Ten Years Later, Zack Snyder’s ‘300’ is Uglier Than Ever
- Thread starter Kimura
- Start date
A desperate appeal for ignorance. Begging people not to think about the media they consume is anti-intellectual garbage and a recipe for disaster.
It's a straight adaption of the graphic novel, but sure, obviously it's black and white; no middle ground involved. Enjoy your movie tribalism.
It's a heroic story that stands out in history because of the peculiarity of the Spartans and the impossible odds they fought against. I think it's natural and inevitable that unsavoury types draw parallels between then and now in their worship of the history. For them its easy to connect the dots in a story of "culturally, morally and physically superior westerners holding back hordes of barbaric foreigners intent on destroying their civilization".
But just because fascists and so on admire the story of Leonidas and the 300 for the wrong reasons, doesn't mean the rest of us can't. The film itself was dumb, but stylish and entertaining. I don't think it was really racist
But just because fascists and so on admire the story of Leonidas and the 300 for the wrong reasons, doesn't mean the rest of us can't. The film itself was dumb, but stylish and entertaining. I don't think it was really racist
Wasn't Xerxes also a crazed fascist tyrant in the movie, though? It depicted two utterly ridiculous ancient forces, one a doomed militarist state and one with a God-King.
I never really caught on to the right-wing undertones because I saw it so long ago, so the rest of this article and understanding how modern neonazi groups have adopted the ever living fuck out of it is very interesting.
I never really caught on to the right-wing undertones because I saw it so long ago, so the rest of this article and understanding how modern neonazi groups have adopted the ever living fuck out of it is very interesting.
Instead of this knee jerk response that has zero to do with what I said, try thinking about what I actually wrote. Don't let you're insecurity of being a Snyder fan dictate all your responses. No one is saying its wrong to enjoy his work, just fucking use your brain
Like holy fuck, being meticulously based on a graphic novel doesn't excuse it from being problematic at its core. Being problematic also doesn't mean you can't still enjoy it
It's a modernish 80s style exploitation film. As such I loved it when I first saw it in theaters. What eventually turned me off it was the different reception. For other exploitation films people acknowledge the camp, cheese, and over the top sex and violence. This one, people really latched onto the idea of this film as some kind of role model. In the military many people talk about the historical 300 as motivation and some of these even pointed to this cheese retelling. That's what was off putting to me. The movie/comic paints a very strong dichotomy. There are only courageous warrior fighters who never negotiate or cowardly traitorous rapist negotiators. That's fine as an exploitation film, but when that's your world view.... yeesh.
I feel snyder as a director is separate from this film's message and reception. He made an amazing recreation of the comic. His version of watchmen cant be topped for me. My only beefs with Snyder is his writing and over use of snydervision (fast action slide in and out of slow motion. That does get a bit old pretty quick)
I feel snyder as a director is separate from this film's message and reception. He made an amazing recreation of the comic. His version of watchmen cant be topped for me. My only beefs with Snyder is his writing and over use of snydervision (fast action slide in and out of slow motion. That does get a bit old pretty quick)
Some of the posts in this thread read like people who are completely unaware that criticism of fiction through a political lense is a thing. A very very old thing.
How are some of you so shocked and appalled that someone would DARE analyze the themes of a movie and how they relate with the real world?
How are some of you so shocked and appalled that someone would DARE analyze the themes of a movie and how they relate with the real world?
Last edited:
That fiction is open to more than one interpretation?
Thanks for the insightful comment.
Troll.
Ohhh come on.. you can twist everythign to fit your propaganda or you view - 300 is a movie based of a comic book that is very loosely based on a historical event.. people were defending their live, families, homes, countries for centuries because of they fear of the unknow, foreign invaders and because in their eyes they were the better people, the better part of the world population - if you make a movie about any of these events, your movie can probably in every instance be called by someone as racims or far-right propaganda, even more so when it's about European countries defending themselves against Arab or Mongol invasions
I don't know if the true purpose of the comic was what people are now complaining about, but I never get the feeling atleast from the movie that it was racist or something, it was just a story how people were defending their lives and homes.. that's it
I don't know if the true purpose of the comic was what people are now complaining about, but I never get the feeling atleast from the movie that it was racist or something, it was just a story how people were defending their lives and homes.. that's it
It's wild to me how often this still comes up. I keep thinking that maybe over the past six or so years video game forum posters would have grown up a bit in this respect (even if that just means not caring about thinkpieces) but I still see so many people jumping straight into deep defensiveness.
