...Didn\'t he do Dawn of the Dead long before this film anyway?
Yeah, but that wasn’t the mega-hit that 300 was, so I didn’t think it was relevant to the conversation
I guess it just feels like an obvious and glaring omission when so much of this review is about looking at 300 in the context of the rest of his filmography rather than as a standalone film.
For what it's worth, I would personally also have discussed the extent to which 300 is drawing on the stark visual style of its source material. I feel that stylization adds to the camp and Narm Charm in a way his original work or looser adaptations often don't.
Also, I admit that while I'm a bit higher on much of his DC work than everyone else, warts and all, I have my complaints, and I haven't exactly gone out of my way to look up Army Of the Dead or his other post-DC work. But I'm haunted by the memory of that one Joss Whedon expose that, while discussing what happened to Justice League and the suicide of his daughter, couldn't resist calling his filmmaking style "as fascist as Leni Riefenstahl," and even if I weren't a tepid apologist for at least some of his movies I like to think that'd probably have soured me on his most vocal critics for life.
I feel like maybe, just maybe, you can complain about someone's work without literally comparing them to an actual (allegedly) enthusiastic, passionate Nazi while discussing their horrific personal tragedy as an offhand footnote in a discussion of something else, you know?
I'm not saying you've done that, for the record. You haven't! You're proof that you can not like Zach Snyder's movies without calling him a Nazi! But it lives rent free in my head now, ya know?
I think that you missed a really, really, really big point in 300, and what made it work.
The original comic by Frank Miller.
The original comic is somewhat at the same time worse and better, its still a testosterone fueled stupid romp about mega-macho men (that completely ignores historical accuracy) akin to \"I\'m the Goddamn Batman\". Now join this incidental cheese fest and mix it with Snyder\'s style of overly bombastic slow-mo imagery. In this case, I believe that it was something akin to a real life \'the producers\' situation, where you get something that is already cheesy and ludicrous, add even more stuff to it till it turns into a success due to the extravaganza.
Think about it. Watchmen came from a serious comic that is well-respected, the guardians came from a fantasy book that was more whimsical than ludicrous, sucker punch had NO background, it was Snyder \'on his own\', and so on... none of these came close to the level of unbridled narm and stupidity that was Frank Miller at the edge of his worst.
Reply to Skull Writer: That\'s a very good point.
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Zack Snyder's One and Only True Hit
Once upon a time, there was a goose who, under the extremely optimal and precise conditions, laid a single golden egg. In the beginning, we all flocked to see this goose and its egg, and we all wondered what it would do next.
What followed was the goose laying a silver and then bronze egg, followed by eggs of iron, brass, then protactinium (look it up), and copper, before settling into the habit of popping out eggs of zinc and tin.
How did this happen? How did the goose go from gold to tin? How long is this analogy going to hold up?
Well, the answer to two of those questions can best be summed up like this:
I think Zack Snyder just got lucky with 300.
When the film came out, it had this sheer undiluted balls-to-the-wall over-the-top charm that had never been seen before. It was basically that year's guiltiest pleasure. Or, to put it more simply, it was Camp to Hell and back.
The raw, over-the-top machismo of the 300 made even the cheesiest lines seem grand and epic in scale. Don't believe me? Ask yourself, why was "THIS! IS! SPARTA!" the the breakout line? Because it was silly. It was dumb. Gerard Butler literally did it as a joke, but it gave the film this fun self-aware irony that made it more accessible.
This is, of course, all to say that I don't think Mr. Snyder himself really understood the big joke of the movie or why it was successful to begin with. In his mind, he was making a Genre Throwback to the grand Epic Movie format of the 50s and 60s, just with modern CGI to construct the elaborate set-designs and money-shots. To him, this was a serious historical war drama, not the Affectionate Parody that it actually was. How do I know? Because people asked him for years if the film was intended to be propaganda or not (and he gives mixed messages about it every time), and not one of his films afterward had that level of camp-value that made 300 such a crossover hit.
The 300 sequel certainly didn't have that ironic self-awareness that gave its predecessor the crucial campy edge–playing its hyper-masculinity and outrageous spectacle fights more-or-less straight, and was thus less entertaining.
There's still the undeniable camp-factor in his other movies, but Snyder is clearly trying for a more artistic and high-brow approach that just doesn't work; it's not playing to his strengths.
300 made Zack Snyder's career, but probably in all the wrong ways because it was the epitome of "lightning in a bottle"–he could never replicate its success. But I think that's because he didn't understand what made it good in the first place.