gruesome? whatever. American critics are such whiney bitches when it comes to violence. "Oh waa Sin City hurts my eyes even though the blood in this scene has been made white!" Please.
It was very stylistic and a very good watch, though I haven't watched it critically. Very enjoyable (since i'm a history buff regardless of whether its actually accurate or not). Highly recommended.
Stylistically it looked brilliant. But that didn't make up for the stark lack of script structure or good acting. It just wasn't fun. Can't say I could recommend it to anyone, other than Frank Miller fanatics or those incredibly interested in seeing an inaccurate recreation of the Battle of Thermopylae on screen.
From a red-blooded man testosterone perspective it was pretty good. Very violent and bloody. Lots of manliness going on.
From a more critical perspective, it really lacked character development and the build up of a plot. Stylistically it was ok, nothing amazing about the visual effects.
Well in conclusion, it thought it was great entertainment and cinema-worthy. By cinema-worthy I mean it is worth seeing in a cinema environment, primarily because of all the action that takes place.
Saw it earlier today and this is exactly why I love it. Of course another story could come along and adapt such techniques to a much better script, but for me the mere beauty of the images was more than enough to captivate my imagination and that's all I need for an enjoyable movie experience.
I went into this fairly sceptical, truth be told, but found it fairly enjoyable. I could point out a huge amount of things about it which were just outright weird (the live action version of the Team America sex scene, the fucking goat playing the lute, Xerxes being 9' tall), but it didn't really matter to me for I just really enjoyed it as it was.
Perhaps I was just in an easily pleased mood today, I'm not sure.
no seriously, this movie was a Piece of Shit. yeah, it looekd good. but the dialogue and plot were shambles. and thats what made it hella annoying. The good line about the arrows blotting out the sun was actually borrowed from history. The rest was crap.
I'm so mixed about this movie. I don't really have a sure opinion on it. It was visually stunning, and I liked their "slowing down and speeding up" footage of the action. I think it really did the action scenes a lot of justice. It wasn't a typical sprawl of blood and death. By using this technique you could actually see some strategy. I really loved that. It was honestly its biggest strong point.
I thought the sex scene with the King & Queen was ridiculous. Just snippets of her going "OH!" about ten times like we didn't get the picture after the fifth "uh" noise. I thought it was seriously unnecessary and became a "here's one for the boys" scene.
The narrating got a bit tiresome for me. It was okay, but at times, I was like "shut up, we don't need you to tell me what I can already see". I realise that there was a character narrating the whole way through, but there were other ways you could have done this. "The wolf circles" was said after we had been watching the wolf circling for the last 5 minutes :/ This really affected me, as it somehow kept reminding me I was watching a movie, rather than letting me get engrossed with it.
Other than that, I liked it as eye candy and an awesome way to depict war.
I find it interesting, as I was reading reviews AFTER I watched the movie, that some critics are just so confused about this movie. They keep mentioning its historically inaccurate which wrecks their credibility as a critic. I also found reviews that compared this movie to the Bush Administration with their handling of the Iraq war. Oh I can see comparisons, but this was a comic created several years ago...
So I can't really find anyone who can articulate what I felt after watching this movie. I can't say it's one of my favourites to go and change my BoS avatar. But I did love it as eye candy. Perhaps much in the same way as (on the otherside of the masculinity scale) Marie Antoinette by Coppola, which had awesome eye candy, but really lacked substance and effective story-telling.
Oh and as for the homoeroticism that someone mentioned - that it might not have enough? Haha, there was quite a bit, if you're not naive, on both the Persian and the Spartan side.
Oh and as for the homoeroticism that someone mentioned - that it might not have enough? Haha, there was quite a bit, if you're not naive, on both the Persian and the Spartan side.