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But since we're already speaking about the comic, um, graphic novel, let's talk about that too, since I happen to own that as well.

Here's something that may surprise you, but the movie adaption of 300 differed quite a bit from the novel. It was written in 1998, that means a few years before Frank Miller totally descended into a complete right-wing lunacy, so that may explain it.

Differences:

1.In the GN, Leonidas never shouts any of his lines. Laconian humor, named after the region Sparta was located in, was known for being dry and understated and the Spartans for being stoic and unflappable. Makes them look much more bad ass than the constantly screaming idiots in the movie

2.The Spartans fight in formation for the entirety of the battle, only when they are surrounded at the end do they break formation and are shot down by arrows as a result

3.There're no monster people on the persian side, no axe-hand executioner (it's a normal guy in the GN), no Ork Ninja Immortals (they're armed with shields and spears and have no visible deformations) and no mutilated goat mutant hookers in Xerxes' tent (it's fairly normal looking female shilouettes). They also aren't portrayed as overtly ethnic as the Persians from the movie. The narration is also less heavy-handed, there's for example no mention about the Immortals serving dark wills or them being monsters from asia but instead only an almost admiring mention that they represent the best and most disciplined of Xerxes' forces.

The only visibly deformed people in the GN are the Ephors and Ephialtes

4.Speaking of Ephialtes, his subplot is portrayed much more sympathetically in the GN. It starts with him saying prayers to his dead parents about how he'll make them proud by proving that even he, as deformed as he is, can fight together with the other Spartans. When Leonidas rejects him (this time for a good reason because here they do fight in formation here), he despairs and tries to kill himself by jumping down the cliff. He survives, now injured with and even more broken body, thinks the greek gods have cursed him and that's why he joins the Persians. He also later tries to convince the Persians to be merciful to the Greeks

5.There's no Queen Gorgo subplot in the GN, so no scene of her whoring herself out


All in all, all the changes made to the adaption serve to make the movie more right-wing, less subtle and more xenophobic than the source material.

The Graphic novel's dialogue is also mostly lifted straight out of Herodotus and the nakedness of the Spartans is a result of Miller following the (now thankfully minority) school of historians who believed Ancient Greeks fought naked as shown on their pottery (instead it being just artistic license).

Yeah, and who can really say that this:



...looks less impressive than "Ancient Chippendales"?

Havok wrote:Hey guys, I heard somewhere that movies based on comic books that are loose interpretations of history, may not be historically accurate.

I heard somewhere that we can still call them bad, though.

RogueIce wrote:Yeah, seriously, Ed Harris murdered that kid just to get at Jude Law.

Well, there was also that time where Sasha tried to get him shot in the face. If I remember correctly, even after that he gave Sasha one last chance to stay out of the fighting.

And in the end, he hung him from the rooftop. Yeah, really noble and heroic.

Metahive wrote: 3.There're no monster people on the persian side, no axe-hand executioner (it's a normal guy in the GN), no Ork Ninja Immortals (they're armed with shields and spears and have no visible deformations) and no mutilated goat mutant hookers in Xerxes' tent (i

This is one of those objections that I get but is also justifiable given the nature of the film. It's being narrated by a Spartan for the purposes of propaganda, crazy shit can and does filter in in those types of situations. Sure, a lot of people don't want to deal with a format that makes it unclear just who the xenophobia belongs to but it is what it is.

Now,whether such a man would narrate the Spartans breaking ranks to kill Persians by making sun-lasers from the reflections off their oiled abs and whether the film is damned by context anyway (Spartans talking about democracy to bring them in line with the Western view of heroes instead of the film-makers showing something else)...that's another topic.

I think they are both valuable because they give an insight into how certain right-wingers perceive the world. Big burly, caucasian men who talk enitrely in tough-guy memes and catchphrases who live in a totally militarized state fight against an overwhelming, yet strangely pathetic and cartoonishly distorted caricature of evil foreigners containing evil black people, middle eastern people, a scorned and treacherous woman , a bodily deformed eugenics refugee and a homoerotic giant.

This part always fascinates me; the desire to be the underdog.

