[A. J. Ratelle]

[Joe Fults]

Looks to me like many opinions were cast in stone before the film even hit the screen. Both lines of debate are valid in their frames of reference. Still this film is not one of the great injustices in human history, and in an instant it will be forgotten by most people, so I believe indignation over it is a waste.

If you can accept it for what its intended to be, its a brilliant ride.

If you instead get stuck on what the film is not, then pass it by.

It really is that simple.

[David Martin]

I think there have been quite a few good arguments for 300 made in this thread. I can see the entertainment value of the graphic novel and film. I can also grant a degree of artistic license in the interest of entertainment. And I certainly agree that if the book/movie sparks an interest in history for those not currently so enamored, so much the better.

My primary beef is when the artistic license is extended to a point at which it offends someone. In this movie, by foregoing the historical accuracy of Spartan’s armor and tactics, they’ve essentially leveled the playing field with the Persians. That the Spartans were so phenomenally successful against even the elite Persian troops indicates that the Persians were vastly inferior warriors. Displaying their best warriors as something akin to goblins was also, at least in my opinion, in poor taste. Dehumanizing the enemy, as we know, is the hallmark of propaganda.

I have read that those responsible for the movie made no claims as to its historical accuracy. Still, there really was a Battle of Thermopylae fought by Greek and Persian armies led by Leonidas and Xerxes in 480 BC. Given this information, parallels to actual historical events (to whatever degree of confidence our historical records allow) are bound to be drawn. The need for accuracy seems, at least to me, to be a temporal function.

Let’s say, for example, that your father led troops in a recent armed conflict. All evidence you have gathered about this indicates that he performed admirably and well within the accepted rules of engagement. Perhaps he was a decorated hero and through his actions, saved the lives of others. Now imagine that you’re watching a recent movie portraying your father in a very unfavorable light: As a treacherous and merciless killer of the lowest sort. Although the producers of this movie make no historical claims to accuracy, they’re still using enough detail that you can easily discern that they’re referring to your father. You’d probably have a pretty clear cut lawsuit against those responsible for the film.

Give it a thousand years or so, however, and all bets are off. Yet I would guess that most of us would hope that the world of the future would have the courtesy to portray us and our ancestors accurately.

Naturally, the relations of the Greeks and Persians who died at Thermopylae have long since stopped caring about their relative’s depiction in the media (at least there haven’t been any outright complaints, as far as I know). The passage of 75 or so generations will have that effect. The big question for us in our modern society is the extent to which we choose to honor the memories of those that passed before us. While I’ll agree that there isn’t a legal responsibility to do so, I would suggest that it is a matter of respect and integrity.

In all honesty, had the producers dropped all historical references and gave fictitious names to all of the characters, I probably would have enjoyed the movie as a bit of mindless entertainment. Once the historical references started appearing in the film, however, my feeling is that it is incumbent upon those responsible for the film to portray the historical figures involved with dignity and accuracy.

I’m obviously in the minority in this belief, and the further reiteration of my stance is probably futile. I do, however, very much appreciate the mature discussion of this topic, such as is common here at myArmoury.

[Joe Fults]

For what its worth, and I can't vouch for all the sources, Iran seems to be annoyed by the film:

http://english.people.com.cn/200703/12/eng20070312_356565.html

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17599641/

http://www.cbc.ca/arts/film/story/2007/03/13/iran-300.html

Perhaps they will take the time to make a version of their own since they are sooo annoyed with this version (I wonder what the Greeks think of it)? With decent production I'd watch it, but it does seem that they really could lighten up a bit.

*One article quotes an Iranian who is film maker saying the correct repsonse is to make films about Iranian and Persian achievements to counter this one. I have to commend him for that.

[Joe Fults]

I'll also note that this film did inspired me to do a bit of reading on the events in question. In spite of the stated historical inaccuracies, because the film told an engaging story, I decided I wanted to learn more about what really went on. Story telling is rarely about accuracy; its about using imagination, aspiration, ideals, and even propoganda to entertain and perhaps motivate an audience. In my opinion, only an inexperienced or lazy listener, or a listener with an agenda, mistakes embellishment for truth and fails to verify what they have been told.

The film did get me to take a deeper dive into this content which I can't say I was that interested in before seeing the film. It also convinced me to try to find references from both sides since the Persians were such exaggerated villians. It did not convince me that the the Spartans fought in loin clothes by themselves or that the Persians were goblin ninjas, ogres, or renegade aliens from SG1.

Unfortuantely I have yet to find anything resembling a decent Persian account of the action online, although I've found things people claim are Persian bits regarding Marathon. More searching to do unless I get bored with it all.

