America Does Not Need '300' at This Time

I ask a question that was at the back of my mind when I first saw the trailer for 300, a Frank Miller adaptation that takes a highly stylized, overly CG approach to the epic battle genre. A. O. Scott's excellent review points out the obvious, that the villains are significantly darker-skinned than the Spartan heroes. But is that really the most problematic aspect of the movie?

There is already a debate going on as to whether the movie tacitly approves of present-day warfare in Iraq, or whether it subtly critiques it. In this vein, we should probably care more that supporters of current Middle East policy will, consciously or not, take the movie as a reinforcement of their existing beliefs. Because it's not the skin color of the enemies that's important; it's the fact that they're imperial, crusading brutes from the Persian Empire. And we all know what mischief the Persians are up to today!

So I think it's worth pointing out right here that, in fact, the Persian Empire during the time of the Battle of Thermopylae, "depicted" in the movie, was not a Muslim civilization but a Zoroastrian one.

That said, does America really need another MTV/videogame-styled gorefest in the vein of Resident Evil, lacking both character and plot or even originality? The visuals in 300 might be nice to look at, but surely it was done far better in the (actually artful) Frank Miller adaptation Sin City? This quote from Variety sums it up best: "Nobody wanted to do an obscure graphic novel with a commercial director and no script." A commercial with no script -- pretty accurate, from early reports.