Completely Useless Movie Previews: 300

Thinking of going to go see 300? Gentle readers, once again I'll spare you the need, by reviewing a film I haven't seen based solely on the content of the trailers.

300 is the story of the first X-Games, held in Sparta, Greece a couple thousand years ago with single one event: Mortal Kombat! Painstaking attention to historical accuracy has wrought a film that cannot be questioned at all. Everything you see on screen is how it happened in real life, from freaky masks to hovering Matrix-style kung-fu attack moves to ancient Greeks actually having sex with their wives, and certainly not prepubescent boys. To question the authenticity of this film is to question history itself.

Our protagonist? Well, his name isn't mentioned in the trailer, so let's call him Steve. Steve and 299 other Spartans are trying to fend off an attack by the Persians, who eventually decided to call themselves Iranians. So we can probably guess they're the bad guys. Rarely do you see Iranian heroes in our popular culture. Just look at Heroes. Any Iranians there? No? See!

Steve gets to do cool things like watch deformed lesbians make out, run around shirtless, and shove people into bottomless wells, which you'll find all over Greece even to this day. The other 299 guys? They don't matter. Actually, Steve matters very little, because I gather he (and his 299 understudies) gets killed by the Persio-Iranians. How could these 299 Brawny Towel mascots be wiped out by a bunch of dudes who obviously devote most of their time to smithing elaborate bronze fetish gear? Did I mention there are like a trillion Persians? Well, there are. Take my word for it, I paused the trailer and counted them. One trillion and seven.

The film is shot in a hazy sort of Sky Captain/Sin City style that doesn't give away the fact that it was all blue-screened one bit. I, for one, truly believed they had sent Steve and his 299 life partners back in time to defend Sparta, a city so comfy that to this day our best accommodations are described as "Spartan". But no, it's all done with computers. Real, sweaty Greek soldiers couldn't stand there for long hours reciting their lines, they'd be too busy sneaking off for butt sex.

On my trademark-registered scale of 1 to 88 stars, I give 300 299 stars and one Steve. I can do this because it's my scale and I can do what I want, just like the filmmaker did what he wanted to in his own movie and altered the highly-effective phalanx military maneuver to "look cooler".