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+

Comments