Battlemouth

You don’t go into a remake of a Kirk Douglas anything expecting more Kirk Douglas…you are lucky if you even end up with Michael. If you have no idea of what I am talking about, I offer up for your enjoyment the original theatrical trailer for the legendary 1960 film Spartacus…

Can you believe that cast? I remember watching this movie when I was young, before we had Braveheart, Lord of the Rings, or 300, there was only Ben Hur and Spartacus. Three and half plus hours of awesome violence on TWO vhs tapes. Well, when you are 12 it sure seems pretty awesome. These days we have more violent news.
Now I am a little older and completely desensitized to all forms of violence, for the most part. I still cringe a little when someone kills a puppy. Naturally, like most men my age, when I see previews for something horribly violent and full of attractive, scantily clad women, I am usually a little more than curious to check it out.

Last night at work I decided to see what all this talk about Starz new, Sam Raimi produced, Spartacus: Blood and Sand mini series. If you follow me on twitter you would have seen some of my opinions coming in live as I watched episode 1 and 2 at around 3:30am EST. Check out the trailer for the show….

Not too shabby looking eh? That’s what I thought too…but lets be honest, you can make almost anything look good if you throw a cool soundtrack and some blood at it for a minute and a half.

I went back and forth with my overall opinion on the show and finally settled on…garbage. If there is one thing I have come to really hate it is when period films (or shows) have fight scenes where the fighters use incorrect fighting styles. No, I am not some sort of fight expert, but I am pretty sure that Thracian’s were not fucking ninjas, and I could be wrong here, but I don’t think that Romans were proficient in muay thai?

“But Aaron, you said you love violence, isn’t that why you watched the show in the first place?”

Yes, this is true and I did sort of say that. I will admit that while I tried my hardest to be angry about ninja fighting, every time they would go into slo-mo for a hardcore punch in the face (a la knock outs in Fight Night) or for a lopping off of a limb followed by gratuitous amounts of blood-squirt…I would have to smile just a bit eventually resulting in a sort of evil cackle. I have problems, I know…
However, then they toss something completely ridiculous into the mix that would ruin the moment.
For example, in the first episode, Spartacus and another Thracian soldier are sent to scout the enemy camp. The camera zooms across a horrible CGI, snow covered mountain range and slides up behind the two soldiers crawling their way to the the edge of a cliff to look out over the enemy camp. I can deal with the CGI crap mountains, until I notice that these two jackasses are sneaking along a ridge in full regalia, including helms complete with stereotypical giant mohawk plumes! Come on people, first of all you are miles away in the mountains, do you really need to sneak and whisper? And if you DO need to sneak and whisper shouldn’t you also be concerned about the giant fucking flag-o-hair popping up above your head?

Enter naked women…

Here is the final part of what I am convinced will be an ever present cycle in the the show. Shortly after I am calmed down from the whole plume fiasco by a nice overly violent scene…they toss in a romantic “honey I’m home” scene. Of course, as anyone who knows anything about this era in history as well as the peoples of this geographic region…romantic = far to lengthy scene where man forces himself on women regardless of her relation to him. It is fine to have nudity in a show, in fact, it is great, however, there is nudity, and then there is “lets make this part an overly long sex scene so that men will love the show more.” For me though, it was just overkill.

Episode 2….blah blah blah more killing, sex…Xena warrior princess gets her deedle dummed by some other chick and then bangs her tiny husband (that was kind of neat…what it’s fucking Xena!)…blah death, blood, PENIS… LOTS OF PENIS IN EPISODE 2, kill, boohoo, wine, sex, death, jealousy, resolve, hope, destroyed hope, to be continued.

I loved the violence, the killing is fantastic. The naked women are excessive…haha…but seriously though folks. The hardest thing for me is the over use of CGI. It is so horribly obvious that everything is shot on a tiny set with back grounds filled in. It is really quite hard to watch at times. The series seems so much like a rip-off from 300 that it isn’t even funny. There is even a big tall black guy that I’m pretty sure was
The original Spartacus was ALL real…real horses and countrysides, real swords, and yes Kirk Douglas really did, AND STILL CAN kill any mother fucker with a gladius any day.

I AM SPARTACUS!