Yeah, I agree. The movie looks fantastic just from the trailers I've seen on TV, and the fact that the SinCity guy wrote/made/is directing it (I don't know), makes it all the better.

It was a bit of a disappointment that the movie isn't coming out until March >_< I saw the trailer, and it raised my hopes only to dash them down :'(

 

MARCH! ooooh fuck! You just had to crush my hopes up too, huh. I was going to check but eventually i forgot all about it.

 

You are just lusting for all the bare male breasts and legs. Women are all the same.

 

how rude Minion!! how rude!

lmao... the film does look good Minion. so... shuttup and stop being mean

 

Humanity is all the same, women just deny it. People like looking at people. Our greatest hobbies? Eating, sleeping, and having sex. Most of everything else boils down to making one of these better (houses and air conditioning make us more comfortable as we do so for instance). We like being animals, we just like to pretend we are better than animals at the same time.

 

Nah, they didn't see themselves as one 'folk', cause each had different customs, valued different ideals. Jesus, the Spartans & Athenians were like France & England through the Middle Ages - traditional enemies and totally dissimilar. (Ironically, the Greek states tended to use the Persians as a sort of impartial referee for these wars .) For example, the whole Spartan culture was focused on war, they had a class system that made 90% of the population slaves/second class citizens and they had a 'tradition' of throwing babies off cliffs if they were in any way disabled. Oh! And they'd occasionally go out and slaughter a family or two to make sure there were no rebellions. Athenians on the other hand had their version of democracy by that point, had the Delian League in the palm of their hand, valued affluence above war and had a form of legal system that isn't dissimilar to what the Romans had. Even their methods of fighting were different (Athens & her navy, Sparta and its army). Not to mention the Peloponnesian War that erupted not 20 years later.

On the barbaroi front, Sparta would be just as happy to leave Athens to burn as it would to fight. Its only when the strength of the barbarians got too strong that they would intervene. After all, the Peloponnese was easily defended by land, and Athens had a good enough navy to keep and barbarians ships away.

In short, the only common things the Hellenic states had in common was that they shared a similar language and were in the same geographic area. And Homer's Iliad was denounced by Athenians and Spartans alike because it showed the Gods in an unfavourable light. The Trojan War was viewed as myth even back then, so using it as proof of a 'Hellenic Union' is basing it on very shaky ground.

Aekiel

On the film note, it was alright, but it seemed to make the Spartans too supernatural for my liking. Sure they were the best land army in the Ancient world, but near Matrix style fighting, no way. Then again I'm biased cause I hate to see history shown as anything other than accurate. Which is why Troy sucks so badly.

 

I, for one, hope this movie does not dissappoint me the way Sin City did. I mean, I liked it and everything, but it just seemed...flat and kind of bland when I went to see it. The trailers and the history behind it (popular graphic novel and all that) made me very excited, and the sold out audience was excited too, but during the movie things that should have worked didn't seem to, and I left the movie feeling unaffected.

The trailers for 300 look so stunning, the colors and the mood to it is so unlike any movie I've seen, that I am kind of scared. Hollywood has this annoying habit (especially lately) of giving everything away in the trailer, and you discover once you get there that you've seen all the good stuff and the rest is just filler. I really hope that doesn't happen with 300.

Some of those scenes in the trailer are so just beautiful and odd and really cool, and I happen to really like Gerard Butler (the guy yelling "THIS IS SPARTAAA!!") a lot. Soo...we'll see.

I'm also really looking forward to Black Snake Moan and Grindhouse.

 

I searched to find out if there was a 300 thread, and nothing came up, so I made one, And now the computer shows me that I actually posted here.

ooops! I really was tired when I posted that so I could have and obviously did do something stupid.

Sorry!

 

@ Aekiel (for the rest it might be rather boring):
You just judged the Ancient Greeks by the events of the Peloponnesian War - events of 30 years, or, if you add the Pentekontaetie, 75 years.


