Quint's BNAT wrap-up, part 1! Zack Snyder's 300!

Quint's BNAT wrap-up, part 1! Zack Snyder's 300!


Ain't It Cool News.com

December 11,2006

by Quint


Ahoy, squirts! Quint here... I got about 6 hours of sleep after this year's BNAT. I woke up to go eat with Moriarty and a bunch of visiting friends and planned to come back, read the new Stallone Q&As and go right back to sleep. But I guess I'm in the mood to write because the moment I was going to turn of the computer and head back to bed, I just got the urge to write up my thoughts on BNAT, which I'm usually dead last in doing.

This is going to be in no particular order, but in this first part I'll go over 4 of the 7 premieres and in my next piece I'll talk about the 3 remaining premieres and some of the vintage programming. Enjoy!!!

300
This was the biggie, the final film of the night and the one everybody was waiting for.

The footage Zack Snyder and Warner Bros. showed at Comic-Con brought down the house and got me extremely pumped to see the film. I was ready.

Snyder was there and told us that 99% of the effects were finished, but then later said there were about 100 VFX shots still left to tweak, just new compositing layers. Which the film needs... but I'll get to that in a second.

On the whole, I dug the hell out of 300. Once Gerard Butler heads out with his 300 Spartan warriors to engage the advancing threat of the Persian army (millions strong), the movie doesn't let up. The battle scenes are incredibly well shot, beautiful... unlike anything you've seen before. You can see moments of LORD OF THE RINGS style pop up, mostly when you see the full armies from a distance, but the actual fighting is brutal, exaggerated, bloody and just plain old testosterone-driven cool.

The whole thing is exaggerated, not just the fighting. The colors, the costumes, the themes, the dialog, the villains, the heroes, everything in-between. Just like in Frank Miller's book.

It eased my mind a little when Snyder said during the Q&A afterwards that there were still over 100 VFX shots that were being tweaked and finished because there were some shots that looked a little cartoony. I attributed those to the early cut and didn't dwell on them when watching, but they did stand out to me... There seemed to be scenes that were CGI for no reason, just two people in a wide shot talking. I'd assume those were the types of shots the Snyder was referring to. Once completed, they wouldn't be so noticeable.

Is it as good as we want it to be? I can personally say this movie is a giant step forward for Zack Snyder as a filmmaker. The weak characters of DAWN OF THE DEAD kind of ruin my enjoyment of that film, but in 300 he has the style with the characters and substance to back it up, even in its exaggerated form.

The movie is indeed fucking kick-ass. It's a must for anyone who calls themselves a geek or a film lover. Be excited for it, but don't expect your life to be changed. I can see the hype for this one fly higher than you'll reach when you're sitting in the audience. I just don't want people to be disappointed in a great movie because they expected it to be godly, you know?


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