Stelios

Bonjovi everyone.

And kick ass he did. Butler's best performance I've seen yet, Leonidas was godlike. The movie itself was nice, but I left the movie theater a little disappointed. Here's some random thoughts about the whole thing.



I liked the beginning of the movie. Things were going rather fast, showing how Spartan warriors are trained and really getting to the real story as fast as possible. However, everything slowed down way too much once we got to Sparta in the timeframe where the movie is situated. Some boring family stuff that really didn't help the story along at all, should've been cut. The Persian emissary scene kicks ass of course, with the legendary 'This is Sparta!' dialogue and all. The shots with the horses, which were also in the trailers, really made my jaw drop when I saw them on the big screen. My jaw doesn't drop very much, let me assure you of that.

The movie as a whole was stunning visually. The fights were so great that every cut to Sparta and the side story felt like a stab through the heart because they slowed the movie down in a very painful way and there were no impressive shots in those scenes. The battle scenes sort of make up for that, forget everything you know about these epic fights because 300 raises the bar a few levels. The camera zooms in, zooms out, slows down, speeds up and does all other sorts of crazy stuff that have never before been done in a movie in such a brilliant way. Visually the most revolutionary movie since Sin City, no doubt about that.



I thought the movie didn't have enough battle scenes. People will call me crazy for it, but it's true. There were way too many scenes in Sparta that could've been replaced by much more interesting scenes about Leonidas and his army of undefeatable ass-kickers. Maybe the Sparta scenes were in the movie because they were in the comic , maybe they were in because of the women in the audience. I don't care, they sucked ass. When you go to see a movie like 300, you don't want scenes with women and councilmen. You want half-naked Spartans beating the shit out of millions of Persians. All the time. For two hours, not for one hour. I hope the movie gets an extended cut on dvd with more battle scenes. Not so much because they would make 300 a better movie, but because every single battle scene in the movie blew me away. And so I want more of that.

If you're not sure whether to go see the film in a movie theater or not: do it. This is probably the first movie worth seeing in a cinema since the second Pirates of the Caribbean, which was more disappointing than 300 was. I think I'll go see it a second time this week myself, if only for the divine battle scenes and the bad ass motherf[Dear Lord!]ing Spartans. Yeah, I think I'll watch 'em fight in the shade and change cultures and dine in Hell again. Because Xerxes sort of looks like a chick, and if you look like a chick you deserve to get your ass kicked by men with beards.