300: Steelbook Blu-ray (Warner Bros./Legendary/Virtual, 2007) Warner Home Video
Inspired by graphic novelist, Frank Miller’s highly-stylized
and much celebrated cinematic gumbo reincarnation of the Battle of Thermopylae,
Zack Snyder’s 300 (2007) is a thought-numbing would-be epic of
impeccable carnage – mostly created through the magic of CGI – but suffering
from an excruciating dearth of character development. 300 unfurls across
the screen with the winged charge of sinewy muscle-men, gnashing, crashing and
lashing out at one another in artful flex and slo-mo. If watching such
spectacular displays of human anatomy be Ginsued into bloody entrails is your
thing, then 300 has you covered. The scope of human decimation here is
jaw-dropping, if hardly awe-inspiring. Gerard Butler and his disciples of the
loincloth underwent a rigorous crash course in weight-training to bulk up for
their roles. A pity, none of them were
given good roles to match their good parts. But I digress. Appropriately previewed at Austin’s Butt-Numb-A-Thon on December 9, 2006 – for if the fanny not
twitch/no reason to bitch – 300 went on to surpass that enviable integer,
taking in $450 million, making its opening weekend, the 24th-largest
in U.S. box office history. 300 briefly resurrected cinema goers’
interests in the sword and sandal quickie, to have worn out its welcome in the
mid-1960’s. And actually, despite its adherence to Miller’s graphic novel, 300
also owes a great deal to director, Rudolph Maté’s 1962 Cinemascope spectacle, The
300 Spartans, then to have starred its own hunk du jour, Richard Egan.
300’s producer, Gianni Nunnari was in a frenzied race
against director, Michael Mann, who had already entered into an agreement to
produce the similarly-themed Gates of Fire. Nunnari’s ace in the hole
was Miller's graphic novel. So, he wasted no time acquiring the film rights,
bringing on producer, Mark Canton, and Michael B. Gordon to write the screenplay.
Unimpressed by Gordon’s work, Snyder turned it over to Kurt Johnstad for a
complete rewrite. Indeed, Miller’s involvement ensured the movie would
basically evolve into a moving tableau of his graphic novel, with 2-months of
pre-production culling together shields, spears, and swords, recycled from the
film sets of Troy and Alexander (both made and released in 2004).
Special effects guru, Jordu Schell worked out the kinks on an animatronic wolf
and a small horde of animatronic horses; the actors, undergoing extensive stunt-training
alongside seasoned stuntmen. 600 costumes, extensive prosthetics, and dummy corpses
were also created for the production. Budgeted at $60 million, Snyder shot in
sequence and against blue-screens at the now-defunct Icestorm Studios in
Montreal. Post-production fell to Montreal's Meteor Studios and Hybride
Technologies, who basically recreated all of the backdrops digitally, resulting
in more than 1,500 visual effects shots created by Chris Watts and production
designer, Jim Bissell. As only half the movie was shot ‘full-scale’, this
post-production lasted for more than a year, eventually to employ ten SFX
companies.
300 charts the relentless journey of that noble sect of
Grecian warriors – the Spartans – as they prepare for battle against
insurmountable Persian forces. The Spartans are led by valiant King Leonidas
(the spectacularly muscled Gerard Butler, who claims – in one of the behind the
scenes featurettes – to have followed a strict regimen of 4-hr. daily workouts
over a 3-month period just prior to the film’s shoot to achieve his rock-solid
physique). The Spartans march as one indestructible war machine into the fray
against a seemingly insurmountable army of 300,000. Throughout the flimsy
narrative, Leonidas makes repeated inferences about the nobility of ‘free men’
who will always fight to preserve their honor. On the home front, Leonidas is
loved by his Queen, Gorga (Lena Headey), respected by his people, and,
worshipped by his soldiers. Aside: as if to temper the threat of a homoerotic
strain brewing among these dedicated warriors, the movie goes out of its way to
show Leonidas and Gorga making passionate love over and over again. Gay? Not a
chance! However, a strain of consternation persists among Sparta’s Council of Elders
over the question of leadership. A particular note of dissension is brought
forth by Theron (Dominic West) a Janus-faced hypocrite who trades on his
authority for political leverage within the council, and, to sway their
loyalties against its Queen. At the onset, the Spartans wage an all-out war
against the Persian forces with one magnificent victory laden upon the next.
