesting that 300 is like a political rorschach test (which is the best analogy of the film I've heard all week) - a film designed to elicit political interpretations, but which in truth is probably not political.

 

My beef, all along, is with the suggestion that anyone who sees political parallels in the film must have been looking too hard for them. That's just not true at all. With some films (and I think 300 is one of those), the material simply inspires political interpretation - though what that interpretation is depends on your own political mindset. Course, if you look a little deeper you realize that these parallels don't mean anything and that there's no evidence that the film has a political message, but that doesn't stop your mind from seeing something in those inkblots, nor is it a reason to castigate people for seeing what you didn't see.

 

meta: I think that's the genius of Moriarity's analogy. Your knowledge of the era made it easy to see the film in that light, since you're looking at it in the context of the historical event. Me - I went into the theatre without researching the history (since, like many people, I didn't go to the film expecting anything but slow-mo fights) and therefore was affected more by the rhetoric, the dialogue, and the basic setup. Another person, with less interest in politics, might simply see a justification for stylized video-game violence. There's sufficient evidence for all three viewpoints, and a few more, in the film (by sufficient, I mean that you don't have to grasp at straws to prove your point). A film can have multiple valid interpretations, none of which might match the actual intent; indeed, what we choose to emphasize might reveal just as much about us as it does the film.

I hadn't seen the film at the time I wrote what I wrote. Having now seen it, I can confidently say that there is NO WAY THIS IS A POLITICAL FILM. It just isn't. It's a (vaguely homo-erotic) muscle-bound men with swords (and spears) killing each other in an graphic-novel inspired arty-noir film.

 

Seriously. It just uses standard film devices (cripple = bad character), not political diatribe (Leonidas = Bush). And there is NO WAY anyone in their right mind would equate Leonidas with Bush.

 

As for the film, it managed to tell a story that didn't overtly break any historical fact (apart from some of the set-up pieces) ... they just omitted some of the more complex parts of the stories to tell a dumbed-down action adventure. (The historical fact is actually more interesting and stranger than the film, believe it or not.) Still, the details of the period and the politics aren't particularly conducive to a film ...

[Hurlshort]

I'll always remember him from the movie with dragons and Batman.

 

Are you comparing him to Christian Bale, or are you just confused?

[metadigital]

I still disagree that the film was not politically charged, but I'm starting to think your definition of "politically charged" is not the same as mine...

Only by people suffering from Pareidolia.

[Azure79]

I saw it with my girlfriend who was more than happy to see half naked muscle bound men run around on screen for her viewing pleasure. I still had to cover her eyes for the many decapitations and dismemberments.

 

It was a good action movie. The spoken lines weren't exactly the best but I enjoyed the fight scenes. Shield bashing, spear impaling, sword swiping goodness.

[Tale]

I'll always remember him from the movie with dragons and Batman.

 

Are you comparing him to Christian Bale, or are you just confused?

Apparently, he was in Reign of Fire, which had Christian Bale and was about dragons.

[metadigital]

I saw it with my girlfriend who was more than happy to see half naked muscle bound men run around on screen for her viewing pleasure. I still had to cover her eyes for the many decapitations and dismemberments.

One of the historical inaccuracies in the film is that the Spartans weren't wearing armour.

The hoplite may well have taken his name from the cardinal item of his equipment, the two-handed shield which he wore in an unalterably fixed position on his left arm, depending for coverage of his unshielded side on his neighbour to his right in the phalanx. The Greek word hopla, which certainly included the shield, was used to mean arms and armour collectively. A panoplia was a full set of hoplite kit, which would consist of large bronze helmet raised from a single sheet of metal that afforded good protection for the head but rendered the hoplite pretty deaf; a bronze or (later) leather or linen breastplate; a large round basically wooden shield, faced all over in bronze in the Spartan's case; bronze abdominal guard and greaves. and possibly also bronze ankle- and arm-guards; a long thrusting spear of cornel wood tipped at either end with a head and butt-spike of iron; and a back-up iron sword, unusually short, more like a dagger, for the Spartans. Two further items of uniform are particualrly Spartan: long hair and a bright red cloak (so important that it accompanied a Spartan hoplite in death as well as life). Effectiveness in action depended not only on sheer weight of numbers but on tight co-ordination, rigid discipline and high morale; these the Spartans ensured by constant drilling, which they were able to undertake as they could afford to maintain the only true professional army in all Greece.

