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Originally Posted by Legio X
You can deffinatly see the historical elements in this movie:
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Vin Diesel stars as the Carthaginian general who led an elephant-riding battalion across the Alps to attack Rome in the 3rd Century B.C.
I bet its basicly gonna be Elephants vs Lorica Segmenta(sp?) legions :laugh4:
The reason why I butcher Alexander as a movie is foremostly the faulty depiction of the Persians. What makes it all worse is that the movie comes off as a pretentious history lesson. The battle of Gaugamela alone was ridden with errata, and to top it off not only did Alexander as a movie try to accuse the Persians as the aggressors but at the same time Rosario Dawson was casted as Raukhshanna. 300 as a movie is best treated as fiction so one could forgive the false portrayal of Xerxes and the... Mutants of the Persian army, and the rhinos... And... Yeah... But Alexander as a movie did thanks to these aspects come across as pretentious comedy if not outrightly a collective insult against Iranians. My colleague Dr. Farrokh brought these aspects to scrutiny in this article:Quote:
Originally Posted by Thaatu
http://www.grecoreport.com/The_Alexander_Movie.htm
Enjoy the read. My treat :smash:
I do not anticipate this lord of the rings, jazzed up unhistorical piece of crap one bit, i will not even watch it out of curiosity.
Booooo to hollywood, booooooo.
I'm gonna be really controversial here, as this is a forum of alot of so-called "realism" dogmatism. :oops:
Kidding. But what is realism anyway? I believe you can never really grasp the hole reality, rather i believe it is a social and political construction. People with resources, power have a picture of how history "should" be portrayed, and then we try to controll this vision.
Then why worry about EB? Vanilla must be oppressively realistic enough for that viewpoint. :laugh4:
Post-modernist! :thumbsdown: A coherent picture of reality is far better than one that is incoherent, hypocritical and basically full of holes, eg. Hollywood.Quote:
Originally Posted by Axelus
Foot
Well, if you'll excuse the hyperbole...Quote:
Originally Posted by Axelus
https://i176.photobucket.com/albums/...ow_Showing.jpg
To a certain extent he is right. It is impossible for us to ever be 100% sure of what was and was not the case in history, until someone invents a time machine, so we can go back and observe first hand. All evidence may be distorted by the opinions and agenda of the writer/painter in the case of accounts or representations, or atypical and unique in the case of artefacts. All we can do is make best guesses and rationalisations of what might have been.Quote:
Originally Posted by Axelus
I dont however believe this means we shouldn't try to get an accurate picture of history, merely that we should bear in mind that our accurate picture may not be as accurate as we would like.
EB is a better approximation of history than vanilla, hence why we should bother with it. While there may be mistakes in EB, the team have done their level best to research and eliminate these, and make the most accurate mod they possibly can. Vanilla made no such effort, and included gross historical errors which go beyond merely not having 100% reliable evidence. For example the ancient egyptians and the frankly two dimensional barbarians...
Not only that,EB is also far superior in terms of gameplay and immersion, with the vastly extended unit roster, traits and all the other improvements you guys have made. To enjoy EB you do not need to be a history fanatic... Of course playing EB will turn you into a history fanatic, but that is a whole different issue...
I couldn't agree more. I think this forum shows that history can be something that we argue and debating about, and with that EB and its forum members here have shown that although you perhaps can not reach "the" truth, you could land somewhere near it.Quote:
EB is a better approximation of history than vanilla, hence why we should bother with it. While there may be mistakes in EB, the team have done their level best to research and eliminate these, and make the most accurate mod they possibly can. Vanilla made no such effort, and included gross historical errors which go beyond merely not having 100% reliable evidence. For example the ancient egyptians and the frankly two dimensional barbarians...
Yea, but I like post-modernism. :2thumbsup:Quote:
Post-modernist! A coherent picture of reality is far better than one that is incoherent, hypocritical and basically full of holes, eg. Hollywood.
Regarding the topic, the movie 300 is a fictious work, and nothing more. I believe here the postmodern view on things can come handy: You can never grasp the reality with a movie, so why even protend you can? It's better to protend it's not realism...
I'd get seriously concerned for anyone who though it was anything else... :sweatdrop:Quote:
Originally Posted by Axelus
Fiction schiction, the basic problem is that it's bad fiction. It comes off to me as basically a rehash of those good old colonial-era adventure novels mated to MTV generation pretentious kitsch, and the whole thing really tries too hard to be too cool for school. "Plot" and "character depth" are, I strongly suspect, concepts that have no place in the same sentence with this film.
Bad SFX-fests are dime a dozen. This one goes one better and tops it off with serious lack of taste and a dodgy attitude.
If you go to this movie expecting anything other than over-the-top gory action, or if you don't enjoy that sort of thing to at least some degree, I think you're setting yourself up to be dissapointed. I think that when it comes to previews, trailers and such that everyone involved with this movie have been really honest about what it actually is. I for one hope to enjoy it, even if I have strong doubts about its quality in many aspects, and even if I would have preffered a more serious aproach to the subject.
