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With his latest column, a piece that praises the primal visual energy of 300 and disdains the fuddy-duddy critics who are too caught up in the aesthetics of 1970s-era quality to understand the genius of young guys like Zack Snyder and his digital Hollywood brethren, L.A. Times columnist Patrick Goldstein has made me realize something...something that old-school, late-GenX and boomer-aged editors probably need to consider also. Seriously.

In order to hold on to the dwindling readership of Genx and GenY-aged movie nuts who are also video-game and graphic-novel fans (some scholastically-challenged, some not) and to save the established venerated film critics from seeming overly clueless and/or snooty, big-city newspaper editors need to hire pinch-hitting geek film critics to come in and write counterpoint reviews whenever any kind of all-digital, intellectually minimalist film based on a comic book is released.

Boomer-and late-GenX-aged film critics have, as Goldstein writes, "been trained to value realism over fantasy" and are therefore psychologically and physiologic- ally incapable of giving crap-milkshake movies like 300 any kind of fair hearing.

To give narrative simple-dick, whoa-dude, all-digital movies a fair shake, editors need to bring in critics who aren't so hung up on erudition and literary traditions and plays and other 20th Century art forms, and who are able to approach films like the serious fans who bought $70 million worth of 300 tickets the weekend before last are...guys who can look at a heaving sea of all-digital images and go "wow" with absolute sincerity...guys who realize, as Goldstein writes, "that Hollywood's mass-audience films are not a literary or an intellectual genre...never have been, never will be...they are built around visuals and emotion."

The problem with boomer-aged critics (the pathetic saps) is that they're hung up on the mostly discredited idea that visuals and emotion alone aren't enough. Most of them feel that some kind of ruthlessness or fierce personal vision or comprehen- sive intensity -- some kind of audacity or brashness, or a spiritual belief system that's about something besides the fact that the bad guys are really bad and that the good guys are pure of heart and noble of spirit -- is also necessary. I know that the older guys can't seem to get with the program, and I don't know what to do about it. Maybe they need to be taken out behind the barn and shot?

Other fields of criticism require different writers for different experiences. Sometime between the late 1960s and early '70s it dawned upon editors that critics who were used to the worlds of opera and theatre and world-class orchestral concerts weren't the right guys to review the latest Rolling Stones album or to trek down to CBGB's and listen to some new band. You have to get writers who are part of what's going on in order to write well about what's going on.

Seriously -- I don't think for a second that mainstream over-40 critics were being the least bit clueless or crabby when it came to zotzing 300. They're merely applying minimal standards of art, taste (which always comes, in the words of Francois Truffaut, "from a thousand distastes") and narrative refinement to an aesthetically downgraded digi-world, however archiac and analog such judgements might seem to guys like Goldstein.

(I refuse to believe that Goldstein, a very sharp guy, is really and truly embracing the Snyders of the world. I think he's equating big earnings with cultural-political significance on some level and is looking to somehow jump on the bandwagon. I know that he knows better. That or he enjoys pissing people off.)

Movies are great -- they're my life, my love, my religion -- but let's face the bitter facts. More and more movies like 300 are going to get made in the coming years (a lot of them), and more and more guys like Zack Snyder (and their allies) are going to take positions of power in this town. Slowly, steadily, movie culture as many of us have known it is being usurped and weakened, and is sliding into the swamp. The world is devolving. Movies may have peaked with Mark Lester's Truck Stop Women, or maybe, just maybe, the best is yet to come...but I doubt it.

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Posted by Jeffrey Wells on March 21, 2007 at 6:44 PM

comment #1

Joe B. says ...

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...

Posted by Joe B. at March 21, 2007 10:00 PM

comment #2

gruver1 says ...

Wells to Joe B.: You can really be merciless when you've a mind to. C'mon, dude...don't be so rough! I was feeling pretty good until I read your withering response. Have a heart.

Posted by gruver1 at March 21, 2007 10:06 PM

comment #3

kingofnails says ...

I've been waiting for someone to deliver some kind of smackdown to Patrick Goldstein for that latest column...thank you, Jeff Wells.

Posted by kingofnails at March 21, 2007 10:15 PM

comment #4

Noah says ...

