"Come and Take Them!" - "300" Reviewed

lol, I like that.

I won't quote the rest of the paragraph, cant wait to see this movie.

Seen this on IMAX last night. Amazing movie.

If you have ever studied Greek myth then it is only loosely connected to any historical account of these events.

Even while not being historically accurate it does do an excellent job in honoring the magnitude of the battle and the sacrifice the Spartans made for the entirety of Greece at that time.

If it wasnt for the freed slaves of Sparta then the Persians would have marched freely across Europe and the world would have been a very different place. The Roman Empire was still in its infancy. If the Persians would have succeeded then the Modern world as we know it would never have come to be.

i have seen the trailer, and i thought it sucked
after reading this, it makes more sense

perhaps i'll watch it after all

8O Man that's personal!!! I think it is a little bit harsh to make a judgment based on that small sentence

So true. Every once in a while everybody needs to see such a movie cheesy dialog and all just for the entertainment.

sounds like a killer movie ---- cant wait to see it. Reminds me of the old days when the critics hated star wars and raiders of the lost ark ---- i was like what the hell are they talking about ---- i guess somethings never change.

Yeah, I agree this was basically a perfect movie within the boundaries of what it was trying to do. It was like getting jabbed in the eyeball with 200ml of testosterone.

On the critics thing, I agree - most of them are just little dweebs who were into drama in high school. They can't just sit in a movie and turn off their brains and let a movie sweep over them.

Most of the reviews I've read from critics are literally ridiculous, just rampant prissy pomposity. I used to check reviews before I saw a movie - never again, those guys are simpering little twits almost to a one.

The numbers I mentioned is the classical count of 300 spartans 700 Thespians & 400 Thebans. True most put the figure at around 7000 and claim that the persians could not feild 2,5 million troops due to logistics but that is not really important. My point was that only the Spartans were mentioned in the film.

Considering that this is based on a comic book vs historical writings this is forgivable. I was expecting a historical film not an action fim based on history. Thanks to this review for clearing things up. Looking forward to c it on the 22nd (start date in Russia)

You guys can always watch the movie that the book is inspired from (1972 movie I think).

Melange a trois.

lol, close enough.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0055719/

I think this is the movie the book is based on, 1962, I've never seen it.

But see, when I want to go to the movie theater, I don't have to choose between all the films which have come out in the past 100 years. At best I have to choose between 6-10 films from the past month or two.

I still think it's wrong for people to expect everything to be done and done well in a film. Would I go to see a romance/story-driven movie if I wanted to see climactic and visceral battles? No. And should people complain if the opposite is true? No.

Let's try to apply this notion of "jack of all trades and master of them too" to other things and see what we end up with.

"Sorry, your grasp of multi-variable calculus isn't too impressive, I think we should stop seeing each other."

"Well I really like the way the car handles, but it doesn't have space for a piano in the back."

"DDR is the worst game ever because it lacks a motivating storyline. And Half Life 2 was also miserable, because they only had a dozen or so songs in it."

See how silly they all are? In life we're constantly given things which aren't perfect in every way, yet we just have to deal with them and be satisfied. Expecting a movie to be perfect in every way to be thoroughly enjoyable is utter nonsense. In fact, I'd generally consider a movie to be awful if it tried to do everything. I was so happy in Batman Begins when, at the end, the woman he had a crush on was like "No, it's not going to work out between us, sorry." I'm sick to death of my action movies being swamped with shallow love stories (Spiderman series, anyone?), just as I'm sure romantics would be upset if their movies were suddenly filled with knife fights and epic battles.

The measure of how good a movie is, is simply this:

Would I, having seen it and knowing how good it is, advise my past self to pay the $5-10 and see it again, or save the money and never know how it was? My answer is that I'd absolutely see it again.

Works backwards at my house. With seven people you ask, "Would I rather watch it now for $30+, buy it later for $20-, or rent it for $10-?"

Personally, I don't really care if I go out and see a movie below my expectations, as long as I actually saw a movie. I made my gamble and I got what I paid for. As long as I get some entertainment out of it, I'm fine.

Owning it is a different story...

I respectfully disagree. I think that hollywood, and all the supporting industries including movie critics; approach to everything is colored by a very pervasive political and philosophical bias that is reinforced by a very strong internally consistent logic.

