I found the movie pretty enjoyable but..yeah..last night, I was really trying hard to convince myself it wasn't as jingoistic and War-on-Terror supporting as it seemed to be (you can see that in my initial journal entry about it), but now that I've had a nights sleep under my head, and that I've seen your really indepth take on it, I'm really having trouble sticking to that conviction. Yes, if you critically examine the film under a lens of logic, trying to making Bush and the NeoCons the Spartans falls apart, but it seems to mesh so well on a purely superficial level that I really have to wonder what was intentional, and what wasn't, despite the directors coy denials. Also, excellent points about the romanticization of Sparta, verses the cold hard historical truth. As always, reality has a liberal bias ;-)
Hmmm...didn't I read somewhere that Frank Miller is slightly right of center, in the weird way that Orson Scott Card is? Meh. I think I'm reading too much into things right now. You are right. Just focus on the fight scenes. The glorious, glorious, godlike, fight scenes.
I _will_ play devils advocate about the "fantastical" elements in the Battle of Thermopolyae. Understand that almost the entire movie is being told as a flashback during the opening preparations for the Battle of Plataea. And as epic storytellers often do, certain elements were exaggerated, enlongated, made larger than life. It's an ancient tradition. So um..yeah. There probably wasn't really supposed to be a Morbo the Lobster boy, just Dilios hyping the details.
I found the movie pretty enjoyable but..yeah..last night, I was really trying hard to convince myself it wasn't as jingoistic and War-on-Terror supporting as it seemed to be (you can see that in my initial journal entry about it), but now that I've had a nights sleep under my head, and that I've seen your really indepth take on it, I'm really having trouble sticking to that conviction. Yes, if you critically examine the film under a lens of logic, trying to making Bush and the NeoCons the Spartans falls apart, but it seems to mesh so well on a purely superficial level that I really have to wonder what was intentional, and what wasn't, despite the directors coy denials. Also, excellent points about the romanticization of Sparta, verses the cold hard historical truth. As always, reality has a liberal bias ;-)
Hmmm...didn't I read somewhere that Frank Miller is slightly right of center, in the weird way that Orson Scott Card is? Meh. I think I'm reading too much into things right now. You are right. Just focus on the fight scenes. The glorious, glorious, godlike, fight scenes.
I _will_ play devils advocate about the "fantastical" elements in the Battle of Thermopolyae. Understand that almost the entire movie is being told as a flashback during the opening preparations for the Battle of Plataea. And as epic storytellers often do, certain elements were exaggerated, enlongated, made larger than life. It's an ancient tradition. So um..yeah. There probably wasn't really supposed to be a Morbo the Lobster boy, just Dilios hyping the details.
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