300 - the official thread (spoilers probably)

I found the movie a bit too.. spartan, for the lack of a better word. I had trouble relating to such stoic characters. It must have been a great acting challenge to guide your audience to an emotional response without allowing the characters to appear to be expressing emotions.
 
All I have to say is look at Sin City how could anyone give 300 low standards? Both amazing flicks.
 
Kinkkerbelle said:
I found the movie a bit too.. spartan, for the lack of a better word. I had trouble relating to such stoic characters. It must have been a great acting challenge to guide your audience to an emotional response without allowing the characters to appear to be expressing emotions.
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Probably intentional, considering the word you used to describe it.
 
Marajade said:
No, its based off the myth of what happened, not what really happened. The comic was just retelling the myth, as did the movie.

Anyways, suficed to day, all that is exactly what the myth says. Also, Spartans really did rock that harcore :P
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It did actually happen. It was documented by the greek historian Herodotus, who was actually there (or close nearby). His writing is what we have to go off of when describing the story of King Leonidas. He also documented the line: "If the Persian's blot out the sun, then we will fight in the shade" which is said by the wrong Spartan in the movie, but artistic lisence for teh win.

Anyway, Frank Miller went on to cite specific examples for his work on 300, especially the old movie "The 300 Spartan's." None of them were myths. Frank just likes to monsterize his bad guys, I think.
 
Also, the "Spartans, lay down your weapons" -> "Persians, come take them from us" lines were also actually said and documented.
 
I'm feeling the sudden urge to start lvling DRG. Spears ftw!

If I'm not mistaken, the strategy of using a phalanx of pikes was used well after the fall of Rome. The English, if memory serves me, had dense phalanxes of pikemen along with their usual infantry. Also, the whole "our arrows will blot out the sun" strategy was one used up until the bow and arrow was a more developed weapon. Archers would simply aim up and shoot en masse. The idea wasn't to have one arrow hit but rather to disorient and confuse an enemy. More often then not, arrows would get lodged in shields, making them cumbersome to wield and therefore disarmed an enemy.

Wasn't old time war great?
 
Tagrineth said:
Also, the "Spartans, lay down your weapons" -> "Persians, come take them from us" lines were also actually said and documented.
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Such a great line, I forgot that was documented as well.
 
Hurray for 300 leather codpieces and sets of six packs.
 
This movie was made of win and abs.

Seriously though, it was such an amazing movie. The only thing I could complain about is the ending. I thought that it couldnt of ended with the Queen and her son in the field with his voice saying "Remember us. Remember why we died." That would have been a nice ending, as I felt the end went on a bit too long.
 
Sanoske said:
This movie was made of win and abs.

Seriously though, it was such an amazing movie. The only thing I could complain about is the ending. I thought that it couldnt of ended with the Queen and her son in the field with his voice saying "Remember us. Remember why we died." That would have been a nice ending, as I felt the end went on a bit too long.
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I like the end because it showed what their sacrifice accomplished. That their deaths where not for nothing and how their bravery united Greece and bought them the needed time to muster their forces.

But yes, movie was amazing.
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoplyae

Read all about it. The ending was like that in the movie because thats actually what happened. King Leonidas and his bodyguards of 300 held off the persians long enough for the Spartan Army to be allowed to (1yr after the battle of Thermoplyae) attack back with their much larger army (still Sparta/Greek Allys we outnumbered heavily but my a much smaller margin then Leonidas was).

So in the end King Leonidas was victorious. He went to battle knowing he would die (the oracle foretold that Greece would only be saved at the sacrifice of a King).
 
Lol I got an email today. A christian newsletter type thing forwarded to me from relatives >.>

Pretty much bashing the movie. Completely stupid, obviously.

I'm tempted to post it just for laughs.
 
Well shit, here you go. Bear with me for a bit as I edit it for formatting.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Violent “300” a Perverse Form of Eye Candy by Christian Hamaker
Release Date: March 9, 2007
Rating: R (for graphic battle sequences throughout, some sexuality and nudity)
Genre: Action
Run Time: 117 min.
Director: Zack Snyder
Actors: Gerard Butler, Lena Headey, Dominic West, Rodrigo Santoro, David Wenham, Vincent Regan

Filled with violent battle scenes, gory killings and some surprisingly explicit sex, “300” is a perverse form of eye candy. A war epic that arrives in the midst of the United States' ongoing war against Islamic radicalism, “300” offers, at best, only faint echoes of the current conflict. Its main interest is sprawling displays of hand-to-hand combat, aided by computer imagery that sometimes resembles a painting, sometimes a video game, but very rarely reminds one of a traditional film. How one feels about such an odd amalgam will largely dictate how one feels about this movie.

Gerard Butler stars as King Leonidas, who leads 300 Spartans in the Battle of Thermopylae against the armies of Persia. Woefully outnumbered, the Spartans – “baptized in the fire of combat,” a narrator informs us at the beginning of the film – fight valiantly, believing that, as the narrator also states, “death on the battlefield in service to Sparta was the greatest glory [one] could achieve in life.”

Things turn ugly when a representative from Persia arrives to demand “earth and water” from Leonidas – a sign of submission to the Persian ruler, Xerxes, ahead of the advancing Persian armies. No dice, Leonidas replies, shoving the messenger and his envoys into a giant pit.

With that, war is inevitable, but first Leonidas must seek the blessing from a group of Spartan mystics, without which no Spartan army has ever gone to war. And with that, the movie begins to go off the rails, mixing the spiritual and the sensual in ways designed to stimulate areas other than the intellect.