Take a look at "Saving Private Ryan", "Apocalypse Now" and "Platoon". The American Film Institute (AFI) ranks "Apocalypse Now" at 28, and "Platoon" at number 83 on its list 100 greatest American movies: "Saving Private Ryan" does not make the list. 8O

While you could spend an eternity arguing about which films should be included or excluded from the "100", I am certain that "Saving Private Ryan" tells a more compelling story than the other two movies, has better acting (Tom Hanks versus the Martin/Charlie Sheen – heck, the actress who played the mother of the Ryan boys deserved an Oscar for her 90 second scene when she is notified about the death of her sons), and although all three are fictitious stories “Saving Private Ryan” is by far the most historically accurate (ask any veteran). You could go on about the soundtrack to "Platoon" or some of the cinematography in "Apocalypse Now", but I believe that the inherent anti-military, counter culture, drug using, radical feminist, anti-religious, politically correct and extreme left-leaning Hollywood bias is responsible for the exclusion of "Saving Private Ryan", while the other two movies are included in that list.

So when a movie like 300 comes along extolling the virtues of traditional heroism, loyalty, and a pro-Western viewpoint; it is a miracle that anybody even produced it. It does not fit the Hollywood mold. It is a hard sell for 300 to get a balanced review. Now if the movie was about homo-erotic love between two Greek boys fleeing compulsory Spartan military service, who find refuge in Xerxes camp and then screw over Leonidas by showing the Persians the goat path through Thermopylae – it would get rave reviews….

Pro-Western viewpoint is looking at the cumulative achievements of art, literature, language, law, politics, philosophy, architecture etc that Western civilization has produced which are substantial. The habit of urinating on ones own culture, history, and values is a late 20th century Western phenomenon. My point is that, like you, the prevailing attitude in hollywood and the mass media does not acknowledge anything good about Western culture. You cannot name any of those people who could have filled the shoes of Leonidas, Churchill, Lincoln, Roosevelt etc. Lets look at Western culture as an evolving epic and consider some facts rather than trivializing the situation:

First, Ironically, Leonidas’ sacrifice led directly to the opposite of your flip summary: “some leader says what is right/wrong and we fight a lot”. Had Leonidas, along with most of the Hellenic world including democratic Athens, failed to unite against the Persians, the concept of democracy would never have evolved into what we have today because Persia would have snuffed out Greece, then the nascent Romans – which would have been the end of democracy, republicanism, the magna Carta, women’s rights, the abolition of slavery not to mention the art, architecture, music etc of the Western world. As a matter of practicality, the Hellenic world united against the Persians because they understood that their children and wives would have been sold into slavery, their cities leveled and the men forced either as slaves in Xerxes army or condemned to die in hard labor in mines. This is the reality that that the Greeks faced and it is why the city-states of Greece took the first steps towards nationalism and united against Xerxes. This was not simply a fight between two tyrants; this was a fight for survival of everything that came before and after.

Second, there are differences even amongst monarchies. Monarchy under Xerxes of Persia, and monarchy under Leonidas meant very different things. Leonidas was far closer to a constitutional monarch having religious and institutional political checks on his power, and a Spartan citizen did have defined rights. Xerxes on the other hand claimed to actually be a god, which left no bounds on his power - certainly there is no greater recipe for tyranny. I am not saying life for the Helots in Sparta was not brutal slavery, but slavery was a reality in every society in the world at the time, and has not been abolished to this day (at least it is illegal in Western law). Call it lesser of two evils if you will, but it was at least a baby step towards a more enlightened political system.

Third, clearly you have not done any critical historical study of Lacadaemon society, or you would find, for example, that women’s rights under the Spartan system were significantly more advanced than what we find in many parts of our world today. The reality of having every able male citizen in the army and often away on campaign for years, was that the women controlled the finances, ran the households, and generally controlled society. If a Spartan man returned from a three-year campaign to find his wife with a six-month-old child, well, that child was now his child (the state needed warriors after all). You do not see that level of women’s rights in most places of the world today - it certainly never took off in Persia, even today.

:?: Excuse me, but what happened is a matter of historical fact. It is impossible to make the counter argument – that Persia would have snuffed out the Hellenic societies responsible for budding democracy and the dawn of individual freedom only to re-spawn them??? Hah, ask Iranian women what the think of the evolution and history of democracy, equality and freedom in Persia!!!

You cannot get to "modern democracy" without having had the political, legal and philosophical roots developed by ancients in the Hellenic and Roman world. It is like trying to build a modern CPU without having first developed vacuum tube transistors (or a number of other technologies and mathematical concepts). If say, the Mayans had invented democracy, you could not trace the influence since their culture collapsed in relative isolation. Classical Western education has always included, if not emphasized the study of Hellenic and Roman culture, which is exactly why democracy evolved in the West.

