Just got back home from watching “300“, and even though I thought it was an extremely fun movie, there were times when the “over the top” parts went so far over the top that they fell down the otehr side.
This was most notably the case with all the speeches and dramatic declarations — all of which were nice and fell-good, in their own, morbid kind of way — but I felt it would have been even better if they’d thrown in at least a little ambiguity. For example, they could have included the comment Loki missed about Athenian democracy, to take a bit of the sting out of the East vs. West interpretation that was latent throughout the entire movie. As it is it is too easy to see it purely as a comment on the supposedly strained relations between Greater Europe and the Muslim world, and to do that robs the movie of its more valuable lessons.
But apart from that, I liked it quite well, and so I end up giving it a strong 8.5/10 with a possible upgrade to a 9.0 when I enter it in my real log.
It was nice, though, that the final lines in the movie was the writing on the Thermopylae memorial stone.

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Yeah that was my feeling too, the imbalanced parts of the ethics involved.
Don’t see how you could say it went too much over the top, though. How could it possibly? The fracking premise was “300 Spartans go over the top”!
27. March 2007 @ 00:48 ( Permalink )
Yeah, and most of the time that was purely fun, but there were times when especialy the speeches became a little too much. But not overly much, of course.
27. March 2007 @ 14:25 ( Permalink )
Speeches? There were speeches? Other than the one in the ending, after they were all dead, I didn’t really notice any speeches. I did in the comic, but not in the movie.
Weird.
There were speeches?
27. March 2007 @ 14:54 ( Permalink )
Nah, I guess “declarations” might’ve been a better description. And those were at least never long…
27. March 2007 @ 17:34 ( Permalink )
Then I disagree strongly, I liked all of’em.
You might call that madness, but I say, madness? THIS IS SPARTA!
27. March 2007 @ 21:11 ( Permalink )
Madness? This is Terjeland, there is no madness here. Only differences. And where I differ from you here, is in that I felt embarassed by a few of the declarations or what have you. But I suspect that my light agoraphobia is more to blame for that than the movie itself, now that I’ve though about it for a little while longer.
27. March 2007 @ 21:33 ( Permalink )
If you say so.
(This is still Sparta.)
28. March 2007 @ 17:17 ( Permalink )
Speaking of which, I just loved the way Leonidas spoke of the Athenians: “Rumour has it the Athenians have already declined your offer, and if those philosophers and boy-lovers did so… well, we have our honour to consider.”
28. March 2007 @ 21:00 ( Permalink )
Yeah, there were two or three more stabs at the Athenians in the comic, but I’m happy they kept one in.
28. March 2007 @ 21:33 ( Permalink )