300: Spartans, Snyder & Shenanigans

it's 2007. you're browsing this newfangled site called YouTube watching the dumbest videos and 240p and among those videos of unicorns named Charlie dramatic rodents and Anime AMV sink to Lincoln Park there's always one line that you come across something that you just couldn't escape in late 2000s pop culture this is 300 is a fascinating film even though it wasn't the biggest movie of the year you could not Escape it it's something that's been kind of forgotten to time only left preserved in Old YouTube videos made in Flash and Windows Movie Maker it was a concoction of energy that couldn't help but be parodied [Applause] 300 is based on a comic by Frank Miller you either know who he is or you don't he's been in the comic industry for decades in 1997 he made a limited series called 300 based Loosely on the ancient Battle of Thermopylae keyword here is Loosely sorry if you came here expecting some comparison between 300 and the real battle like a historical CinemaSins or something this isn't that type of video by this point I'd assume most people understand this isn't accurate at all if this is the first time you're hearing about this then wow I'm sorry man read a book or something no the Persians didn't fight with giant troll men or bladed demons Xerxes wasn't an eight foot tall demigod The Immortals weren't evil goblins they looked like this and the Spartans wore armor not just leather underwear 300 is first and foremost a fantasy as Fantastical as Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones all of these were purposeful creative Decisions by the movie or Miller himself and if we want to understand the movie we're gonna have to do the one thing that nobody ever does when talking about 300. let's talk about the comic when Frank Miller was a wee lad he watched a film called the 300 Spartans here we stay until we win you could say he was a fan he said in an interview that it changed the course of his creative life I try to get more information on what that meant by any link to that interview is dead so that sucks I also caught covid in between recordings so I sound like this now so that double sucks gonna have to just take Wikipedia at its word after watching the 300 Spartans and coughing my brain out you know I could see how it have some influence it's kind of funny how tame the depiction of the Persians are compared to 300 it's like night and day the 300 Spartans is a pretty solid movie but just like a lot of films of the time it's more sanitized than Mr Clean hey this is a really good War they say Xerxes has brought 100 nations with him the Spartans get along with everyone they're like the loyal Vanguard of United Greece so in 300 the Spartans were now rough and brutal and they killed babies the aspect of their almost psychotic Devotion to militarism is on Full display there's still Noble but not in the that clean cut 1960s way they look like they've seen a thousand battles their superiority complex is cranked up to 11. the only thing Miller didn't include was the Spartans rampant use of slavery which by his admittance he knew happened he just didn't want people to completely hate them personally I think he should have went all the way release the slavery cut Miller the actual comic is so short though I don't know where he'd fit it in the politics of this world really don't matter it's just minor set dressing the story is just a band of soldiers marching to a place fighting for a little bit and then dying the end and it's fantastic George Miller's angular style really elevates the story in a way that the movie just can't they're like angular muscular cavemen these faces are brutish and tired it isn't until they put on the helmet and line up in formation where any semblance of Spartan Glory actually appears the comics just full of striking Silhouettes like for instance Xerxes why does he look like that well in the comic the main aspect of his design are those chains he isn't even really drawn a lot he's more like a negative space illuminated by gold no it's not accurate but it is surreal and that's what I describe the comic as one that's attempting to be a stark difference from the clean movie that inspired Miller in the first place and while I do like what the movie does I can't help but feel after reading the comic that some aspects were just Lost in Translation but that's just the nature of live action which oh hey I should probably talk about the movie now 300 the movie is always just compared to the actual historical battle itself but like 300 is first and foremost an adaptation of a comic a comic inspired by a 1960s movie Loosely inspired by at least a few centuries of interpretation on a battle with a lot of historical baggage a long game of telephone adaptation and this movie does have a lot of baggage attached to it there are some contra commercial elements that can't be left unsaid we have to talk about something this movie has perpetuated since it first came out in 2007. Zack