Honestly, this site is becoming useless. You can't just let anything go, Jeff. Big fucking deal, you disagree with the masses. It happens to all critics, it's not the end of the fucking world. Miami Vice was not as brilliant as you think it is, I disagree with you. This happens sometimes, people disagree. This is one movie.

Posted by Noah at March 21, 2007 10:31 PM

comment #5

Mr. Muckle says ...

I recently got an HD TV and it's pretty cool. Thankfully the stores let me return four of them before I found one I liked. I think the picture is actually a worthwhile improvement on the old standard. And so the march of technology goes on obsoleting the old stuff, and it got me thinking what they could do next to make us spend more money. It came to me in a flash -- 3D! Watch for it.

So I suppose that's a kind of evolution -- the technological. But what is it about movies that make them worth being one's "life, love, and religion?" I couldn't say, and it occurs to ask (not cynically) whether that state of affairs is not itself a cause of the world's devolution.

In very important functions of our lives, we observe and rightfully lament the ascendance of image over substance, and isn't that the primary gift movies have given us after all? And so the image continues to evolve while the substance goes all to frigging hell.

Posted by Mr. Muckle at March 21, 2007 10:33 PM

comment #6

nemo says ...

When you're investing in the stock market, the most dangerous three words you can hear are Everything Has Changed.

Goldstein is talking just like all folks at the height of the dot-com bubble in 1999. Earnings? Business plan? Route to profitability? The business cycle? That's the old way of thinking. Get with the program, granddad!

Sooner or later, a really big budget version of "300" is going to get made that is going to tank in a really big way. Then all of sudden the Goldsteins of the world will be talking about a return to basics, a return to old school values in film storytelling, the maturing of the Gen-Y generation.

Posted by nemo at March 21, 2007 10:43 PM

comment #7

Terry McCarty says ...

Haven't waded through the Goldstein and Chocano columns yet, but I'm presuming that Turan isn't happy over being labeled out of touch yet again.

But I'm beginning to think that the fuss over 300 (regarding form and content)is one that should have been settled after the release of SIN CITY. There's going to be good and bad actors-and-CGI graphic novel adaptations in the coming years. And maybe it's a little too early to assume that over-40 critics will reflexively hate every one of them because it's a new kind of filmmaking.

Posted by Terry McCarty at March 21, 2007 10:43 PM

comment #8

Matthew says ...

I don't really agree with writing off his point like that. For example, how would a critic who grew up appreciating the films of John Ford (such as THE SEARCHERS, which you have written about the problems of it, and I agree with those problems) write about THE WILD BUNCH when it came out? The movies are in the same genre yet so completely different. Coming from THE WILD BUNCH from the history of westerns, it is revolutionary, but in a much different way than Ford's films. It focused on the dirt and blood of the west instead of the beauty and honor present in most of Ford's films (compare the criminal characters of The Ringo Kid from STAGECOACH to Pike in WILD BUNCH). The difference makes it hard to judge WILD BUNCH coming from that history just as it is harder to love SEARCHERS after the changes the western genre has gone through since.

Now, I do not think 300 is as good as any of those movies I just mentioned, but I enjoyed it. It is an exercise in visual style that could not be made before the digital era. Instead of attempting realism with CGI, it and movies like SIN CITY are going the other direction, embracing the fake nature of the CGI and using it to create different images. In doing this, it also told a different kind of story, not as complex in character or plot as movies since the 1970's. To me, the plot and story reminded me of some of the old Greek and Roman myths you used to read in high school. These stories were not enjoyable because of character archs or complicated plots, but for the larger than like situations, such as the story of Prometheus giving fire to humans and having his liver eaten daily by an eagle. The story is great because it cannot be seen in every day life. It works on the imagination instead of playing on the emotions. To me, that's what movies like 300 and SIN CITY are doing, using CGI to play more towards the imagination than trying to depict reality and play on emotions. Anyways, just my (very long) thoughts on this movie, though I do agree than many far worse movies will certainly follow, but doesn't that always happen?

Posted by Matthew at March 21, 2007 10:46 PM

comment #9

Terry McCarty says ...

Jeffrey wrote:
(I refuse to believe that Goldstein, a very sharp guy, is really and truly embracing the Snyders of the world. I think he's equating big earnings with cultural-political significance on some level and is looking to somehow jump on the bandwagon. I know that he knows better. That or he enjoys pissing people off.)

