MasterChugs Theater: ‘300’

Do not adjust your televisions sets. It would just look silly because you’re on your computer. Besides, who says “television sets” anymore? What you are about to see is a point-counterpoint review by Rick Snee and Bryan McBournie, while Chugs is currently unavailable.

For this round, we chose that feel-good movie of the year, 300. Since it debuted, great and little minds alike have debated its merits. This … is one of those debates.

Point: Rick Snee
300 was not the best film of 2007; it wasn’t even a great film when compared to the classics that normally litter any movie review. Film reviewers can throw out as many great names as they want, but that tactic ignores the one aspect of movies: did I enjoy myself?

Sure, I walked out of 300 laughing. It’s hard to imagine that all of the developments of stunning CGI culminated in photoshopping abs onto the ancient world’s first Olympic Dream Team. It’s also ridiculous that Leonidas makes fun of the Athenians by calling them “boy-lovers,” but no more so than whenever politicians accuse each other of “big spending.”

But that ridiculousness is what entertained me. 300 depicts the Spartans with the same detail as Greek art from that era: it’s idealized. No matter how much credit is given to Frank Miller, those rippled shaved gorillas were invented by the original 300’s contemporaries in rhetoric, sculptures and painted pottery. Hell, if you gave Plato or Herodotus the same technology and budget, they would have made the same movie.

It’s also the only movie from 2007 that was claimed by both political sides of the Internet, which thankfully provided a break from my favorite online game, “Which side is more like the Nazis,” albeit a very short break.

So if it’s not a great movie, then why was everybody talking about it? Aside from the special effects, there’s the story.

The prologue glamorizes child abuse by proving that beatings, exposure to the elements and wolves will make your child stronger, and if he dies, then he did not earn his right to share your genes. In other words, it says exactly what everybody was already thinking.

To concede a bit, the follow-up does kind of drag a bit. Bodybuilders in capes argue about whether it’s preferable to live under a militaristic oligarchy, disfigured and corrupt religious figures or an even larger militaristic autocracy. (Spoiler: freedom wins, and by “freedom,” I mean “baby oil.”) But, if professional wrestling has taught us anything, this loud talking/posturing is the necessary build-up to the mother of all cliff fights. Plus, it provides some nice shots of jiggling lady boobies (sadly, only three and a half).

But, as I said before, that build-up climaxes into the greatest cinematic collection of dead, maimed and awaiting death/maiming bodies this side of Conan. And as the Spartans stacked more dead Persians on their wall, I had to restrain myself from grunt-shouting (grouting?) “HU” with them.

That is why I can justify vouching for this movie; it has everything, from decapitation to nudity and even a few historically unexplainable explosions. I may like more intellectual fare like A Man for All Seasons, but I still enjoyed myself during 300.

Counterpoint: Bryan McBournie
Rick, you ignorant slut. The only reason you liked this movie was that it was pound-for-pound the best example of man-meat on the big screen.

We all know Frank Miller is an incredibly talented artist and writer, but even the best can miss the mark sometimes. He should stick to creating his own stories, rather than attempting to revamp old ones (see “Batman: Year One”). As for director Zack Snyder: we get it, slow motion looks really cool, especially when you speed it up at the moment of impact and slow it down again in the moments after. It’s a trick pioneered by nearly every movie made this decade, only they actually slowed down for the cool parts, not the after poses. Sure, it’s a different technique, but you don’t have to beat the audience over the head with your approach.

This classic Greek tale is turned into a testosterone-fueled flick that swears it doesn’t like guys, because it has a single female cast member. If Hollywood has taught us anything, it is that the ancient Greeks and Romans were all English and Australian actors who made no attempts to conceal their accents. Troy and Alexander tested the limits, trying American accents, but obviously, they flopped. The audience knows a sham when they see it.

It’s a man-tastic romp, because apparently everyone in ancient Sparta had their own Bowflex. The celluloid is practically dripping with homophobia. It portrays the Greeks as robust, manly, heterosexual warrior-poets with flowing capes, fighting the effeminate Xerxes I and his Persian Army of Mutants. In fact, ancient Greek men by today’s standards, were as fruity as a peach cobbler. They idealized the male form and shunned the form of the female, they frequently got naked and wrestled and it was extremely common for an ancient Greek man to take a young boy as a lover aside from his wife. Really.

Sure, King Leonidas did hold off the Persians in 480 B.C. at the Battle of Thermopylae, but that didn’t stop the Romans from taking over 100 years later, and the Persians on and off in the centuries that followed. This film deserves to be forced to drink hemlock.