300 Seen it!

[Teleklos Archelaou]

It's easy to hate disfigured, hideous, deformed, mutant, tyrranical enemies. It's also very easy to create them, and even more easy to make the audience understand who they are when you just make them all black or brown or mutant. I find little worth in any story that can't take the time to make a believeable bad guy. The opinion might not be popular, but I think it belittles the real actions of the Spartans. The situation they were placed in was much more complex than the one presented here and they still made their decisions and fought for what they believed in and I respect them more for choosing wisely and making the sacrifice they did than I would for choosing to defend themselves against a dark (literally) mutant ninja empire. Every enemy is not the same, but movies like this would have people think so. Anyway, a real movie today about Thermopylae would have been so much cooler in my opinion.

[Eduorius]

I totally agree with you buddy.

I can only hope that in 2008 Vin Diesel respects a bit more history and portraits a acceptable Hannibal.

[antisocialmunky]

Agreed. I much rather see a more historically accurate version of Thermopylae buttered up with alot of the mythos surrounding it such as the Spartans and Thebans fighting with their teeth and nails or the rumored attempt to assassinate Xerxes after the first day or the feinted retreat of the spartan phalanx or atleast the prophecy of the oracle for the sacrefice of the Spartan King and 300 men.

I mean, seeing uber 300 stylized guys fighting for glory and some farflung idea of freedom is kinda cool. Seeing 300 people and 700 volunteers sacrifice themselves for all of Greece.. for people that they have fought and never united with in the way they were now... to stand against an inplacable enemy as numerous as the stars in the heavens that they know they have no chance of defeating. That would be amazing.

[keravnos]

I don't think there is anyone alive who wouldn't like to see a movie called "Gates of Fire". Unfortunately for some reason, this wonderful would have been got sidetracked. Who knows? Maybe the success of "300" will force its creation.

Remember, it is an imperfect world. We have to get what we can and hope for the best

[Dooz]

I do believe there is more to a movie than visuals... much, much more. In fact, visuals are a small part of the equation in a great movie. Of course for this movie, the visuals are the main draw and that's all anyone who likes it will talk about, as that's all there really is to talk about, considering its shortcomings contentwise.

One of the guys who I saw it with liked it and the reasons he gave just made me mad more than anything else. Basically the fact that "it's an underdog movie", "he's fighting for his country, freedom, etc." There's cliche, and then there's cliche. This movie was both. Basically what TA said.

'Course it all comes down to preference, as with everything else. So if you like it then good, you don't feel like you wasted your money.

[Xtiaan72]

Vin Diesal: HANNIBAL!!!!!!


Orlando Bloom: Scipio Africanus!!!!


Vin Diesal as Hannibal......Awesome!!! Can't wait... It will be the greatest thing since The Rock as The Scorpion King.. And who can really fault that Oscar winning performance. Surely it won't live up to Tom Cruise as the last living samurai warrior though. Because noone could top that man...No one. Still it will be pretty good. A non-stop thrill ride of explosiveness. I hear that the elephants have rocket launchers on them....Sorry, Greek Fire launchers. And then there is this totally amazing part where Hannibal and Scipio Africanus ( Orlando Bloom in his most powerful sword wielding performance to date) wrestle to the death in the middle of the battlefield while both armies just stand around and watch! Not historical but its for the kids man...For the kids. Orlando really bulked up for this role too. I mean he's huge. And those two guys wrestling in loinclothes...It's really powerful film making. But I won't give away the end cause I don't want to ...You know. That would be a spoiler. But trust me it'sgreat and you won't believe who comes out on top. It's a really zinger of twist a that noone will anticipate!

Feel the heat folks. This is hot. Can't you feel how big this is going to be. 'The 300' came out with that war crazed rhino. BOOM! Right back at them with elephants with Greek Fire Launchers. Genius.....Genius.

And Vin is directing... People! Vin is directing. So Francis Ford Coppola watch out!

[Revenant]

"Vin Diesal as Hannibal......"

OMG, this dumb muscular man, previously acting in the worst action films I ever saw, like XXX (what was incidentally filmed in my country) and "Riddick chronicles" now acting as the master strategist Hannibal...

this cannot be,... please, not

[Tiberius Nero]

Umm tell me you are joking about Orlando Bloom playing Scipio. Please?