Or that Goldstein is aware that this kind of cheerleader writing will ensure his survival in the new L.A. TIMES regime. A parallel example could be that the not-afraid-to-be-politically-incorrect prose stylings of Marc Cooper and Nikki Finke have kept them from being deep-sixed during Michael Lacey's campaign to make the LA WEEKLY just like his late NEW TIMES LOS ANGELES.

Posted by Terry McCarty at March 21, 2007 10:48 PM

comment #10

Hallick says ...

Patrick Goldstein is quite a remarkable writer. Probably the only one who can spit and swallow at the same time.

Crude "homophobic" joking aside, if he thinks 300 is the second coming of sliced bread, then great for him and his fanboy/gamer sandwich. But heralding a new Gilded Age in movie making is like making room for more bone in the largest cavity of your skull.

Not having seen "The 300" to know where I would place Snyder's film in this squabble, I can still say if critics have to be taken to task for coming at movies like this with a closed mind, then the filmmakers should also be taken to task for coming at the same films with ones little-used; because, eventually, what everybody's wetting their underoos over in "The 300" will become the new tediously commonplace status quo. And then your legacy is going to become stripped down to the quality of your script and the excellence of your actors - should you have such things.

Posted by Hallick at March 21, 2007 11:18 PM

comment #11

MovieBob says ...

Goldstein is on to something, but it seems to me that there's an irony going on: HE'S not looking far back enough in forming his perspective on this. The idea that apparent shift from subtext-heavy, morally-grey material prefered by the Boomer-age critical establishment toward the more iconic, crowd-pleaser material like "300" represents some kind of singular upward or downward evolution... no. The history of ANYTHING is never a straight line, it's peaks n' valleys.

The ultra-experimental/"artsy" silent and pre-code eras gradually gave way to the "simple" good vs. evil mass-entertainments of the sound and color eras, which then transitioned again to "edge" and art-crowd-cred in post-Studio era, which now seems poised to shift again once more toward the mythic. Tide goes in, tide goes out.

The trouble is that the current crop of critics either came up as or made their bones impressing the boomer-era guard, who initially made they're bones as part of a "revolution" that - in part - did away with the then-stale-and-overused John Wayne style mythic movie hero and built up newer paradigms. Now that, with "300" and the comic/superhero films in general, that "classical hero" paradigm seems to be making a comeback, they're reflexively acting like ALL revolutionaries do when they wake up and realize they've morphed into the establishment: Barricading the doors, digging in their heels and shaking with fear remember what THEY did to the "old fogeys" who's tower THEY now occupy.

Posted by MovieBob at March 21, 2007 11:33 PM

comment #12

James says ...

It's scary to realize that you "don't get" something that lots of smart, sophisticated ("hip," to use Wells' term) people seem to sincerely enjoy. I'm 33 and I already realize that I'm becoming a bit of a fuddy-duddy about video games. I caught a feature on NPR within the past week about the possibility of video games becoming some sort of "art" and I threw up in my mouth. Video games fun? Sure. A way to zone out and sluff off stress? Yep. But art? Like Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Altman type art? Really?

But it's the way of the world. You've got to plant your flag somewhere, which means that, in some circles at least, you don't always get to be hip. Wells is willing to live with this fact. Goldstein, the whore, is in denial.

Another fuddy-duddy-ish bit about me is that I love classical music. Anyway, there's a line from some art critic or philosopher or someone who says something like: "Beethoven was great. And he will be loved until the end of time. But you know what would be better than Beethoven? A Beethoven in our time and place, who speaks our particular language, who shares our particular culture and history and worldview."

That's why we always keep looking for the next great artist working with the next technology in the next genre. Because we're not satisfied with having experienced the likes of Altman in the 1970s. We want an Altman for our time and place. Indeed, it's no surprise that my favorite Altman movie is Short Cuts because it came out when I was 20 and spoke to me where I lived. I can appreciate M.A.S.H. and Nashville and others but they can't grab me in the same way because I was barely alive when they were made.

Posted by James at March 22, 2007 12:55 AM

comment #13

Terry McCarty says ...

