I finally got to see 300 and it was pretty awesome. If you didn’t know, 300 is another comic by Frank Miller, who also happened to be the one who drew Sin City. Anyway, I spoiled the ending of the movie by reading the Wikipedia entry on Leonidas even before the movie came out. Anyway, the movie was excellent and gory, but people’s complaint of the slow motion action was infact true. I think they overdid the dramatic effect a bit too much. The cinematography was amazing once again.
Official Site
IMDb: 7.9/10 (104,008 votes)
Yahoo! Movies: The Critics: B / Yahoo! Users: B+
Rotten Tomatoes: Rating: 61% / Average Rating: 6.2/10
Apple Trailer
Amazon.com DVD
Amazon.com Soundtrack
Amazon.com Comic
MY RATING: 7.5/10
Spoilers: (Show)
According to Wikipedia:
Leonidas took his small personal fighting unit because Spartan religious customs forbade sending an army at that time of year. In addition, he was deliberately going to his doom: an oracle had foretold that Sparta could be saved only by the death of one of its kings, one of the lineage of Heracles. Instead it seems likely that the ephors supported the plan half-heartedly due to the festival of Carneia and their policy of concentrating the Greek forces at the Isthmus of Corinth.
This was somewhat different than what the oracle said in the movie, but who knows what really happened.
The storyline was simple and there were no surprises. You knew the moment that Leonidas rejected the hunchback disfigured man, he was going to end up betraying him. There’s really nothing else to comment about the movie besides the fact it was quite enjoyable.
The same Wikipedia entry did mention Leonidas sending off another soldier for support, but this was completely missing from the story:
Two Spartans survived the conflict. Aristodemus suffered an eye injury and was sent behind the lines, eventually ordered back to Sparta with the retreating allies by the King. Pantites was sent by Leonidas to raise support in Thessaly but returned to Thermopylae only after the battle’s conclusion. Pantites hanged himself in disgrace after being shunned as a “trembler”.
