After 300 debuted last March to unexpectedly impressive box-office numbers, it rekindled the eternal debate over whether critics should reflect popular tastes or maintain their own standards. Naturally, newspaper editors fretted over the apparent disconnect between pundits and their diminishing circulation base. In all likelihood, the people who ignored the opening-weekend reviews of 300 also had better things to do than add fuel to controversy by reading about it.
Hey, it’s a movie ... a movie that looks very much like the graphic novel from which it was adapted and, therefore, different from other movies. The story of the Battle of Thermopylae is timeless and would be exciting and inspirational even if it were performed by the Muppets. You either buy the highly stylized CGI conceits, or you don’t ... next movie.
Just as they did for the 2005 adaptation of Frank Miller’s Sin City, the actors performed in front of green and blue screens and were added to digitally created backgrounds or digitally enhanced scenes of real skies and landscapes. Facts are fudged, and the filmmakers took liberties with Frank Miller’s graphic novel, but 300 not only is more entertaining than Troy and Alexander, but it also is nearly an hour shorter.
A second disc adds interviews with Miller, the filmmakers and historians, as well as making-of featurettes and a couple of deleted scenes. For a more historically accurate take on the same epochal battle, there’s The History Channel Presents Last Stand of the 300: The Legendary Battle at Thermopylae. It expands on the circumstances that led up to and followed the Spartans’ stand against the Persian army, and adds even more analysis by scholars. The re-enactments aren’t quite as much fun, however.
300: Two-Disc Special Edition
***
Rated R
$34.98