[Taylor Ellis]

[Taylor Ellis]

[Peter Bosman]

Interesting topic this!

I liked the more filosofical thread best.
It ís true that motion pictures heavily influance how people perceive history but as long as the filmmaker makes it clear wether or not it is intended to be historically accurate of fantasy it is as is and like everthing in life is.

As for the key importance of events I do not beleive in that. Things do not happen out of the blue. History is not a chronological sequence of events. It is a complex adaptive system. There is always a world around it. Wether the turn of thát event goes left or right sure does change thát and al directly connected but the general flow of things does not.

The greek were of course subjective and there perception coloured so their 'history' is nót what actually happened.
Also both archeology and the litterature give us fragmented information. In our turn we have a subjective view on the greek too.
There you have it. What we think is our version of fragmented greek perception

I will see it if it pops up on dvd here.

Peter

[Kev Sutton]

I can highly recommend watching the training videos on the 300 website look under the video journals section and take a peek at the videos there. It gives you a good background on the story, concept and training the blokes did for the film.

[Marcos Cantu]

Did anyone else notice that the Spartan with the eye patch is Faramir from the Lord of the Rings movies?

[Joel Whitmore]

I honestly don't know why we put ourselves through this every time a new movie comes out that is based on historical events. Wouldn't it be nice if we could save our posts for that movie that "gets it right" ?

[Joe Fults]

[Jean Henri Chandler]

Playing Devils Advocate for a moment here (probably literally in the eyes of Frank Miller and Victor Hansen)

I went to see this film expecting to like it and made a conscious effort not to pedantically nit-pick over historical issues since I knew it was a stylisitic rendering. I suspended disbelief and simply let the film wash over me.

For the most part, that worked. As I said, I like this film even though I have a few reservations.

Where it fell down for me was really at the very end, the speech by "farimir", where he excoriates the Persians and elevates the role of the Spartans into freedom fighters. The key instant which kind of ruined it for me to some extent was when farimir declares that they are fighting a struggle against the forces of mysticism. I instantly remembered the scene with the perverted, leprous Greek priests and their drugged Spartan nymphette giving her oracle. Thats not mysticism? What is that? Spirituality? I'm not dragging this from the pages of history, it's from earlier in the same film! Even viewing this from within it's own context, one can still expect a certain internal consistency. I mean you can talk me into 'forgetting' my Herodotus, but expecting me to forget what you just showed me a couple of hours ago is an insult to my intelligence.

That kind of put the whole skewed nature of the portrayal into a more sour perspective and left a rather bad taste in my mouth. The Spartans are clean living heterosexuals who love their wives; the Persians are perverts with syphilis. The Spartans are eugenicists who purge ugly babies and hunchbacks from their society; the Persians employ semi-human mutants and ogres as their elite soldiers and executioners. Most of all, the Spartans fight for freedom and the Persians are boot licking despot lovers!! The little speech at the end was a wedge which forced you to think about the crude political agenda and starkly one-sided perspective which underlay this rather stylistic visual presentation.

And while I hate Political Correctness, I really can't blame the Iranians for being offended. I hope it spurs them into making their own film on Thermopolae or any other aspect of the Persian wars (do they call them the 'Greek wars?') Hopefully from a more balanced perspective rather than portraying the Greeks as vampires or something. But I'll watch it regardless I've seen a lot of good Iranian films so I figure it will be good!

The real tragedy here is if they had portrayed the Persians in a more realistic manner this film could have risen to a higher level by exploring the interesting and more nuanced argument hinted at in some of the dialogue, contrasting the relative merits of two different forms of compromise on the road to freedom; a Satrapy of Persia under a fairly laissez faires rulership, vs. Greek independence dominated by the aggressive Spartan Monarchy and the ruthless Athenian Empire...historically many Greeks seemed split on this decision. Eliminating the graytones from all of this and making the story into stark black and white are where this Graphic novel turned film became merely good light entertianment instead of a great cinematic epic.

J

[Sam Barris]

[Chad Arnow]

[Michael Eging]

I think martial storytelling falls into many levels, good - bad - and ugly. My point was not to compare the merits of any one of them, but to point out that story tellers through the ages took great liberties with their material, and in many cases even fabricated it. Some of the stories at the time they were told were also considered very bloody. This movie (and the graphic novel) squarely falls within that ages old tradition of fictionalizing martial events to make them relevant to the audience of the time. That was the point of my comment about Shakespeare and other works of martial historical fiction. Shakespeare wrote to fund his craft and therefore translated events to make money so he could keep writing stories. But remember his audience was very different than the audience of today.

