Ten Years Later, Zack Snyder’s ‘300’ is Uglier Than Ever
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Not a fan of the movie, but it did give us this ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Oh yea, those sexy 300 bods will be timeless. Girls love 'em and dudes wanna have 'em.
I always assumed that it was framed as propaganda as the entire story was a riveting retelling used to inspire a nation to go to war.
As in, the monsters never existed, the numbers were greatly exaggerated, the heroics "enhanced" and the entire thing just became a piece of legend like all actual war stories end up being.
The same stuff happens even in our own times, just look at the Lone Survivor/Marcus Luttrell
Compare the initial after action reports to the book, to the repeated stories through the years up until the movie.
"In Luttrell's original after-action report, he said he was attacked by 20-35 enemy soldiers. For the Medal of Honor documentation, the number climbs to 35-40. In the book, and the above interview, the number goes all the way up to "eighty to a hundred". Finally, in this speech, Marcus Luttrell describes getting attacked by 40-50 enemy soldiers above, and 50-60 soldiers on both sides of his position. This puts the number of enemy attackers between 140-170. In Wikipedia and the book SEALs: America's Elite Fighting Force, the number of enemy fighters jumps to 200."
But I guess I'm rambling, but then again the author is dead so I don't really care what the intentions of the original author were.
As in, the monsters never existed, the numbers were greatly exaggerated, the heroics "enhanced" and the entire thing just became a piece of legend like all actual war stories end up being.
The same stuff happens even in our own times, just look at the Lone Survivor/Marcus Luttrell
Compare the initial after action reports to the book, to the repeated stories through the years up until the movie.
"In Luttrell's original after-action report, he said he was attacked by 20-35 enemy soldiers. For the Medal of Honor documentation, the number climbs to 35-40. In the book, and the above interview, the number goes all the way up to "eighty to a hundred". Finally, in this speech, Marcus Luttrell describes getting attacked by 40-50 enemy soldiers above, and 50-60 soldiers on both sides of his position. This puts the number of enemy attackers between 140-170. In Wikipedia and the book SEALs: America's Elite Fighting Force, the number of enemy fighters jumps to 200."
But I guess I'm rambling, but then again the author is dead so I don't really care what the intentions of the original author were.
Yes. Here's a quote on his thoughts about the Spartans:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2...erxes-cursed-sin-city-the-dark-knight-returns
People who don't think 300, or Miller's work in general, is infused with politics don't really know anything about Frank Miller. Now whether or not his intent matches what people see, and whether other views subconciously affect his work, is another matter entirely.
I mean, he's written outright anti-Muslim propagana before, though he says he's different now. His mentor aparently gave him one hell of a wakeup call.
He has a Xerxes book he's working on. I'm interested in seeing how that turns out.
Well put.
I actually just watched the movie a couple weeks ago for the first time in a long time. I still think it's a fun film for what it is. Film grain is certainly overdone though.
A rebellion or revolution is more than the person that started it. Aristagoras may have started it to save his own hide but everyone rallied to it for their freedom.
Looking at things in depth and putting context to it's creation and themes isn't "outrage"
It's kinda what academics do.
I don't know I still feel like this properties greatest sin is inspiring a Friedberg and Seltzer movie.
This is literally the very first time I've ever thought about this movie in this way. Maybe not every piece of media needs to be overlyanalyzed all the time. Especially when a movie from another time is being judged by the standards of another time.
He's always had most of his female characters be prostitutes (Sin City, for example).
After 9/11 he kind of lost his shit for a while. Holy Terror is a pretty xeneophobic work which was meant to be a Batman story, but DC wanted no part of it, so he published it independently with a Batman analogue.
I wouldn't really call the article in the OP academic. It's much too hyperbolic for that.
Haven't seen it since I was 18 or so, but yeah, the action was intense and the style was very unique for the time.
Lots of 80s movies glorify police brutality, but I still go back and enjoy those movies for their over-the-top action (Cobra being one of my favorites). I imagine I'd watch 300 with the same mindset if I were to see it again.
Ok I can agree to that. Essentially he kicked off the right thing for the wrong reasons.
Franco avy a classic but if u ever switch again it's gotta be the Eva one.
