300

[Liquid Blue]

Sounds like Gran had my spartan spear already up his butt when he went to go see this movie

[CrvenBan]

I think it's better to look at how far behind we would have been if the Persians won.

Maybe you oughta check the incredibly rich and advanced persian culture, that gave birth to big number of important "things"...like bricks
but I was thinking about how todays society only developed after the industrial revolution, what about Europe in 17th-18th century, and America, compared to areas like Persia, China, Japan, think it was a better place ?

You people are so naive and ignorant if you think that making a movie TODAY about 300 glorious Europians fighting off 100.000 ugly, scary Iranians, is not a form of bullshit propaganda



Go back to bed America, You are free to do what we tell you!

[Squeezer]

Yeah, so I just saw it again for a second time....This time not really high, and aside from the battle scenes (which are still mindblowing) the rest of the movie is horrendous. Seriously, the dialogue is laughable, the plot is paper thin, the subplot is annoying, and the characters are not consistent (for a queen that's so revered for her intellegence, she was manipulated rather easily). I'm just glad I only paid $6.25 this time around.

[Nickname]

I think it's better to look at how far behind we would have been if the Persians won. Of course we sometimes gloat in our accomplishments as a society, and sometimes it seems hypocritical when you really examine our society and how we treat and interact with other culture's and people throughout the world but there is progress being made and to deny that progress has been made is to say that we are no better than we were 4000 years ago. Men and nations fall, history had taught us so. We may see our society crumble, we may not, but more importantly what we stood for and who we were as a society will hopefully define us as people.

the sun never sets on the british empire!

[Liquid Blue]

Maybe you oughta check the incredibly rich and advanced persian culture, that gave birth to big number of important "things"...like bricks
but I was thinking about how todays society only developed after the industrial revolution, what about Europe in 17th-18th century, and America, compared to areas like Persia, China, Japan, think it was a better place ?

You people are so naive and ignorant if you think that making a movie TODAY about 300 glorious Europians fighting off 100.000 ugly, scary Iranians, is not a form of bullshit propaganda



Go back to bed America, You are free to do what we tell you!

god dammit

god dammit

do I really have to start

[Zeebu]

red sauce on pasta

[Kolar]

Persians aren't black, nor chinese, nor did we have elephants or rhinos. Xerxes wasn't a tall black dude with piercings (Persians don't do piercings, it is considered gay, and only the slaves were pierced so we knew that they were slaves). Xerxes was somewhat shorter than being tall, like 5'10" at most, he rode a horse, and looked like every other middle eastern at the time with a big beard and long flowing black hair.

The movie was based on a comic/novel by Frank Miller. The only way you can historically predict any kind of change if the Persian Empire won is to account for whatever the ancient Greeks contributed after the fact. The Romans were greatly influenced by the Greeks also and it's likely we would know a lot less about ancient humans given that Athens and Greece as a whole played a major role in shaping and recording their world. As for the propaganda, I'd be willing to bet most Americans, Canadians and Europeans couldn't put two and two together between Persia and Iran and given the fact that this is not a historical replay or documentary I think the producers would be more concerned with making the action more bloodier and such not messing with any sort of political environment we've built up today.

[Jerome Scuggs]

attn: threadviewers

You're all ignorant. Apparently this "slandering" and "ruining" of history and the Persians is ok if it's a graphic novel that's been out for 6, 7 years... but as soon as it's put on in movie form you flip your shit? Why don't you actually go and read shit before it's made into a movie?

V for Vendetta totally takes stabs - outright stabs - at Americans, and I didn't see a thread where a bunch of Americans flipped their shit. Calm the fuck down. It's a movie. (The graphic novel is alot different and doesn't have this outright propaganda in it)

300 was written before GWB, before 9/11. To say it's some "propaganda" is outright ignorant. The movie was in production by 2003, which is before the Iran thing ever really exploded... Frank Miller and Zack Snyder must have really had it in for the Persians if they were planning on doing 300 before America was embroiled in shit. Or maybe Frank Miller just wrote a fucking action novel.

