What happened to the doorman?

300 has oodles of champions out there in the de-civilized World, owing much of its popularity to the spread of graphic novels, and copious non-knowledge about history, cultures and other places on the planet. Too harsh? No doubt a Spartan would just casually relieve me of my typing fingers.

Before we alienate the sword-worshiping zealots out there, busy slaying creatures at their consoles, let me vouchsafe that we enjoy a good old blood-splashed, heroic total-massacre situation as much as the next non-warrior, and applaud the super-cool visual razzmatazz conjured here for this 2007 shout-out (make that bellow-top-of-lungs) to manly martial gloriositude. *

More than 1,500 blue-screen visual effects shots used up $60,000,000 to give the cast a gadzooks passel of bad guys and magical critti to chop, lop, spear, slice, hamstring and otherwise thrust at with extreme prejudice. Goggling to behold—if you can blot out reams of the dialogue.

When this urn-breaker beheld it all, with a combo of trepidation (thanks to garishly histrionic previews), dude-borne expectation (big battle scenes), and obligation (lifelong disciple of 1962’s The 300 Spartans and things Thermopylae in general), one thing that struck me, aside from the vivid hacking and the awful vocal-chord sundering, was what felt like an underlay of racism/nationalism in the portrayals of the respective sides.

“This is where we hold them! This is where we fight! This is where they die!”

The Persians (think Iranians), swarming like insects, led by a pierced, studded, rouged, butch S&M giant, were all swarthy, either Arabic or vaguely Eastern-European/Slavic/Oriental, complete with accents, or Black African (think Idi Amin). Granted, Xerxes host did not descend on plucky Greece from Sweden, but the only physical stereotype missing here was bucked teeth.

When sulking won’t suffice

The Spartans, on the other hand, all look molded from Scottish or Nordic-Germanic stock, gym-buffed, often blond, handsome and pretty much looking to kill—in a good cause.  Historical realities as opposed to hysterical rabble rouse—that the real 480 B.C. Spartans would have been hairy, nasty brutes, who preceded their slaughters with ritualistic combing of their long, flowing tresses and some good old-fashioned state-sanctified pederasty—well, that got penciled out of the screenplay.

Verily, I didn’t let PC anguish get in the way of the 117 minutes of muscle-flexing, corpuscle-spewing mayhem, but had to draw the line when the rhino-monster came charging in. What the flock?

Attacking the role of ‘Leonidas’ like he’d never get hired again, Gerard Butler must’ve dislocated some abs, roaring his challenges loud enough they could be heard in Athens.  Also hamming without wry are Lena Headey (priming for Game of Thrones), Dominic West, David Wenham, Vincent Regan, Michael Fassbender and Rodrigo Santoro.

Has anyone seen my lung?

Directed (orchestrated) by Zack Snyder, who co-wrote the script with Kurt Jonstad and Michael B. Jordan, the slickness slew a mighty $457,000,000 around the orb (6th in the States, 8th globally), producing a sequel (the cool 300: Rise Of An Empire), ripoffs, spoofs galore, apoplexy from drama coaches and historians, and angry denunciations from Iran, including official complaints to UNESCO.

XERXES:”But I am a generous god. I can make you rich beyond all measure. I will make you warlord of all Greece. You will carry my battle standard to the heart of Europa. Your Athenian rivals will kneel at your feet if you will but kneel at mine.”    LEONIDAS: “You are generous as you are divine, O king of kings. Such an offer only a madman would refuse. But the, uh, the idea of kneeling, it’s- You see, slaughtering all those men of yours has, uh, well it’s left a nasty cramp in my leg, so kneeling will be hard for me.”

One positive kindle was a renewed appreciation for the undervalued warhorse The 300 Spartans, while a downside was that it scotched a planned version from director Michael Mann, which had the interest of George Clooney and Bruce Willis, childhood adherents to the older epic.  Seek out the classic book on the subject, “The Gates of Fire”, by Steven Pressman—it’s a helluva read.

Rematch with Persia, cheerleaders?  Our ‘statesmen’ tirelessly, desperately sought to bring one about. How many hundreds of times over a good half-century have you been told to drop your Big Gulp because the Iranians were coming? Aren’t lunatic asylums a gas to live in?   This movie-scarred veteran bellows at the ever-hemming hills, lined with Fox News infantry and MAGA cavalry—“Drop out and see some of the world before the end of the end game makes The Road Less Traveled more like The Road, movie.”  

• * Former girlfriend quote: “Is this another movie where everyone gets killed?”
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