[Domitius Ulpianus]

It's easy to hate disfigured, hideous, deformed, mutant, tyrranical enemies. It's also very easy to create them, and even more easy to make the audience understand who they are when you just make them all black or brown or mutant. I find little worth in any story that can't take the time to make a believeable bad guy. The opinion might not be popular, but I think it belittles the real actions of the Spartans. The situation they were placed in was much more complex than the one presented here and they still made their decisions and fought for what they believed in and I respect them more for choosing wisely and making the sacrifice they did than I would for choosing to defend themselves against a dark (literally) mutant ninja empire. Every enemy is not the same, but movies like this would have people think so. Anyway, a real movie today about Thermopylae would have been so much cooler in my opinion.

Tele, I'm not going to start another "war of words"...because the point is if you didn't like the movie not even the ghost of Leonidas himself could make you change your opiniona about it. hehe...BUT I am pretty sure a lot of people willl comment this movie with me and that will mean 2 things: 1) it will give me the chance to inform them (with the limitation of my own knowledge) what we "really" know about how things happened. 2) we would have all remembered great warriors and cultures from antiquity....that alone in my book is priceless.

Now, a movie...any movie...is not great because it is historically correct. It's good or bad if the essential ingredients of any movie are there: Direction, actors, edition, Screenplay, Sound, Cinematography etc. Now if on top of that the movie tells "the truth"...whatever that is for you or me...well then we have a document for all eternity.

Now here is my question for you: is there such a movie? has any movie told the story as it is?...and to begin with...do we know the "truth" about anything?

But again, I understand and respect your opinion very much. Just wanted to put my 2 cents on the table.

[Tiberius Nero]

Well, even if we don't know the Truth, we can still make a well founded educated guess that Xerxes most probably wasn't the avatar of Beelzebub leading a marauding army of hellspawn to the west...

[Domitius Ulpianus]

Well, even if we don't know the Truth, we can still make a well founded educated guess that Xerxes most probably wasn't the avatar of Beelzebub leading a marauding army of hellspawn to the west...

Yes, for instructed people today...that might not be the case...but what about the spartan farmers at the time....maybe they did believed and saw "Xerxes as the avatar of Beelzebub leading a marauding army of hellspawn to the west"....now that is the interesting thing about "truth".

[Tiberius Nero]

No. The Greeks didn't have such simplistic views on the world, sorry. In the Iliad the Trojans are a bitter foe who are nevertheless represented as more humane urbane and civilized than the Acheans, from whose side the epic is delivered. Neither have I seen perception of the enemies as demons and monsters in a Greek text. Those are just modern notions again, projected into a place and time where they do not belong. Again, 300 says more about Miller and a contemporary simplistic Western focused worldview than anything else.

[antisocialmunky]

Orlando Bloom: Scipio Africanus!!!!

I can handle Vin Diesel as Hannibal, after all he's the director and executive producer(me thinks) but Orlando Bloom?!? WHAT THE HELL!!!!!!?

[aecp]

I totally agree with you buddy.

I can only hope that in 2008 Vin Diesel respects a bit more history and portraits a acceptable Hannibal.

Unfortunately, that seems unlikely. First of all, Vin Diesel is not only starring as Hannibal, but also directing, as mentioned by Xtiaan72. I haven't seen any of the movies hes directed but I have serious doubts whether he's capable of directing a movie like this. Second of all, I've read the reviews and some excerpts from the novel the movie is based on, and frankly it seems like total crap. Third of all, the writer of the screenplay is David Franzoni, who also wrote Gladiator and, far worse, King Arthur. Finally, I get the impression that Diesel is just handing out roles left and right to his old buddies from the terrible Riddick sequel.

Here's the movie on imdb

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0382731/

And here's the novel it's based on

http://www.amazon.com/Hannibal-Ross-...3623050&sr=8-1

And finally, heeeerreeeees Hasdrubal!!!!

http://www.imdb.com/gallery/hh/06026...g.html?seq=41&

[Domitius Ulpianus]

No. The Greeks didn't have such simplistic views on the world, sorry. In the Iliad the Trojans are a bitter foe who are nevertheless represented as more humane urbane and civilized than the Acheans, from whose side the epic is delivered. Neither have I seen perception of the enemies as demons and monsters in a Greek text. Those are just modern notions again, projected into a place and time where they do not belong. Again, 300 says more about Miller and a contemporary simplistic Western focused worldview than anything else.

Simplistic...ummm now when you say "the greeks"...who are you talking about?...I said explicitely a spartan farmer...not a writer, nor a philosopher, not a historian, not a general or a politician....a farmer I said...and that is the other interesting thing about "truth", not only his time frame perspective but its subjective approach. Or are you trying to imply here that each and every "greek" individual had the same opinion/believe about everything. I'm sure you don't ...that would be indeed simplistic.