I don't know if I would call Patrick Goldstein a whore. He just wants to be a part of every TIMES regime and not imitate the career path of his former partner on the rock critic-turned-film writer beat: the now-forgotten Dennis Hunt.

Hunt used to do sniffy (albeit principled)video reviews with a kind of "rock is real, Hollywood is crap" ethos--which led to his disposal and the arrival of Susan King. Unfortunately, the cure was worse than the disease. King's done little more than crank out puffery her entire career.

Posted by Terry McCarty at March 22, 2007 1:46 AM

comment #14

atticusrex says ...

Matthew: I think you hit it on the spot. Movies like 300, Sin City shouldn't be judged against more serious minded matter. Is that to say we should dumb down our critique of these movies... not at all but we should look at them differently.

For example: Sky Captain was a bad movie in the CGI circus. Sin City and 300 have enough going for them that they work in this brave new world of filmmaking. Look at the last three Star Wars movies... they are awful as well. So yes movies still need to stand on their own no matter how they are made yet I feel that critics for one reason or another read into or expected something else out of 300.

Whilst yes 300 is based on history/legend it's based on a visual medium which distorts reality and bringing it to life gives us a heighten sense of reality. 300 was reality told through a fantasy lens.

People are reading into this film what they will... the Gay subtexts and visuals, the War in Iraq ect... Well for my money you can always compare wars/battles of yesteryear to what is happening in the present and just because there is beefcake on display doesn't mean Gay Pride is on display.

Could 300 have had better dialog, sure most movies can... but the way Zack directed this and yes the performances work and what you end up with is one fantastical period piece loosely based on fact.

Enjoy it or not for what it is.

I shudder to think what these critics will do to Grindhouse. I hope they get what that flick will be about.

Posted by atticusrex at March 22, 2007 5:00 AM

comment #15

Rich S. says ...

Oh for crying out loud. CGI is simply another form of expression. No more, no less. As atticusrex pointed out, any form of expression is going to have its good exemplars and its bad. Star Wars spawned a legion of ripoffs that thought all you had to have was the special effects. People soon tired of them and went back to the story. But the movies didn't get rid of the special effects. It's interesting to note the difference between the original Battlestar Galactica, which was clearly one of the empty ripoffs, and its new incarnation, which can stand with anything on television.

CGI is simply another tool. Somewhere, Stanley Kubrick is laughing his ass off. From Strangelove on, he turned his back on "reality" and chose to seek larger truths on broader canvasses. Are you telling me he wouldn't have been able produce a masterpiece using the techniques employed in 300? Please.

One thing that has to change, though, is that movie critics like Jeff need to stop automatically turning their brains off the minute these techniques are employed. That's where the industry has passed them by. Jeff "geeks out" over the "fumes" given off by Miami Vice, which is every bit the exercise of style over substance that 300 is. But since MV didn't employ obvious CGI, it gets a pass.

Someday, someone will produce a great movie using this process. Neither Sin City, Sky Captain, 300 nor any of the Star Wars prequels were that movie and I won't argue they were. But if a movie critic can't address a film on its own merits regardless of the medium in which it is presented, then, yes, that critic could, and probably should, be labeled a "dinosaur."

Posted by Rich S. at March 22, 2007 5:22 AM

comment #16

Rich S. says ...

Oh, and all these critics that style themselves as the last true bastions of taste should probably go back and read some of the "mainstream" reviews of Bonnie and Clyde, The Wild Bunch and 2001. They will sound awfully familiar.

Posted by Rich S. at March 22, 2007 5:24 AM

comment #17

Doug Pratt says ...

It's the thumbs up/thumbs down mentality--instigated, by the way, by one of the finest film critics in America--that has poisoned the discourse of cinema, just as its more gargantuan political model is destroying the country as a whole. A decent film critic is going to recognize the strengths and weaknesses of any movie and convey those strengths and weaknesses to readers who will be able to discern, from the writing, whether the components of the film will or will not be their cup of tea. For some, all a movie needs ia gigantic, charging rhinocerous to be a satisfying entertainment, while others will quite naturally turn tail and leap out of its path. A good film critic will play matchmaker for both, share a personal preference that alienates neither, and offer insight--the rhinocerous is the new zeitgeist--that enhances the viewing experience for all.