Snyder [Applause] foreign Zack Snyder he had done one movie before 300. the remake of Dawn of the Dead which was apparently written by James Gunn I didn't know that 300 was gonna be the first film where his recognizable style could really Blossom an opportunity for his cocoon to crack and a Zack Snyder butterfly to finally come out what the [ __ ] is this analogy if I could describe Zack Snyder in a single word I would describe him as pure look at that man not a single thought is going on in that head and that's why we love him that's right this is a Zack Snyder friendly space he is very much a visual person like 90 of his brain is made up of stylish cinematography and the other 10 percent is color grading today the name Zack Snyder cracks open the Earth beneath internet nerd's feet and I just find that hilarious there's just something about this man that makes people lose their minds probably the decade or so of questionable films Snyder's relationship with WB is an epic as fascinating as the Greek poems themselves you could say it would eventually Encompass the entire Studio maybe even Hollywood in general I'm not going to say a word about the dceu but I will say that everything going on with this can be traced back to this with a funny little man who just wanted to bring a funny little comic to life literally if you watch the movie you have basically read the comic shots entire lines better your breakfast and eat hockey but tonight we died in Hell most of the script ripped right out of the comic Snyder loved it so darn much he did everything to change it as little as possible like as little as possible panels from the comic were used as storyboard references and shots were built directly from that and honestly who can blame him the comic looked good and Snyder knew that and then he went on to do the same thing with Watchmen unlike that movie 300 was really the perfect project for him to get his hands on it was a simple story that lent itself to exaggeration hyper violence and most importantly style truly the peak Snyder film 300 is officially called an American epic historical action film but I think it's true genre should just be called [ __ ] Yeah because that's really the main emotion this movie tries to evoke [ __ ] yeah hell yeah hot damn Ura this is the definition of a power fantasy and that's all Zack Snyder thought while directing it how do I make this look as cool as possible and also how do I make this as faithful to the comic as possible there is an overuse of Bloom and sapiotones all meant to evoke the often bright backgrounds of the original panels 300 is a world of computer generated backgrounds slow motion more filters than a Tick-Tock live stream and a truly Banger soundtrack and in my humble opinion I think it works you know in that caveman brain sense meat cigar Tim Allen grunt yeah in a decade this movie is not visibly age great it's very clearly all shot on green screens and you could argue the entire visual language of this movie has been made fun of to death but to me this has only enhanced The Experience no movie has ever looked like this again nor would it ever dare to the closest comparison I could possibly make is Spy Kids 3D and I say that as a compliment that's that's a compliment 300 at its core is an ancient horde game mode this goes on for about three days until Spartans are betrayed by Quasimodo and they're gunned down on the streets there are no character arcs in 300. character arcs are for the week but there are characters or as best as characters as there could be there are faces separate faces so let's talk about those faces Leonidas King Leo the big cheese the meme himself leonius is the best part of this movie and I didn't need to tell you that in the greater pop culture sphere Leonidas is really remembered for those bombastic moments and those moments Rock such raw anger and drive in each line it sounds both incredibly badass and also unintentionally hilarious and that's what 300 is all about that's what we're fighting for yet as famous as this line was nobody ever knew what the hell this giant hole was why did they have this here seems a little dangerous it's a well it's meant to be a well in the histories the Greeks really did kill their Persian diplomats and the Spartans threw theirs down a well in true 300 fashion this is exaggerated as much as possible it's actually kind of funny how many of the most badass lines in this fantasy movie were said to have actually happened they've done your weapons come and get them even inspired a certain flag that if you're texting you're probably familiar with or even this exchange our arrows will blot out the sun then we will fight in the shade that line actually came straight from the 60s movie our arrows will block out the Sun fight in the shade but it was something Leonia said to one of his own men not a Persian but while Leo does a lot of the screaming throughout the movie he has another site too which I entirely forgot about until re-watching it he's