300. Just got back from Midnight opening...

[Priest_Sidran]

I have almost no interest in seeing that film... I can do with historical innacuracies, really, but when you make rampant single combat be the basis of fighting, in a situation where we all know that fighting as a group is the only way to pull off what they did, that just kills it for me. The awesomeness of unit combat, even heroic unit combat, is what I would want to see about any film about the three hundred Spartans. If you can't give me what made the real battle so amazingly cool, then I'll pass, I'm not interested.

Not to mention the real battle of Thermopylae, had much more than three hundred spartans. It had 300 elite spartans plus 7000+ Boetians, Phoecians, Athenians (who fled the field), among others, the boetians where not a reliable source and the Phoecians were left guarding the "Goat trail". Leonides and his 300 men took the Middle Gate of three gates in this case narrow defiles in the landscape that led to the Coast. Xerxes was in real life a tyranical and powerful man both physically and politically, the actor from the movie was billed to look like Frank Miller's Xerxes not the real Xerxes. It is said that the Army of Xexes included men from every Satrapy, and that his army on the march dried the rivers where they camped. Of Course this also is a myth (graphic novel of its own time, legend). In truth they had 150,000-300,000 Troops. And in the end Athens was abandoned, and sacked by Xerxes, effectively blinding one of the two eyes of Greece (the other being Sparta). They did not even show the bridge of ships that Xerxes made to march his army across the Helespont which was a major achievement in the ancient world, or talk of how he built a canal for his ships which is still visible.

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

It's too bad that the Spartans hadn't invented the shirt yet for that movie, much less armor.

That's the freedom they were fighting for, you know. The freedom not to wear shirts or pants!

Brad

 

[Grog]

I have almost no interest in seeing that film... I can do with historical innacuracies, really, but when you make rampant single combat be the basis of fighting, in a situation where we all know that fighting as a group is the only way to pull off what they did, that just kills it for me. The awesomeness of unit combat, even heroic unit combat, is what I would want to see about any film about the three hundred Spartans. If you can't give me what made the real battle so amazingly cool, then I'll pass, I'm not interested.

You're complaining about inaccuracies like that in a movie where the Persians are physically mutated??

That's my big beef with the movie. Why not just call them orcs and get it over with?

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

The movie, quite simply, was awesome. Complaints about niggling details brings a new level to the definition of "lame".

Its a movie adaptation of a comic book, which itself was an adaptation of ancient acounts by Herodotus, Plutarch, and Diodorus. If precise numbers of troop counts brings meaning for you, I got nothing.. don't see this movie. The movie gets the core theme of the historical accounts dead on. Quoting from a Victor Davis Hanson review of 300:

...the main story from our ancient Greek historians is still there: Leonidas, against domestic opposition, insists on sending an immediate advance party northward on a suicide mission to rouse the Greeks and allow them time to unite a defense. Once at Thermopylae, he adopts the defenses to the narrow pass between high cliffs and the sea far below. The Greeks fight both en masse in the phalanx and at times range beyond as solo warriors. They are finally betrayed by Ephialtes, forcing Leonidas to dismiss his allies — and leaving his own 300 to the fate of dying under a sea of arrows.

But most importantly, 300 preserves the spirit of the Thermopylae story. The Spartans, quoting lines known from Herodotus and themes from the lyric poets, profess unswerving loyalty to a free Greece. They will never kow-tow to the Persians, preferring to die on their feet than live on their knees.

 

[Seonaid]

I already plan on getting a copy for every one of my players, and hopefully a directors cut or some other such copy for myself, I loved it. The movie was a quality mix of graphic novel and historical (well psuedo-historical) accuracy.

After watching it I read the Osprey book that deals with Thermopylae, and while it did not deal with the real issues of that battle in any historical way, it was still an awesome war movie and it did not detract from my enjoyment.

Other than the gratuitous use of nudity in the earlier scenes of the movie I enjoyed all of the movie thoroughly.

What he said (except that I didn't read that book ).

