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01 April 2007

300 Spartans

Tonight I went to the movie 300, which took place in ancient Greece in 480BC. The movie is about the Battle of Thermopylae, where Spartan King Leonidas (Gerard Butler) and 300 Spartans fought to the last man against Persian King Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro) and his army.

The movie itself is not that good, however the visual effects are brand new. Do you remember The Matrix, and the rotating camera - also known as Bullet Time - that was really cool, and many other movies imitated it later on. As well as many other visual effects. I also think that 300's visual effects will be copied in other future movies too. The colors and lighting where intended to make it look like a fantasy comic book. In some scenes, it was hard to tell if they are Black and White, or Colored. Some other scenes looked like Film Noire to me. The movie itself was based on a comic book with the same name by Frank Miller, and this can explain the presence of beasts, giants, and strange creatures in the Persian army.

The question now, don't you think that the current tension between US and Iran has inspired the move creators to shoot this movie. Greek is always considered as a symbol of the western civilization. Sparta is shown as a democratic state in this movie, while the Persians were shown as a slave empire, which is however a historic error, since slavery was also very common among the Greeks. The image of the Persians where they were shown as homosexual, handicapped and/or deformed in some way, was intended to show how evil they are, and how brave the Spartans/Americans are.

By the way, since it is the 1st of April, has any of you come out with a cool April's Fool for this year!?

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2 comments:

  1. actually, I saw the movie last night, Saturday. I liked it though. if you were intended to be entertained, then it was good entertainment. However, as to the factual side, the persians were enraged by this movie, even though they ended up defeating the spartans. I kept joking throughout the movie of how Leonidas kept saying 300 even when some of them were killed.

    I personally do not expect a western movie to portray Middle Easterners positively. Kingdom of Heaven was an Exception. especially with the war on terror thing going on, a western movie won't make money if it were to look highly to the "axis of evil" people.

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  2. The film has good message. It shows the bloody barberic nature of Persian empire. They claim they had a civilsation while they were nothing but bloody barbers

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