To escape from the bad motorcycle movie trailers, I had to reach into history to a time when motorcycles hadn’t even been invented. Could 300 be the trailer to end the streak of dreadful trailers in 2007? It not only ends the streak. It takes a sword and jams it through the streak’s skull a couple hundred times. Then it does some other stuff to the skull that I can’t legally write about in the USA.
300 is based on a Frank Miller graphic novel. It employs the same otherwordly techniques of using live-action and CGI like Sin City (also based on a Frank Miller graphic novel).
The trailer opens with some startling imagery: A tree filled with many-arrowed people, boats tossed around on a roiling sea, giant elephants stampeding Spartan warriors.
Next, we learn that Spartan warriors are the ancestral brothers of Klingons. They are taught from youth to be great warriors and that dying in battle is the greatest honor. They also learn a lot about personal grooming such as waxing your chest before going to battle.
Men Without Hair
Make our enemies squeal like we do when the women rip the hair from our chests!
A thousand nations of the Persian Empire are descending on the city of Sparta to burn it to the ground. Only the titular 300 men are there to defend it. The Spartan leader kicks the attackers’ diplomatic envoy down a deep hole to his death. No namby-pamby diplomacy for these studs.
Don’t worry lovers, there’s plenty of sex to go with the violence. If the trailer is any indication the movie will be nonstop sex and violence from beginning to end. That’s something we can all get behind… and in front of… and on top of.
Next we get several stylized battle sequences between the Spartans and the invaders. Guys flying around with swords, exploding arrows, helmet-shaving axes, rhinos, mutants, everything you wanted in Troy, but didn’t get.
Flying High
The secret weapon of the Spartans was the catapult that shot guys with swords.
A brain-pounding soundtrack accompanies all this sex and violence just to prove that subtlety won’t be allowed.
This trailer conveys the brutality that violence must’ve been like in ancient times. Sure there probably weren’t mutants or giant elephants, but they didn’t speak English either.
Conclusion on Trailer: Plenty of violence and sex to please just about everyone. It’s not a historical epic you want to take the kids to though. It looks like it earns every bit of its R-rating.
Conclusion on Film: As long as they don’t spend too much time on the melodrama, this one could be a kick-ass action film. Enough bare-chested men killing things to appeal to both men and women.