You guys are putting stupid spins on things. I take it the next thread in this uber-PC hippie shitfest series is one claiming that the History Channel only aired the special on Xerxes' defeat because the History Channel hates Persians, too... or maybe one about Captain America, and how Marvel Comics 'TOTALLY RUINS WORLD WAR II... DER WAZ NO SUPER-SOLDIER PROGRAM, WHAT TEH FUKS IS CAPTAIN AMERICA!!?!?!'. Fuck, Wolverine was created by a secret government program, JESUS DIS COMIX IS SO UN-ACCURATE BECAUSE THE GOVERNMENT DOESN'T HAVE WOLVERINES THREAD THREAD THREAD. Newsflash: comics consistently use historical backgrounds to create a story, usually completely destroying historical reality in the process. For instance, perhaps it starts off in WW2... and the Nazis invent zombies. I don't see how 300 is in some way some terrible offender, here.

For crying out fucking loud. 300 is an action movie. You can say anything you want about it, but hey, let the box office speak. It broke records, it's gotta have some sort of merit you guys are obviously missing.

[Squeezer]

To be honest, it never crossed my mind when I watched it yesterday that the film was about anything relevant to today's world (except that gay little freedom message they tried to tack on the end of the movie). With that being said, this movie blew ass. Sure, the battle scenes, cinemetography and CGI were incredible, and I could not stop looking at the tiger stripe colored sky, but as a total movie, there was just too much wrong.

For the first hour or so, I was sooooooo bored. The oracle bullshit (though cool) was unnecessary. I honestly remember sitting in the theatre saying the one thing I thought I'd never say at the 300....KILL SOMEONE ALREADY!!!!!

The acting....Oh God, where to start. In their defense, they were doomed from the start, because the writing in this movie is horrendous. I guess one could make the point that the Spartans were pretty much meatheads IRL (after all, Sparta wasn't known for their Political and Philosophical advances, they were known for their hawkish mentality) but the dialogue began dragging the movie down, and I can recall several times where epic lines were delivered, only to be returned by giggles from various viewers, myself included (case and point: When the queen stabbed the guy that raped her and Persian gold fell out....Then everyone started chanting "traitor!" That was so incrediably hokey, I couldn't help but laugh my ass off....and I wasn't the only one either).

Yet even the visuals got tiring. Sure, the blood looked awesome at first, and the slo-mo effect was neat, but they overused both. After the third or fourth guy got his head loped off, and the umpteenth Persian was sliced up, I began to get bored with the fighting. You can only see so much blood before it stops being cool and starts becoming repetitive.

Which brings me to the direction. Zack Snyder did a pretty good job with the remake of Dawn of the Dead. It was unique, hip, well paced, and most importantly a work of his own. He took the original material and put his own spin on it. I felt however that Snyder was overwhelmed with the CGI and question whether he was ready for this big of a project just yet. Like I said, many of the shots are breathtaking, and the composition of the movie is beautiful, but there is absolutely no continuity. It seemed more like scenes piled on top of other scenes with cool battles thrown in at random times. The scenes didn't build off of each other and the characters never evolved. The queen was terribly inconsistent, and the movie seemed very poorly paced. Too many times did it go from straight dialogue to the middle of a battle scene. If you want to see pacing done to perfection, then watch the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Peter Jackson understands that you have to build up ancticipation. Without it, the audience gets too comfortable with the fight scenes and begins to stop caring about the protaganists. Snyder did not choose his shots well, and it shows. He went more for individual shots that look awesome rather than aiming for a movie with at least a tidbit of continuity.

Those are my main gripes with the flick. To be honest, I wasn't expecting much from it either. If it had been a moderate movie with awesome battle scenes, I would have been completely satisfied. Instead, I got a movie that without the CGI, or the other millions of dollars put into camerawork and special effects, would have been nothing. And sure, it's an action movie and it doesn't need to have an exceptional storyline, but this could have had an awesome story, it just needed more depth and less beheadings. Ultimately, I walked out of the theatre thinking the same thing I did with Sin City; it's amazing to stare at for two hours, but once you get past how cool it looks, you realize there's nothing worth watching again.

Also, as my friend and I walked out of the theatre, we saw this lady around 30-35 walking with her 7 year old kid. WTF!!!!! That is definately not a movie I'd take a young kid to go see.

