12/29/2023 0 Comments Gerard butler 300 keep calm my assIt’s important to keep this in mind when discussing 300, because even 14 years after its release, Snyder’s film remains surprisingly divisive. Ultimately, the politics of the viewer shouldn’t prevent one from finding a great deal to appreciate in these diametrically opposed visions of heroism. The comparison between Hero and 300 is particularly illustrative because it shows how films with opposing ideological approaches can utilize similar narrative and visual tactics and simultaneously succeed as films in their own right. Leonidas dies as an individual standing against the imperial collective of Persia, sacrificing himself so that Greeks can live in a world where they remain free people and individual units apart from a Persian imperial whole.īoth films are rousing action epics and narratives about the creation of a heroic national myth, but they argue for opposite ideological outcomes: Hero for collectivism and Chinese Communist nationalism, 300 for a particularly Western philosophical championing of the individual and Greek-style nationalism. But in 300, the significance is the opposite. In Hero, the final shot of Nameless is a portrait of calm reserve-Nameless is willing to give himself up for the promise of a new nation, sublimating his identity (he already had no name) and his status as an individual for the sake of the collective. However, while the images and methods of each film mirror each other and serve similar nationalistic purposes, the specific meaning of the image of martyrdom changes drastically depending on the film. They also share an understanding that martyrdom is the most powerful way to create a myth. Both films show how a heroic death creates an emotional fervour that can unite people behind a single national cause. The sombre ending, in which Nameless sacrifices himself, only to be taken up as a hero by the men who killed him, shares with Zack Snyder’s digital cinema epic an emotionalist’s approach to myth. Nameless accepts his fate as well, understanding that his death is the required payment for a united Chinese nation. The lawmakers demand his execution and the King reluctantly understands that sacrificing a great hero is necessary to unite the nation and establish a myth of Chinese nationalism. The presentation of his heroic death is nearly identical to the closing scene of another national mythmaking epic, Zhang Yimou’s wuxia picture Hero (2002), which was released five years before 300.Īt the end of Hero, the King of Qin (Chen Daoming) orders the execution of the hero Nameless (Jet Li) by a shower of arrows in the courtyard of the palace in Xianyang. Leonidas dies defending his small nation against the Persian Empire and becomes a mythic figure in the process, uniting the city states of Greece through his death. We do not see the arrows hit Leonidas, but instead freeze on the image of him holding firm in the face of death: the figure in silhouette in the foreground and in the background, a sky full of arrows frozen in mid-air before finding their mark. Near the end of Zack Snyder’s 300, after bravely defending the Hot Gates at Thermopylae from Persian hordes, Leonidas (Gerard Butler), King of Sparta, issues one last defiant battle cry and stands firm as hundreds of arrows pierce his flesh.
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