The English certainly get the credit for defining individual rights versus government through their system of common law, which in turns had roots in the Magna Carta. This set the balance between the state and the individual we find essential for modern representative government. However, the US gets credit for devising a functional checks and balances system for a working Republic (freely robbing ideas freely from the ancient Romans and Greeks, the English and the Iroquois) while the English were still very much bound to monarchist rule. The Magna Carta was really quite a radical document. Up to that point, up to that point, law codified the "rights of state towards the individual", never the other way around. If you compare French or Spanish law, based largely upon Roman law, with the British Common law this becomes readily apparent. But again, the "social contract" and other critical philosophies upon which democratic government depends, all go back to those pesky Greeks and Romans (and beyond). Heck, you cannot even study western law (or medicine) without tripping all over Latin.

Sorry, but if the Greeks had not ultimately triumphed over Persia, nothing we take for granted as “Western” would have survived.

What is fact is that the Greeks united and ultimately destroyed the Persians. What is also fact is that if Xerxes had won, Greece would have suffered the fate that the Persians inflicted upon every other nation that resisted and went to war against them: they would have been enslaved, their cities sacked, and their culture dismantled. I am not passing moral judgment on the Persians, warfare has never been pleasant business, and the ancient Greeks routinely took other Greeks as slaves in their wars. But your assertion that “there is no way to tell for sure how the world would be today if the result was different” is false.

We can be very certain the world would have been one devoid of the contributions of Greek and Roman civilizations because those people would have been destroyed without passing on their philosophy, political institutions, architecture, art, etc. You can also be sure that Christ, and the church that preserved the Greek and Roman culture in Europe, also would not have existed – hence no Renaissance in Europe. The Romans did not even begin to dominate the Italian Peninsula for almost 150 years after Thermopylae; they would have been just a tribal speed bump for the Persians in the 5th Century B.C.. This does not tell use what would have ultimately replaced these civilizations if Xerxes had won, but you can be absolutely certain that it would not have had any Greek or Roman influence.

Where has democracy flourished in the world outside of the West, or in the absence of Western influence? The list is pretty short. If Xerxes had won, historical evidence is that democracy as we know it would not have developed. Even today, the world trend is away from representative government. So while the politics in Iran today are different than in Xerxes day; the lot of the average Iranian, particularly Iranian women has remained the same throughout thousands of years of history. Sorry, but you will have to find a better excuse for Iran than the CIA for the 3rd century BC through the 1950s.

False. You continue to throw generalities around with out giving specific arguments to demonstrate flourishing national democracies that evolved outside of Western influence, which in turn owes its beginnings to the ancient Greeks and Romans.

I have nothing against Iranians, but have a lot to say about their government. Before you get on a hobbyhorse, you might be surprised to know that my family married Iranians. And yes, you can search history on the role (or lack therein) of woman’s rights in that part of the world – it is not pretty.

Duh, “quite Western” – you made my point exactly, your friend’s mother was obviously part of the Iranian social elite that benefited from WESTERN CULTURE and gained rights. But, it did not spring forth from Persian culture or tradition. And when you look at the poorest majority of that society, both now and before the Shaw, you see “Old Testament” style treatment of women. Women do not have rights under Sharia law and are subject to many travesties of justice including being stoned to death for “adultery”.

Yes, women’s rights are still very much a work in progress, almost everywhere. That is why I made the observation about how remarkable the Lacadaemons were: “… for example … women’s rights under the Spartan system were significantly more advanced than what we find in many parts of our world today.” But it is a general fact that women’s rights are significantly better in countries in the West, or in countries that have had significant Western influence, as opposed to those that have not.

Excuse me, but was Pontius Pilot a Jew? An Egyptian? A Persian? He was the ROMAN governor of the ROMAN Judaea Province. Obviously if the Greeks and Romans had been destroyed in the 5th century B.C. by the Persians; the story of Christ would have been significantly different. Again I am not saying that it would not have happened, but there certainly would not have been a ROMAN Catholic or GREEK Orthodox Church to carry the story through the European dark ages to ultimately explode in one of the greatest periods of prolonged scientific, cultural and philosophical discovery in human history – the Renaissance.

Didn't the "west" conquer persia once or twice, why hasn't "western" views held until today? How would anyone know if Xerxes was able to conquer the "west", that we'd ("the west" ) all be reading backwards? Alot of things can happen in 2 millenia.

"Saving Private Ryan" is some excellent filmmaking. The small problem I have with it is that the whole story is based on a flashback that can't happen, and it's manipulative. We're in the graveyard with the old man. We zoom into his eyes, and then cut to D-Day and Tom Hanks. The logical connection is that the old man is Tom Hanks remembering D-Day. Unfortunately, it turns out the old man is Ryan and he is somehow remembering D-Day despite the fact that he wasn't at it. I love the movie, but that small story problem rubs a little.