Posted by Doug Pratt at March 22, 2007 6:22 AM

comment #18

erniesouchak says ...

Most of the kids (i.e., 20-something males) I know who loved "300" would not read a movie review no matter who wrote it. Clearly a media outlet needs to make a determination about its own audience before it brings a critic onboard. Scott & Dargis write for New York Times readers, Lane & Denby for New Yorker readers, Knowles et al for Aint It Cool readers, and so forth. And that comes across in all of their writing. As for TV vs. print, you're dealing with 2 different ballgames; everything becomes shorter (i.e. shallower) and more stupid on TV. How else to explain the success of Anderson Cooper?

Posted by erniesouchak at March 22, 2007 7:17 AM

comment #19

atticusrex says ...

RICH: I agree with most of what you said though I loved Sin City and really liked 300. I wanted to love Sky Captain but it left me very cold and the film itself was boring (as was the last 3 SW movies) as it relied on CGI to propel it forward. When you have a total effect movie and the best effect is Jolie in Black well... there you have it.

Sin City and 300 on the other hand while using CGI to create the world the characters lived in, the films were not relying on the CGI to propel it forward.

The point is both films were based on graphic novels and the decision was to honor those sources to the letter and panel and for that I would call both movies a resounding success.

Does that mean Troy should have been made this way? Not really. The source for that flick were history books. So doing it mostly with live action is a better way to go since there is no art form as it's basis. That said the only problem for me concerning Troy was the director. While yes there were good performances I felt the action scenes were dull and needed a Ridley Scott or someone else of that elk to film.

I always point out that a filmmaker is the final controller and not what tools are used... Compare the 'cinema' of Fifth Element to Phantom Menace. You actually feel the gritty organic future world of Fifth Element where the worlds depicted in SW I felt cold and distant and obviously digital.

Posted by atticusrex at March 22, 2007 8:45 AM

comment #20

DavidF says ...

I don't know if this is relevant but I was just looking around and it turns out that different movies are made for different audiences! Who knew?

This whole discussion started silly and got stupid (because of the concept, not the posters!).
Different films aim to capture different styles or levels of reality.
Sin City was totally abstract in that regard.
But in 1968 were people writing long articles about how the model work in 2001 was ruining movies?
George Lucas made a leap with the whole "used universe" idea in Star Wars that changed the way sci-fi was filmed from then on (Alien being maybe the most obvious example.)

This is ONE KIND OF MOVIE and as others have said it's little different from Roger Rabbit.
Like anything else, CGI is a tool. Robert Rodriguez and Zack Snyder have chosen to use it in a particular way (specifically, the recreation of a graphic novel style). I don't see how that, by itself, is any worse than a director choosing to shoot something (say, the opening of Saving Private Ryan) documentary style. They're all just choices.
There are a zillion ways for a film to create "reality" and people who bash CGI mostly don't know what they're talking about. They don't know how much model work went into the new Star Wars movies, they think that a guy in a car in front of front-projection is somehow better because it's "more real"...it can be used well and it can be used poorly JUST LIKE ANYTHING ELSE.
I thought the battles in the Lord of the Rings films were exceptional but found the ones in Troy to be lackluster: Same technology, different director. One good use, one bad.

I liked Sin City (ie it was "cool" but not "great") and haven't seen 300 but if/when I do I don't find it difficult to place these in their proper context. I might see 300 AND Reign Over Me but comparing them is apples and oranges.

Wells seems to have a real trouble making distinctions here. And he keeps harping on them over and over and over...

Posted by DavidF at March 22, 2007 9:05 AM

comment #21

DavidF says ...

I don't know if this is relevant but I was just looking around and it turns out that different movies are made for different audiences! Who knew?

Wells seems to have a real trouble making distinctions here. And he keeps harping on them over and over and over...

Posted by DavidF at March 22, 2007 9:05 AM

comment #22

DavidF says ...

p.s. This reminds me of a wonderful story Ed Norton tells on the commentary track for Fight Club.
There's a critic - Richard Schickel, I believe - who wrote an essay Norton loved about how great The Wild Ones was; how it changed his life. It disappointed Schickel that the movie critics of the time "didn't get it" or how important it was to his generation.
The same critic slammed Fight Club and, in Norton's opinion was doing EXACTLY what he hated the other critics for doing. When push came to shove he was as trapped by his generation's pereceptions as anyone else. And so it goes...

