I think good points have been made. I agree that comics these days have quite a lot of substance if you're looking in the right places. Again, if you compare the 300 comic to the 300 movie, you'll find that while the movie attempts to have more going on, there's a lot more substance in the comic. I think it was just a little bit of the director trying to go too much into a Sin City route than the comic truly called for. It doesn't feel like Sin City, but it feels like it's trying to go more over the top than the comic would warrant in some cases. That doesn't mean I didn't like it, because I did (and if you're going to see a crazy special effects movie in a theater, this is the one), I just wouldn't have done it the same way had I been making it. It goes right back to my liking of The Illusionist more than The Prestige that we talked about in the associated threads. This 300 was Prestige. Mine would have been Illusionist. I'd prefer a little more simplicity, a little less flash and a little more of a painterly quality. This director was trying to make a huge movie, and one to match Sin City, which was incredibly huge in its own way. That was a lot to live up to, and I think that's what knocked it down from what it could have been.
But again, it was worth seeing. It wasn't high art, but it was damn good fun.
And I disagree entirely about Butler, ender. He was fucking perfect in that movie. And actually, I guess I don't just mean in the movie, I mean in the role. He was Leonidas, or at least about as close as you could hope for. I thought he did an amazing job on all fronts.
EDIT - Added a little bit to my explanations.
