Saturday, August 18, 2007
Yo DrX!
I want to get the opinion of our resident comic expert of the movie 300. I just finished watching it, and I have to say, I was not impressed. It was really a spectacular looking movie, but other than that I couldn't find any redeeming qualities. Am I missing something here? I haven't read the graphic novel, is it at all similar to this film? I thought that Sin City captured the spirit of a graphic novel perfectly, while this film absolutely did not. Maybe it has something to do with the narrator. That and all the lame dramatic Braveheartesque speeches peppered throughout. Anyways, maybe I'm alone on this one, but I have to say, 300 kind of sucked.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
I wouldn't say it captured the book perfectly, but it was very close. Like Sin City, the vast majority of the scenes and dialog are lifted straight from the book. They did better than I would have expected at a translation. The "soul" of the book was a little corrupted though.
Here's why: a lot of it comes down to the acting. The book reads differently. The Spartans are the probably among the most bad-ass sumbitches who ever lived. The artwork in the book is much more visceral, and it gives the Spartans a very alien quality. They are very clearly different from us, and they would kick our fat,lazy asses just for being fat and lazy.
When that gets translated into a film, of course you pick lots of good-looking people, who act like Hollywood actors. They are beautiful people acting in an historical epic with pseudo-English accents. Instead, they probably ought to have been reading their lines like some weird accent/speech style combination of pirate and cowboy (think tough) to place them as more different. That'd be hard to pull off right though. So, it was a Hollywood movie.
Overall, I liked it though. Not a super-great film, but a solid 3 stars.
I know you didn't like Watchmen, but the director is going to do that next. The success of 300 should let him do it the way he wants without much studio interference, which should be pretty close to the book according to interviews I've heard.
(Unlike Wanted which is going to be a travesty.)
Hey, I liked Watchmen, I just thought the ending kind of sucked. I'd watch the movie, but I don't think Zack Snyder a good choice to direct it. His films are all action and style with no substance. Watchmen wasn't exactly full of action. Who knows though, the guy has only made a couple movies, maybe he's not the hack I expect him to be.
Oh, and as for 300, I can now imagine what the book is like, and I wouldn't mind reading it. I really think the movie would have benefited making the Spartans less human. As they were, they were just warmongering assholes and I was actually hoping they would all just die. If the movie did a better job of making them super badasses, like some of the characters in Sin City, then I might be able to get behind them. As it was, I thought it was another of those Marine commercials on tv. You know, like the one with the guy jumping over lava and killing monsters with a sword. That's just what being a Marine is like!
Post a Comment