300

The basics   

300 is an American film that was made in 2006. 300 was originally a five issue series of comic books which was written in 1998 by Frank miller. The film was directed by Zack Snyder and is about war, glory, honour, betrayal and military tactics.

What is this film about?

In 480 BC the Persians have raised the biggest army the world has ever seen and they are on their way to take over Greece. In rejecting submission the King of Sparta Leonidas visits the Ephors (priests) to obtain their favour before sending the Spartan army in battle. After Ephors consults the oracle he claims that Sparta’s army should not go to war as it would interrupt the sacred Carneian festival. Because of this Leonidas goes for a loop hole and he claims that he is not going to war he is just going for a walk up to the hot gates (where the Persians are) with 300 bodyguards at this side. Bring on the legendary battle of Thermopylae.

My views on it

I remember being sat in the cinema watching this film and I was thinking ‘these battle scenes are awesome’. Now thats was a few good years ago and since then I have gone through college and I have gone through university. I have become more intelligent, my knowledge on cinema has grown dramatically, my views on films has changed a lot and when I watch this film recently I was thinking ‘these battle scenes are awesome’. In the last few years I have changed a lot but my opinion on the fights in this film have not, it’s just the rest of the film I don’t like.

Back when I first watched this film I didn’t care for the Spartan Queen’s side of the story. You know, the side of the story that has her in, with the traitor and the council and all that stuff. All I care about was the action. Nowadays my view on the action is the same but now instead of just not caring about the queen’s side of the story, I am annoyed by it. Because the Queen’s story in this film is nowhere near as visually pleasing as the Kings story, also it is not on the same level of intensity, excitement or interest as the King’s story, it flops. Due to this it make the film feel very unbalanced and this is what really annoys me. It almost feels like the queens story in this film was only there to fill up time and I would say after watching this film once if you wanted to watch it again you could get the same level of entertainment from it by just watching the Kings side of the story and fast-forwarding through the Queen’s side and save yourself a few minutes.

Also before I sat down to write this review I did some research on the film and its context (like I do with all my blogs). Within minutes I had found out more about this battle then I did from the film and I found myself reading up on this battle for a long time and then I started to wonder ‘why isn’t this in the film?’. I know that this film came from a series of comic books so that they could not fit it all in to 117 minutes, but I would have loved to have learnt more about the history of this war in this film.  This is something that this film lacks and instead of getting this we get the boring Queen story line that no one will ever remember this film for.

All in all I would recommend this film. This film has some of the best use of green screen I have ever seen so far, the battle are amazing, you will not even remember the Queen’s side of the story after you have watched it and you will be shouting ‘this is Sparta!’ in no time.

Favourite Quote 

King Leonidas: This is Sparta!

Rating 3/5 (or you could say 300 out of 500. Woo for bad puns)