War among the members of one folk doesn't contradict the idea to be a folk. Other examples can be found in German and Italian history of the nineteenth century. In Germany Prussia and Austria finally fought for control, with the majority of German states siding with Austria. While the public opinion wanted Austria to remain a part of Germany, Prussia couldn't accept another state with similar powers at its side and won the conflict in 1866. Nevertheless the Austrians still saw themselves as part of Germany: After WW I they wanted to reunite with the German Empire, but England and France refused. Only since 1945 the Austrians reject the idea to be a part of Germany (and vice versa - for those who wonder, look up where Hitler was born).


The Greeks as one 'folk':

I put 'folk' in quotation marks. Of course they weren't a folk or a nation in the modern sense, but they were connected by much more than just the language. For instance the Macedonians and some other shared the same language, but the Hellenoi saw them as barbaroi, as they were indeed following other traditions. Only the Macedonian kings were later accepted as Greeks.

The Greek shared the same basic myths and hailed the same set of gods and heroes - of course with regional differences and variations. The awareness of their common properties grew within few centuries (9. - 7.). Part of this development was, that some former local cults and places acquired panhellenic importance, i.e. the panhellenic games (the oldest were the Olympic games) and the Oracle of Delphi. Homer's epics are an example of a certain phase of this development, describing the then known Greeks working together, but yet without a common term for them.

As a side note: The war against Troy as historical fact:
The involvement of the Gods in Homer's epics was criticised since the six century b.c., but the basic events of Ilias and Odyssee have been accepted as historical facts until the 19. century a.c. Thucydides, as eyewitness describing the Peloponnesian war, compared both conflicts - 'his' war was the greatest of all time, so much greater than the former greatest war. He rationalised the events by eleminating the gods and calculating the number of ships and warriors, but he accepted the war and its events as fact. Since the late 19. century modern scholars use Homer's epics only as a source for the state of the society of ca. 8. century Greece - the timeframe the poems were created.
​

Since the seventh century the Greek thought of themselves as Hellenoi - in contrast to the barbaroi. The Hellenoi were divided into three tribes - the Aiolians, Dorians, and Ionians, based on the myth of Hellen, patriarch of all Hellenoi. His sons Aiolos and Dores, and his grandson Ion were the three progenitors of the three tribes. The tribes had their own cults and places - Delos was such a place for the Ionans and especially for the Greeks of the Cyclades. Of course there were huge differences between the poleis, but based on this myth the Greeks thought of themselves as related by blood.


Of course wars among the Greek were quite common despite their common properties. Several hundred poleis, mostly small towns of hundred or less citizens, fought for resources. During these wars only the Spartans were able to extend their territory remarkably - and they had to justify the result - the enslavement of the Messenians (also Hellenoi) with another myth. But despite all conflicts the common cults were (usually) respected, as was the peace during the Olympic games. As common as war were permanently changing alliances between the cities. The only lasting alliance was the Peloponnesian League, but several of its members permanently changed sides. Sparta and Athen fought side by side several times, before and after the Peloponnesian War. They weren't traditional enemies, as they had different interests. During the Peloponnesian War the propaganda tried to create the image of traditional enemies, but that was (still quite common) political bullshit.

During the war against Persia the motif for both Sparta and Athen was of course to save their own state. But the war didn't stop when Xerxes was defeated, instead, the Greeks decided to free their 'relatives' in Asia Minor. It was the idea to defend some of their own kind against the barbaroi, and since then there was the idea of a panhellenic unity.

After the Persian war the conflicts between the major Greek states was about control of Greece and the Greeks. At one point Sparta and Athen practically divided Greece among them. That phase lasted from the 470ies up to 338 - with Sparta, Athen, and eventually Theben the major players, sometimes as allies, sometimes as enemies. That the Spartans at one point sided with the Persians against Athen was a move still quite common today and not a contradiction of the idea of the Hellenoi as one 'folk'. It was a desperate situation, and in such a situation 'moral' doesn't count much. The enemy of my enemy is my friend - even if the 'friend' was my archenemy yesterday.

