Wed, 21 Mar 2007 00:50:00
Patrick Goldstein (and me) on 300
DON’T tell the critics, but “300” is a new kind of action movie, a clever synthesis of the stylized epic storytelling practiced by Peter Jackson in “Lord of the Rings” and the stop ‘n’ start fast-motion cutting of the Wachowski brothers’ “Matrix” series. Let’s call it Hyper Cinema. “300’s” entire visual environment — its billowy wheat fields, its stormy gray skies, even blood that miraculously evaporates before it hits the ground — is a fabricated universe, created by 1,300 effects shots generated in a computer after the actors have gone home.
It’s a gamer’s view of the world that film critics don’t relate to because they seem to have forgotten the kick they got from reading comics as kids. When I went to see “300” last week, the theater was full of scruffy guys who looked like they spent a lot more hours playing Final Fantasy X11 or God of War II than working out at the gym.
Exactly. Insult to my people and our lack of physical conditioning aside - and it’s the truth, but still, shut up - Patrick Goldstein has this nailed. Not everyone who likes this movie is a gamer, but the die-hards - the fans that are telling everyone they know to go see this film - poke those people and more often than not you’ll find a gamer. Gamers are unique in one respect - we’re used to the world being presented to us as hyper-stylized and animated. Realism in gaming are drawings that move and look a lot like reality but more...more colorful, more stylized, more...game-like. We grew up living with each successive generation of gaming equipment able to draw us further and further into a created world.
A world we often prefer to the one in which we live.
300, to a gamer, is the ultimate expression of the visual art we love. It’s both a comic book and a “next-gen” game. Plus it has heroes and villains and sword-fights and cool capes. And a couple of bare boobs. You’d have to lock the doors to the theater and station rabid wolves outside to keep gamers away from this movie.
Where the fanboys saw an easily identifiable theme — “me and my buddies are gonna band together and kick some butt” — critics spied pandering trash. The Boston Globe’s Wesley Morris called “300” “action porn.” The New York Times’ A.O. Scott said “ ‘300’ is about as violent as ‘ Apocalypto’ and twice as stupid.” And the Washington Post’s Stephen Hunter, dripping with disdain, exclaimed, “Go tell the Spartans that their sacrifice was not in vain; their long day’s fight under the cooling shade of a million falling arrows safeguarded the West and guaranteed, all these years later, the right of idiots to make rotten movies about them.”
Those idiots grossed $129.2 million in just 10 days.
That’s the kind of idiocy with which we should all be cursed.
Ultimately, the critical hatred of 300 stems from two places: a need to politicize everything, and a need to coddle and sympathize with your enemy. I’ll explain.
300 simply refuses to be politicized. It’s at the same time too simple - oppressor versus oppressed - and too complex - the real history of the event doesn’t lend itself to simple allegorical mappings like Americans as one side and anyone else as the Persians - to be twisted to suit some current-day political agenda. They’re twisting themselves into knots to try to paint each character in the film as some or another modern figure. It’s simply not there.
The second place from which this hatred stems is this need that some people have to coddle and “understand” people that want to kill them. It’s never OK that someone is - at least at that moment - a bad person and that the other side is not in the wrong for resisting them. In this case, it’s simple: Xerxes, trying to get revenge for his father and grandfather, decided to burn Athens to the ground. To do so required that he travel through the pass at Thermopylae and through Sparta. Xerxes never traveled with his army through anywhere without conquering it. Leonidas did not want to be conquered. Period. Simple yet complicated, no?
300 refused to show the Persians in any other light than the one by which the Greeks saw them. There was no half-handed attempt to humanize the enemy. In fact it was quite the opposite; 300 shows us what the Spartans felt through visual representation. The Persians look like monsters and marauders because they were coming in a massive wave to try to slaughter the Spartans, and emotionally, that’s how the Spartans saw them.
No apologies. No attempt to understand the enemy. Just a simplified telling of Herodotus’ already-simplified mythical retelling of those fateful three days. A lot of people cannot accept that, it flies in the face of how they believe the world should work.
300 is a big middle finger to critics everywhere who can’t just eat a little popcorn and watch a movie about good guys and bad guys.
Posted by JimK at 12:50 AM on March 21, 2007
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Comments:
#2 Posted by mgnmfrc1 
on 03/21 at 12:12 PM -
Again, because I believe this, I am an uneducated, warmonger who is insensitive to the feelings of a monsterous horde.
Of course you are! Just remember you are not alone. When the time comes to defend our homeland on our turf, I wonder who these pussies will think is going to save their sorry asses?
#3 Posted by artmonkey on 03/21 at 03:03 PM -
As a completely useless side note, (my personal specialty.) I’d like to add that the descriptive term you seemed to be looking for, Jim, is “super-real”.
It’s actually a specific style label used in the world of art and illustration.
It describes the representation of life in a manner that is realistic, yet brighter and more visually striking in it’s representation.
#4 Posted by JimK on 03/21 at 03:42 PM -
I’d like to add that the descriptive term you seemed to be looking for, Jim, is “super-real”.
Yep...that fits precisely what I am trying to say. That;s how us game dorks are used to seeing created worlds, so 300 is, as they say, right in our wheelhouse.
#5 Posted by Christian on 03/21 at 08:13 PM -
When the time comes to defend our homeland on our turf, I wonder who these pussies will think is going to save their sorry asses?
Actually, I’m not to worried about this. I will be up in the mountains leading the resistance with a much younger Jennifer Grey (pre-nose job), and Lea Thompson while these ass munches are put up against the wall and shot.
Unlike these idiots, I remember history. And every single time an oppressor takes over, the “Intellectuals” are the first to be sent for reeducation. (China, Russia, Cuba, Vietnam...need I go on?)
All I have to say is:
WWWWWWWWOOOOOOOOOLLLLLVVVEEEEEERRRRRRIIIIIIIINNEEEEEEESS
#6 Posted by JimK on 03/21 at 08:50 PM -
All I have to say is:
WWWWWWWWOOOOOOOOOLLLLLVVVEEEEEERRRRRRIIIIIIIINNEEEEEEESS
So awesome.
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Part of the problem that these critics have with 300 is that it does not fit with their world view that violence is bad, every single time. They firmly believe in that Dr. Spock/Hippie mindset that if you just sit down and talk to someone, and “understand” them like you were saying, that “reasonable” and “educated” people can come to an understanding. They fail to realize, as Liberals often do, that the world just does not work that way. Their are often people in the world that just don’t give a shit about what you have to say, and can only be dealt with by smacken them upside the head. Diplomacy only works if their is a stick to back up the sweet lies your telling to get this dude to do what you want.
Again, because I believe this, I am an uneducated, warmonger who is insensitive to the feelings of a monsterous horde.