I don’t like to be unfairly negative but does anyone else have a bad feeling about the big budget blue screen adaptation of Frank Millers Sparta graphic novel ‘300’? Probably not (culturalelite obviously disagrees with me :)). On paper it sounds great: a big budget film about the Spartans (those dudes were frikkin awesome!) and their most legendary victory, adapted from the classic graphic novel and made by the guy that somehow didn’t mess up the ‘Dawn of the Dead’ remake. I’m there! Check out the new trailer in the post below (although it’s pretty much the same as the last one).

It looks very impressive I guess, epic and colourful and full of sound sound and fury. There are some mental looking giants (fantasy style) and some innovative looking shots using greenscreen or whatevz. But at the same time it looks like a fucking advert for a car or a bank to me. The modern music in the second half doesn’t help. Maybe that’s the main problem – it all comes together and just looks and feels like some very athletic contemporary actors in a studio, overacting. Another issue I have is the unbelievable amount of slooooo-mo in it. Personally, I think this should be kept to a minimum in action films. A few choice slo-mo shots can be great but if every horse and every woman-writhing-in-a-corn-field is slo it just pulls me out of the film. Total cheese fest. Finally, the acting. Gerald Butler is obviously loving it and might pull it off by shouting constantly. But what we can see of the other performances worries me. They look poor. I hope they aren’t.

I have to be honest, I’ve never read the graphic novel and this might well be a bang on version of it. To me, the similar looking and similarly historical epic ‘Apocalypto’ (just opened number one in the US despite expectations) looks much much cooler. It’s a smaller story I believe, it’s got a stylised look but it’s uses only a few natural colours and most importantly it’s attempting to be an accurate portrayal. I love the fact that they speak Mayan - so much cooler. Couldn’t we have had some Greek?