Everything we have read from past civilizations is just a recollection of the thoughts and views of a certain elite that had access to writing. What do we know about how the rank and file soldier, the farmer or the slave perceipt, thought or felt about their time?....sadly the response is nothing.

Don't get me wrong, I understand the difference between a hack/slash blockbuster-movie and a documentary. I'd also would die to see a 100% historically (if such thing exists) movie about anything with all the great movie ingredients I talked about before....but my question still remains: Have we ever seen such a movie?

BTW: Vin Diesel as Hannibal is in it's own already a bigger tragedy to history than the whole 300 movie..../cries

[Tiberius Nero]

What is indeed simplistic is to make assumptions; give me a documented example of what a Greek farmer thought of the Persians and we can take it from there.

From what I know from the Athenian perception of the Persians to say the least they did not view them as monsters and demons. Read the "Persians" of Aeschylus, which was played before an Athenian audience, to see that there is even sympathy there for the calamities of the enemy.

Viewing the enemies as monsters is simply not documented in Greek writings, sorry.

[Eduorius]

With movies like 300 I start to appreciate movies like Gladiator, Alexander, and Kingdom of Heaven.

[soibean]

I thought it was an amazing film, but as stated time and time again you can't go in there expecting historical accuracy or anything apart from a Frank Miller stylistic movie, aka Sin City.
The movie is nothing more than an action film created with the barest of historical facts, but it was beautifully created and choreographed (sp?). Plenty of witty one liners and laughable moments, as well as a great sound track. It has a mixture of some classical, if I remember correctly, together with some heavy metal to really get your adrenaline going. The metal gets you pumped up similar to the music in the xbox game Halo right before you entered a major battle.
From what I gathered from the audience in my theatre, everyone loved it as well. People started cheering and clapping when a persian force was repulsed when all seemed lost and we all wanted to see more of the wonders of the Persian Empire as well as the military might of the 300.

Id recommend it to anyone who is a fan of action films and doesnt require too deep a plot in order to have a great time

[Elminster12]

Doesn't sound interesting to me. Demons, IMO, make terrible villains due to completely lacking a dimension other than "evil." I'm not interested in it at all, and I wasn't very interested before, because I suspected it would go like this. One of the reasons I loved Gladiator and The Last Samurai so much is that, in the former, you could understand Commodus. He was wrong, and probably evil, but his motivations were understandable....he was jealous of Maximus and wanted what he felt was his due. In Last Samurai, it is the protagonist side that is misguided, and though they could've been kinder to Omura, I'll forgive it. In the end, Meiji(like Japan really did) elected a middle path....a Japanese modernization, not clinging foolishly to the past or sacrificing it. But...black and white? I hate black and white because absolutely nothing is....

[Xtiaan72]

Actually everything in my post was taking the piss except Vin Diesal is playing Hannibal and directing. Which to me sounds like comedy so I added the bit about Orlando Bloom....Because in a preposterous project like this a "bulked up Orlando Bloom", Well let's face it, something like that is going to happen.

[Domitius Ulpianus]

What is indeed simplistic is to make assumptions; give me a documented example of what a Greek farmer thought of the Persians and we can take it from there.

From what I know from the Athenian perception of the Persians to say the least they did not view them as monsters and demons. Read the "Persians" of Aeschylus, which was played before an Athenian audience, to see that there is even sympathy there for the calamities of the enemy.

Viewing the enemies as monsters is simply not documented in Greek writings, sorry.

Sorry to see you missed my point completely I never said a fermer viewed them like that I merely said we have NO CLUE at all....anyway now I realize you see truth as a uni-dimenasional entity ... I guess you are certain you know the truth about some stuff...I prefer to see truth as something that changes from person to person and from one age to another as we uncover our own ignorance progressively and today's paradigm is replaced by a new better informed one..We have enough historical examples of people that were "owners of the truth"...Hitler, Mussolini Stalin, Mao...

[Tiberius Nero]

Nope, you have missed the point: there are "legitimate versions of the truth" so to speak. Nothing at all whatsoever from what we know legitimizes us to think that Greeks thought of their adversaries as subhuman monsters. On the contrary much of the stuff we have shows even sympathy extended towards defeated foes and aknowledgement of worth; why? because one is all the more worthy if one has beaten a mighty worthy enemy and not subhuman beasts, like the Persians are made to look in 300, or because out of simple humanity and aknowledgement of the common human fate. Those are major themes in Greek writings; depicting enemies as demons isn't even heard of.

