Please, please please please please. Read this book. The reason I'm pleading with you in so undignified a manner: I saw this movie this past week. What's worse, I took my wife to see this movie this past week. And I have to refer to earlier statements I and others have made. Namely: we, as a community and industry are alienating anyone that at one time may have given this medium a chance.
Look. I listed this graphic novel as one of my favorite books in my profile. I bought and read and sung this book's praises when it was first released in May 1998. I have three copies of all the original issues; one copy for myself, one to lend out and one just in case. And I have the hard cover. Frank Miller and his work has been one of the primary reasons I continue to read comics and among his work, I rank this peice at the top. Needless to say, I'm a fan. In other words, I'm less than objective here.
300 (Fank Miller / Lynn Varley; Dark Horse Comics, 1999, $30.00; http://www.darkhorse.com/profile/profile.php?sku=48-339) is a graphic re-telling of the Battle of Thermopylae, focussed on King Leonidas and the 300 Spartan warriors that set out to stop the Persian hordes of Xerxes the Great at the Hot Gates. Upon its release, 300 received Eisner Awards for Best Limited Series, Best Writer/Artist and Best Colorist in 1999. The series continued Miller's stark and unique vision that he established most fully in his Sin City series while bringing a new dynamic to comics in the well-researched historical drama of ancient Greece.
The themes of this book, though seemingly macho and mundane, are appropriate for the given subject matter and it is widely seen as well-researched and overall historically accurate in its telling. It is at turns, engaging, intriuging and suspenseful, violent and heroic and overall remarkable. Miller and Varley both, in an attempt to get it that much closer to right, travelled to Greece to flesh out the research they'd already done, visit the sites, gain an appreciation for the land and speak to the people. ...all in the name of getting it right. Of making sure that the story did justice to the notions of heroic sacrifice and moral victory that are embodied here.
And the movie took an amazing peice of work, a jewel of the industry, and shat upon it. I don't actually know what Mr. Miller's thoughts are on this movie, though I assume he had a pretty big part in the making of it, given his involvement in Sin City. I can't imagine that the folks responsible for this film intetionally cocked it up. And there are quite a few redeeming qualities. The photography is amazing. I think it works much better in color than in the black-and-white of Sin City. The acting, for the most part was worthwhile, though in places a bit melodramatic. And, to be fair, they did a better than average job translating it to film.
So what, then, is the problem? you ask? It is this: in the editing room and production room decisions that were made on this project, the point was almost completely passed over in favor of a violent fantasy movie rather than the complex and fascinating historical narrative that was the book. I saw gratuity take the place of complexity and subtlety (I'm thinking here of the splashing blood shots and the treatment of the Oracle at the temple). Embellishment in places where there was none needed (the monstrous masks and visages of the Persian elite). And a quick treatment of the main themes of the book in the trite delivery of several of the more important lines seemed more filler as opposed to the actual substance.
So, my recommendation is this: please please please please please read this book. Do yourself a favor and pick up one of Frank Miller's best works and what I see as a pretty big argument to continue reading comics, and forget there's even a movie by the same name out there. Besides, I'm sure it will be a mainstay of SpikeTV within a year anyhow...
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