I wonder if in 2000 years people will give the Battle of Stalingrad the same treatment.

Let me tell you about my idea for a movie called 500. It's about a valiant band of Spaniards who defy the orders of their craven governor in order to liberate the people of Mexico from the oppressive rule of a cannibalistic god-king. It's based on a true story and there's even a readymade narrator guy.

This part always fascinates me; the desire to be the underdog.

Overcoming adversity is more impressive than grinding a pitifully backwards and outclassed opponent. It lets you feel special, whereas being in an overtly dominant position both diminishes your achievements and makes you look like a bit of a dick.

Scrib wrote: This is one of those objections that I get but is also justifiable given the nature of the film. It's being narrated by a Spartan for the purposes of propaganda, crazy shit can and does filter in in those types of situations. Sure, a lot of people don't want to deal with a format that makes it unclear just who the xenophobia belongs to but it is what it is.

Now,whether such a man would narrate the Spartans breaking ranks to kill Persians by making sun-lasers from the reflections off their oiled abs and whether the film is damned by context anyway (Spartans talking about democracy to bring them in line with the Western view of heroes instead of the film-makers showing something else)...that's another topic.
[

Umm, you must have misunderstood what I was saying. I was not listing a deviation from real life but from the movie's own source material, Frank Miller's graphic novel 300. The unrealiable narrator of the novel didn't see fit to portray his fellow Spartans as undisplined, shouty warriors or to degrade the opposition with modern racist stereotypes, that was a change made deliberately by the movie makers and that's what I think is truly damning the flick.

Metahive wrote:

Scrib wrote: This is one of those objections that I get but is also justifiable given the nature of the film. It's being narrated by a Spartan for the purposes of propaganda, crazy shit can and does filter in in those types of situations. Sure, a lot of people don't want to deal with a format that makes it unclear just who the xenophobia belongs to but it is what it is.

Now,whether such a man would narrate the Spartans breaking ranks to kill Persians by making sun-lasers from the reflections off their oiled abs and whether the film is damned by context anyway (Spartans talking about democracy to bring them in line with the Western view of heroes instead of the film-makers showing something else)...that's another topic.
[

Umm, you must have misunderstood what I was saying. I was not listing a deviation from real life but from the movie's own source material, Frank Miller's graphic novel 300. The unrealiable narrator of the novel didn't see fit to portray his fellow Spartans as undisplined, shouty warriors or to degrade the opposition with modern racist stereotypes, that was a change made deliberately by the movie makers and that's what I think is truly damning the flick.

I was piggybacking off you to get something that bothered me about the criticism off my chest.

But yes,as I said, if the deviation matches modern stereotypes instead of just being propaganda you would expect right before a battle at the time then yes, Snyder is definitely to blame.

Overcoming adversity is more impressive than grinding a pitifully backwards and outclassed opponent. It lets you feel special, whereas being in an overtly dominant position both diminishes your achievements and makes you look like a bit of a dick.

Except other times you have the rampant patriotism and exceptionalism from the same hypothetical group we're speaking of.

It's wanting to both have the cake and eat it that's so amusing.

Eternal_Freedom wrote:Nope, the proper 300 treatment would reset the whole battle into the brave, white, heroic, manly Russians who've never done anything bad and constantly espouse the glories of Communism (which woudl be portrayed as the only good system, of course) fending off the vastly numerically superior Nazis, who have inexplicably become brown people.

If you swap 'Russians' and 'Nazis' in the above description, there is easily a dozen such films already

Eternal_Freedom wrote:Even that was a good film compared to a proper 300 treatment of Stalingrad.

Seeing about the only thing EatG got right, that there was Battle of Stalingrad, is about as correct as 300 (that there was Battle of Thermopile), all you needed for both movies to be equal would be a scene with Erwin König praising Nazi freedom in ham-fisted way while shouting and... that's about it, actually.

Thanas wrote:Wait, when did Enemy at the Gates portray the germans as heroic or manly people?

