Showing posts with label 300. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 300. Show all posts

Thursday, July 23, 2009

Warner Considers "300" Sequel: Is There Glory to Be Found After Thermopylae?

In 480 BC, 300 Spartans with the aid of some 400 Thebens and 700 or so hoplites from Thespiae stood at the pass of Thermopylae in the hopes of delaying the massive Persian army of Emperor Xerxes. The force failed to provide any significant delay to the march of the Persian army and not long after the defeat of the Spartans the Persian army captured Athens -- the battle at Thermopylae had provided sufficient time for the Athenians to flee their city to bide their time for a better time and place to face Xerxes' army. But the death of the 300 did fuel the fires that enabled the Greeks to defeat Xerxes' army. In dying, the 300 had proven that Spartans were willing to die in defense of Greece and provided a wonderful morale boosting tale for later battles. The death of the 300 made it so that Xerxes would have to face a unified Greece and not individual city states that could be defeated one by one.

In 2007, Warner Brothers and Legendary Pictures released a summer blockbuster film based on a Frank Miller graphic novel adaptation of the sacrifice of the 300 at Thermopylae. The film was a huge financial success and stirred up some political controversy as well.

Now it appears that Warner and Legendary are inching toward putting together a sequel to the successful epic.

But what would such a sequel look like? What story would one adapt as a sequel to 300? Hollywood loves to build on the success of a winner, all businesses do, but what story could serve as a worthy successor to one of the most inspirational battles in recorded history?

One might think that the ultimate defeat of Xerxes' navy and army at the battles of Salamis and Plataea would be a good place to start. I wouldn't agree. Primarily because the narrative framing device of 300 is that of a warrior telling the tale of the sacrifice of the 300 to a mass of troops gathered at Plataea just before they charge against the Persian army. In a way, 300 is already the story of Plataea. So that's not really a good place to start.

How about a representation of the Peloponnesian War where the Spartans "came to the defense" of Boeotia and Corinth? Given that one would have to portray Sparta's subjection of the Messenian Helots and the fact that Sparta, after defeating Athens and preventing Athens from becoming "imperial", is itself defeated by Epiminondas of Boeotia when Sparta attempts to become "imperial" in its own right. The Boeotian's of Thebes are the people who most easily translate into the champions of freedom during the Peloponnesian War. In what may be a legacy of the Peloponnesian war, or at least the Boeotian War that immediately followed it, it is often argued that the 400 Thebans who fought at Thermopylae were hostages taken by Leonidas.

Unless you're willing to paint the heroes of the previous films as the anti-heroes (or even villains) of the second film, it's better to avoid using the Peloponnesian War as a "sequel" to 300. A kick ass movie about Epiminondas would be a real treat, and it would be nice for people to witness the darker side of Sparta's "helot policy," but it doesn't make for a natural sequel.

This really leaves only two choices.


The first choice would be a portrayal of the Greek victory against Darius at Marathon. The battle, and the way that the message of victory was delivered, still echo in modern athletics. We once more have a story about "democracy" vs. "empire," but we would also be watching the story of the Athenians whose participation was minimized in 300. In 300, the Athenian naval victory over the Persians is portrayed merely as a storm brought by Zeus to crush the Persian navy. Barely a mention of Athens is made in 300. Gerard Butler, as Leonidas, tells us perfectly which city state 300 is about when he proclaims, "Madness?! THIS IS SPARTA!" 300 is about Sparta, and highlighting its virtues while overlooking its vices, and not about some "intellectual" city state to the north. Once more we are left with a subject which would make a great film, the Battle of Marathon, but one which doesn't translate well into a sequel to 300.

This leaves us with our second, and probably best, remaining choice. The tale of the 10,000 and their journey home after the death of Cyrus the Younger. During the Peloponnesian War, Darius II sent money and his young son Cyrus to aid the Spartans in their war against Athens. Cyrus used the opportunity to gain allies among the Spartans as he desired the throne that his older brother Artaxerxes II would inherit when their father died. He eventually brought some 11,000 mercenary Greeks -- including a goodly number of Spartans -- to aid him in his attempt to take the throne. He was wise to bring the Greeks as they were able to win a large battle at Cunaxa, but he wasn't lucky and was killed during the battle. This left 10,000 Greeks trapped in enemy territory seeking a way home. The leaders of the 10,000, including Clearchus of Sparta, were slain while trying to negotiate safe passage home. The 10,000 had to fight their way home. The tale of the 10,000 -- while it still has some Peloponnesian war baggage -- is one of the great tales of Ancient Greece.