I don't know what you base that on. I think the effects (from what I've seen in the trailers) look very impressive. And you could call 300 a lot of things, but dime-a-dozen is hardly one of them. As far as I know the only movie which it resembles in cinematography is Sin City.Quote:
Bad SFX-fests are dime a dozen. This one goes one better and tops it off with serious lack of taste and a dodgy attitude.
I wasn't commenting on the technical merits of the effects.
I know this is not historicly accurate, but comon so isnt other stuff in other movies.
This is gonna be teh action film. Done forum settled, in fact disscusion settled. commenting wont do you any good any more.
Yeah, but I just hate that I'm going to have to answer so many questions about it over the next few years. Ridiculous questions. :laugh4: You mean Achilles wasn't in the Trojan Horse? Huh? Patroclus wasn't just his younger cuz he was protecting? Achilles must have really loved Briseus, right? :grin:
I'll agree with TPC and go a bit further. Alexander was an unadulterated piece of garbage for many reasons, not the least of which being its erroneous depictions of near everything. Colin Farrel can't act either.
300? I would have seen it if it were just a comic-bookesque picture of the battle, but the Persians are indeed cast as the eastern horde from hell. Now, I'm no multi-culturalist relativistic wiener who eats tofu-dogs and gets sick from beef broth, but come on. It's just so fucking blatant it makes my ears bleed. IRANIANS ARE EVIL, IRANIANS ARE EVIL banner going across the top of the screen would serve up its message. AND it cheapens what those 300 men actually did.
TPC: One thing though. Farrokh does not understand Greek or Roman battle orders very well, as most on the other side don't understand the Persians. He actually calls the Roman armies 'hoplite inspired' at the time of Carrhae, which is rather silly to say the least.
Uhh, maybe you need to a refresher on 20th century history... should I list the evil tyrants and the incredible heros who stood up to them for freedom, democracy, and the American way of life?Quote:
Originally Posted by aecp
Even today, it is the same old story. http://www4.army.mil/news/article.php?story=9825 ...do I need to say who the evil tyrant is, or who is in the "Axis of Evil"?
I'm pretty sure if the real "300" were here today they would puke at their actions being depicted in this way. I'm not looking forward to this movie at all. But at the same time, I'm already about to puke because of how much the crap in this movie actually resembles how Americans feel today.
The way the Achaemenid Empire is shown in every movie, TV show, etc makes me mad. To me the Persians were the "good guys".
"History is written by the winner." Ever noticed that the "good guys" are the ultimate winner of every struggle.
Anyone here seen the Starwars films? First time I saw them I was totally OMG?! WTF?! CAPSLOCK?! It never happened, even though they claim it's history! How dare they?
All movies should be painstakingly accurate documentations of historical events. We need to crack down on anything else and demand to be served movies that do not require us to look beyond the immediately recognizable.
jeez/EoE
And with that I better say bye-bye to OT'ing more on this forum and return to enjoy the wonder that is EB. :balloon2:
I think few serious people are concerned about the movie's ahistoricity, wth, it is a work of fiction, we can understand that and it takes licences (all ancient plays or epics even take similar licence and are full of anachronisms, no one is complaining about these); what people are concerned about is the quality of it as fiction (e.g. no plot, no characters etc) and I for one with its blatant propagandist nature.
No offence, mate, but I think that quote rather applies to your link. The link starts by saying Alexander drew heavily on a modern historical work. Would that all Hollywood historical movies were so grounded. The movie was head and shoulders over most Hollywood efforts. It taught me a lot - for example, about Alexander's relation with the East, which your link acknowledges as a strength. To damn the movie over details shows a lack of judgement and just surrenders the field to 300 style nonsense. The best is the enemy of the good.Quote:
Originally Posted by The Persian Cataphract
Spending a lot of time focussing on Alexander's hair colour or Rosario Dawson's skin colour - and being "insulted" by it as your link's author and his wife were - frankly smacks of racism. It's called acting - you don't have to be a Macedonian general to play one or a 3rd century Persian woman to play one. I don't see a problem with a white man playing Othello or a black playing Hamlet; heck, Shakespeare did well enough with men playing all the women's roles (as do many single sex schools today). People are people - if you prick me, do I not bleed? ~:grouphug:Quote:
...at the same time Rosario Dawson was casted as Raukhshanna.
Why so much gloom and doom?
No matter what historical carnage 300 commits, there is one historical fact they cannot fail to honour.
Isn't it ironic that there will be no actual Spartans at all, only Thespians!
:2thumbsup:
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Originally Posted by Urnamma
Except that todays Middle East Arab population is, ethnically and culturally, very far removed from ancient Persians...
And how likely is the run-of-the-mill American movie-goer to be aware of that ? I wouldn't bet on my countrymen being on the average too well informed on the matter, and they aren't notorious for categorical ignorance concerning the rest of the world.
'Sides, we're talking symbols here.
And AFAIK the present-day Iranians aren't Arabs (to meaningful degrees anyway), and both will probably be offended if so mistaken.