[Jerome Scuggs]

http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,...ulture_media_6

Someone asked me, "Is George Bush Leonidas or Xerxes?" I said, "That's an awesome question." The fact they asked tells me that this movie can mean one thing to one person and something totally different to another. I clearly didn't mean either. I was just trying to get Frank's book made into a movie.

That kind of debate is unavoidable right now. I don't live in a cave, but on the other hand, the film's about a 2,000-year-old conflict. People will say, "You made this because we are going to war with Iran." I'll say, "We are? Not if I have anything to do with it."

Conc - I missed your post amidst everything else, but I enjoyed the book. Actually, I'd see myself as the epitome of your argument - I ignored the book for the longest time, because of The Literary Style he wrote in, and when the Oprah shit came out, I was the first to make fun of all my friends... but I read the book, and I thought it was fantastic for what it was, all the drama aside.

Persians aren't black, nor chinese, nor did we have elephants or rhinos.

How can you stick up for your peeps when you're not even aware of how the Persians worked? They took land/cities, and demanded the conquered people send off troops for his army. Perhaps there weren't chinese, but there were non-persians in the persian army, a significant portion. Shit, Xerxes wanted sparta to JOIN HIS EMPIRE AND FIGHT FOR HIM. Leonidas wasn't persian. Persia had conquered cities in Africa. If you go down to the modern day cities of Bandar Abbas, Ahvaz, and Abadan, you'll find black persians.

If you want to bitch about a Frank Miller comic,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22Holy...C_Batman%21%22

Squeezer: I think the dialogue was doomed from the start because once again, this was a comic book adaptation, which focues more on graphics. Writing comes next. (Though Miller does do 'screenplays' from which the drawing is based).

Seriously, ever seen the movie Crank? It's a glorious tribute to those TOLD U I WAS HARDCORE action flicks... which means the dialogue must be fucking FANTASTIC, rightttt?

[Nickname]

I thought the acting wasn't super, but I've never heard of anybody in it, so it's not some massive shock or anything.

[PaulOakenfold]

As a fairly religious person this is what I feel. God made humans to think freely and independent, even if it means blaspheming against his words, his creations and his ideals... he knew this. He also deems this the most important part of our being, it sets us apart from all other living things in this world, and at whatever the cost, whatever the odds, it will stand, for he knows eventually we will find enlightenment through this, which will be our ultimate victory... a self-made victory. Innocent deaths, wars, plague and whatever is thrown at us is a test of our will for independent thought.

To add to this, the great enlightenment may not come through the world's acceptance of god, for I do not believe that is what he feels our ultimate goal should become.

[ConcreteSchlyrd]

Conc - I missed your post amidst everything else, but I enjoyed the book. Actually, I'd see myself as the epitome of your argument - I ignored the book for the longest time, because of The Literary Style he wrote in, and when the Oprah shit came out, I was the first to make fun of all my friends... but I read the book, and I thought it was fantastic for what it was, all the drama aside.

I think we're kind of on the same page. If the book was never promoted as "my THUG LIFEEE IN THA SCHOOL UF HARDKNOCKZZ," I'd probably be singing it's praises. It's a well-written book, and the random capitalization doesn't necessarily kill me. The major problem I had with it is that he chose to co-opt other people's tragedies and apply them to his life, then reacted violently when people called him out on it. I know he tried first to sell it to publishers as fiction, and they were the ones who told him to market it as a memoir, but at some point you have to stop grabbing cash and start coming clean.

Great drama, I agree. Just horrible implementation and representation.

Seriously, ever seen the movie Crank? It's a glorious tribute to those TOLD U I WAS HARDCORE action flicks... which means the dialogue must be fucking FANTASTIC, rightttt?

Best dialogue since XXX.

[D1st0rt]

You guys have it all wrong, the ancient oracles knew all about America and came up with this plot to incite Persia to attack Greece so that in a couple thousand years it could be used in a movie to make people want to attack Iran.

[Nethila]

You guys have it all wrong, the ancient oracles knew all about America and came up with this plot to incite Persia to attack Greece so that in a couple thousand years it could be used in a movie to make people want to attack Iran.

all hail the almighty oracle