Snyder being a "huge fan of Ayn Rand" is one of the weirder narratives I've seen people trying to fabricate. I think it's a case of someone twisting the truth and others uncritically repeating it so often. Because you go back and it's mostly Snyder dunking on Rand's ideas.
Honestly, MOST action movies have questionable underlying messages about the role of violence in society. Most of those messages are unintentional (though that's less evident for someone like Frank Miller...) and they shouldn't automatically bar people from enjoying those films.
At the same time, pretending like no one should ever point out the problem with intentionally or unintentionally advocating violence as a universal means of solving conflict is asinine. I'm not saying that's what you're doing but there has been an awful lot of that in this thread.
I only remember one black guy from the movie/comics--the emissary. Are there more?
I still want to read this...
I own 300 on DVD, but it hasn't held up for me. It was a neat theatre experience when I first saw it, though. Regarding the political implications, I never really considered them until I watched it on DVD, and yeah, I see how it's problematic in its depiction of Persians and the evil middle eastern outsider, as well as the macho homophobic western male hero.
I own 300 on DVD, but it hasn't held up for me. It was a neat theatre experience when I first saw it, though. Regarding the political implications, I never really considered them until I watched it on DVD, and yeah, I see how it's problematic in its depiction of Persians and the evil middle eastern outsider, as well as the macho homophobic western male hero.
Yeah, I hear you. I do tend to look more closely at movies I see that have come out in the last year or so, but when you stretch more than 10 years back it just seems like nothing more than an exercise in film critique or film history, which is fine if that's all the article is. Or if it ties into Snyder's newer movies and looks at whether he's either moved away from problematic themes or has failed to mature as a filmmaker, there could be some value there.
As a side note, I watched Predator in its entirety for the first time recently, and thought their treatment of the rebels was so blatantly inhumane that I hesitate to call it propaganda. Like Cobra, that's probably par for the course in the 80s, but I guess when you throw some international politics into the movie I take a bit more notice.
It was a garbage movie with a racist undertone back then and it's a garbage movie with a racist undertone now.
It was criticized for everything stated in the article when it came out.
How old are some of you?
Wow, I never picked up on any political undertones to it. Guess that's what I get for just watching movies and suspending my disbelief and taking things at face value. I'm still not sure, even after reading the articles, how so much is read into it.
Good thing Snyder didn't make Braveheart, huh?
Good thing Snyder didn't make Braveheart, huh?
I was 20 at the time. I dont think I was paying nearly as much attention to this sort of shit until Trump became a candidate in 2015.
Is 300 a vile racist diatribe...or harmless fun?
A movie only a Spartan can love.
Frank Miller and 300's Assault on the Gay Past
Persian Shrug In this article the author even theorizes that neo-Nazis would love the movie.
All articles from 2007.
It's perfectly fine if you disagree with the points made in the OP's article, but this revisionist history with its reception is embarrassing. Please stop acting like these criticisms are fresh. The movie has ALWAYS been mired in controversy. The fact that you thought the action scenes were cool doesn't change that. 300 didn't come out in a time of different standards. It was controversial in 2007.
A movie only a Spartan can love.
Frank Miller and 300's Assault on the Gay Past
Persian Shrug In this article the author even theorizes that neo-Nazis would love the movie.
All articles from 2007.
It's perfectly fine if you disagree with the points made in the OP's article, but this revisionist history with its reception is embarrassing. Please stop acting like these criticisms are fresh. The movie has ALWAYS been mired in controversy. The fact that you thought the action scenes were cool doesn't change that. 300 didn't come out in a time of different standards. It was controversial in 2007.
We were the same age then. Most reviews mentioned at least one of the controversial aspects of the film, whether it was the overall portrayal of the Persians and if it promoted further Islamaphobia, and homophobic themes. Bush era 101 stuff. Hell I remember talking about it on GameFAQs of all places.
Yeah I looked at it the same way -- the Greek storyteller was making everything huge and grandiose in his retelling.
Yes, academics spend their time dissecting mindless movies like 300 in depth...ten years later, right on, preach it brother.
The Blind Side got shit for being inadvertently racist and that only came out three years after 300.
So yes, it merits discussion and analysis.
