The War Nerd on 300

[Ibram]

that article was good for a laugh... i'm always amaized at the number of people who go to see a movie and expect historical accuracy. I dont remember "compleltly accurate recreation of the Battle of Thermopoly" as being the tag line for 300. Shall we complain about the historical inaccuracies found in the Indiana Jones movies? Or perhapse how the Die Hard movies portrayal of police work differs from reality?

As to the political bit at the bottom, I find it an interesting demonstration of how people can view older works of art through current events.

 

[Mistwell]

The War Nerd's established persona is that of a bitter war nerd who realizes that all the things he obsessed about as a young war nerd no longer matter -- war's not about high-tech weapons systems, glorious massed-unit assaults, etc., but about ugly counter-insurgency efforts in a global media fishbowl.

If you want two educated but very different takes on an issue -- most any issue -- read War Nerd and Victor Davis Hanson.

It really didn't sound like an educated take. It sounded like a bitter, angry and cynical take, but not an educated one.

 

[F5]

Actually this guy is only basing his blog on a recent time magazine article which talks about how easy it was to get this movie greenlit. Sure the material is old, but the article hinted that it was exceptionally easy for htis movie to get greenlit considering the usual process it takes a movie to go into production.

I think it can be argued that the success of Sin City had as much to do with getting 300 quickly greenlit as any political agenda did.

 

[TanisFrey]

The War Nerd goes on an unnecessary political rant for about half of it, but he's got a valid point with the historical stuff at the beginning. The Athenians get slammed unnecessarily(A Sparta calling Athens full of boy lovers? Hilarious!) and stuff like Salamis gets ignored.

I don't find clear parallels with the current war(you can spin it all kinds of ways, and nothing really sticks), but I will say that the Spartans make a reprehensible group of heroes. Maybe it was the baby skulls at the beginning, I dunno...

Iran thinks that there are pallales ment to slam them and help give the US a reason to attack them. This is very because it has allways had 0 chance to be shown in IRAN.

 

[Kunimatyu]

Iran thinks that there are pallales ment to slam them and help give the US a reason to attack them. This is very because it has allways had 0 chance to be shown in IRAN.

Spun one way, Iran is "Persia" versus the freedom-loving (sorta) US ("Spartans"), fighting for rationalism.

Spun another way, Xerxes is GW Bush ("son finishing his father's war"), Persia is the US ("greatest army ever assembled!"), and the plucky but outnumbered Spartans are Iran, trying to rally "Greece" (the Middle East) to their cause.

It works both ways fairly convincingly.

This does not change my feeling that the Spartans make lousy heroes from an American perspective.

 

[Someone]

I'm surprised nobody has commented on the wolf, the one that appears at the start of the film. What kind of joke is that? It has nowhere the correct morphology of a real wolf or the corect behaviour; everyone talks about "lone wolves" but the truth is that they hunt in packs. Also, it's a feline's eyes the ones that shine in the dark, and wolves are canines; even then, they got the glow all wrong. Not to mention that a poorly sharpened stick wielded by a hungry and frozen buy would never have the thrust to pierce something with the structural integrity of a wolf's skull, no matter how misshapen it is. Clearly, the film makers wanted to stablish some kind of political metaphor with the wolf, no doubt related with the middle east, but in any case they should be fired for their zoological ineptitude.

 

[shilsen]

Clearly, the film makers wanted to stablish some kind of political metaphor with the wolf, no doubt related with the middle east, but in any case they should be fired for their zoological ineptitude.

Clearly? Please tell me you're joking. The reason the wolf doesn't look like a wolf is because it's a creature in a story being related by a storyteller (Dilios) who's trying to explain how brave his king was in fighting a monstrous creature when he was just a boy. Complaining about zoological ineptitude there is like complaining that Homer is incorrect in telling a story about cyclopses in the Odyssey, since they don't actually exist.

 

[hong]

Someone does this better than me.

 

[Someone]

Clearly? Please tell me you're joking. The reason the wolf doesn't look like a wolf is because it's a creature in a story being related by a storyteller (Dilios) who's trying to explain how brave his king was in fighting a monstrous creature when he was just a boy. Complaining about zoological ineptitude there is like complaining that Homer is incorrect in telling a story about cyclopses in the Odyssey, since they don't actually exist.

ENworld needs a [sarcasm] tag.

 

[D.Shaffer]

ENworld needs a [sarcasm] tag.

That's what is for.