Zack Snyder made a name for himself with 300 in 2007, the movie came out of nowhere and adapted Alan Moore’s graphic novel in a way that it made sense for a movie and showing what comic books could become as films. Hella quotable and memes took over the internet as well as 4chan and even bitcoin hodl memes kept using it a decade later. Greek and Roman times make great movies especially when history is romanticized and exaggerated to make a good story. The sequel came a bit too late and the energy the movie invoked had already disappeared. The influence of this film can’t be understated but are they still enjoyable years later?
300 2007
The movie tells a beginning and gives us context very well at the start of the movie and it sets up the rest of the movie to have a lot of action without it being necessarily senseless. It does a fantastic job at telling the story it wants to tell and also gives a great mix of myth with the historical events. Zack Snyder does a good job since it does feel like a comic book. There are so many cool moments that are iconic and it was able to inspire great shows like Spartacus that took its DNA from this movie. Great scenes and extremely quotable.
The ephors are neat and give a window of world building, same when they mention Hercules existing in this world. I do think it needed more of that and ot expand on the fantasy and greek mythology since those are the strengths of the movie. Insanely quotable and what makes 300 great? The fantasy and the style the movie offered. The movie is long but it never feels long by the way that it is structured and the weakest part of the movie is the wife sub plot which is easily overlooked.
300: Rise of an Empire 2014t
Despite having a good enough ending many years later we get a prequel and a sequel with Rise of an Empire. It’s not as good as the original movie but if you have that in mind it’s alright. Just being able to go back to this world is cool enough. Some of the flaws that the movie has is that it’s missing some of the stylized shots the original had. There is a little too much dialog and not enough explained through narration which would’ve helped things flow better. Because of that at times this movie feels a bit less like 300 and more like a normal movie set in ancient Greece.
The best parts are the ones dealing directly with the original movie and not so much the original content they went for this film. It’s still fun to see Greek fights in this style though but by the time this was released it was a few years too late. We get some of the monster like things the original didn’t have many of but they should’ve used them far more, it is something that was easy to expand upon the immortals and I wish they would’ve used more of that. The prequel and sequel idea was neat and having Thebes, Delphi, Arcadia and Olympia fight was cool.
Overall the sequel is a disappointment but there’s enough there to like while the original holds up extremely well. Since it is fiction it would’ve been good to have an actual ending in the second movie with Xerxes being defeated even if different from history since we get a rather non-ending that at lest the original subverted it since the open ended final battle scene doesn’t show what’s going to happen. It’d be cool to see a supercut of both films into one giant 300 movie and see how well the expanded scenes of the sequel fit with the actual movie and to see if the original story fits well as a beginning and an end with the original stuck in the middle. Tonight we all dine in hell.