Posted by DavidF at March 22, 2007 9:12 AM

comment #23

Craig Kennedy says ...

Goldstein's just trying to look like he's ahead of the curve, but I hardly see 300 as some kind of generational litmus test. Comparisons between 300 and Star Wars or Lord of the Rings are especially ridiculous.

Wait until the next CGI enhanced film based on a comic or graphic novel stiffs and everyone will move on to the next big thing.

I thought 300 was nice to look at but really boring. The former opinion has everything to do with technology but the latter has nothing. And it's not a style over substance issue either. I really loved Sin City.

This was my less eloquent way of saying many of the same things a bunch of people above have already stated, but there you go.

Posted by Craig Kennedy at March 22, 2007 9:59 AM

comment #24

dre says ...

I really don't see what the big deal is. I consider myself something of a "fan boy" and "geek". I thought Sin City rocked and enjoyed 300. But I wouldn't call either film masterpieces (though Sin City comes closer) because both films lack real depth. I do think they are much better than the average special effects driven pieces of crap released every year. Both movies were well-reviewed (esp. Sin City) and got - I think - a fair shake from critics. Just as the Kill Bill movies - which I do consider a great masterwork - got rave reviews because they had that sneaky Tarantino depth (I know, go ahead and laugh).

Just because 300 made a gazillion dollars and it didnt receive wall-to-wall raves doesnt mean critics are out of touch (they're out of touch for different reasons). If we get guys in there who just to call 300 a masterpiece, we've only dumbed ourselves down. I'm not saying the movie couldn't have been one, I'm just saying it isn't. It was a very good trace art of the graphic novel, nothing more.

Eventually the amazing albeit empty visual feasts will make way for movies that combine the intellect and/or heart. That's my take anyway

Posted by dre at March 22, 2007 10:06 AM

comment #25

sutter kane says ...

This is a great piece, Jeff. I like to think that I hover somewhere in the middle of your polarity; I'm able to suspend disbelief and enjoy a visceral trifle like Snyder's DOTD (haven't seen 300 yet), but I also get hungry for something more challenging. I often tell people that 28 Days Later, which you liked, if I recall correctly, appealed to the film buff in me. DOTD appealed to the 12 year old in me. I'm not sure it has to be an either/or scenario for critics, except that there is so much more of the latter.

But I'm also hopeful about a guy like Snyder. I admit there's nothing to support this, but I also think that after those guys ascend to hollywood's a-list, they suddenly have the power to do something more substantial. Sure it's all style and emotion now, but if you do that well, it can translate to something more intellectually nourishing down the road. I know how you feel about Spielberg, but I'm pretty sure the guy had to make Jaws and Raiders before he would ever have been allowed to make Schindler's List. Not that Snyder has that kind of potential, necessarily, but he's only gotten the power in the last two weeks. Let's see how he uses it before we decry this as the decline of art in films.

Posted by sutter kane at March 22, 2007 10:12 AM

comment #26

lipranzer says ...

I'll preface this by saying I haven't seen 300 yet; I like Frank Miller's work, but I didn't like Zach Snyder's remake of DAWN OF THE DEAD, and SIN CITY got the style of Miller right, but not the substance. BATMAN BEGINS had nothing to do with Miller's Dark Knight series, but ironically, it was closer to Miller's spirit than SIN CITY was. Anyway.

If Goldstein's just pandering to keep his job, that's ridiculous. I mean, I hate reading David Denby's tracts on how cinema is being ruined, but at least he believes in what he's saying. If Goldstein really believes it...well, on the one hand, every generation of critics does a "Kill Your Idols" thing (to quote Jim DeRogatis). And certainly, I agree with those who say CGI is nothing more than a tool, and it's how you use it that counts. I thought it was brilliantly used in the LOTR movies, for example.

On the other hand, while critics all have different tastes, and certainly it's nice to read a review or essay on a film by someone who clearly knows the territory, I find the whole "only certain critics should review certain kinds of films" notion distressing. I love old-fashioned movies and directors like Ford and Capra and Sturges (Preston), so I can't appreciate something like the KILL BILL movies? Wrong - I love those too. When I go to a movie, I want to see something that's done well. Period.

