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300 — Page 4

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Originally posted by: Marvolo
But I have never seen any record of a goat acting like that goat did. It was completely wrong.


As a student of mythology and legends I can tell you that mystical creatures like that goat man have been in he minds of people for a very long time.

Seriously, I actually like random strangeness in movies if it's done well (otherwise I wouldn't like the original Star Wars) and having a strange goat man playing a string instrument in Xerxes presence spoke to his immense wealth. To own such a rare and mystical being gave the hunchback even more awe when he observed Xerxe's greatness. I actually don't mind that people laughed. I actually even agree that it was silly in many obvious ways. I laughed myself. That still doesn't mean that I don't think it was awesome at the same time though.

"Now all Lucas has to do is make a cgi version of himself.  It will be better than the original and fit his original vision." - skyjedi2005

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Let me put it this way, when the goat showed up I felt like I was watching The Chronicles of Narnia not 300.


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I agree with how out of place those creatures seemed. What I found funny after reading the comic series is that it takes itself very seriously in comparison to the film. The only of the creatures you find in the graphic novel are the elephants and it is just one panel of them falling off the cliff. No Rhino, no orc guy in chains, no bomb throwers, no knife hands, no goat guy. And Xerxes is just a head taller than Leonidas, he is a big guy but you in no way get the impression he is a giant. Once this comes out on DVD I am considering making a edit that matches the book.

"Every time Warb sighs, an angel falls into a vat of mapel syrup." - Gaffer Tape

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Originally posted by: Marvolo
Xerxes, size was never a fantastical thing with me, because giants or people taller than 8 feet tall have existed in the past. Like, Galioath( if you believe the Bible).


Also, Andre the Giant, the pro wrestler.

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Originally posted by: C3PX
I agree with how out of place those creatures seemed. What I found funny after reading the comic series is that it takes itself very seriously in comparison to the film. The only of the creatures you find in the graphic novel are the elephants and it is just one panel of them falling off the cliff. No Rhino, no orc guy in chains, no bomb throwers, no knife hands, no goat guy. And Xerxes is just a head taller than Leonidas, he is a big guy but you in no way get the impression he is a giant. Once this comes out on DVD I am considering making a edit that matches the book.


I beg to differ. I very much got the impression that Xerxes was a gigantic, larger-than-life god-man. And I haven't even seen the movie yet.
MTFBWY. Always.

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Originally posted by: TiptupXerxes was also portrayed as a giant man. I hope that didn't bother you immensely. At least at some point I'm hoping you would have been able to get into the fantastic mindset. The movie's based on a comic book after all and that's what comic books do. More comic book-to-movie adaptations should be like this in my opinion. Otherwise, perhaps Ridley Scott will make his version of the Battle of Thermopylae and then you'll be much more happy.


Hey, don't put words in my mouth. I never said anything was wrong with Xerxes, although now that you mention it, he kind of looks and talks like Ra from Stargate. Anyway, I accepted the fact that he's a tall guy. Hey, why not, if Kareem Abdul Jabbar can be tall, so can Xerxes.

What you seem to have forgotten is that this isn't like the graphic novel. Believe me, I know, as I have it here in front of me (I pulled it out to see how the film compared to the book). There's no goat-man or Knives-A-Lot in this film. If anything, the writers made it MORE unbelievable by adding them. It doesn't seem very "fantastic" to me that there's this goat creature that comes out of nowhere and just disappears. It's like eye-porn.
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Where did I put words in your mouth, crazyrabbits? Don't put words in my mouth. I hate it when people flippantly throw around accusations.

Otherwise, I'm sure that a more serious approach like the original "graphic novel" (if it really was serious on every page) would have been cool (probably even better in terms of heightening the drama). I just enjoyed what I saw for the reasons I've already stated. They were fun things to watch in a movie and seemed to fit my ordinary understanding of a neat, comic-book-style imagination. If you believe that those reasons of mine are wrong, then I'm willing to discuss that.

"Now all Lucas has to do is make a cgi version of himself.  It will be better than the original and fit his original vision." - skyjedi2005

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One thing that I am glad that they didn't put in the movie from the graphic novel is the fact that most of the spartans wore nothing over there balls.


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Originally posted by: Tiptup
Where did I put words in your mouth, crazyrabbits?


By suggesting I wasn't happy with the villain.

You know what else I don't have patience for? People who use excuses to justify why they like a movie. Great, you liked the random shot of a goat moving it's head around, and you give me this fanwank theory about his place in the film. Hey, I liked the film too, you know. Everyone does it, and I know I've done it too, but really, I couldn't care less about whether you have experience with mythology. I have better things to do with my time. Let's just agree to disagree. Anyway, hope that works out for you.
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Originally posted by: crazyrabbits
By suggesting I wasn't happy with the villain.


I didn't suggest that. I said I was hoping you weren't unhappy.

Also, are you telling me that you've never experienced mythology, crazyrabbits?

"Now all Lucas has to do is make a cgi version of himself.  It will be better than the original and fit his original vision." - skyjedi2005

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Originally posted by: theredbaron
Originally posted by: C3PX
I agree with how out of place those creatures seemed. What I found funny after reading the comic series is that it takes itself very seriously in comparison to the film. The only of the creatures you find in the graphic novel are the elephants and it is just one panel of them falling off the cliff. No Rhino, no orc guy in chains, no bomb throwers, no knife hands, no goat guy. And Xerxes is just a head taller than Leonidas, he is a big guy but you in no way get the impression he is a giant. Once this comes out on DVD I am considering making a edit that matches the book.


I beg to differ. I very much got the impression that Xerxes was a gigantic, larger-than-life god-man. And I haven't even seen the movie yet.