Tribal? I wouldn't call the city states of medieval Russia Tribal. Under what context do you label them as such. The people in the city voted on who they should select as their prince. Not like your example where a ruling class governs true democracy (democracy only for the ruling class). True it changed in time as do all things. But that is just my point there is no way you can say that that is the only example of democracy and that it wouldn't have developed without the Greeks. Modern democracy is an English product.

[quote=]
The reality is that democracy has rarely appeared as a form of government throughout world history, therefore you cannot suppose that it simply would spring up if the political, legal and philosophical roots in Roman and Greek Culture had been destroyed (as they surely would have been if Xerxes had won).[/quote]

But it did spring up didn't it? As as other democracies even the Greek and Roman were overtaken by dictatorships which goes to show you a lot about human nature.

What would be so bad about that? As a fellow Roman Catholic I can tell you that I wouldn't mind I wouldn't mind if the Vatican was located in Delhi, Mecca, or even Timbuktu.

Again you are implying that without the Greeks and Romans modern democracy would have been impossible. I shall say it again there is no way you can say for sure. Maybe yes maybe no but no 100% sure.

Man you love to misquote don't you? The point was made as a reply to to the following "to ultimately explode in one of the greatest periods of prolonged scientific, cultural and philosophical discovery in human history – the Renaissance" . I meant that the renaissance had a great effect on Mainly European culture and to a lesser aspect the rest of the world calling it the greatest is a highly Eurocentric view of things isn't it? You made it sound like I was mentioning democracy and freedom. I wonder if it was a real misunderstanding or are you doing it on purpose?

I agree with you on the fact that the story of Leonidas is amazing and I am not trying to put down his contribution it's just that I consider the view of Europe = good, non-Europe = Bad is wrong. True the victor gets to write the history books but I think modern society is past that (at least I hope)

You are wrong. Modern Western Civilization (specially it's incarnations in Scandinavia and North West Europe) is IMO how things should be done. I greatly respect them specially their contributions towards democracy and tolerance. What I am arguing with you is that you and a lot of people in the West fail to realize that modern western society has borrowed from a lot of cultures as has every other society (I'm not counting amazon bushmen here ). Not something that Europeans came up with. (most Americans will say America )
I just like to give credit where credit is due.
1. Did the ancient Greeks contribute towards modern democracy? - Yes
2. Would we not have democracy if Leonidas was defeated? -
There is no way to say for sure.
3. Could democracy have evolved without the Greeks?
It did in other societies, civilizations.
4. Would the type of democracy we enjoy today be the same without the Greeks?
Hard to say. But due to Greek influence on modern western society it could have been different. But to say for sure is pure speculation.
5. Was the Renaissance the greatest periods of prolonged scientific, cultural and philosophical discovery in human history?
While it was great and influenced Europe greatly I wouldn't say the GREATEST.

Modern

No offense taken . There was nothing primitive about them. True the democratic institution wasn't as advanced as Rome but it was there and evolved independently.

All cultures had a slight influence on each other (excluding the American) They had a pagan religion. And the viking princes who they elected weren't Christian yet. Christianity came later through the Byzantines (along with imperial type of rule which killed the democracy ) Do some research before believing or not.

I'm not sure here but I think the Kings hands were somewhat tied by parliament and it was really not him to blame, but I could be wrong here.
Still I do not consider the American model to be the better one. I prefer the type of democracy that has evolved in England and other North Western European nations, Parliamentary democracy. But then again that is a matter of personal taste.

Quite true. While it was entertaining while it lasted I agree that it's time to quit the ring.

Cheers

Thanks ...................... I think

Thanks

To be honest my last post looks horrible. Thank God my mom can't c that (she is a descendant of English colonist and a native English speaker) But I think that the fact that it was 2 a.m. here and I was half drunk (after watching Sri Lanka decimate India) had something to do with it

On second thoughts I think he was making fun of us "kissing and making up"
(dam I don't think I should have used the words "kiss and make up" when talking to a proponent of ancient Greece)

Clarification: The Romans were indeed a fledgling republic at the time of Thermopylae, but they did not even begin to dominate the Italian Peninsula until they defeated the garrison of Pyrrhus of Epirus at Tarentum. They were comparative weaklings, and still paying tribute to the Gauls.

- According to legend, the city of Rome was founded in 753 BC (8th century BC) as a kingdom.
- The Roman Kingdom ended with the expulsion of Lucius Tarquinius Superbus in 510 BC and the establishment of the Roman republic
- The Roman Republic lasted from 510 BC to 31 BC (1st century BC) although the civil wars, conflict between Sulla and Marius, and Ceasar's crossing of the Rubicon made the tail end of the Roman Republic more like a long standing nightmare.

Dictators were comparitively uncommon during the five centuries of republic, but more common towards the end (Sulla and Marius).