'Crap Part 2: Recycled Crap' Part III

Admittedly I had expectations going into this movie, and not just because they were crammed down my throat by advertisement and hype. I thought 'wow, the story of Thermopylae brought to film, and shot in the stunning style of Sin City', which I actually thought was a very good movie. Little did I realize that the success of that movie was yet another tool to make money for 300. OK. Nevermind the hackneyed music. Now we progress into the actual movie. Starts not too bad. Shows how rigourous and merciless the Spartan training and culture was. Aside from the really crappy looking CG wolf, a passable 'coming of age' scene for Leonidas. From what I can recall, the movie is fine until the actual battle at the Hot Gates. While this battle begins in good fashion, with the Spartans adhering to the tactics discussed earlier in the movie that gave them so much success (i.e. the shield wall), it is after this point that the movie abandons in one fell swoop anything resembling consistency, originality, plausibility, and intelligence. It's as if, having proven that he acknowledged the Spartans tactics in battle, the director can then proceed to shoot battle scenes that are all style and no substance (or logic or taste or anything good). After the shield wall of the Spartans defeats the first wave of invading Persians, the Spartans proceed to all disperse and fight individually, exposing their flanks and rear to the enemy. But wait! Now they have more room to manoever, thereby freeing them to do real over the top moves, while the camera footage can slow down and then speed up, thus simultaneously ruining the realism of the scene and making me want to puke! This brings me to yet another tangent. Why can't directors nowadays just SHOOT THE FUCKING ACTION!!? Why do they feel this overwhelming desire to either a) apply some cheesy effects to the scene (i.e. speed up/slow down) or b) shake the camera around, 'cleverly' simulating for the audience what it would be like in the real fight, but consequently eliminating any chance they have to SEE WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING!!? Grrrr......
If you want to see action scenes shot with real skill and effect, watch Conan the Barbarian, possibly the most underrated action film of all time.
The rest of 300 pretty much sucks, with some scenes that are gratuitous and ridiculous (I vaguely recall some Persian, possibly the executioner? who has two what look to be power saws instead of arms...) and a laughably horrible scene in which the son of one of the Spartan warriors is slain. This brings me to my next gripe about movies these days: what I'll call the Plausability Factor. OK. So the movie thus far has shown what astounding warriors the Spartans are, and how they are keenly aware in battle and have amazing self-preservation instincts. Now, in this 'dramatic' scene, some lone Persian horseman comes galloping up through some mysterious fog that appears out of nowhere, and stabs the Spartan dudes son in the back (or whatever, I can't exactly remember how he died, I was too busy groaning in pain), with the whole Spartan army watching. The rider then proceeds to gallop off, to God knows where, unhindered. Um....are we actually supposed to believe that this guy could manage to do this unnoticed by the entire force of Spartans? I'm sorry, I'm actually at a loss for words here...if you've seen the movie, tell me this scene isn't flat out ridiculous. So it makes me think, obviously this death of the Spartan guys son is important enough to justify a huge stretch of logic to bring it about. Uh...really? Why couldn't they have just killed the fucking guy off in the battle earlier? (something made more probable by the fact that he was gallavanting around doing somersaults for the camera in Slo-Mo)
As for the guy with power saws for arms...I mean, CMON!!! Like really, is this necessary? Does it contribute anything positive to the movie?
The bottom line is, the people who made this film just don't think about things like this, because, for some unknown reason, they aren't held accountable for not doing so. I swear, if directors simply hired someone full time to watch their movie while they're making it to point out things like: 'Um, I'm sorry (insert directors name) but if that person fell from that height and grabbed onto that ledge there, their arms would be ripped off', or, 'Yeah, I'm pretty sure that they didn't have the technology of power saws circa 300 BC', then even lousy movies would be much improved, in some cases even watchable. A good example of this is the movie Van Helsing. While this movie has many, many problems, (for one thing the actor playing Dracula - I have nothing against him, it's not his fault - has all the charisma of a turd that someone forgot to flush) it could have been made into a REASONABLE movie, instead of the gigantic mess that it is. Take out the stupid autocrossbow (which I'm pretty sure the crafting of which would be implausible even for modern engineers with modern tools) and the gatling gun and such, and consider things like the fact that vampires can't travel around in daytime (duh) and what you're left with is a movie that sucks only because of bad acting and a bad story line. Still a big improvement from what was put on celluloid.
Anyways, enough for now....