The story of the 10,000 was also the inspiration for one of the great "cult" films of the late 70's -- The Warriors.

So here's to hoping that 300 is followed by 10,000. The audiences should have a good time with a rip roaring tale, and the critics will have a field day with puns a plenty.

Monday, March 19, 2007

300 and the Disconnect Between Critics and Viewers

Peter Bart, over at Variety, wrote a column last Thursday about how so far this has been a year where there is a large disconnect between what critics opinions of a movie are and what the viewing audience's opinion is. He bases what the audience's opinion is based on the financial success of a particular film rather than on some kind of random survey data. I imagine that his method is as accurate as a good survey would be, people do vote with their dollars. This is particularly true if a given film is successful for more than one week, which implies that word of mouth was positive rather than negative. Bart has noticed that the audience reactions to Ghost Rider, 300, Wild Hogs, and Norbit are very much out of synch with the reactions of critics.

Ben Fritz, at the same magazine, also writes about the critical reaction to 300 and focuses on how the critics often compare 300 to a video game. Fritz argues that the critics use of this comparison is "both artistically demeaning and substantively wrong." Fritz doesn't, and he likely should in a future article, articulate how the opposite is more often true. Videogames are becoming more like films, a statement that is both artistically complimentary and substantively correct. One need only watch a few of the interstitial sequences in Marvel Ultimate Alliance to discern that the Marvel video game is attempting to create an entertaining narrative while also allowing the player to beat hell out of Dr. Doom and the Masters of Evil.

Which brings me back to the Bart article. Bart asks a couple of key questions in his editorial criticizing the critics. His central, and most important question, is whether "critics make a passing attempt to tune in to pop culture?" Bart begs the question, but he doesn't directly answer it. His editorial is more a discussion starter than an answer, though one could guess his answer might be a caveat laden "Yes...but..."

I would have liked to see Bart take a brave stand on this issue, which I don't believe is limited to this year's box office or critics. I think that it has been a problem for quite some time. I have often in conversation asked my friends, "Do you think that (insert favorite hated critic here) would like That Touch of Mink or Ben Hur if it came out today?" I usually get one of two reactions to this question. Sometimes my interlocutor agrees with me that the critic would hate both of these films, and might add that they would also dislike M because it ends advocating the execution of a child molester by "extra legal" means. Other times, the response might be that the person had never thought about that particular question. It often seems to me that critics are so fond of the French New Wave that they have rejected the idea that movies can be entertaining, they must have meaning!

With Bart not providing an answer to the question, one can be thankful that sci-fi writer extraordinaire Neal Stephenson decided to weigh in on the disconnect between critics and audience in yesterday's New York Times. His point was that the critics who negatively review the film won't even give the film a serious review, possibly because the subject matter is rooted in geekdom (at least in the case of 300). He also brings up some of the criticisms that have been thrown at the movie and dismisses them by saying, "such criticisms aren't really worth arguing with, because they are not serious in the first place -- and that is their whole point. Many critics dislike 300 so intensely that they refused to do it the honor of criticizing it as if it were a real movie." I agree. I also believe that any critic who feels this way is also practicing a bit of onanism. They are writing to read just how creatively they can mock a movie, and their only real audience is themselves. They "know" that audiences, lowest common denominator brutes that we are, will like the movie regardless of their review. So they decide to write witty and scathing responses so they can read just how well they can mock a movie. This is about as morally edifying as some critics have said they thought 300 was.

Stephenson provides a couple of key quotes from critics he finds to be particularly good examples of this type of criticism, but one in particular stood out to me.

300 is not sufficiently ironic. It takes themes (duty, loyalty, sacrifice, the preservation of Western civilization against enormous odds) too seriously to, well, be taken seriously.