That said, I would not put this in the same league of storytelling Henry V or the tales of Homer or Virgil. Just as some people might not put, for example, the Song of Roland into the same league as maybe Beowulf (please don't misread, just an example because Song of Roland is one of my favorite epics, but some consider it mere crusader propoganda). I do think (and the box office from opening week might tend to agree) that the story teller in this instance did create a tale relevant to the intended audience. I agree that many of the elements dehumanize the "bad guys." But that is the tradition of comic books and graphic novels, from which this was cast. Even some great epics "dehumanize" villains, even though some of us might find sympathetic villains of greater interest. Often that is done to make the challenge more daunting for the hero and make the fight more recognizable as good versus bad. Very simplistic, but effective in a medium where complexity can be lost on the audience.

I also would like to see an Iranian sword and sandals epic on that same topic to get a glimpse of their perspective.

Anyway, this has been a good natured discussion and I appreciated reading this thread.

[Joe Fults]

At risk of being off topic, here's the thing about watching a movie and viewer perception.

To me it was clearly stated that the Spartan King had to go to the priests. He did not want to go and had no use for them, but he could not break the law at that time and he hoped they would see reason. When the priests reject reason, saying the Spartans must sit the affair out, old Leo rejects them to do what he knows is right by going north to meet the Persians. So to me at least, the are 300 rejecting mysticism in their own culture as much as in the Persian culture.

I felt this idea was carried over into some of the other dialogs. Also although the movie didn't show or state it, I felt that the priests were in deep poo at the end of things. There would be a new Greek ideal.

Film true to history or not, I don't know.

Film lacking internal continuity on this count, I'm not so sure.

[Joe Fults]

As for historical inaccuracies, I'm fairly sure there were no ninjas at the battle. Visually I think the portrayal of the immortals could have been better and more consistent with the feel of the other Persians. Gak! I hated the double back scabbard sword thing.

[John Cooksey]

I actually went to see this movie yesterday afternoon, and I do have a few comments about it.,
1. the movie was *very* true to the graphic novel (I have a loaner copy in my possession)
2. I was actually amazed by how accurate some of the arms and armor *were* on the Persian side. The persian infantry wasn't half bad!!!!!! The immortals, of course, as previously described, were weird orc ninja creatures-----I think they were actually supposed to be some kind of warped "immortals"
3. the monsters were crazy----all kinds of giant animals and weird, mutated giant people---seemed to be a theme of the movie.
4. Xerxes was a goa'uld!!!!! A seven-foot tall, black-as-night shaven-headed goa'uld with enough piercing to decorate a mother-ship!!!! I laughed myself silly at that part. He looked, essentially, like a much taller, more heavily decorated version of Ra from the Stargate movie. It was awesome.
5. I also had to ask myself, "Where is all this gore I keep hearing about?"----the movie was not a gore-fest, in my opinion. I don't enjoy such things, but I don't mind a little blood. This movie was not even close to slasher-film gory, and no more so (in degree) than classics such as the Conan movies. I didn't find it nearly as bloody and disturbing as say . . . Saving Private Ryan (in which every German soldier was a master sniper and every American casualty got shot in the head).

In conclusion, if you like overblown graphic spectacles (visually awesome!!!), enjoy graphic novels turned into movies, or just want a good laugh, go see the 300.

[Jean Thibodeau]

One suggestion, that would get us off the film and all the way off topic stuff, would be to discuss the real battle, tactics, weapons: After all I think almost everything good or bad about the film has been said already.

Why not take the opportunity to discuss how a small group of Spartan and some allies were able to hold so long against so many.

1) Geography: Narrow pass and a large force could only use a small fraction of it's manpower at any one time. Although fresh troops could be sent up to replace exhausted ones while the less numerous Spartan might have to fight or die even if completely spent.

2) Armour advantages.

3) Discipline, skill, courage and toughness ( Physical fitness ).

4)Tactical system / fighting style.

5) The Spartans were finally defeated when the Persians found ( Were led by a traitor ) a path to bypass the Spartan and then be able to attack the Spartan from the front and the back. They might have defeated the Spartans eventually through attrition, but it would have taken longer and the butcher bill on the Persian side would have been bigger.

6) A heavy infantry culture fighting a mostly light infantry / archery culture I believe ? But did the Persians at this time have some heavier units that could in theory stand toe to toe with the Greeks ?

Well, just a few possible directions the topic could go: Lets make it a learning experience instead of lamenting that the film is not accurate to history for whatever reasons.