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Jon and I just got back from seeing the 300 at the theater. Our friends who had seen it were split down the middle. Half liked; half did not. Jon and I both liked it.

It’s well worth seeing, and definitely will loose something on the small screen. It’s one of those movies that to get the full effect intended by the director and everyone else involved, including Frank Miller, you need to see it big. Because it’s a big movie in that old time, old Hollywood way. What do I mean by that?

I mean it’s spectacular. If someone dies, he dies spectacularly. If someone rides a horse it’s done in slow motion. Heck, deviant sex is done spectacularly. There were things glimpsed in the tent of the Persian King Xerxes that made me queasy. But it was spectacular, and creepily erotic. (I didn’t actually see anything in the tent that I didn’t know existed, but just because I know people may do it, doesn’t mean I want to be reminded.) It was a brief scene, but I’m more likely to remember anything that disturbs me, and write about a version of it later.

The battle scenes were amazing. Though, Jon and I cannot argue with the New York Times review when it said that the Spartans obviously had better gyms. I haven’t seen that many six packs outside of a liquor store. But they were pretty.

The Queen and the politics back home in Sparta get a lot more play in the movie than in the graphic novel, and that worked for us. It added the human cost sort of like the wife half of the story line for the television show THE UNIT. (Recently saw it on DVD, and both of us loved it.)

The Persians were the enemy of the Spartans and the story is narrated by a story teller who is Spartan. Which explains why the Persians, the enemy, are monstrous and deviant. It is traditional to make your enemy evil. Because only in making your enemy evil can you kill them with no regard, because they are not human to you. This modern idea in the West to make everyone human, everyone nice, and try to get along, is a very, very modern idea.

I tried not to buy into the movie completely, but by the end they had me. I shed tears for the pretty warriors, and we understood why a line at the end was a curse and not a blessing, if you were a Spartan man. “May you live forever.” Live forever, instead of dying a beautiful death.