usually just a smartass motoring all those men of yours is that was left a nasty crap in my leg so Gerard Butler does a lot with a few facial expressions and head tilts never breaking that Spartan emotional wall I couldn't fit this in anywhere but I was listening to the 300 commentary and Zack Snyder kept referring to Gerard Butler as Jerry and Jerry looks like he's in pretty good shape in that shot right there and I thought that was the funniest thing ever all hail Jerry King of the Spartans other Spartans who knew Michael Fassbender was on this I don't remember that he looks pretty hilarious well for Sparta for freedom to the death despite there being 300 Spartans they only focus on like four there's a father and son pair leonias is second in command literally just named captain who brings along his oldest son named astinos a name that is not Greek the Greek historian who was working on the movie wondered where the hell Snyder got that name from and Snyder said he named him after his Aston Martin that's incredible poor Aston Martin and then there's delios they only surviving Spartan of the 300 sent by Leonidas to tell their story to the rest of Greece and dilios he he sure does even the parts where he wasn't even there did dillios make up the fact that leonias's last thought was of his wife who's to say he probably made up a bunch of things he's got an active imagination if you really want to think about it 300 is kind of just from dilios's imagination I really want to know what the rest of the ancient world looks like from his perspective what are the gulls like in the 300 world are they giant monstrous gingers are the Egyptians cat people maybe the scythians of the Eurasian step are literal centaurs call me WB I have ideas now I haven't watched 300 in a while so while watching this I thought man dillios's voice is really familiar where have I heard that before and then it clicked from the time he could stand he was baptized in the fire of combat long I pondered my King's cryptic talk and victory Comet engine was created by Robert David a former Green Beret and designer of more than 30 military-based video games he's the narrator of Deadliest Warrior hell yeah it's all connected baby honestly it makes sense I would imagine that 300 and Deadliest Warrior had a pretty big overlap hell I wouldn't be shocked if 300 inspired Deadliest Warrior monuments no poems of war and Bella designer of more than 30 military base video games speaking of historical inaccuracy I feel like there's something else something I've been putting off oh yeah oh yeah the Persians the Persians were certainly something from every corner of the empire the Persians were certainly something 300 is one of those movies you either really love or really hate and I mean hey I love it Flaws and All certainly has a style and when things work they really work well it's got some problems for sure but don't don't don't look at that don't look at it for me I was too young to watch 300 in theaters the only thing I knew of it for years was that Sparta Meme and any vague ideas that came from cultural osmosis I think for a while I knew more about 300 from meet the Spartan trailers than the actual movie [Music] I was so disappointed when Mumble from Happy Feet didn't show up or baby Shrek or a [ __ ] Transformer it was actually the first rated R movie I'd ever seen I watched a buddy of mine's house it was one of the four things I still remember watching there the other things were District 9 The Dark Knight and that episode where Gus ring dies in Breaking Bad I had never seen breaking bad before that was the first episode I had ever saw he just put it on so [ __ ] you Caleb anyway 300. you know I thought it was good honestly the main thing I really did was just make me super interested in the ancient world there was a lot of Spartan Resurgence after this movie came out oh boy I had never even given the period much thought before then I mean for a kid what else was there for ancient Greece Hercules and at the end of the day that's what any historical fiction is good for even the bad ones establishing a mood or energy that makes you just want to explore this time period even more and then you do and you realize oh wow Athens did some war crimes and man that first movie was some anti-athens propaganda I tell you what and if those philosophers and uh boy lovers and I think a lot of people behind 300 realize how harshly the Athenians were treated boy lovers maybe even the Persians because seven years later we got a sequel for Glory sake [Music] who here is actually gay laughs

Channel: PointlessHub

Views: 1,212,497

Keywords: 300, 300 movie, 300 review, 300 PointlessHub, PointlessHub, Zach Snyder, Snyderverse, Snyder Cut, PointlessHub Transformers, 300 this is sparta, this is sparta meme, 300 meme, 300 history, persian empire, ancient greece, ancient greece history, ancient greece 300

Id: dkwf7t_xKgM

Length: 16min 49sec (1009 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 15 2023