I didn't say he was a friken midgit in the graphic novel, just that he was only a head taller than Leonidas. In the graphic novel he seemed a realistic height, while in the movie he was unrealistically large.

Nobody should diss the graphic novel until they have read it. It is actually a pretty serious piece of work. Frank Miller had a passion for the subject and made a very enjoyable retelling of it. The giant wolf scene is the most fantastical part of the graphic novel IMHO. But giant wolves fit into mythology, knife-hands is just a lame looking CGI character added in for the heck of it. It feels like those parts were added to acknowledge that it is a comic book movie, but I felt they were unecessary and really did a great job of lowering the quality of the film.

"Every time Warb sighs, an angel falls into a vat of mapel syrup." - Gaffer Tape

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I disagree. I think the point of them was that the Persians (in the fictional context of the film) celebrated grotesquery and freakishness--they celebrated things that made them less than human. (Notice all the freaks seemed to be less intelligent than actual people, almost animalistic in nature.)

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As I said earlier, I have no problem with the opinion that the movie would have been better without the freak show. I can probably see myself agreeing with that viewpoint on the basis of realistic drama alone. (Plus, sticking to the original intention of the original author is a good thing.) However, I don't see how any of you can totally and completely reject the fun aspect these strange additions might have had, or refuse to see any other possibly-redeeming qualities they might have had. Sure, they sucked in some ways, but that doesn't mean they couldn't have been enjoyable in some other, different ways at the same time.

"Now all Lucas has to do is make a cgi version of himself.  It will be better than the original and fit his original vision." - skyjedi2005

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Just for fun I checked out the IMDB boards to see what was being said about this movie. Man, it is sad. Those have got to the crappiest most useless boards on the net. All arguments about weather or not Greeks were gay and complaints about Americans not knowing their history. I like how everybody things this film is American propaganda.

"Every time Warb sighs, an angel falls into a vat of mapel syrup." - Gaffer Tape

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For what purpose would they argue about homosexuality in Greek culture?

Heh, I really liked the "boy lovers" in Athens line from the movie. That was also in the graphic novel, correct?

"Now all Lucas has to do is make a cgi version of himself.  It will be better than the original and fit his original vision." - skyjedi2005

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Just saw this film last night. While it didn't live up to the hype I've seen for it, I did enjoy it. I can understand the graphical style seeing as this is a Frank Miller film, and I think it did help in making it feel more like an ancient mythological tale. I think it could have used a little more backstory about the weird guys with the oracle and what control they had (or at least explained why Sparta wouldn't send their whole army to begin with but suddenly did after their king and his 300 men were dead despite what the weird guys on the mountain top said.)

I liked the action scenes. Some of my friends said that the slow motion/fast motion/slow motion thing bothered them, but I thought it totally worked. I just didn't like how they never really showed more than about 20 spartans at a time. Even in the shots were they were all in formation together, it only looked like there were 15 guys fighting the Persians.

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Originally posted by: Tiptup
For what purpose would they argue about homosexuality in Greek culture?

Heh, I really liked the "boy lovers" in Athens line from the movie. That was also in the graphic novel, correct?


Yeah that line is in the graphic novel. As for why they should argue, I don't know, it is IMDB after all. I think it started with somebody saying the film is inaccurate because the Spartans are historically an extremely gay culture and the Persians were not, while the film depicts the Spartans as anti-gay and the Persians as ultra-gay.

"Every time Warb sighs, an angel falls into a vat of mapel syrup." - Gaffer Tape

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I've heard similar things, but I'm no expert on ancient Spartans. Though, as far as I can tell, 300 didn't seem to dwell on the subject too much for it to be that big of a problem.

"Now all Lucas has to do is make a cgi version of himself.  It will be better than the original and fit his original vision." - skyjedi2005

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I think there is pretty good evidence to say Spartans were by no means avocates of the gay lifestyle. History is actually a pretty funny subject. Let's say you and a group of friends go to a party or a concert, the very next day each and every one of you will have a variations in your stories. Two people get in a fight, each will have very different stories to tell just half an hour later. You ask them for details on that fight years later, if it was a significant fight and they still remember it, then they are likely to have stories that vary even more. I don't think anyone can disagree with this, yet we think we can figure out exactly what took place during a particular battle or during one event in history. We can get a pretty good approximation I suppose, but if we think we can figure out the whole truth, then we are fooling ourselves. Spartans lived over 2500 years ago, I think it is safe to say we will never know exactly what they were really like. Every country needs its heros and legends, Leonidas is one of Greece's great heros (they even have the words Malon Labe meaning "Come and get them" as their military slogan, referencing Leonidas telling the Persians to "come and get them" when they asked for them to hand over their spears). Let them have him, and let them depict him they way they have traditionally. Modern Greeks are extremely homophobic, and Frank Miller wrote the graphic novel with a very strong bias in favor of the Greeks.

EDIT: My Greek Characters for "Malon Labe" didn't work, so I have to transliterate it.

"Every time Warb sighs, an angel falls into a vat of mapel syrup." - Gaffer Tape

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That's a very good point about recording accurate history. People have a tendency to talk as if they know every detail of what went on in a situation when in most cases, particularly with ancient history, the amount that we do know is dwarfed by what we don't. I suppose we like to take the easy way and feigning knowledge is a powerful way to claim authority on a given matter. Sad that we can't be more honest at times and simply admit what we don't know. I try to be that way myself but I seem to fail miserably almost all of the time.

"Now all Lucas has to do is make a cgi version of himself.  It will be better than the original and fit his original vision." - skyjedi2005