Trailer for 300: Not sure if it’s awesome or awful…

So I just watched the trailer for Zach Snyder’s 300, and I’m not sure if it looked completely awesome or totally terrible. Snyder’s track record is nothing for me to go on, since I haven’t seen his remake of Dawn of the Dead, which is his only film to be released thus far. The trailer seems like an MTV-inspired update of Gladiator or Troy and there’s a big difference between the two. Gladiator was a very good film, combining excellent action sequences with real heart, while Troy was pure drivel, combining action sequences with badly done emotion with, well, badly done action sequences. It also doesn’t feature any actors or actresses that I know, so there’s nothing to go on there (and wow, do I hate the recent trend of referring to actresses as “actors”, implying that the word is gender neutral. Female actors are “actresses”, just like female waiters are “waitresses”, and female flight attendants are “stewardesses”. There’s nothing derogatory about the terms; they are simply gender-descriptive).

300 is based on Frank Miller’s graphic novel, which is itself based on the historical tale of the battle of Thermopylae, in which 300 Spartans took on Xerses’ massive Persian army. Recently Miller’s Sin City was adapted for the screen, to mixed reviews. I happened to like, but not love, Sin City, so I’m not quite sure what to think. So basically I’m as wishy-washy as you could be going into 300. Meh. It’s expected to be released in March 2007.