It was a good action movie. The spoken lines weren't exactly the best but I enjoyed the fight scenes. Shield bashing, spear impaling, sword swiping goodness.

A lot of the one-liners are actually historical sayings: the Spartans called themselves Lacad

[Hell Kitty]

I'll always remember him from the movie with dragons and Batman.

 

Are you comparing him to Christian Bale, or are you just confused?

Apparently, he was in Reign of Fire, which had Christian Bale and was about dragons.

 

YOU WIN!

[Azarkon]

I still disagree that the film was not politically charged, but I'm starting to think your definition of "politically charged" is not the same as mine...

Only by people suffering from Pareidolia.

 

Perhaps

 

But as time passes it's only become apparent that more people suffer from Pareidolia than we originally thought. Topics, critiques, and theories are popping out all over forums, blogs, wikipedia, and even news sites regarding the "political dimensions" of 300 - all you have to do is google. I've even read a couple of articles from political news websites such as Asia Times discussing the film, and they don't usually do Hollywood.

 

I hate to resurrect the topic on this note, but: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17660862/site/newsweek/

 

Even in my most feverish moments, I did not call 300 an "act of war."

Edited March 26, 2007 by Azarkon

[metadigital]

Well, that's more down to attention-seeking.

[Gromnir]

*chuckle*

 

persians v. greeks? miller's new comic book? seems like most o' the folks seeing a political angle (including azar) is seeing w/o actually considering STORY o' 300.

 

people is seeing what they wish to. if you ignore the movie itself, and focus instead on details, you can see whatever you want to in 300... just as people can see the virgin mary in a grilled cheese lunch food.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Sand]

I saw it as a live action over the top movie based on a comic book.

 

Entertaining, but that is it. Sometimes a duck is just a duck.

[Azarkon]

Well sure, Gromnir, if you strip all the contextual details and look only at the story, then 300 is just the same old story of underdogs triumphing against impossible odds - the very archetype of heroism.

 

But I think it'd be a very different movie, and very differently received, if this were the Spartans vs. the Athenians or the Gauls vs. the Romans. Like it or not, who you cast as the face of villainy invites real world analogies, particularly between countries on the brinks of war. And if Wikipedia is to be believed, the studios knew that this movie would inspire political interpretations before they ever released it. That, to me, means that people only saw what was obvious even to the studio execs, and weren't, as you say, looking too deeply into that grilled cheese sandwich.

 

Or maybe the world's just full of pareidolic attention-seekers. *shrug* Either way works for me.

[Maria Caliban]

Calax:

" Catwoman for example was a prostitute in year one. She'd never stoop that low on the ladder to survive.

 

You don't know Catwoman.

 

She wasn't stooping low on the ladder. She was born in the gutter and had to crawl her way out. Why wouldn't she be a prostitute? Shame? Shame means caring about what society thinks of you. Why would the opinion of a society that has given her nothing matter to a hungry sixteen-year-old Selina Kyle?

 

Gorgon:

" Frank Miller didn't direct the movie, so who cares."

 

Like Sin City, the movie it pure Frank Miller. The director followed the comic as closely as possible.

 

deganawida:

" DK:SA was crap, I'll agree with that."

 

It was offal. I assumed it was his way of giving the finger to all the fans who've been harassing him for over a decade for a continuation of TDKR.

 

Meshugger:

" One of historys most militaristic and totalitarian states is fighting for freedom? hehe."

 

We're talking about the 300 movie here. Please stop bringing up current events.

 

Anyways, the 300 did help hold the Persians from reaching Athens sooner, which lead to their eventual naval victory. Whatever the irony, that battle was an important one for democracy.

[Maria Caliban]

I notice how old this thread is. Did I post in it already?