You mean, besides the Übermensch Erwin König in his fresh Hugo Boss Heer uniform? Complete with aristocratic fur collar? Who was about the only person in that movie who tried to act or wasn't miscast? Yes, the scene with the kid is disturbing, but it's not like Greeks in 300 didn't do their own share of kicking the puppy.

Metahive wrote:A proper 300-style reversal would in my opinion turn the Sixth Army into heroes who bravely sacrificed their lives for freedom, democracy and the well-being of all of (white) humanity against the unwashed eastern horde and their naked God King Stalin* and his black sorcery called communism.

Pff, yeah, and he probably rapes women 24/7 and can be defeated only by FREEDOM! I think no right-winger can ever be stupid enough to write such a...

...oh wait

Metahive wrote:3.There're no monster people on the persian side, no axe-hand executioner (it's a normal guy in the GN), no Ork Ninja Immortals (they're armed with shields and spears and have no visible deformations) and no mutilated goat mutant hookers in Xerxes' tent (it's fairly normal looking female shilouettes). They also aren't portrayed as overtly ethnic as the Persians from the movie. The narration is also less heavy-handed, there's for example no mention about the Immortals serving dark wills or them being monsters from asia but instead only an almost admiring mention that they represent the best and most disciplined of Xerxes' forces.

That sounds like a more reasonable plot, but also less enjoyable. I liked how it was over the top and put style over substance. That gets boring very quickly, but is okay for one move a year.

Irbis wrote:You mean, besides the Übermensch Erwin König in his fresh Hugo Boss Heer uniform? Complete with aristocratic fur collar? Who was about the only person in that movie who tried to act or wasn't miscast? Yes, the scene with the kid is disturbing, but it's not like Greeks in 300 didn't do their own share of kicking the puppy.

When is he ever portrayed as heroic or anything but an extremely competent villain?

Welf wrote: That sounds like a more reasonable plot, but also less enjoyable. I liked how it was over the top and put style over substance. That gets boring very quickly, but is okay for one move a year.

I'm with Zod here, the fighting in 300 was stylized and it was also extremely boring because there was so little tension in the fights. Persians throw something at the Spartans, Spartans defeat it with little effort *rinse* *repeat*. The only scene that's worth something is the fight against the Immortals because they manage to stand up for at least five minutes against the invincible Sparty-Stus before getting flattened. Everything else, including battle-rhinos, holy hand grenade chucking sorcerors and war elephants are defeated so quickly, you'll miss it if you blink during one of those scenes.
Take for contrast the movie that inspired the graphic novel and therefore indirectly the movie, The 300 Spartans. There the Spartans are portrayed as good fighters, but they also have to come up with actual tactics to beat the odds and can't just stand there and tank every persian attack.

Thanas wrote:

Irbis wrote:You mean, besides the Übermensch Erwin König in his fresh Hugo Boss Heer uniform? Complete with aristocratic fur collar? Who was about the only person in that movie who tried to act or wasn't miscast? Yes, the scene with the kid is disturbing, but it's not like Greeks in 300 didn't do their own share of kicking the puppy.

When is he ever portrayed as heroic or anything but an extremely competent villain?

As I remember that scene, he rolled up in his nice dining car while, outside the windows were all the German soldiers wounded, dirty, and generally being run down. And upon seeing this, he closes the blinds and goes back to his food/tea/paper/whatever. That was hardly "heroic or manly" and more setting him up as cold and aloof, or, at best being hugely out of touch with plight of the common soldier.

EDIT: As for "tried to act or wasn't miscast" well that's because he was Ed Harris.

I wouldn't read anything in that beyond "it was a shitty movie but at least Ed Harris gave half a fuck anyway" rather than trying to 'glorify' Nazis or something.

EatG glorified Nazis in a more subtle way: they were the ones who were fighting properly, were equipped properly and their commanders cared about them (except Ed Harris, who was a dick).

All Russian characters were fighting their callous and dumbass chain of command more than the Germans, because Russians are idiots, except for the main character, who doesn't subscribe to this weird communism thing. Add Danilov's final epiphany and you can see that only the non-communists could POSSIBLY fight the Nazis and win.

In other words: Nazis = villainous but competent, Communists = villainous, but also pathetically stupid and totally incompetent.

