5 Reasons Why “300″ Is The Best Film For The Next 5 Years
WARNING: Possible spoilers ahead
1) Awesome, shouty quotes.
300 is the most obscenely quotable movie I have seen in a long time. Truly, quotes such as “Eat your breakfast boys and eat hearty - FOR TONIGHT, WE DINE IN HELL!!!”, eyes shimmering with batshit insaneness or “THIS. IS. SPARTAAA!!” are this generation’s “Hasta La Vista, Baby” and “I ain’t got TIME to bleed”. Respectively. In any case, the macho-tastic quotes in 300 are made five billion times better by the fact that ALL OF THEM ARE SHOUTED. SPARTAN MEN LOVE TO SHOUT. THEY WERE RAISED NEVER TO SURRENDER AND TO SHOUT UNDER ALL CIRCUMSTANCES. In fact, it made the rest of the movie without the shouting scenes quite uncomfortable to listen to. I was all up for seeing the boys relaxing round the campfire, screaming at the top of their voices “SPARTANS! WHO WANTS SOME TEA. I HAVE EARL GREY AND LAPSANG SOUCHONG. IN HELL!!!”.
2) There is a hunchback in a hat
Not many movies can get away with this with a straight face on, but 300 achieves it with a sense of artistic pomposity so awesome that it will make you shit your pants inside out. In 300, the character Ephialtes betrays the Spartans in exchange for social acceptance, one of the fringe benefits of this being his own uniform. A hunchback in a hat is an almost perfectly formulaic recipe for humour, as it follows the tried and tested “X in a Y” weird thing / normal thing laughter matrix. “Hunchback in a hat” follows on from great traditions such as “cat in a washing machine” and “dick in a box”.
3) Totally Unexplained-Yet-Awesome Characters
There’s so much cool shit in 300 that the writer didn’t even have TIME to explain some of the characters. You will, for example, watch a scene involving a grotesquely overweight man with SAWS FOR HANDS executing members of Xerxes’ army. And this character NEVER gets explained or expanded upon. You’re just meant to shrug it off and say “k” and watch the next scene with more Spartans and more shouting.
4) Lesbian Lepers
It’s like someone opened a window into my wildest sexual fantasies, didn’t immediately projectile vomit and / or douse me with holy water screaming “The power of christ compels you!” and thought “Frick, that would be awesome in my new mainstream hollywood blockbuster movie”. There is a scene in 300 where two lezzers, one of whom is a leper, go at it. In the same scene there is also a guy with a goat’s head for a…head…smoking and chilling out. You’ll be disturbed, turned on, and will never be able to volunteer at the leper colony without getting spontaneous erections ever again.
5) Prophets On Crack
There is a prophet who takes the form of a drugged-up teenage girl who flails about a bit showing off her nipples and then slumps to the floor to get helplessly groped by a hideously deformed priest. No, I’m not describing the hottest porn ever conceived, this is a scene in 300. It’s like Girls Gone Wild - B.C.! Or something. Only there’s also battles and SHOUTING.
For the love of God, go and see this movie.
