Seeing 300, which by itself had a thin storyline and was cheesy (yet done differently and I enjoyed the artistic way they shot it) I couldn’t help thinking about a few things, be it that such a movie was not maybe made to make us think deeply but to entertain:

  • The Gladiator factor - Seems like with Gladiator being such a success, this was another movie to ride the wave of telling stories of people that face, or rather choose to acquiescently face hardship and sacrifice despite knowing the suffering that comes with it, because of what they believe in.
  • The war factor - Gladiator was a huge success, so was several other similar themed movies, yet I can’t escape thinking why bloodshed is the way to highlight the inspiring points. Certainly, there are many many inspiring stories out there based on truth if Hollywood wanted to inspire people. Personally, the reason I think war and violence type of movies are made popular is simply because they cater to the very lower natured emotions within each of us. We see suffering, death, misery and the first emotions awakened within us are usually anger, hate, fear and sadness and what better way to give the audience something to quench and put out these feelings, but blood shed and retaliation.
  • “Wag the Dog” factor - And finally, having seen “Wag the Dog”, and following the world affairs, with Iran having such a spot light on it for its nuclear program, I thought the timing for this movie seems right if you want to show a violent/world domination perspective of the history of this nation and maybe provoke and attract support to stand up against Iran. Is this plausible that the movie has some baked in propaganda? I don’t have the faintest clue, nor do I care to speculate.