^ yeah it made 70 mil, over the weekend, biggest opening on this weekend ever. I enjoyed the movie but its not up there with Gladiator and Braveheart. 300 is way too shallow in terms of characterizon, we know very little about these characters. Also the CGI gore actually makes the whole thing less impactful than if they would have gone with practical effects. The whole subplot with the queen was weak and a momentum killer, IMO. It's an above average movie.
Who didn't see this coming? Iranian official lashes out at Hollywood movie "300" for insulting Persian civilization An Iranian official on Sunday lashed out at the Hollywood movie "300" for insulting the Persian civilization, local Fars News Agency reported. Javad Shamqadri, an art advisor to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, accused the new movie of being "part of a comprehensive U.S. psychological war aimed at Iranian culture", said the report. Shamqadri was quoted as saying "following the Islamic Revolution in Iran, Hollywood and cultural authorities in the U.S. initiated studies to figure out how to attack Iranian culture," adding "certainly, the recent movie is a product of such studies." The movie's effort wound be fruitless, because "values in Iranian culture and the Islamic Revolution are too strongly seated to be damaged by such plans", said the Iranin official. Shamqadri, who is also a filmmaker, said that production of more domestic and artistic films which portray Iranian achievements is a proper response to movies like "300". "300," an ancient epic about the famous Battle of Thermopylae in Greek history, set a new record at the box office in North America this weekend. The Warner Bros. adaptation of the 480 B.C. battle took an estimated 70 million U.S. dollars in its debut weekend, according to figures released on Sunday by Los Angeles-based box office track firm Media by Numbers. The R-rated film, based on comic book writer Frank Miller's graphic novel, tells the story that an army of 300 Spartan warriors led by their king Leonidas fought to the death to delay a massive Persian army's invasion, so that the Greeks could reorganize a counterattack. http://english.people.com.cn/200703/12/eng20070312_356565.html
^^ So I watched the movie...and at the end I came to the realization that Iranians are blood thirsty monsters. I'm not even thinkin that these are the descendants of these middle eastern countries...who the hell would be?! And hell the Spartans, in the film, were just as bloodthirsty as the Persians.
You too can have the body of a Spartan... Either way, it's the reason Butler enlisted the help of Mark Twight, a former world-class mountain climber who, based on personal experience, believes in training as if your life depends on it. In fact, Twight would argue that a good workout should make you feel almost queasy upon hearing what lies ahead. For example, to hasten Butler's mind-body transformation, he created what he calls the "300-rep Spartan workout." (Trust us, 100 reps is plenty hard.) (*2) It goes like this: Without resting between exercises, Butler performs 25 pullups, 50 deadlifts with 135 pounds, 50 pushups, 50 jumps on a 24-inch box, 50 floor wipers (*3), 50 single-arm clean-and-presses using a 36-pound kettle bell, and 25 more pullups. All this, in addition to utilizing other unconventional yet equally taxing training methods, such as tire flipping and gymnastics-style ring training. Sound like hell? It is. In fact, upon receiving his marching orders for a Spartan workout, one of Butler's costars told Twight, "It feels like you just killed my dog." http://www.menshealth.com/cda/artic...item=de42ad5c08450110VgnVCM10000013281eac____
Hmm... I wonder why pr0n is so popular? AGREED. I wanna see a taller dude getting his head chopped off by a little guy 'cuz the bigger they are, the harder they fall.
So is he saying the Persians DIDN'T attempt to invade Greece, because...that's just dumb. It happened: Persians attacked, 300 Spartans (and 700 Thespians) defended, the rest of Greece eventually got off their ass and kicked butt at Salamis, and the Persians went home losers. He can complain about it all he wants: sounds like 2400-year-old sour grapes to me.