Three little things bothered me, and if I hadn't been desperately trying to find something to dislike about the movie*, I probably wouldn't have cared:[sblock]1) Leonidas's form when he throws his spear/javelin at Xerxes was atrocious. I kept thinking, "If he had used proper form, he could have hit him in the eye instead of grazing his cheek."

2) I know it was all digitally put in, but for the amount of blood being splashed across the screen in every fight, the Spartans sure were clean . . .

3) The Christ imagery at the end. Maybe I'm sensitive to it, and I'm sure it's in the graphic novel (which I am definitely picking up), but it was a bit jarring for me. Leonidas is no Christ, and there was no other obvious Christian mythology, so why?[/sblock]All that being said, I think it's my favorite movie of all time. I cannot express how much I enjoy fight scenes, and these were done just right. We saw it last night on a digital screen and now I want to drive 45 minutes to see it on IMAX. :drool:

*I was enjoying it so much I was afraid it wouldn't live up to itself, so I was trying to find reasons to not be disappointed when it fell on its face. Lucky for me, it lived up to all of my (extremely high expections).

 

[trancejeremy]

Spoiler

3) The Christ imagery at the end. Maybe I'm sensitive to it, and I'm sure it's in the graphic novel (which I am definitely picking up), but it was a bit jarring for me. Leonidas is no Christ, and there was no other obvious Christian mythology, so why?

Spoiler

Since I haven't seen it yet, I can only guess what you are referring to, but after the battle, Leonidas dead body was crucified by the Persians at the order of Xerxes. So if that was in the movie and what you are referring it, it's historical.

 

[trancejeremy]

It is said that the Army of Xexes included men from every Satrapy, and that his army on the march dried the rivers where they camped. Of Course this also is a myth (graphic novel of its own time, legend). In truth they had 150,000-300,000 Troops.

Actually, no one knows. Saying 150,000-300,000 is just a guess (based on the modern view that all the old time writers were wrong). However, Herodotus, which is one of the primary sources for the movie, said

I cannot give the exact number that each part contributed to the total, for there is no one who tells us that; but the total of the whole land army was shown to be one million and seven hundred thousand.

What he right? I dunno. No one really knows. But that's what he wrote. And his writing was one of the primary sources for the story, particularly the movie.

 

[Queen_Dopplepopolis]

Spoiler

1) Leonidas's form when he throws his spear/javelin at Xerxes was atrocious. I kept thinking, "If he had used proper form, he could have hit him in the eye instead of grazing his cheek."

Spoiler

See... I thought that was done to scar the God-King so that he would carry with him the reminder of the battle because Leonidas knew that the entire Spartan army would march on Xerxes upon his death.

 

[Seonaid]

Spoiler

Since I haven't seen it yet, I can only guess what you are referring to, but after the battle, Leonidas dead body was crucified by the Persians at the order of Xerxes. So if that was in the movie and what you are referring it, it's historical.

I didn't know that, but, no, that's not exactly what I was referring to. However, it makes much more sense now! "It" being why it was done presumably at the end of the comic and, subsequently, the end of the film.

Spoiler

See... I thought that was done to scar the God-King so that he would carry with him the reminder of the battle because Leonidas knew that the entire Spartan army would march on Xerxes upon his death.

That makes sense, and made poetic (and story) sense, but the fact of it still bothered me. I haven't thrown in years, but it was recent enough that I cringed a little when I saw it.

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

Far as the thrown spear threre at the end, it's a bit of poetic license. Remember the line where Leonidas tells Xerxes "they will know even a god can bleed" and refuses his offers.

Far as the Christ-like imagery that's just way to common in everything now, you saw the same thing in the new Superman movie. Crucifiction in a historical context has nothing to do with Christ it was one of the most common punishments of the classical mediterrainian world and elsewhere was carried on far longer after the practice stopped in Europe.

But it was fleeting enough that it didn't detract from the movie in this case at least. And after about two hundred years of just refusing to consider classical historian's numbers more recent historians have been forced to acknowledge in many cases that those numbers may have been possible given what we now know about population density and technical/logistics achievements of the time in regards to the major empires of the classical world. Anyway, who cares, it was a great movie that spoke to the heart of the issue and the Greeks of the time would have been proud of this telling.