If you saw Fuel the Rebellion's review of 300, you know it had us gushing, with its stunning visual intensity and viscerally graphic action scenes. We're hoping 300 sets the trend for more graphic novels moving to the screen with high-quality renditions like this one.
Based on Frank Miller's highly fictionalized account, 300 dramatically re-enacts the Battle of Thermopylae, When 300 Spartan soldiers fought to the last man, strategically defending a narrow mountain pass from Emperor Xerxes and his huge assaulting Persian army. Though ridiculously outnumbered, the small band of highly-trained Spartans used the terrain and their superior fighting skills to devastate the Persians, who suffered so many losses that they had to fall back and regroup, enabling the Greeks time to mount a full-scale naval assault upon the advancing Persian fleet.
Historically, The Spartans then returned full-force to head a pan-Greek army against the Persians, and in the decisive Battle of Plataea, they routed Xerxes and the advance of the Persians completely, ending the Greco-Persian war and the expanson of the Persian Empire into Europe for good.
And in Frank Miller's fictionalized version? Xerxes is about 8 feet tall, golden and godlike, seductively persuasive and utterly corrupt.
Also, the intimidating Imperial body guard "immortals" have scary masks and jump like ninjas.
And don't even get us started on giant claw-handed lobster guy.
And now 300 is out on DVD, HD and Blueray.
We picked up a copy on Blueray yesterday, armed ourselves with popcorn and Sourpatch Kids and screened it on the PS3. In a word? Outrageous. We were giddy as school kids on Christmas morning.
Total ass-kicking action, up-close and personal, complete with incredibly detailed slow-motion decapitations.
You just can't ask for more than that.
DVD Blueray
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
300 video hits the streets
Saturday, March 24, 2007
MOVIE REVIEW: 300
In a word? Awesome.
What? That doesn't have the professionalism you've come to expect from Fuel the Rebellion?
I'l elaborate.
300 is a movie about a legend, told in a graphic novel style. You have to get that first, right off the bat. It's not an historical documentary, it isn't meant to tell the story of a battle. It's meant to tell the legend of a battle.
What's the difference?
Well, take this scene from the beginning of the movie as an example: a young Leonides, a youth who will later become the Spartan king, has to face a man-eating wolf out in the snow. He is all alone, barefoot, and armed with just a spear.
"Well, that's tough, but...I dunno...not really such a big deal, is it?" That's what you're thinking, isn't it? You cynical bastard. You've seen tough guys before. After all, it's only one wolf.
But this is not just any wolf.
No, this is more like the very *essence* of wolf. This is the way a wolf *should* be: Menacing, impossibly huge, with evil slavering jaws and bristling black fur, and eyes that don't just catch the odd flicker of light but really do glow in the darkness, bright as lamps in the vicious, snarling face.
This is the legendary wolf of stories, not that disappointing overgrown dog you once saw sitting passively in a zoo somewhere, lying in the shade of a faux rock background behind a plaque with the word, "wolf" on it.
That one scene prepares you for what this movie has in store for you. This is not just a movie about a people known as the Spartans, who sent a small group of warriors to fight for their freedom against a much larger force of Persians.
No, this is a movie that draws, from somewhere deep inside of all of us, the vision of what bravery, duty and sacrifice and even angry bloodthirsty vengeance should be, and pits it against our darkest, most frightening concepts of soulless evil.
And that's what makes this movie, well, awesome. Because history tells us (for those of us who actually bothered to read any) that the Spartans were tough, and raised to be warriors, and that they were supposed to return from battle either with their shields or lying dead upon them. And that reality should be damned impressive.
But in our minds, when we picture warriors born and bred for nothing other than battle, we picture not just a band of really tough guys, but some truly epic bad asses.
And in this day and age, when we as movie-goers have seen so many bad asses, so many Rambos and Terminators and John McCleans, it takes a lot for us to really be impressed any more.
What we need now is not just larger-than-life. We need the stuff of legends. We need a fighting race of Spartan warriors for whom fighting comes as naturally as breathing. We need men who, in the face of impossible odds, viciously strike down all opponents with an econonmy of motion and a tactical strategy that defies sheer dumb brawn and becomes genius, men whose reflexes are sharper than the bloody, rough-hewn weapons they wield, men who join together to form a seamless, flawless fighting machine.
And then--we need to give them enemies worthy of their skill.
And 300 delivers on all counts.
I'm not telling you any more. I'm not giving away the story, or spoiling the truly stunning graphical images that lift this movie up from the mundane into the spectacular.
You just have to go see it.
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