Adolescent fantasies: ‘300’ and ‘TMNT’

I had heard a cacophony of buzz over the past few weeks about Zack Snyder’s film “300:” about how it would revolutionize the movie industry; how it would come to be seen as the great allegory for the injustice of the war on Iraq; how it would be really, really awesome. Upon seeing it, there’s not much to say, except—Lord, how did those notions get thrown around?

Frankly, there’s more intelligence, more excitement, more love of storytelling in the trailer for the Rodriguez/Tarantino double-header “Grindhouse,” which conveniently played before my showing of “300,” cruelly placed there in order to whet my appetite and apparently to remind me of what I wouldn’t be seeing for the next two hours.

The film purports to a romanticized account of the Battle of Thermopylae, when Spartan King Leonides (Gerard Butler) brought 300 of his finest troops to battle the millions of soldiers from the Persian Empire, but really it’s about filmmaking at its most childish and onanistic: epic wars take place on oversaturated computerized battlefields, and lapse into slow motion with every swipe of the sword, apparently resonating pretty deeply with the easily amused but only succeeding in giving me a serious migraine. One could say that it’s a reflection of Frank Miller’s world of testosterone-laced fiction (upon which this film is based), where hulking troglodytes force their ugly, angular fists through the faces of other hulking troglodytes. What’s missing, however, from at least the film version of “300” is the typical Miller turnaround in that respect—where the eventual fulfillment of macho ideals was greeted with a trip to the electric chair or a bullet in the brain; less a matter of martyrdom than the ultimate reward for the lifestyle of the snarling caveman. On the other hand, Snyder’s Spartan legions—which, if the film’s prologue is to be believed, were more-than-willing players on a barbaric playground of cold-blooded murder—become an irony-free paragon of might-makes-righteousness, screaming catchphrases vaguely in favor of liberty and honor before slicing up a few hundred weaklings and eventually achieving a glorious death.

But despite news reports to the contrary, one should not mistake the adulation of chest-beating apes for any kind of position on the United States or the Iraq War, as its so-called “politics” can probably be attributed to any conflicts between any cultures from any countries through the entire history of man: the unwavering insistence of carrying out justice; the gung-ho thrust into battle; the tendency for those involved to throw themselves into the light of the underdog. A statement on the decadent, destructive nature of humanity, a la Mel Gibson’s “Apocalypto?” Not when it’s presented this glamorously. To be honest, with most of the film comprised of a sea of soldiers, walking in lockstep, preparing to fight a legion of oiled-up Aryan gods (playing Greeks, of course), “300” is about as close to a Leni Riefenstahl film as you can get without actually propagandizing anything—save the idea that rabid jackasses will take every opportunity to whip ‘em out and measure ‘em, and that they should be congratulated for it.

Surprising that the lesser of two headaches would be “TMNT,” an all-CGI affair based on a franchise that was originally meant to parody Miller’s grim-and-gritty output of the early 80’s. Of course, if you’re expecting the Ninja Turtles to have somehow creatively reformed in the 15 years since they were on top of the world as a terrible animated series, you’re probably a member of the target adolescent/immature audience, thereby making the question utterly moot. Apparenty taking place sometime after “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze”—shamefully without mention of that film’s real star, Vanilla Ice—”TMNT” begins with arch-nemesis Shredder dead and the Turtles disbanded; however, as a mysterious industrialist (Patrick Stewart) teams up with the Foot Clan to capture a cadre of monsters for possibly sinister purposes, they’re forced to work together again.

Let’s face it: the Turtles cash cow has never been interested in painting its plots or characters with anything other than the broadest strokes available (to recap: Leonardo leads; Donatello does machines; Raphael is cool, but rude; Michelangelo is a party dude) and “TMNT” takes an even lazier route: Mike, Don and the rest of the supporting cast are pushed to the sidelines as goody-two-shoes Leo clashes with faux-badass Raph over the latter’s tendency towards vigilantism. Several boring fight sequences later, the sound and the fury ends with the promise of a sequel. Hopefully, said follow-up will come another decade and a half later, perhaps convincing the young’ns of today that they obsessed over garbage when they were kids, as the previous generation learned rather harshly. Ah, but there will always be a brand new generation of young’ns to convince—but not before they’ve paid their two bits.