Posted by lipranzer at March 22, 2007 10:12 AM

comment #27

Craig Kennedy says ...

Here's an open question for the folks who enjoy their graphic novels and comics: What do you make of this Snyder guy directing Watchmen?

He seems to say many of the right things in this Chud interview with Devin Faraci, but 300 is a totally different thing than Watchmen, no? I haven't read 300, but I'm told the film captures the source pretty well. The strengths of 300 are not the strengths of Watchmen. I don't know what to think.

Posted by Craig Kennedy at March 22, 2007 10:36 AM

comment #28

biffbolt says ...

"Here's an open question for the folks who enjoy their graphic novels and comics: What do you make of this Snyder guy directing Watchmen?"

I am cautiously optomistic.

Snyder clearly takes the original source material seriously, which is for the good, and did an able job in adapting 300. However Watchmen is an order of magnitude more difficult to adapt, has a bunch of layers that 300 didn't. Frankly I really have trouble seeing how anyone can faithfully translate it into a single movie. Then again, I was surprised that V for Vendetta turned out so faithful to the spirit of it's progenitor, so I am not as pessimistic as I would have been a year or two ago.

Posted by biffbolt at March 22, 2007 11:13 AM

comment #29

nemo says ...

"I caught a feature on NPR within the past week about the possibility of video games becoming some sort of "art" and I threw up in my mouth."

When I was 20 I knew a lot of people who liked to drink really sweet alcoholic beverages like rum and Coke, peppermint schnappes, Boone's Apple Farm, crap like that. I don't know a single person over 30 who can stomach that stuff. But the liquor store near the university in my town still sells plenty of that sweet stuff to college students.

People who are 20 are not going to stay young forever. They may continue to like some of the greasy kid stuff they enjoyed when they were young, but a lot of them will become dissatisfied and want something more out of life. They will look for more challenging forms of art and entertainment.

And then there will be a new crop of teens and 20-somethings behind them, who will in turn be attracted to sweet and empty crap. And who will also be attracted to something entirely new. That's the horror and the beauty of having young people come up in the world over and over again.

Posted by nemo at March 22, 2007 11:39 AM

comment #30

Craig Kennedy says ...

I'm guessing Watchmen will have to lose many of the things that made the graphic novel so great (the layers, the depth, the literary quality) but in the right hands a movie could be made that at least stands on its own as a good piece of cinema. At best it could maybe augment the original in some way, but I don't think you could ever really duplicate it within the confines of a feature length film. They did a great job with V, but even that in retrospect seemed a shadow of the original.

Posted by Craig Kennedy at March 22, 2007 11:42 AM

comment #31

jeffmcm says ...

The problem isn't that we need 'hip young critics' who can speak the language of younger viewers - this sounds like the panicked reaction of someone who fears being out-of-touch and unhip above all else.
The problem is that young people increasingly don't know how to watch a movie when confronted with an increasingly sophisticated visual world.

Like it or not, movies _are_ based primarily on action and emotion, but there's a big range in there, and the best filmmakers are the ones who can include delicacies and nuances of emotion and intellectual content within the populist medium that is film.
The problem is when you have a hack like Snyder who doesn't want to challenge or enrich his audience in any way - his singular goal in making his movie was to pander, to give the people what they wanted in the form of exquisitely rendered bloodlust. That's the primary sin of the movie - the CGI treatment was just the state-of-the-art icing on the cake.

If young people were more willing to actually think about the images they receive, be skeptical of them, literally be critical of what they're receiving instead of merely swallowing what is given to them, we'd be better off. How you get to that point, I don't know.

Posted by jeffmcm at March 22, 2007 12:36 PM

comment #32

jeffmcm says ...

I also want to point out that I have not seen a single person who loves 300 who actually praises it for anything other than merely entertaining - it's not a movie to be loved as much as it is that people don't want to be made to feel bad for their enjoyment.

Posted by jeffmcm at March 22, 2007 12:38 PM

comment #33

Craig Kennedy says ...

I would go further Jeffmcm and say that there's nothing wrong with liking a movie purely for its entertainment value, but declaring some kind of revolution because one example is particularly successful at the box office is indeed the 'panicked reaction of someone who fears being out-of-touch'.