More like a desperate appeal for rationality and wisdom.
There's a huge difference between dissecting 300 for political themes and something like, say, Atlas Shrugged. Go after the stuff that actually has an overt agenda, not this desperate connect the dots nonsense.
Eh, the Persians in the film are portrayed as ACTUAL perverse monstrosoties. I think to say that it's reaching to call it racist is pretty laughable.
Your inability or unwillingness to examine a work's themes and underlying message doesn't mean they don't exist. An author not intending certain massages in their work also does not shield their work from unintended messages.
Trying to stir up shit by painting a picture that anyone who enjoys this film or any of his works treats it as some sort of misunderstood work of fiction. Read your own post for Christ's sake. Nobody mentioned Snyder fans before you did.
This as got to be one of the stupidest articles I've ever read.
There's a lot to be said about Miller's political views, but the idea that a comicbook that celebrates Sparta's defense against the Persian invasion being a white supremacist piece is kind of ludicrous.
History has context. The Middle-East wasn't always the underdog. The Persian invasion featured a massive empire which employed genocidal methods with colonialist goals vs a proto-european country. Not everything is about American politics.
There's a lot to be said about Miller's political views, but the idea that a comicbook that celebrates Sparta's defense against the Persian invasion being a white supremacist piece is kind of ludicrous.
History has context. The Middle-East wasn't always the underdog. The Persian invasion featured a massive empire which employed genocidal methods with colonialist goals vs a proto-european country. Not everything is about American politics.
I brought up Snyder fans because they're the ones arguing this is "just a movie" while being known to claim there is deep subtext in his other work. Your reading comprehension really sucks.
There's nothing wrong with analyzing it through a political lens. It just happens that I disagree with the conclusions of this analysis.
Some of the stuff in this article is just so eye-roll inducing:
There's accusations of sexism, ableism, fascism, homophobia, xenophobia, toxic masculinity and so on in this article and all seems rather that the author really has an itchy trigger finger for these accusations yet they're really clutching for examples. "Leonidas wouldn't let Ephialtes fight in the Phalanx because he couldn't raise his shield to protect his comrades, what a morally irresponsible, hate filled movie!"
People are free to analyze a movie in this way but they're not owed anything, I'm not obligated to agree with them or think they did a good job or that the article was interesting.
I liked it back when it first came out, but it just kinda got old after a while. Thinking back, I can definitely see the political messages of the movie and heavily disagree with them. There's also the fact that it's based on a comic book by Frank Miller, who's kinda a nutjob.
None of this is Snyder's fault though. I feel bad that people may attribute this to him. The only thing he did was try to recreate the comic as accurately as possible.
None of this is Snyder's fault though. I feel bad that people may attribute this to him. The only thing he did was try to recreate the comic as accurately as possible.
Very true. Also, the same director can have different aims for different movies.
There is a degree of hyperbole in this analysis that invites derision. "most morally irresponsible", "assault on decency", "most divisive film imaginable". This is ascribing a tremendous amount of cultural power to a movie that no one took seriously, because it was a dumb film about muscle men fighting in their underwear.
I don't disagree that the negative themes exist in the movie, and I could accept an argument that in aggregate, seeing such themes repeated across many movies could have a societal effect. But it is hard to swallow if we are discussing this specific movie in isolation.
The criticisms about hyperbole are apt, but I don't think you need to talk about its impact on film as a whole in order to criticize the film for being co-opted by the alt-right and white nationalists, even if what led to that co-opting was unintentional by the filmmakers.
I agree though that the article itself left a lot to be desired.
How do you even know everyone who thinks like that are fans? Maybe they think it's just a movie AND it's bad. I know. Outrageous.
So kindly piss off with your trolling.
The movie was criticized at the time of release for its portrayal of the Persians. This line of critique is nothing new. What you describe as hyperbole to me reads like the natural evolution in the discussion of a film that was considered problematic when it came out.
I mean come on people, there's an entire section of the film's Wikipedia article dedicated to the controversy it stoked at the time of release. Why are some of you acting like this is new?
