300- Zach Snyder's new ride

I just saw it as well. Pretty impressive film, although it's way too obvious when the actors are on a blue screen set. The CG was good enough, but the limited studio space makes the staging too claustrophobic and takes away from the sense of wide open space that the background seems to suggest.

There's also some weird moments where the actors seemed to switch place in relation with each other (Persion army was in front and the Spartans advance in the other direction). The battle was pretty good except the Persian army comes at them in groups of 10 or 15 at a time instead of swamping them like I thought they would, which also suggests a limited amount of spacing and extras. Other than that though, great film.
 
Last edited:
Saw the midnight showing on IMAX last night (early this morning). Great movie!!! One things that impressed me, was the digital blood, and how it lended that comic book feel without going overboard. This is a must see movie!
 
well that was pretty much awesome. I really liked how the film didn't waste any time and basically got right into it.
 
shawneous said:
I just got back from the midnight screening. This movie is incredible....log off DVXUser now, go to your local cinema and watch this movie. Now!
Click to expand...

Ok! Ok! I'm going! lol

I just bought tickets for the 7:30 showing at Mann's Chinese... :beer:
 
It was pretty good. I enjoyed it. I'm not usually into epic action movies, but a friend offered to buy me a ticket, so I went, and was pleasantly surprised. A few parts were a little cheesy, but there's enough in the film to make up for it. I also loved the grainy look of it.
 
For those of you interested in the battle of Thermopylae:




October 11, 2006
History and the Movie “300”
by Victor Davis Hanson
Private Papers

(Adapted from the introduction to the forthcoming book trailer published by Black Horse Comics, Inc. to accompany Director Zack Snyder’s new film “300”)

The phrase “300 Spartans” evokes not only the ancient battle of Thermopylae, but also the larger idea of fighting for freedom against all odds — a notion subsequently to be enshrined through some 2500 years of Western civilization.

Even today we remember the power of the Spartans’ defiance. “Come and take them,” they tell the Persian emissaries who demand their arms. “Then we will fight in the shade,” the Spartans boast when warned that the horde of Persian arrows will soon blot out the very sunlight. “Go tell the Spartans that here we lie obedient to their commands” the tombstone of their dead reads.

In 480, an enormous force of more than a quarter-million Persians under their King Xerxes invaded Greece, both to enslave the free city-states, and to avenge the Persian defeat a decade earlier at Marathon. The huge force of ships and soldiers proved unstoppable on its way west and southward until it reached the narrow pass at Thermopylae (“The Warm Gates”) in northern Greece. There a collection of 7,000 Greeks had blocked the way. They hoped to stop Xerxes’ horde outright — or at least allow enough time for their fellow countrymen to their rear to mobilize a sufficient defense of the homeland.

Among the many Greek contingents was a special elite force of 300 Spartans under their King Leonidas — a spearhead that offered the other Greeks at Thermopylae some promise that they could still bar the advance of the vastly superior invader. And that hope proved real for two days of hard fighting. The vastly outnumbered, but heavily-armed Greek infantrymen in their phalanx — taking advantage of the narrow terrain and their massed tactics — savagely beat back wave after wave of advancing Persian foot soldiers and cavalry.

But on the third day of battle, Leonidas’s Greeks were betrayed by a local shepherd Ephialtes, who showed the Persians an alternate route over the mountains that led to the rear of the Greek position. When he realized that he was nearly surrounded, Leonidas nevertheless made a critical decision to stay and fight, while ordering most of the other various allies to flee the encirclement to organize the growing Greek resistance to the south.

Meanwhile the King and his doomed 300 Spartans, together with other small groups of surrounded Thespians and Thebans, would indeed battle to buy the Greeks time. They ranged further out from the pass on this third and last day of battle — at first with spears and swords, finally with teeth and nails —killing scores more of Persians. The last few Spartan survivors were buried under a sea of Persian arrows. The body of Leonidas was found among the corpses, his head soon impaled on a stick as a macabre reminder of the wages of resistance to the Great King of Persia.

The Greeks took encouragement from the unprecedented sacrifice of a Spartan King and his royal guard on their behalf. And so a few weeks later at the sea battle of Salamis near Athens — and then again the next year at the great infantry collision on the plains of Plataea — the Greeks defeated, and eventually destroyed, the Persian invaders. The rallying cry of the victors was Thermopylae, the noble sacrifice of the final stand of the outnumbered Greeks, and especially the courage of the fallen Three Hundred Spartans under King Leonidas.

So almost immediately, contemporary Greeks saw Thermopylae as a critical moral and culture lesson. In universal terms, a small, free people had willingly outfought huge numbers of imperial subjects who advanced under the lash. More specifically, the Western idea that soldiers themselves decide where, how, and against whom they will fight was contrasted against the Eastern notion of despotism and monarchy — freedom proving the stronger idea as the more courageous fighting of the Greeks at Thermopylae, and their later victories at Salamis and Plataea attested.

Greek writers and poets such as Simonides and Herodotus were fascinated by the Greek sacrifice against Xerxes, and especially the heroism of Leonidas and his men. And subsequently throughout Western literature poets as diverse as Lord Byron and A.E. Houseman have likewise paid homage to the Spartan last stand — and this universal idea of Western soldiers willing to die as free men rather than to submit to tyranny. Steven Pressfield’s novel Gates of Fire and the earlier Hollywood movie The 300 Spartans both were based on the Greek defense of the pass at Thermopylae.