As I have already pointed out
, in quoting Victor Davis Hanson, "If critics think that 300 reduces and simplifies the meaning of Thermopylae into freedom versus tyranny, they should reread carefully ancient accounts and then blame Herodotus, Plutarch, and Diodorus — who long ago boasted that Greek freedom was on trial against Persian autocracy, free men in superior fashion dying for their liberty, their enslaved enemies being whipped to enslave others." But such critics deserve more than an appeal to History as a response, as these critics exhibit one of the greatest flaws I believe a critic can have. These critics lack a love of virtue and in aesthetics this is almost unforgivable, at least in aesthetics as traditionally understood (Schiller, Kant, Hegel) and not in criticism how it is currently taught (Gramsci, Krakauer, Baudrillard). Before you flame me, it should be noted that I very much like Simulacra and Simulation and the Mirror of Production and think Benjamin's analysis in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction is wonderfully insightful given YouTube etc. My point isn't that aesthetic critical discussions oughtn't include observations by the Frankfurt School and Post-Structuralists, rather that critics should also be aware of earlier aesthetic studies and their links to how aesthetics represent/affect virtue.

Nietzsche gave this kind of study a bad name, but that is because he turned the arguments on their head much like Marx did with Hegel. Of course, one should never forget the power of irony in philosophy, but that is another discussion.

These high art vs. vulgar art critics, a very Adorno-esque dichotomy, disdain both pious depictions of morality and the base comedy of films like The Wedding Crashers. Nevermind that Aristophanes has a multi-page discussion of farts and fart jokes in his play The Clouds. One word...Thunder. Just think about it. I hear that in Ancient Phrygia they used the word Phartos to describe Thunder. Most people turn off when I mention Aristophanes in a conversation, and my knowledge of his plays is much shallower than Fritz's (cinerati Fritz not Variety Fritz). Most people think I am making a high art vs. vulgar art distinction and trying to talk down to them when I am doing just the opposite. I am trying to demonstrate how even "high art" has abundant fart jokes. Don't even get me started on Shakespeare.

Back to the virtue discussion and whether 300 should be ironic. One of the classical virtues is that of thumos a kind of spritedness which combines patriotism and courage. It is the virtue that is central to the Spartan society. In fact, Spartan society might be said to value thumos over almost any other part of virtue as we understand it. Spiritedness is a powerful force in people, we like to take pride in our society and we value those who fight to defend it. That is thumos in a nutshell and that is what 300 is about. The film doesn't spend time showing us the ways that Sparta was unjust, and they were in many ways, because then the film -- and comic -- would be about Sparta. This film isn't about Sparta, it is about thumos.

Those critics who fear that the film is fascistic because of its overemphasis of thumos do have a point, but not as large a point as they believe. If the film were merely about thumos it would be true, but the films is also about freedom, equality under the law, and the need for just rulers. There is a reason that Plato devoted two dialogues toward critiquing Spartan culture. Both his Republic and The Laws present critiques of societies based solely on thumos. The "republic" of the Republic everyone tells you Plato thought was the "Just" society (though they forget to tell you how easily Plato has this society decay)? That could easily be read as a description of Sparta. And one of the key interlocutors in The Laws is a great Spartan who comes to understand that thumos and courage are only a part of Justice, the Stranger argues that Wisdom is the central component of Justice. These are not talked about in the film, but those would be the discussions to have if you wanted to criticize the film.

Instead a critic talked about how the film wasn't sufficiently ironic, as if the virtues the film advances ought not be taken seriously at all. Or that if you want them to be taken seriously you must use them ironically. This is the mentality that Roger Scruton argues against in his book on Modern Culture when he writes,

"modern producers, embarrassed by dramas that make a mockery of their way of life, decide in their turn to make a mockery of the dramas. Of course, even today, musicians and singers, responding as they must to the urgency and sincerity of the music, do their best to produce the sounds...intended. But the action is invariably caricatured, wrapped in inverted commas, and reduced to the dimensions of a television sitcom. Sarcasm and satire run riot on the stage, not because they have anything to prove or say in the shadow of this unsurpassably noble music, but because nobility has become intolerable. The producer tries to distract the audience from [the] message, and to mock every heroic gesture, lest the point of the drama should finally come home."