It's really quite different from 300, but also not THAT different, as it still proudly carries forth many right-wing talking points.

As an aside, that movie had literally three good parts:

1. The opening, which openly acknowledges Stalingrad was a hella important battle

2. The pan across the Volga to the burning city

3. Ed Harris's everything

But that is more standard hollywood trope. The enemy is usually portrayed as that competent and efficient villain (to create a credible threat) while the hero is being bogged down by stupid higher-ups.

Thanas wrote:But that is more standard hollywood trope. The enemy is usually portrayed as that competent and efficient villain (to create a credible threat) while the hero is being bogged down by stupid higher-ups.

Damn right. Except it's not standard. The only time Americans got that treatment it was from Kubrick. But that guy's a genius, not your ordinary idiot director.

Stas Bush wrote:

Thanas wrote:But that is more standard hollywood trope. The enemy is usually portrayed as that competent and efficient villain (to create a credible threat) while the hero is being bogged down by stupid higher-ups.

Damn right. Except it's not standard. The only time Americans got that treatment it was from Kubrick. But that guy's a genius, not your ordinary idiot director.

Dunno, you had Generation kill portray the higher ups as being idiots and cowards, you had Saving Private Ryan being full of tactical mistakes by the allies, you had A bridge too far having Allied incompetence as the basis for the whole movie and almost any of the typical Action hero movies involve corrupt and stupid authority figures. Heck, even Batman which was a cop lovefest had them being pretty much incompetent idiots, what with the nearly entire police force being stuck underground by a raving lunatic.

Just Kubrick? That's one of the most widespread tropes in american media. Like everything from Frank Miller. Everything from Ayn Rand. First Blood and Rambo: First Blood Part II had it (didn't see the latter two), 2012, Bay's Transformers and that's just from the top of my head.

What I meant is that Kubrick portrayed nigh the entire establishment as a bunch of militaristic, but incompetent madmen. Other directors were usually more like 'well, some (usually unnamed and behind-the-scenes) guys screwed up but in any case MURRICA WINS because FREEDOMIZE THEM TO ATOMIC PARTICLES' and so on.

On the other hand, the shots from "Enemy of the Gates" could've just as well came from the German brochure 'Der Untermensch', because all the film does is portraying Russians as the typical untermenschen - incapable of being clever, more like a bunch of pathetic apes ruled by extremely ugly - physically ugly! - commanders like that one sending them to die in pointless human waves:

"Hit the Zhid-Bolshevik, his face's just asking for a brick", the German propaganda leaflets used to say. I think the director might have been reading too much of that and too little of the war memoirs (if he even read any that weren't written by bitter Nazi losers).

EotG is as much an atrocity as 300, just about a different time. Although the Americans are extremely notorious with their 'war films' (for which lies would be a very soft word), they even managed to steal an actual accomplishment of the British by filming that piece of shit called U571. I would say the Hollywood filmmakers are mostly just crowd-catering bastards incapable of admitting foreign accomplishments and understanding history on a greater level than "Asian subhumans fighting brave Uropean white men who are burdened by Evil but nonetheless fundamentally Good".

I fail to see the criticism of the soviet officers being portrayed as ugly bastards when the main soviet heroes are ridiculously way too good looking. Really, I think this is just blowing smoke.

Thanas wrote:I fail to see the criticism of the soviet officers being portrayed as ugly bastards when the main soviet heroes are ridiculously way too good looking. Really, I think this is just blowing smoke.

Well, the main persian antagonists in 300 were also like, sex bombs.

Stas Bush wrote: Well, the main persian antagonists in 300 were also like, sex bombs.

As I already mentioned, Xerxes in 300 represents the "wrong" kind of manliness, the homoerotic one. The rest were ethnic and/or monstrous caricatures.

Wait just one second... Stas Bush are you saying that American Hollywood directors don't hold doctorates in military history and are only catering to crowds that also don't hold doctorates in military history and actually couldn't care less about it?

DOES ANYONE ELSE KNOW THIS?! WE NEED TO SPREAD THE WORD!