300 did so well because there's something in it for everyone. Hot half naked men for the womens and slow motion fighting for the mens! Plus a few not so impressive boobies here and there. Also, it's really just visually stunning. The story isn't so great, but it's really neat to watch. And a nod to the marketing, it was just as impressive. They took over myspace months ago to kind of make you wonder what teh hck it was and then did it again right before the release.

All good points, Chani. I guess I would have thought all the testerone in the trailer would turn the womens off to it. It does have a really impressive style, but so did Sin City (plus an amazing cast) and that didn't do near the business 300 is. Interesting point about myspace; there's just no accounting for internet marketing yet.

BTW, is Chani a Dune reference?

I'm trying to analyze why I wanted to see it. I think I wanted to see it, because I really liked Sin City, and I was vaguely familiar with the story of this battle. I think it just looked exciting in the trailors.

And, yes, I did think of the war in Iraq while watching the movie, but not as us being the Spartans. No, we were the Persians, because our government has decided to be imperialistic.

I hope you enjoy watching it at the IMAX. It's a great experience.

the reason for the success of '300'=fanboys.

this movie's development and marketing campaign have been brilliant in their integration of several major forces in teenage male-oriented pop culture: the internet, video games, comic books, and highly stylized violence, particularly of the hand-to-hand variety.

for months before its release, it was the top-rated film on imdb and was being spoken about in the sort of gushing, reverent tones usually reserved for the likes of 'casablanca' and 'citizen kane.' from 'the blair witch project' to the howard dean campaign to 'snakes on a plane', it's becoming increasingly obvious that a shrewd internet marketing campaign can guarantee a massive hit before the negative reviews hit the presses--certainly when the primary target audience consists of people who tend to pay more attention to web-based buzz than to the traditional review/promotional machine.

'300''s method is essentially to fuse the elements of comics and particularly of video games, which are now more popular and profitable than films by a significant margin. its violence is basically a simulacra of its video game counterparts--stylized to the point of being too obviously fantastic and fictional to be shocking or disturbing rather than visually thrilling (the same method tarantino employed in the 'kill bill' films and, to a lesser extent, 'pulp fiction' and 'reservoir dogs'). the action is typically video-game-ish in design, and its similarity to a video game in terms of its almost exclusive use of CGI settings and scenery suggests a substantial step towards the inevitable future of action films, in which the lines between 'movie' and 'video game' will become increasingly blurred (we are probably not too far away from 'interactive' movies in which an audience can affect the outcome of the story with game controllers or wii-style virtual-reality gaming equipment, 'choose your own adventure'-style).

it also taps into a lot of the traditional sources of angst and obsession for teenage boys--obsession with body image and sexual confusion (all those gleaming, rigid abdomens and leather codpieces), the channeling of repressed anger and confusion through violence, obsession with sex and death, etc. ad infinitum. it even has a heavy metal soundtrack.

i recently happened to overhear a conversation between a group of 14 or 15 year-old boys discussing their plans to attend the premier of '300' and then to see it again at least twice over the course of the opening weekend. they were talking about this as if it were compulsory--everyone they knew would be going; only the biggest dorks in school would show up on monday not having seen '300' at least twice.

no one who follows the industry needs to be told that boys aged 15-25 are the number 1 target marketing demographic, and '300' has captured that audience brilliantly in its inception, execution, and promotion.

haven't seen it yet myself, though i plan to, on IMAX. it looks like an awesome spectacle.

Impressive analysis, Jack. WB should make you their vp of marketing. Seriously.

Nice analysis jack ... I agree with everything that you've said, with the exception being that a shrewd net campaign doesn't necessarily guarantee success, pointing to 'Snakes on a Plane' as an example. Maybe 'Snakes'' campaign was more stumbled upon than planned, but the buzz beforehand was still pretty high, amoung virtually the same fanbase. Any thoughts on why '300' actually succeeded where 'Snakes' failed?

The problem with Snakes is that it peaked too early. Once the buzz caught on, New Line decided they had a hit on their hands and spent a slew of money on reshoots. By the time they got it into theatres, the buzz was gone.

Timing is everything, I guess.

Maybe ... although the reshoots were specifically done in response to the buzz ("I want those motherfucking snakes off this motherfucking plane!"). Maybe what it came down to is that, in the end, who really wanted to watch a movie about snakes loose on a plane...