Waiting with trepidation

A few months ago, the trailer for 300 was released and I was stunned. I had heard that a movie adaptation of Frank Miller's graphic novel would be made but I did not expect it to look like the most fantastic nightmare.

I realize that I should try to calm down since I ruined Borat for myself by overhyping it over several months. But, in this case, I can easily come up with reasons why I might not enjoy 300.

• I was not a fan of Sin City. It looked great but Frank Miller's clichéd dialogue and cast of caricatures were too exasperating. I do not expect much progress in 300, since the source material was written before Sin City.
• The story of the 300 Spartans battling the Persian army sounds like the kind of heroic underdog story that contemporary audiences love. However, upon closer inspection, the Spartans come across like a bunch of Aryan jocks. Here was a society that shunned the handicapped and the weak. It was their ruthless practice of weeding out so-called inferiors, like leaving babies in the wilderness to see which ones would survive, that eventually contributed to the decline of the population, and hence, their society.
• Pitted against the racial homogeneity of the Spartans are a bunch of coloured people and the physically deformed. When Frank Miller transforms the Greek turncoat, Ephialtes, into a grotesque hunchback, he participates in the kind of vilification that is usually only found in childish fairy tales. As an adult, equating minorities and the ugly with evil is harder to swallow.

Having said all this, I will probably see 300 in March, unless it gets a 'Rotten' rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

PS, fanboys/girls, I am prepared to be told how wrong I am. I have not read Frank Miller's graphic novel so feel free to school me.