The mystics’ word must be respected; such is Sparta’s law. But they flinch at the king’s request, telling him that his “blasphemies” have already brought miseries upon the people. They must consult the oracle, which, in the spirit of the movie, is accessed through the agency of a barely dressed, beautiful young woman. Seductive images of the woman are followed by ugly scenes of her being taken advantage of by beings with “souls as black as coal” (the narrator again, who will soon drop out of the film, only to reemerge in the late-going). The king, knowing that he’s heading off to war the next day, makes love to his wife, and the movie “lovingly” pictures the encounter through a series of explicit images.

Although denied the required blessing, Leonidas defies the lawmakers and fields his army of 300 to face the Persians. His actions would inspire future generations – and, the film argues, preserve Western civilization.

As interesting as the look of “300” is at times, its origins as a graphic novel also reveal a weakness. These characters speak in the brief “sound bubbles” of that format, expressing ideas through declaration and exclamation, rather than through thoughtful discourse. Nevertheless, some of these soundbytes resonate. “Freedom isn’t free at all,” says Queen Gorgo (Lena Headey), in defense of her husband’s decision to fight the Persians. “It comes with a cost – the cost of blood.” Later, a character states, “A new age has begun – the age of freedom. And all will know that 300 Spartans gave their lives to defend it.”

But it’s another quote that resonates above all others, spoken by a soldier, eyeing the battle and its consequences, who refers to the “grotesque spectacle” before him. For, all talk of freedom aside, what “300” spends most of its running time showing is not the origins of freedom, nor the bravery of fighting men, but a “grotesque spectacle” demonstrating how we pursue our basic instincts: survival, sex and a thirst for brutal, bloody entertainment.

Inspired by the work of graphic novelist Frank Miller (whose work also was the basis for “Sin City”), the story, ostensibly about one battle, actually combines earlier and later battles between the Greeks and Persians than just Thermopylae. But historical accuracy is not the main concern of “300.”

The movie features more bare flesh than any film in recent memory. The flesh is primarily from male upper bodies, but not exclusively so. (Director Zack Snyder says Miller’s emphasis on the bare-chested men grows out of a statue of Leonidas in modern Thermopylae, which shows the nude king clad in only a shield, spear and helmet.) The film’s hyper visual style fits alongside the deafening roar of its musical score and sound effects.

Visually compelling but saddled with a flat script, “300” is a loud, furious view of early warfare – a shell of a great tale that, for a brief time, covers its weaknesses with striking images. But the bottom falls out early, leading to a punishing sit for those who aren’t interested primarily in seeing the myriad methods of death for ancient warriors.

If the film sets a precedent for its striking visual style, we can only hope that the elements that comprise its screenplay go the way of the Persian empire.

AUDIENCE: Adults only

CAUTIONS:

•Language/Profanity: Specific Christian terminology applied to God is used to apply to men, particularly the Persian ruler. See “Spirituality” below.

•Drugs/Alcohol: None.

•Sex/Nudity: A reference to Athenians as “boy lovers”; beautiful young women are used by the Spartans to consult an oracle; a reference to those who take advantage of these women; the king stands naked, with his heavily shadowed backside to the camera; the king and queen’s love-making is depicted in a series of explicit erotic images; a woman’s chest is exposed; many bare-chested men throughout the film; the queen wears a revealing dress; some homoeroticism; a woman is raped; a Spartan hunchback is invited to indulge his desires during a Persian orgy; topless dancers and a scene of an orgy.

•Violence: Skulls and skeletons of dead infants are pictured; a boy is whipped; a snarling wolf is speared; young children are said to be trained in violence, fighting, stealing and killing; a tree is strewn with human corpses; numerous battle scenes are filled with explicit scenes of dismemberment, beheadings and the running through of swords; wounded soldiers on the battlefield are killed while on the ground; soldiers and elephants both plunge over a cliff, to their deaths; death by arrow.

•Spirituality: The Persians apply to themselves biblical terminology that applies only to God; charges of blasphemy don’t refer to God; the Spartans seek the blessing for battle from those they describe as “senseless mystics” who consult an oracle; a command to “pray to the winds”; a Persian leader calls himself an “emissary to the god of god and king of kings” and later, “the lord of hosts”; a Persian leader refers to his “divine power.”
 
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Of all the things there, I think the whole God King warning was the "best".

I distinctly remembered a line something like "The supposed godking felt a very human chill down his spine", and a scene where the "godking" was injured mainly to show that he is infact not a god.

Meaning that if that was someone something needing warning, then the review would also need a warning itself, since both in no way try to say that Xerxes was truly a god, yet talk about it.
 
I didn't read anything but the OP, because I'm just too damn excited to see a 300 thread so I can express my deep and utter love for this epic achievement in filmaking history.

It's my new favorite movie, honestly. As far as action fliks go, this is by far the best I have ever seen. Went to see it at the first showing at midnight since all my friends were goin then too, otherwise I would have waited, but I'm glad I didn't. Ordered my tickets online a few days in advance, and I'm glad I did, becuase by the time the movie started, there was not a single seat in that Imax, not a single fucking seat open. Left two and a half hours early, got there an hour later, and the place was already half full, but we still got some damn decent seats.
Let me say that the Imax was the only way to experience this movie righteously. That was the first time I had ever been to one, and it was fucking mind blowing. You know I honestly can't say anything about the movie itself, because there are no words in any known language to give it due credit, just go see for yourself.
 
I read the first line of the email and went 'lolradicalchristians'

sall i gotta say.
 
=P Just wondering if anyone has a site to show the accurate hystotic event. I'm actually sort of intrested.
 
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