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Showing posts from July, 2018

Frank Miller's "300" is Completely Realistic. ...No, Seriously.

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(Spoiler Warning) As our story begins, an adolescent Leonidas faces a wolf that seems to have been conjured from Little Red Riding-Hood's worst nightmares. The size of a small horse, it has fangs reminiscent of dagger-blades, and eyes that glow like twin drops of molten bronze. The boy, our would-be king, stands nearly nude, barefoot in the snow, facing the monster with a makeshift spear. Observing the massive creature circling him, looking for an opening, he lures it into a narrow rift in the rock face behind him, forcing it to face him head-on. Xerxes' messenger arrives at Sparta and warns Leonidas of his emperor's power; "an army so massive it shakes the ground with its march, so vast it drinks the rivers dry." The Spartan king answers Xerxes' demand for submission by kicking his emissary and entourage into a pit so deep we never hear them hit bottom. Later, Leonidas ascends a windswept peak in the night, climbing bare stone hand-over-hand, to peti