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| March 10, 2007 |
| '300' far from perfect |
The fanboys are raring for this one. As of Wednesday, two days before "300" opened, the Internet Movie Database gave director Zack Snyder's historical epic a user rating of 8.6 out of 10, based on more than 7,000 votes. The breakdown reveals that 6,000 of the voters are males under the age of 29, and that more than 80 percent rated the film a perfect 10. (The figures weren't much changed as of Friday.)
All this excitement for a historical epic set in ancient Greece, starring such actors as Gerard Butler, Dominic West and David Wenham. What gives?
Seven years ago, "Gladiator" used CGI to paint in crowds and armies and even resurrect actor Oliver Reed after he died during the shoot. But "Gladiator" looks like an artifact from a bygone age beside "300," based on a Frank Miller's graphic novel about the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C.
Ridley Scott dragged his crew to Italy, Malta, Morocco and Britain. Snyder recreated ancient Sparta and famed Thermoplyae -- where 300 Spartans held off an invasion force of more than 100,000 -- without leaving his virtual studio in Montreal. Photo-realism is dead, or at least on its way out.
"300" morphs between live actors and a graphic animated world that is both cheaper and more malleable than the usual movie sets. Instead of the traditional cast of thousands, the credits list more than 200 visual effects artists. Along with "Sin City," the previous adaptation of a Miller work, "300" etches out the horizons of a new cinematic landscape.
So one can see why there would be such enthusiasm for the project. But, having actually seen the flick in question -- unlike, perhaps, a number of its eager IMDb supporters -- I'm afraid I cannot share their enthusiasm, though I suspect it delivers exactly what they think it does: blood and thunder.
Really stylized blood and thunder, too. Thermopylae doesn't look remotely like Greece; it looks more like the inside of a computer game.
Reproducing Lynn Varley's double-page panels as if the comic book were their storyboard, Snyder and cinematographer Larry Fong bleed detail and color from the grainy, sepia visuals, save for the Spartans' swishing crimson cloaks, the bronze of their round shields and rippling torsos.
Perhaps it's this remove from reality that allows the filmmakers to revel in an orgy of violence with impunity. The battle, which dominates the movie, is a nonstop slaughterhouse with the ferocious Spartans lopping and chopping their way through their innumerable foes (including rampaging rhinos and elephants, scuttled off the cliffs to their doom). |
posted by viraks @ 7:28:00 AM  |
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