This is how critics are reacting to Miller's 300, they have disdain for its open admiration of nobility. That disdain must naturally result in mockery. Ironically, I have argued that Frank Miller himself helped contribute to the crisis in modern comics where the hero is eternally deconstructed when the "constructed" hero is so badly needed.

What do we need more in a world where our choices are so often gray, than a hero who has a clear and consistent morality?

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Preparing for 300




When it comes to historical dramas, one often wonders what the thoughts of scholars of a particular subject think about films depicting that subject. When watching a film about the Crusades, one wants to know what medieval scholars think about the film as a whole product.

No one expects historical dramas to be perfectly accurate, but one does expect them to capture the feel of the times and to be compelling stories. There are exceptions to the above statement, especially with regard to biblical films where some people do expect perfect accuracy, but by and large the audience wants to know that a film is entertaining and not a mockery of the era it is representing. Let me give what I think are two good examples. Kingdom of Heaven has many historical inaccuracies, but the more I watch the film, the more I am drawn in by the sense of the film and its imagery. The film genuinely transports me away from the present and into a faux version of the Crusades. Timeline has an almost opposite effect. As much as I enjoyed Crichton's book which provided the foundation for the movie version, I dislike the movie more each time I view it. Sadly, I have seen this film around six times because I have friends who enjoy the movie, and friendship is more important than agreeing whether a film is good or not. For me, Timeline's problem is that the film completely ignores the underlying argument of the book, chiefly that the "Dark Ages" weren't anywhere near as dark as the Renaissance claimed it to be. Every time I see Timeline, I keep asking myself, "Where did the $80 million go?"

Next month sees the opening of Frank Miller's 300 on the big screen. The Battle of Thermopylae has been one of my favorite subjects to read about/watch for a long time. My first exposure to the famous battle was Rudolph Maté's 1962 classic, The 300 Spartans. I saw it at a tender young age when I was cutting my teeth on all kinds of Sword and Sandal films, most of which had some kind of supernatural element. The 300 Spartans was different. The heroes didn't win the day, they died heroically. I have watched the film numerous times since and, while it does seem dated, it inspires me every time. I guess you can't go too wrong as long as you include the "big lines" from Herodotus.



I am excited about Frank Miller's version. The graphic novel was good, though there was significant artistic license. The previews look beautiful and Gerard Butler, who was the best thing about Timeline, looks to be a very good Leonidas. Being excited, I did what I usually do and surfed the internet searching for speculation by scholars familiar with the subject. I was pleasantly surprised to find more than mere speculation. Frank Miller, and film director Zack Snyder, gave classical scholar Victor Davis Hanson a preview screening. Both claim to be big fans of VDH, a fandom which includes me.

In an interview with Rebecca Murray, Zack and Frank were quoted as saying:

Zack Snyder: He’s a frickin genius. He’s a Greek historian and we showed him the movie because I wanted him to write a forward to the Making Of book. I was a little nervous to be honest, because I wasn’t sure how he’d react. And Kurt Johnstad who he and I worked on the screenplay together, he actually also is a huge fan of Victor Davis Hanson. He went up to show him the movie at his house.

Frank Miller: I mean, jumping back to Victor Davis Hanson, it was right in the middle of maybe our first conversation that Zack brought his name up, not realizing that he was citing my favorite non-fiction writer in the whole universe.


When I read these words, my excitement increased. But it was upon reading Victor Davis Hanson's review of 300 that the film went from "must see" to "will murder to see." VDH gives the film a glowing review over at his site (though it should be noted that the graphic novel is being released by Dark Horse and not Black Horse). He states in the summary of his review, "most importantly, 300 preserves the spirit of the Thermopylae story. The Spartans, quoting lines known from Herodotus and themes from the lyric poets, profess unswerving loyalty to a free Greece. They will never kow-tow to the Persians, preferring to die on their feet than live on their knees."

I can't wait.