Recently, a variety of Hollywood films — from Troy to Alexander the Great — has treated a variety of themes from classical Greek literature and theater. But 300 is unique, a sui generis in both spirit and methodology. The script is not an attempt in typical Hollywood fashion to recreate the past as a costume drama. Instead it is based on Frank Miller’s (of Sin City fame) comic book graphics and captions. Miller’s illustrated novelette of the battle adapts themes loosely from the well-known story of the Greek defense, but with deference made to the tastes of contemporary popular culture.

So the film is indeed inspired by the comic book; and in some sense its muscular warriors, virtual reality sets, and computer-generated landscapes recall the look and feel of Robert Rodriquez’s screen version of Sin City. Yet the collaboration of Director Zack Snyder and screenwriters Kurt Johnstad and Michael Gordon is much more of a hybrid, since the script, dialogue, cinematography, and acting all recall scenes of the battle right from Herodotus’s account.

300, of course, makes plenty of allowance for popular tastes, changing and expanding the story to meet the protocols of the comic book genre. The film was not shot on location outdoors, but in a studio using the so-called “digital backlot” technique of sometimes placing the actors against blue screens. The resulting realism is not that of the sun-soaked cliffs above the blue Aegean — Thermopylae remains spectacularly beautiful today — but of the eerie etchings of the comic book.

The Spartans fight bare-chested without armor, in the “heroic nude” manner that ancient Greek vase-painters portrayed Greek hoplites, their muscles bulging as if they were contemporary comic book action heroes. Again, following the Miller comic, artistic license is made with the original story — the traitor Ephialtes is as deformed in body as he is in character; King Xerxes is not bearded and perched on a distant throne, but bald, huge, perhaps sexually ambiguous, and often right on the battlefield. The Persians bring with them exotic beasts like a rhinoceros and elephant, and the leader of the Immortals fights Leonidas in a duel (which the Greeks knew as monomachia). Shields are metal rather than wood with bronze veneers, and swords sometimes look futuristic rather than ancient.

Again, purists must remember that 300 seeks to bring a comic book, not Herodotus, to the screen. Yet, despite the need to adhere to the conventions of Frank Miller’s graphics and plot — every bit as formalized as the protocols of classical Athenian drama or Japanese Kabuki theater — 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.

If critics think that 300 reduces and simplifies the meaning of Thermopylae into freedom versus tyranny, they should reread carefully ancient accounts and then blame Herodotus, Plutarch, and Diodorus — who long ago boasted that Greek freedom was on trial against Persian autocracy, free men in superior fashion dying for their liberty, their enslaved enemies being whipped to enslave others.

©2006 Victor Davis Hanson
 
Good film. Not great, but good in a single minded, Rambo / Top Gun kind of way, just pure testosterone filmmaking. People are reading a lot of politics into this film, and the homophobes just think it's too darn gay with all the sweaty pecs and spear thrusting on display, but with an impartial mind I think it's clear the main theme of the piece is martyrdom. Leonidas goes into battle knowing full well he's going to die, and in fact he hopes to so he can become a symbol to rouse his people. Martyrdom is not a popular idea in the west. Patton (or at least the movie version) said, "No one ever won a war by dying for his country. He won by letting the other poor, dumb bastard die for his." and I think most westerners think this way. Islamic fundamentalists on the other hand...well, we know what they think of martyrdom, so those who say this movie pushes a pro-bush, pro-war agenda are only looking at the film on a very superficial level...i.e. Anglo looking people vs. Persians (who weren't even Muslim at the time).
 
Why is it single minded? So they are threatened with slavery and defend against it, pure and simple. If the Germans re-embraced the Nazi ideals and came over here and told us they were going to subjugate the Americans, would you think it "single-minded" if we defended ourselves?
 
Single-minded isn't an insult, if you're talking about single-mindedly defending your territory and independence against attack...

...I enjoyed it a lot. It was mostly about abs, although pecs played an important supporting role and the cameo appearences by Gerard Butler's glutes were fun, too.
 
I didn't mean single minded in a negative way, just that the story didn't have much nuance. It's not Spartacus or even Braveheart. It was half an hour of setup with an hour and a half of fighting. It's two-dimensional, and that's okay sometimes. Some of my favorite action films I'd put in the same category, The Road Warrior, Speed, Predator.
 
Just saw 300 in DLP. I was impressed and enjoyed it immensely. Unlike The New York Times, which hates any movie which doesn't have an profound underlying statement about humanity, I can appreciate a movie that is merely meant to be entertaining and fun to watch. Five stars from me.
 
I liked the film, quite a visual spectacle, but I think because it was shot green screen, it lacked in scope... IMHO.
 
I thought it was pretty good. Some of the style seemed way over the top for my liking (like the oracle, for example).The largest thing that concerns me (though we'll have to wait a few more movie till we know) is whether this is a new breed of Michael Bay. Granted it does work pretty well for what the movie is.
If nothing else, I think it's probably the highest fighting/story ratio I've ever seen in a movie.
 
Loved every minute of it! A must see. 5 stars. I want to go see it again but you people keep buying all the tickets. I couldn't get to see it in the imax because it was sold out.

I almost wanted to let out a man cry in the movie and jump in to help them. " This is SPARTAAAAAAA"
 
shawneous said:
I liked the underlying statement that freedom comes with a price and is worth defending, even at great sacrifice.
Click to expand...

True that! Just saw it and loved it! I will be going to see it again several more times.

I encourage anyone who wants a more realistic accounting of the battle of Thermopylae to read Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield.

EXCELLENT BOOK!
 
The trailer makes me think the films pathetic. Just want to stay away from the film as much as possible. I dispice it IMO. Sorry. Feel tad better for saying that.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top