Since the Persian war the panhellenic idea spread in Greece. All Hellenoi should unite under one leading state - often with the addition 'to fight against Persia'. During the fourth century one main element was the idea of koine eirene - peace among all Hellenoi. Famous authors and orators to promote the idea were Isocrates (who permanently suggested to unite under the leadership of Athen) and Demosthenes (who spoke against the dominance of Macedonia). Philipp King of Macedonia finally used the idea to united Greece (338) in the Corinthian League under Macedonian dominance. Few years later Alexander's war against Persia was justified as revenge of the united Hellenoi against the barbaroi.

Despite the chaotic situation in post Alexandrian Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean there was the idea of 'Hellas'. Reciting the knowledge of the wars against Troy and Persia, Greek scholars hailed the glorious Hellenic past - and later had troubles to explain how the Romans managed to conquer the Eastern Mediterranean within only four decades (205 - 167 b.c.).

 

Damn movie; forces me to research the battle of Thermopylae, which i know nothing about. I for one will be at the 12:01 showing..

EDIT: after reading the Wikipedia account http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Thermopylae i can't seem to find how big the odds actually were, correct me if i'm wrong but it seems to me that there were around 5200 persians and 700 spartans and Thespians. Well now i know how it ends. Still looks pretty damn good though.

 

I too dislike how they show the Spartans as ZOMG warriors with Matrix powers.

Honestly, they make the Persians look like total retards.

 

Dark Minion: Obviously you've done more research than I have, as I have based most of this off my college Classics course last year and the year before. Didn't help that the main topics were Women's rights in Athens & Greek Tragedy too. Plus, you seem to have gone farther back than I have been taught and we skipped about 100 years straight to Alexander the Great.

Therefore I bow to you greater knowledge, did you do a university course on this or is it all your own research? Plus, I'm not familiar with most of the Greek names you used, I was taught the English translation for most.

On a side note: Macedonia was seen as the backwards distant relative that you don't talk about by most of Greece, their only claim to fame before Philip/Alexander was the alleged relation to Achilles & Herakles. Even then parts of Greece tried to rebel from their rule, with help from the very people they were going to invade!

Amerison: The Persians pretty much were, they wore very little armour and relied mostly on their archers rather than heavier troops. Then again, even the Immortals (Xerxes' elite bodyguard) are portrayed as incompetent compared to the Spartans.

Aekiel

 

How can you not know about one of the most significant battles in history? Troy, Thermopylae, The destruction of Carthage, The Sack of Rome, Sinking the Spanish Armada, Waterloo, Saratoga, Gallipoli, Normandy, Hiroshima. These were the ten battles that changes the history of War. Ten times where the "invicible" were served a big helping of Humble Pie. If I had to rate it, it's #2 behind Hiroshima and before Rome.

Herodotus claims that the Persian strength was better than 5,000,000 men. The Greeks (united or not) sent 7,00 men initially (700 Thespian, 300 Spartan, 6,000 others). On the second day (the real fight didn't start untill Day 5 when Xerxes sent in some of the lower troops to "round them up") all but 1400 were dismissed, Thebans, Thespians, and Spartans.

As to the Immortals being too weak in the movie/book, they got hosed in real life too! They went up against the Spartan lines on two consectutive days and suffered better than 20:1 casualties each time. On the whole, 1500 Greeks died versus over 20,000 on the Persian side so 13.3:1 for the entire battle. The Spartans kicked ass and no one can question that.

 

Historians say that Herodutus' 5,000,000 men claim is distorted and they would've ran out of water and other supplies.....

I know about Normandy, Gallipoli, Saratoga, Waterloo, and Hiroshima, unfortunately, i don't have the option to learn about ancient wars and battles and i don't have the time to research them myself. I would also mention Antietam in the "great battles" section, even if it wasn't an underdog battle.

 

Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by,
that here, obedient to their laws, we lie​

Gates of Fire​

 

The only bad thing I can say about this movie is that there was an excess of gratuitous nudity. and I'm going to sound SO gay for saying this but... I'm not talking about the men. They showed far more breasts than were really necessary in that movie.

 

They had to do that. Or else, all the guys would feel weird going to a movie with a bunch of half-naked, sweaty, muscle-y men in it.

With that said...I need an oracle.