Exactly. Sparta was mainly known for its military techniques which are still used in modern combat, to a degree. I can understand why people are annoyed, but it doesn't make sense to really try and take this much from the film.
Doesn't help that the author of the original comic the movie was based on, Frank Millar made a Islamophobic comic called Holy Terror. A book that he's never explicitly apologized for.
Oh you mean the "deep" character plot of:
- fucks a politician in an attempt to gain political favor
- kills said politician after being slut shamed
- everyone else sees a Xerxes coin and decides to listen to her, meaning her actual speech was of no value
Wow that's TOTALLY not diminishing her to just a sex object......
I never get the people who turn around and (rightly) point out that people are misapplying historical societies onto modern worldviews and then do the same.Right-wing Greeks celebrating Sparta as Greece ignore how fractured ancient Greece actually was and how there was no "Greece" as we understand today. People who single out the Spartans as fascists are applying a label that didn't spring into being until thousands of years later and trying to apply it so they can demonize their opponents rather than using their opponents totally reprehensible and current actions.
The Blind Side is a true story about a black man who had a shitty family and thanks to a loving rich white family he got the support he needed to get into college football and later the NFL. I'm all for sticking it to Trumpsters but how is this film racist?
The "it's a fun movie, it's a work of fiction, trying to look at it critically is outrage and stupid" responses here are just baffling.
Like I imagine that no one would bat an eye at critically analyzing the Rambo sequels and their message their stories present and their reflection of American ideals of the time, despite those movies being over-the-top action flicks
Fiction doesn't exist in a vacuum, and fiction and reality arent distinct distant entities. Reality informs fiction, and fiction can influence reality. The fact that Neo-Nazis and alt-right place the movie and its historical inspiration on a pedestal is the ultimate counter to the notion that it's stupid to critically analyze a movie like this.
Because they're definitely not championing the story and ideas of a movie like Agora
Like I imagine that no one would bat an eye at critically analyzing the Rambo sequels and their message their stories present and their reflection of American ideals of the time, despite those movies being over-the-top action flicks
Fiction doesn't exist in a vacuum, and fiction and reality arent distinct distant entities. Reality informs fiction, and fiction can influence reality. The fact that Neo-Nazis and alt-right place the movie and its historical inspiration on a pedestal is the ultimate counter to the notion that it's stupid to critically analyze a movie like this.
Because they're definitely not championing the story and ideas of a movie like Agora
I don't remember the story of 300 like at all, but wouldn't a story based on Persia back in the day based on stories back in the day? Maybe it's misogynistic because it was like that at the time. Or maybe the author is really mysogynistic and that's why he liked those stories ?
I'm really confused by the attitude that this is some newfangled nonsense to examine its politics, and not that these exact criticisms were brought up at the time the movie was coming out, or when the comic came out, or the lionization of Thermopylae as the Western Man standing against the Degenerate Foreign Horde is decades if not centuries old, or that the author of 300 is an intensely political writer who constantly puts overt real world politics into his stories even as long tangential sequences that have very little to do with the main plot.
This is exactly how I interpreted it. The lone Spartan was exaggerating the story for the Athenians.
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"300" is a great action film, with amazing style, and I'd argue it's the most important / influencial straight-on action film in cinema history since "The Matrix".
That all being said, it's always been extremely problematic. Most of this is due to source material, though Snyder did himself no major favors sticking s o close to the source in this regard.
I think it's perfectly OK for a problematic film to still be enjoyable to watch as well as important. It's just important to be aware of the insensitivities and problems at hand, regardless of how hyperbolic the article is in this regard.
That all being said, it's always been extremely problematic. Most of this is due to source material, though Snyder did himself no major favors sticking s o close to the source in this regard.
I think it's perfectly OK for a problematic film to still be enjoyable to watch as well as important. It's just important to be aware of the insensitivities and problems at hand, regardless of how hyperbolic the article is in this regard.
I'm not at all on board with this 300 backlash. I love the copious abs and super stylized action.
I'm aware of the problematic messaging but it doesn't affect my enjoyment of a fucking cool action movie in the least.
I'm aware of the problematic messaging but it doesn't affect my enjoyment of a fucking cool action movie in the least.