Err, Iranians are not Arabs, they don't even speak arabic for one...Quote:
Originally Posted by mcantu
did one of you notice that xerxes himself looked more like a klingon ?
This is the beauty of Iranology, friend. Whereas we are the masters of everything pertaining to the Iranian world, we are yet very full of misconceptions regarding the Graeco-Roman military traditions. This is largely due to the fact that Iranian cultures are so poorly documented and one could just dedicate a few days just to get a grasp of the whole pre-Islamic Iranian history, while Greek and Roman history takes years just to plow through half of the primary sources and the scholastics, to truly understand their culture. We are very used to fill in the blanks with whatever is suitable and thus by situations where ambiguities arise, we are very quick with plotting down a various hypothesis. It would sound disastrous and utterly unscholarly to any historian with sensibility in Graeco-Roman field, but it is an everyday situation for the Iranologist. Criteria are naturally higher in the ancient history of the West.Quote:
Originally Posted by Urnamma
He does indeed call the Roman army, in context of Carrhae "hoplite inspired", true true. I myself caught him redhanded a few times on his work on Pan-Turanism. In his Osprey work on Sassanid cavalry, he does however retain honesty on the colour plate of the battle of Ctesiphon between the army of Julian the Apostate and the Sassanids, where Angus McBride depicted soldiers wearing the lorica segmentata, and carrying Germanic shields, so there is a note on the errata. So he is not completely ignorant, though I was baffled by his praise of muslim commanders.
As for the movie plastering the Persians as an evil horde of mutants and disfigured orchs, well, like I said before it would depend on the intention of the film. It is not meant to be a historical portrayal so I am satisfied. It does sting a bit that they carry the name of Persians, and it stings a bit that Xerxes is depicted as he is, but that's Frank Miller. If it is a caricature of history with testosterone crammed in to it, then I'll be more than willing to and spend a few hours with the gang and enjoy a flick touting itself as more masculine than Conan The Barbarian. I have no expectations for this movie, not like I had for Alexander when I heard that Robin Lane Fox, a very esteemed authority on Alexander III The Great was to be the historical advisor of the movie. It's the same as that other horrid movie known as Attila, plastering itself as historically accurate with expensive sets... But again, Hollywood legions and... Parthians? Ridiculous. Compared to these horrid attempts of serious movies, 300 comes across like a wind of fresh air, and for once we do ironically see "Persians" in actual armour and possessing some technology :egypt:
...I could have a field day on the comical portrayal of Xerxes alone. Rodrigo Santoro, at least with hair on his head and skipping the piercings could have passed as a half-credible Xerxes if he could wear a huge crown and a square-cut beard. Instead we see him carrying more bling than Mr.T and instead of wearing long, flowing robes a befitting an Achaemenid emperor, he is half-naked. But hey, it's not like Gerard Butler is an exact replica of Leonidas... And then we have Ephialtes... Jeez, I wish they could have cut the poor goat-herder some slack, I mean from being the man just saying "Uhh, idiots you could actually take this way, duh!" he is depicted as a gigantic uruk-hai in chains :laugh4:Quote:
Originally Posted by stefan25
First of all, I was being ironic. I was just commenting on the fact that when it comes to depicting war and conflict any further back than the 20th century, the Hollywood consensus seems to be that the only thing that motivated people back then was freedom (Braveheart, Gladiator) and the possibility of being remembered for thousands of years (Alexander, Troy).Quote:
Originally Posted by fallen851
A movie about WW2 or the Vietnam War typically has far more depth when it comes to the developement of characters, moral issues, motivation and such. That was really all I was trying to say. And "American way of life?" are you saying that the heroes of the 20th century were exclusively Americans or something?
Christ, calm down, get a hobby or something. You seem to be overreacting to some pretty insignificant stuff. As for the original 300, I think its very possible that they would be amused at the fact that the tale of their actions has survived for thousands of years in a society so far beyond anything they would have been able to imagine. Even if the tale is in a form that might seem to them a tad on the mythological side.Quote:
I'm pretty sure if the real "300" were here today they would puke at their actions being depicted in this way. I'm not looking forward to this movie at all. But at the same time, I'm already about to puke because of how much the crap in this movie actually resembles how Americans feel today.
Ephialtes' portrayal is just ridiculous: it didn't fit Miller's idea of supposed unity of the Greeks (and hence the forces of Good Democrats everywhere) that it was a simple goatherd caring more for his pocket than the Cause of Liberty and so he had to find a tragic story behind him being a Spartan actually who was denied serving in the army for being deformed etc etc. Unity my foot: anyone has noticed how the epigram of the fallen Spartans says: "we fell obeying to Spartan Law"? A far cry from at least an emerging concept of Panhellenism evident in the Athenian Epigram for Marathon, where at least it is said that "Fighting first on the front of Greeks in Marathon, the Athenians crushed the might of gilded Medes". Even using Sparta to champion the idea of Liberty and Progress betrays uncoscious irony on Miller's part. Sparta was possibly the most reactionary city state in Greece.