300.

I have to start by saying this: Please don't kill me. Between the Eva Mendes-obsessed kids in my Robotics class and the overly-excited kids with the braces, red towels and the wooden swords, EVERYONE seems to love this movie. I don't think I'd stand a chance.

I saw this the day it came out. I was excited. I loved Sin City, thus beginning my love of Frank Miller, and so I was excited about this movie. The fact that Zack Snyder directed it, though not as big a deal, was still incentive for me. I loved his pseudo-remake of "Dawn of the Dead" in 2004, and thus had faith in him. Because the DVD commentary for that movie was quite funny. I like that guy.

I was disappointed. I'm sure I would've loved it more had I not put in the effort to read it the day before, but I was disappointed. For those of you who have not read the comic, almost the entire book takes place on the battlefield. The entire storyline with the queen doing crazy liberating stuff in Sparta was added later, and, though handled well, could not support its own weight all the way through. It seemed like a cliché, ya know: This guy is gone doing something heroic and great, and his lady is supportive, but she has to give herself to another dude to save him or whatever. It seemed dumb. Although there was some awesome payoff at the end, where she's all like, "Bitch!" and stabs him.

Oh yeah. This may sort of ruin some stuff for you if you haven't seen it yet.

Wikipedia refers to this, as well as Sin City, as a "shot-for-shot adaptation of the comic book." This is pretty much as true of this as it is of that, I think, at least as far as what was IN the comic book to begin with.

You will find that pretty much all of my complaints about this movie are about inconsistencies between the book and the movie.

Perhaps it was my commitment to the comic book, perhaps my extreme want to prove to my History teacher that it was at least MODERATELY historically accurate, perhaps an amalgamation of the two, but people I've talked to don't seem to be as bothered by this as I was. There are three big, angry, inexplicable monsters in this movie.

The first is a large rhinoceros-like creature, who is sent charging at the Spartans and killed en route. Now, at first, I tried to defend this in my head by thinking, "Maybe that's just representative of like, the elephants that were shown in the comic or something. Later, there are elephants, in a scene taken directly from the book. So they just threw Mr. McRhinofreak in there for the hell of it.

The second, at right, is much more humanoid. But this does not make him any more excusable. He is a giant angry battle-scarred creature, very much looking like something out of Lord of the Rings. I swear to god, in between the walking trees and the pissed off dead guys, he was in there. This is a big bald thing set upon the Spartans by the Immortals, who have it all chained up, as seen. They send him out there, and of course he fights directly with Leonidas, no one else. He seems not to care about the other 299 or so Spartans out there, with the exception of the two or three that need to be killed for him to get to his only somewhat conspicuous target.

The final and most annoying of these three creatures is a large, puffy creature with claw-like knives for hands. It is only shown for about thirty seconds, simply employed to slice a guy's head off as punishment. He is by far the least like any creature of the real world, and not even used in a battle sequence. If you are going to put a big random monster in there, Zack Snyder, at least use it for something interesting and memorable. Not for half a minute of confusion and bewilderment.

Now, I emphasize my problems with this movie simply because, judging from what I've heard, it is so unanimously LOVED. Sure, it was badass, I did like it a lot. But it was not perfect, and had some things in it that really pissed me off.

I give it a four out of five.