It's possible one day the old fogies will see some kind of subtext to 300 that I'm missing now and it will be regarded with the same respect as Star Wars, but I doubt it.

Posted by Craig Kennedy at March 22, 2007 1:01 PM

comment #34

jeffmcm says ...

There can be something wrong with liking something purely for its entertainment value. People like porn because it entertains them, after all.

Star Wars is an interesting example - its subtexts are a little contradictory if you really step back and pay attention to them.

Posted by jeffmcm at March 22, 2007 1:09 PM

comment #35

Matthew says ...

Yes, 300 is an action movie and basically ignores character development and plot, but at the very least there are far worse movies than it. The problem with most action movies is that they try to have well developed characters and emotions, but do a horrible job at it as they spend much more time trying to get the action right. DIE HARD works because it did get the characters right. The movie is enjoyable not just for the action but because you feel for McClane. 300 goes the other direction. Instead of containing horrible attempts at emotion, it avoids that. The filmmakers knew the audience wasn't going to see the movie to watch how conflicted these characters were. Instead, they focused on the visual and the action and did a great job in those aspects. It is vacant in some areas, but at least it didn't contain emotions and displayed that poorly (I'm looking at you PEARL HARBOR). It is a slippery slope and there are many better movies out there, but it achieved its aim and for the type of movie it is, it works.

Posted by Matthew at March 22, 2007 1:42 PM

comment #36

jeffmcm says ...

Yes, it's successfully fascistic and tunnel-visioned.

Posted by jeffmcm at March 22, 2007 1:45 PM

comment #37

Craig Kennedy says ...

I'm getting this weird sense of deja vu that we've had this discussion before Jeff. I think we're on the same page regarding 300, though not so much in terms of whether such a film should be allowed to exist. And that's cool.

Posted by Craig Kennedy at March 22, 2007 2:20 PM

comment #38

jeffmcm says ...

You think it shouldn't?

Posted by jeffmcm at March 22, 2007 2:28 PM

comment #39

le corbeau says ...

Finally saw it. 300 is weirdly both pumped-up and inert, almost like some very early silent spectacles in terms of presenting a series of tableaux rather than action sequences (as Peter jackson did). Nevertheless it's no surprising it's a hit-- lots of people have clearly wanted a movie in which we tell strutting Islamic popinjays to go get fucked, and our mealymouthed entertainment industry has given us Jarhead and Syriana instead. Call it red state fascist gay porn if you like, and you won't be wrong, but I don't think the general sentiment-- that we have a lot less to feel guilty about toward the middle east than everyone keeps telling us we do, and they have a lot more to apologize for than anyone ever dares tell them-- is entirely mistaken.

Posted by le corbeau at March 22, 2007 2:46 PM

comment #40

jeffmcm says ...

Well stated, except I don't think that's the film's general sentiment: I would describe it as something more like, "wouldn't it be awesome to get together with all your buddies and mutilate some ragheads" and it's okay, because like they're invading us.

Posted by jeffmcm at March 22, 2007 2:53 PM

comment #41

Craig Kennedy says ...

"You think it shouldn't?"

No, I think is should. I hated the movie, but I'm ok with it existing in principle...not that it needs my approval, I just sensed you disagree.

Mgmax, I'd be a little surprised if the people loving this movie thought of it in any more specific terms than "us vs. them". I didn't get an anti Iran vibe off of it or a red state/blue state vibe off it. Maybe it's just because I don't think in those terms and once again I'm misreading the pulse of my fellow Americans.

Posted by Craig Kennedy at March 22, 2007 3:03 PM

comment #42

jeffmcm says ...

I don't think _any_ movie should not exist, but I thoroughly disliked it and want to spread that as widely as possible, if for no other reason than to tell those who did like it that they ought to analyze _why_ they liked it. Not all pleasures are created equal.

Posted by jeffmcm at March 22, 2007 3:38 PM

comment #43

dre says ...

I'm not sold he's the right guy for Wacthmen yet, and I enjoyed 300 and Dawn of the Dead. I liked the idea of Paul Greengrass tackling it a lot more. Snyder has the eye, but he has yet to show the substance. Doesn't mean he can't though.

Posted by dre at March 22, 2007 8:42 PM

comment #44