Thermopylooza

...To a remarkable extent, 300 is a cartoon...

...But every other thing you see has been generated by a computer—and that may include the exposed pectoral muscles of Butler and his Spartan confreres...

...They want Nicolas Cage to play Ghost Rider, even though Cage hasn’t had a hit in years and now sports a hairpiece that rivals William Shatner’s when it comes to the willing suspension of disbelief...

...But all things being equal, studios either want stars headlining their action movies or want to invent stars in the process of making those movies...

...Yes, there are actors in it: Baker and his fellow performers were fi lmed jumping around on soundstages in loincloths and helmets...

...James Cameron made Titanic with two performers who were no more than starlets at the time because the movie’s title told you all you needed to know about it...

...Stars don’t like playing characters with flaws, or characters from different times whose views on social matters don’t conform to our own...

...The part would have been altered to ensure Pitt got to deliver a speech bemoaning the tragic cost of war...

...Peter Jackson was able to make his Lord of the Rings trilogy with a bunch of nobodies because the books on which it was based are world-famous...

...Ever heard of Jason Statham...

...I’m not sure any human being has ever been quite as ripped as any one of these guys, let alone all 300 of them...

...The leading actor in 300 is a Scot named Gerard Butler, last seen as a Phantom of the Opera who was so, shall we say, Fernando Lamas that there seemed to be no reason other than perversity for him to be living in the Paris sewers singing “Music of the Night...

...300 has no stars, was helmed by a no-name director, was inspired by a mildly successful graphic novel, and tells the story of a three-day clash in a Greek ravine between Persians and Spartans that took place 2,500 years ago...

...They will also kick a promotional machine into gear to create an action star, though they’re getting much worse at it than in the past...

...Thermopylooza Blood, war, and 'computer-enhanced washboard abs.' by John Podhqretz Into the San Fernando Valley of Death rode 300, the strange new movie that may prove to be one of the most influential films ever made in Hollywood...

...Computer-enhanced washboard abs...

...He’s an English guy who toplines The Transporter movies...

...The tale of Thermopylae has compelled the human imagination for more than two millennia, and it seems that Americans living in the fi rst years of the third millennium after Christ are no different from anyone else...

...Kyle Smith, writing in the New York Post, points out that people seeking to draw parallels between the action onscreen and the war in Iraq or the war on terror are looking in the wrong place, since 300 hews close to Miller’s 1999 comic book...

...But while Miller foresaw no parallel, the audience seeing 300 in the year 2007 is responding viscerally to a story of a clash of civilizations that takes the side of the West against the East...

...If semianimated pictures aimed not at kids but at adult moviegoers now really take flight because of 300’s smashing success, the future will not be so bright for Hollywood’s star system...

...Director/co-writer Zack Snyder offers not even a moment of doubt that the Spartans are the good guys—believers in human freedom who oppose the Persians because they demand nothing but submission to a false god-king...

...That is certainly true...

...When a picture earns between two and three times more money in its opening weekend than anyone predicted, collecting a $70 million take that indicates its final tally both here and abroad will reach half a billion dollars (on a $60 million investment), that picture is going to change the way things are done...

...We’re talking about one of the most thrilling accounts of bravery and sacrifi ce imaginable: How a relatively tiny band of Spartan soldiers held off a gigantic Persian army ten thousand times its size for three days by using the narrow and craggy terrain of the “hot gates” as a defensive weapon...

...But it will give adventurous moviemakers some room to breathe free...

...You might expect Connelly, an Academy Award-winning actress, to be able to turn on the waterworks by herself, but evidently she didn’t or couldn’t, and yet the tear is there for all eternity...

...The other, and by far the more signifi cant, reason for the movie’s impact is its story...

...It does look like an entirely new kind of movie...

...But that can get old pretty quickly, and it seems clear that the 300 audience is remaining rapt throughout the movie’s two-hour running time...

...300 is nothing more than a comic book rendering of that tale—quite literally, as it’s slavishly faithful to a 1999 comic book by Frank Miller, whose violent imagery and hardboiled storytelling have now been immortalized in two successful Hollywood films (the other being Sin City...

...That’s the sound of crickets you hear in the background...

...And here’s why 300 is going to be revolutionary...

...Oh, haven’t heard of him...

...Because the actors are unimportant, Zack Snyder received no pressure from a top-of-the-line star to adjust his script to make his heroes more attractive, more modern, and more politically correct...

...Snyder and his collaborators had the same storytelling freedom enjoyed by Disney and Pixar and other animators whose films are primarily intended for children...

...What happened with 300 at the box office wasn’t supposed to happen, largely because 300 breaks every rule Hollywood has come to believe about how to make a successful action picture— perhaps the studio executives’ most beloved film genre because it travels so well outside the United States...

...There’s no way that a Brad Pitt could have played Snyder’s Leonidas...

...One is its arresting visual style, which is key to the successful marketing campaign...

...Here’s one key rule that has been overtaken by events: Unless an action picture has a pre-sold title, it must have a big star...

...Why not...

...I don’t think this movie has a single idea about the nature of cultural conflict, the meaning of martial valor, or anything else...

...It depicts Sparta and the Spartans in all their proud, martial, vicious, nasty, unsentimental, and egalitarian glory...

...No Spartan would have delivered such a speech, of course, but if Brad Pitt is your Spartan, he’s going to insist on it...

...In a partially animated, partially live-action film, the performers are relegated to a secondary status that liberates moviemakers from the Hollywood power structure, in which stars hold the cards...

...Their superhuman labors fi nally failed, but the legend of their bravery inspired Greece to turn back the invading Persians and thereby usher in the most febrile political and cultural moment in the history of the world...

...For Blood Diamond, the big-budget melodrama released at the end of last year, the director had his special-effects man add a tear to the cheek of leading actress Jennifer Connelly...

...Despite the vulgarity and overheated solemnity of its approach, 300 does tell the Thermopylae story without a trace of irony...

...In animated features, the story is king—and the stories that work are ones with clear moral conflicts in which flawed characters are called upon to sacrifice for the greater good...

...And it’s precisely this aspect of 300—as well as its entirely unapologetic celebration of war at its most insanely bloodthirsty—that offers the only coherent explanation for its galvanizing effect on audiences...

...How about John Cena, a former pro wrestler and star of The Marine...

...Millions will see it twice, and they still won’t care...

...They want Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible III (until they decide to fi re him for jumping on a couch), even though Cruise will cost them in excess of $75 million when all is said and done...

...But here’s the thing: If you choose to tell the story of Thermopylae, you cannot escape the fact that you are choosing to tell a story of Western civilization taking a stand against rampaging barbarians from the East...

...That’s because they may question whether Butler even exists...

...Since the performers fade into the background in 300, there are only two ways to explain the movie’s undeniable impact on its audience...

...They do not have to satisfy the desires of in-demand actors who want always to appear sympathetic, to act in ways that will not offend core audiences, and to get all the best lines and the best scenes in the script...

...John Podhoretz, a columnist for the New York Post, is The Weekly STandard’s movie critic...

...Nobody going to see 300 has the slightest idea who Gerard Butler is, and even after the picture is over, chances are that 90 percent of moviegoers won’t be able to tell you the name of the guy who plays Leonidas, King of Sparta...