Reboot

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That's An Option

300 is an awful movie. You need to understand my opinion of the film before we start. Read my review. Now let’s begin.

Everything in the movie is a device, designed to appeal to a certain something. Some video game nerd got a directing job and is browsing down a self-made checklist of “What Will Make This Movie Fucking Awesome.” The Producers and the Studio don’t have to worry about pulling in the young male audience, considering it’s an ultra-violent war epic with gratuitous nudity and its source material is a comic book. They’ll already be lining up outside the door weeks in advance.

The trick is getting their girlfriends (Sadly, yes they have them, another injustice of life.) to come. Anyone other than the heterosexual, video game playing, reluctant-to-leave-adolescence-and-Ring Pops-behind male is going to need something more than that “Fucking Awesome” checklist to persuade them to pay money to see this film.

I thought the answer to that was muscular men. It’s really frightening actually. They’re everywhere, glistening with sweat, talking about freedom, and…well…being “fucking awesome.” It’s a shallow device, but the amount of bare male body in this movie is excessive to the point that I thought I was watching an infomercial for the Ab-Doer.

But my friend Tyler saw the exposition of man differently. While I thought it was girls and gay guys going to the theater and staring at the shirtless men, he thinks it’s actually the straight men gawking the most. To them, that kind of person, the daring and doomed Spartan, is “an option.”

And you know what? Tyler’s right, not just because I caught him doing push-ups later that night after the movie, but because of the phenomenon it has become in spite of average reviews. People really think that is an option.

It’s nothing new. We’ve always wanted to be the characters we see in movies, to live the lives of people we’re not. That’s what makes all stories so endearing and keeps us coming back to the movie theater week after week: the escapism. But we’ve severely lowered our standards.

I mean, come on people. Gerard Butler? This is the kind of person we envy? This is whom we want to be? The guy’s main contribution to the world is playing the Phantom of the Opera in an equally crappy screen adaptation of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. Why him? Because he bangs a hot queen on the screen for five minutes and has a digitally-enhanced six-pack? Go buy a magazine, for the love of God. Take your soft-core porn elsewhere and leave my movies alone.

What is so appealing about these Spartans? They don’t even win. I’ve heard the argument that it’s the honor of dying in the name of freedom, but that’s bull. We wouldn't have a shortage of troops in Iraq if people wanted to die in the name of freedom. Maybe the Army should change their uniforms from desert fatigues to capes and panties. Enlistment would soar.

And here's a history lesson for you all: the Spartans were not fans of freedom. Not in the cliched "Muslims hate freedom" sense, but in the we're-an-oligarchical-society-that-constantly-fights-with-the-democratic-Athenians sense. And the Persians weren't terrible people. They had an empire, but the different regions were allowed to govern themselves autonomously. Maybe I shouldn't have watched The History Channel before seeing this movie. That was my error.

I just watched The Philadelphia Story the other night. Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart: those are guys I would want to be, the "option" I would pursue. Sure, they're fully clothed and not chopping people's heads off, but it's attainable. I can be quirky and witty like Cary or likeable and wholesome like Jimmy, and it doesn't require push-ups.

Plus wearing Fruit of the Looms and a bath towel around my neck like a cape was what I did as a kid to be Superman. I'm not about to go back to doing that over this film. Superman could fly, see through walls, and never get hurt. A Spartan can...win a sit-up contest? I'm sorry, it's not an "option."