Does it really matter if the movie wasn't completely accurate? I didn't go for a history lesson. POSSIBLE SPOILERS...MY BAD Sparta? No. This is madness An expert assesses the gruesome new epic Mar 11, 2007 04:30 AM The battle of Thermopylae was real, but how real is 300? Ephraim Lytle, assistant professor of hellenistic history at the University of Toronto, has seen the movie and offers his view. History is altered all the time. What matters is how and why. Thus I see no reason to quibble over the absence in 300 of breastplates or modest thigh-length tunics. I can see the graphic necessity of sculpted stomachs and three hundred Spartan-sized packages bulging in spandex thongs. On the other hand, the ways in which 300 selectively idealizes Spartan society are problematic, even disturbing. We know little of King Leonidas, so creating a fictitious backstory for him is understandable. Spartan children were, indeed, taken from their mothers and given a martial education called the agoge. They were indeed toughened by beatings and dispatched into the countryside, forced to walk shoeless in winter and sleep uncovered on the ground. But future kings were exempt. And had Leonidas undergone the agoge, he would have come of age not by slaying a wolf, but by murdering unarmed helots in a rite known as the Crypteia. These helots were the Greeks indigenous to Lakonia and Messenia, reduced to slavery by the tiny fraction of the population enjoying Spartan "freedom." By living off estates worked by helots, the Spartans could afford to be professional soldiers, although really they had no choice: securing a brutal apartheid state is a full-time job, to which end the Ephors were required to ritually declare war on the helots. Elected annually, the five Ephors were Sparta's highest officials, their powers checking those of the dual kings. There is no evidence they opposed Leonidas' campaign, despite 300's subplot of Leonidas pursuing an illegal war to serve a higher good. For adolescents ready to graduate from the graphic novel to Ayn Rand, or vice-versa, the historical Leonidas would never suffice. They require a superman. And in the interests of portentous contrasts between good and evil, 300's Ephors are not only lecherous and corrupt, but also geriatric lepers. Ephialtes, who betrays the Greeks, is likewise changed from a local Malian of sound body into a Spartan outcast, a grotesquely disfigured troll who by Spartan custom should have been left exposed as an infant to die. Leonidas points out that his hunched back means Ephialtes cannot lift his shield high enough to fight in the phalanx. This is a transparent defence of Spartan eugenics, and laughably convenient given that infanticide could as easily have been precipitated by an ill-omened birthmark. 300's Persians are ahistorical monsters and freaks. Xerxes is eight feet tall, clad chiefly in body piercings and garishly made up, but not disfigured. No need – it is strongly implied Xerxes is homosexual which, in the moral universe of 300, qualifies him for special freakhood. This is ironic given that pederasty was an obligatory part of a Spartan's education. This was a frequent target of Athenian comedy, wherein the verb "to Spartanize" meant "to bugger." In 300, Greek pederasty is, naturally, Athenian. This touches on 300's most noteworthy abuse of history: the Persians are turned into monsters, but the non-Spartan Greeks are simply all too human. According to Herodotus, Leonidas led an army of perhaps 7,000 Greeks. These Greeks took turns rotating to the front of the phalanx stationed at Thermoplyae where, fighting in disciplined hoplite fashion, they held the narrow pass for two days. All told, some 4,000 Greeks perished there. In 300 the fighting is not in the hoplite fashion, and the Spartans do all of it, except for a brief interlude in which Leonidas allows a handful of untrained Greeks to taste the action, and they make a hash of it. When it becomes apparent they are surrounded, this contingent flees. In Herodotus' time there were various accounts of what transpired, but we know 700 hoplites from Thespiae remained, fighting beside the Spartans, they, too, dying to the last man. No mention is made in 300 of the fact that at the same time a vastly outnumbered fleet led by Athenians was holding off the Persians in the straits adjacent to Thermopylae, or that Athenians would soon save all of Greece by destroying the Persian fleet at Salamis. This would wreck 300's vision, in which Greek ideals are selectively embodied in their only worthy champions, the Spartans. This moral universe would have appeared as bizarre to ancient Greeks as it does to modern historians. Most Greeks would have traded their homes in Athens for hovels in Sparta about as willingly as I would trade my apartment in Toronto for a condo in Pyongyang. http://www.thestar.com/article/190493
Terrific review/analysis of the movie, thanks for posting it. I think the way the non-Spartan Greeks and the Persians were portrayed was probably the biggest turnoff for me personally. The message of this movie was pretty simple: Spartans kick arse, everyone else is either a homo or an evil monster. Of course, in reality, those gay philosophers from Athens pretty much won the war for Greece (Oh, the irony!), but we shouldn't let the facts get in the way of making a boatload of money off of a movie. But again, the movie producers/marketers never claimed it was historically accurate or inclusive, so no big deal.
that should be the Clutchfans motto. Clutchfans kick arse, everyone else is either a homo or an evil monster!
I can't believe there's even a freaking debate as to "realism" & "accuracy." It's a pure adaptation of the Miller graphic novel. That's it! Christ, did anyone argue whether Sin City was "realistic?" If so, then those people are idiots. Want the real story? Read Herodotus. Want accuracy? read any of the numerous scholarly works on Ancient Greek battle tactics. Want a cool novelization with "character development?" Read Gates of Fire. Otherwise STFU about accuracy & realism, lol! If you like stylized, asskicking movies, you'll like this. If you go in expecting The Departed in sandals, you'll be disappointed. I get that some people want more plot. Fine, but then wtf are you doing going to see a comic book movie like this in the first place? Do people go watch movies like Fantastic Four and actually come away pissed that their powers were bestowed by a 30 second radiation storm? IT'S A COMIC BOOK MOVIE! And whoever said that sometimes plot isn't necessary is right. See the movie Russian Ark. Anyway. This board does have a large Iranian contingent from what I remember - I wonder how many have seen this movie. Would watching an asskicking movie be the same, if it's your ancestors depicted getting their asses kicked?