So Miller's version of the "truth" is not a legitimate one (historically as always, because this is what it is about), but it is a "truth" based on his contemporary perception of an event, not on anything else. It is as "true" as saying today that Achilles was an extraterrestrial (sure, why the hell not?) and spinning modern myths about old stories. I am not annoyed by this kind of activity always, but the level of propaganda in 300 makes my eyes bleed, so I guess I am more vocal about it.

[Xtiaan72]

but what about the spartan farmers at the time.

New Oxymoron: "Spartan Farmer"

Let's get the facts straight about "Spartan Farmers". Well, the one thing we all know about "Spartan farmers" is they were Helots, Slaves that were treated with uncommon brutality by their Spartan overlords. And we know The Spartans treated them that way because it let them be full time, kick ass warriors.

So if you think about it logically, the average "Spartan Farmer" was probably unaware of any Persian invasion at all. The Spartan Warriors" would have tried to keep that information from them out of fear of rebellion. If the "Spartan Farmers" did find out they would have been very quite about it because "Spartan Warriors" really wouldn't like that kind of talk.

And if the "Spartan Farmer" did talk quitely about it with other "Spartan Farmers" they might have had a dim thought in the back of their head that someone was trying to conquer their slavemasters and that they might one day be free.

[Dooz]

Hahaha, that was pretty good there X. Unfortunately, this was the first I heard of a Hannibal movie, so first sentence, I was super excited. Then comes Vin Diesel and I sink a little. Then comes Vin Diesel as director and I'm a depressed, suicidal maniac looking to take out a bunch of people before I go.

It sucks how every topic like this turns into a historical debate or one about truth and facts. Any notions of authenticity and realism, first of all should never have existed with regards to this movie, but even if they did they should have been thrown out before going into it.

Now, a movie...any movie...is not great because it is historically correct. It's good or bad if the essential ingredients of any movie are there: Direction, actors, edition, Screenplay, Sound, Cinematography etc.

Exactly. And with regards to all those points, it was a terrible film.

[mcantu]

Saw it this morning on IMAX. First off, let me say that it was very strange seeing 400 New Yorkers lined up outside a theater at 9am on a Sunday morning...

Second, damn entertaining movie. I even got choked up at the end

Did anyone else notice that the Spartan with the eye-patch (forgot his name) is Faramir from the LotR movies?

[Guywithagun]

I live in England, and the film "300" hasn't been released here yet, and to be honest, I am a fan of history, and would like more films to respect historical accuracy, but to hear that guy look at all those Persian warriors, knowing he was probably going to die very soon, and to turn to his men and yell "TONIGHT, WE DINE, IN HELL!!". I mean, c'mon. Thats brilliant.

[keravnos]

Well, in Greece it broke any record there was for first, second, third opening day. But, that is to be expected now, isn't it?

300 rocks!

[Boyar Son]

OMG! I just saw it and it is the action movie!

Watch it before you diss it.

It is an awsome action film that will make your jaw drop (people think jaw droping is a myth, but it is quite real, only experienced when completely awed).

[kambiz]

Well, in Greece it broke any record there was for first, second, third opening day. But, that is to be expected now, isn't it?

300 rocks!

So you really excited by this movie ,right. And it broke any record for the first ,2nd ,3rd in Greece . . . And I'm sure it would broke even more records there my friend. YOU GREEKS ,I know you like these movies ,Not only you ,many of you westerners like them. Now YOU GREEKS! have very good reason to declare war on Iran. USA now have a trusted allies on his future war against Iran. YOU GREEKS Want to prove your so called "Thermopylae" ,Right? So come on my friend ,We in iran have many places like Thermopylae and I seriously want to show you the true Thermopylae.

SO COME ON YOU GREEKS ,Modern Thermopylae is in Iran ,IF YOU WANT IT !

[Boyar Son]

So you really excited by this movie ,right. And it broke any record for the first ,2nd ,3rd in Greece . . . And I'm sure it would broke even more records there my friend. YOU GREEKS ,I know you like these movies ,Not only you ,many of you westerners like them. Now YOU GREEKS! have very good reason to declare war on Iran. USA now have a trusted allies on his future war against Iran. YOU GREEKS Want to prove your so called "Thermopylae" ,Right? So come on my friend ,We in iran have many places like Thermopylae and I seriously want to show you the true Thermopylae.

SO COME ON YOU GREEKS ,Modern Thermopylae is in Iran ,IF YOU WANT IT !

Uh oh! we got ourselves a "my country is better than yours" debate!