Geek mythology

I went to see 300 this afternoon, and I have to say I pretty much got what I expected to get; lots of action, and some very cool visuals. It would have been nice to get a little more than I bargained for (decent script, good acting) but then, I suppose, that wasn't really what I was looking for.

The story's (loosely, very loosely) based on the legendary last stand by King Leonidas and his army of 300 Spartans against the Persian Army in the 5th century. Gerard Butler is suitably imposing as Leonidas; despite wearing eyeliner, he still looks like he could take on an entire army. Even his pointy beard looks like it could be used as a weapon. And as for his army - holy crap, they've got more 6-packs than a liquor store. I felt like doing 2000 sit-ups as soon as I got home. Well no, not really.

The battle scenes were well done though. They made the warfare in Gladiator and Braveheart look like pillow-fights. The footage repeatedly slowed down to a crawl so that you could see every hack, chop, slice and dice. After a while the violence became almost Monty Pythonesque with the amount of severed limbs and heads flying through the air in slow-mo. Each battle tried to top the previous one; first they fight an army with a hulking axe-wielding bald giant, then one with an armored rhinocerous, then one with giant elephants. Almost like a video game with each level getting more and more difficult.

The film has a great visual style too with washes of sepia tones and slashes of red and gold. The movie is based on a graphic novel by Frank Miller, author/artist of Sin City, Like that movie interpretation, much of the action was shot on blue and green screen, with the locales and effects digitally composited later. In fact, post production took nearly a year to complete.

Though based on Miller's graphic novel, I also thought the movie owed much of it's visual style to the paintings of Caravaggio. There's definitely a similarity to the use of light, shadow and color.

Or maybe I'm just reading WAY too much into this.



'Judith Beheading Holofernes' - Caravaggio 1598-1599