It has been almost two weeks since John and I first saw 300. I seldom go to the movies because I’m a cheapskate and I have to find a film that I would want to see so bad, I’d pay good money for it. The trailer for 300 I first saw about November last year, and I had to wait 4 months to see it. But it was worth it.
The graphics and fight secenes were great. For that alone, I’d kiss the ground the director walks on. But it was the story, the characters and the dialogue that gave the movie its heart. (And what made me inevitably cry buckloads of tears).
I seriously had a blast watching this movie! Yeah the graphics looked a little bit like a video game, but that’s how they got away with the violent scenes in the film, like building a wall of bloody, mutilated corpses and such. Yeah they falsifiedtook liberties with history, like how it was only Sparta ( a very small city-state) that spit in the face of Persia. Athens and other Greek states actually helped. Athens was in charge of the naval attack (which is Athens’ strength), while Sparta covered the terrain (coz they were more familiar with it). Besides, the Spartan phalanx was legendary at that time, and if you read up on history, Greek city states, numbering at about 700, usually looked to Sparta to lead them during warfare.
I loved how the movie followed what little is known about Sparta and the infamous Battle of Thermopylae:
1. When Spartan men go off to war, their wives say, “Come back with your shield or on it”, the same words uttered by Queen Gorgo in the movie.
2. The 300 were personal soldiers of the king, chosen because they all had sons, who would carry their father’s line, after the suicide mission.
3. Spartans were direct descendants of Hercules and it is this bloodline that they were trying to preserve by raising children only strong enough to be called a Spartan.
Here are some things the movie didn’t include:
1. The Persian messenger did say, “Earth and water” as a message from Xerxes. But the Spartan reply when they threw the party into the well was, “Dig it out for yourselves.”
2. Before King Leonidas left to go to battle, Queen Gorgo asked him,”What do I do?” His reply, “Marry a good man and bear good children.”
All in all, I loved this movie. I hate going to see the same movie again, but this one, I know I’ll still like the second time around. Hell, I still get goosebumps just watching the trailer just now!