But the tide turns out of favor when Leonidas discourages a humpback cripple,
Ephialtes (Andrew Tiernan) from joining their cause. As retribution, Ephialtes
betrays his King for earthly rewards and the war is lost. However, Leonidas’
sacrifice incites the Greeks to mobilize an army of 30,000 led by 10,000
Spartans.
300 takes an actual event and transforms it into the sort
of blood n’ guts war epic that owes a great deal more to the era of graphic
novels and video games that have long-since wrecked and rewritten, with their
revisionist and navel-gazing views on history itself. The great disappointment here is that, though
its visuals remain faithful to Miller’s graphic novel, their overwhelming
spectacle is marred by a rather passionless hodgepodge of plotting; these stick
figures with no soul, paraded about as decorous martyrs, exceptionally built,
but utterly brainless. The art of war gets distilled into a sort of crass
commercialism, hellbent on showing the bastardized butchery and bludgeoning of
a people, without first pausing to reconsider either the backstory or even the
modus operandi for the conflict. Perhaps, this too illustrates the futility of
war. But it also deprives the viewer of any concrete involvement with these
characters. Instead, the purpose for the movie appears to be, take several
hundred men of the ‘body beautiful’ ilk, give them the implements of war, and
then unleash their mindless thirst for bloodshed on the enemy. Understandably, speaking parts are neither the
point nor the purpose of Miller’s graphic novel. And, as the movie follows
Miller’s cue, dialogue between characters is fairly inconsequential – just a
means to connect-the-dots. This works for the graphic novel. But it remains
problematic for the movie.
In depriving us of any meaningful exchanges, the movie
unravels into a derelict of mottos – rather than motivations. The Spartans
cause is presumably honor-bound, in service to family, and bent on the
preservation of individual freedoms. But their means to achieve these worthy
satisfactions never goes beyond the bone-crushing splendor of an ancient
carnival freak show, with the Spartans to have taken leave of their senses,
though not their Gold’s Gym memberships, suffering a very bad case of penis
envy and roid rage. As Leonidas, Gerard Butler clearly has both the physical
and emotional grasp on his character’s presence; indeed, the one bright spot of
intellect, only intermittently given its opportunity to shine. Yet, he too is
rather crudely deprived of humanity – a rather bloodless façade a la Arnold
Schwarzenegger’s Terminator. Hence, Leonidas’ actions spring from a more primal
instinct, far less articulate than the master warrior and superior general whom
he now misrepresents as a rabid, wounded animal. Larry Fong’s MTV style camerawork
and William Hoy’s editing augment the superficial look of the movie, its battle
sequences remade into plastic and wax figure vignettes, caught in a trap of
stop-motion tableaus, slavishly devoted to Miller’s novel – artfully
achieved, perhaps, but one-dimensional, nonetheless.
300’s 1080p transfer does a fairly impressive job of
replicating the unique look of the movie. The image does not ‘pop’, per say,
but again, neither did it in theaters. The copper-ish, sepia-esque graphic look
of the movie has been perfectly preserved here. It all looks like a glorified
video game, and that was the original aim. So, mission accomplished! 300’s aggressive sound field is an
exercise in sensory overload, given its due in Dolby True HD lossless 5.1 here
with an uncompressed PCM track also included. The two offer indistinguishable differences.
Also included, a Dolby Digital 5.1 mix that
is, noticeably, less impressive by direct comparison. Warner Bros. has included
all of the extras that were a part of its 2-disc DVD edition. These include a commentary track with Snyder,
Fong, and Johnstad that is, frankly, a snore. We also get a featurette
comparing fact to fiction, another on the real warriors, some un-doctored
original ‘test footage’, Frank Miller’s taped ‘guidance’ on the project, a puff
piece made to promote the theatrical release, and almost an hour of internet-based
content culled together in 5-min. segments; plus, deleted scenes and a trailer.
FILM RATING (out of 5 - 5 being the best)
2
VIDEO/AUDIO
4.5
EXTRAS
5+
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