Last edited:
300 is a fun movie. Looking back at it, it's probably not the best depiction of Persians, even though that villian design was really cool. But it's a heavily stylized movie so it didn't really seem that offensive.
Something like American Sniper seems more like alt-right trash, than 300.
Something like American Sniper seems more like alt-right trash, than 300.
That's not entirely accurate. The Persian Greek states that rebelled did so because one of the Persian appointed Greek rulers (with help from a few others) fucked up in his attempts to conquer another state. Realising his ass was going to get kicked in for how disastrous the whole thing ended up being, he decides to revolt against the Persians. The Persians go to put down the revolt and the Athenians (and others) decide to support the rebellion. The revolt (Ionian Revolt) in Asia Minor had dick all to do with Greek city states wanting independence from Persia because Persia conquered them.
Darius himself might be a dick and all. But his grievances towards Athens for providing troops and material support to help Aristagoras in burning down cities such as Sardis and in his revolt in general, are legitimate grievances to hold. Darius' assessment that the Persian empire's Anatolian holdings were never safe due to interference from Athens and other Greek states is not an incorrect assessment.
The whole thing is a lot messier then one side truly being the bad guys and the other side being the good guys.
No there is not. One cannot just go "please criticize this, but not this". It all has content, themes and messages. Good movies, bad movies, high budget, low budget, movies, books, videogames, etc. it all has things to say, and we should look into if the things they say are worth it.
Snyder fans tend to lean more right from what I've personally seen. Wouldn't know if it is widespread tho. In this case we do know where the book's author stands. I don't think all of it is intended in the director's case, maybe it's a combination of style, tone, dialogue and general themes in his work, but I've seen this analysis before. A classmate of mine brought it up in college and I think he made very similar points. Damn, that was like a decade ago. It's certainly not the first time I've heard this line of thought for sure.
Yep.
Yep.
I don't see anything in this article that wasn't brought up in 2007.
I can only go by what people say, not what they're not saying. You're not very good at this.
I dunno if I can agree with that. As much as the burning of Sardis was unnecessary, the Ionian revolt itself was totally understandable. Cyrus invaded a lot of kingdoms, including the Lydian kingdom that Sardis was capital of, to found his Persian Empire and the Ionians didn't like it so they fought back.
I mean we're not talking about Persian-Greek states, we're talking about Greek states invaded and occupied by Persia for about fifty years. Regaining their independence was exactly what the Ionians fought for and what Athens helped them take back.
Whether Cyrus was a good emperor or had good intentions doesn't really matter. Darius killed the guy's son and took control of the Empire under the pretense of saving it from some stupid plot from a wizard. Then he spent most of his time as emperor shutting down rebellions from kingdoms that didn't want to be ruled by the Persians. He seemed quite good at that until it was the Ionian's turn to rebel and they got help from Athens.
Empires have always been shitty. The Persian Empire was just stupid enough to piss off the Greeks, who banded together long enough to defeat them before Athens tried to found its own empire and that went to shit too.
I enjoy the movie, but recognize that its depiction of Persians is far from objective. I would also argue that viewers would/should recognize that Sparta is not portrayed as an ideal place. Casting sick babies off a cliff to keep the warriors strong, for example, is obviously not something that the audience is likely to support. Having children fight to the point of risking death regularly is not something the audience would think is a great thing.
incredible movie. One of my all-time favorites. It was unlike anything I'd had ever seen. Zack Snyder is a master.
FYI, Zack Snyder is a huge fan of Ayn Rand and has been trying to make a film adaptation of The Fountainhead for years.
The Ionian Revolt didn't start as a revolt based on trying to free Western Anatolia from the Persians. It began because one guy (Aristagoras) wanted to conquer another city, failed to get support (in the Wiki page he attempts to conquer it and fails), and then realising what he did would bring Darius' wrath on his head, initiated a revolt. You're right in that there was considerable Greek dissatisfaction with their Persian overlords. But the Ionian Revolt itself wasn't kicked off because a dissatisfied ruler wanted to liberate the Greeks.
https://ehistory.osu.edu/articles/ionian-revolt
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionian_Revolt
Yes, and it's getting tiring.
Did someone make a checklist for games/movies to respect as to not offend anyone?