[Movie] 300

I just came back from a special showing at my university (thanks to a friend who secured a ticket for me woot), and I must say, I liked it a lot.

To answer TheXeno's question, yes, they do use phalanx in the movie, but I forgot to count how many times (more than once for sure though).

Like Mithrandir said, this movie is totally worth watching if you like gory war movies from ancient times. I will try to minimize spoilers here, and maybe it was just with the group I saw it with, but there were a lot of "funny" scenes. By that I mean we were laughing at a lot of the stuff that was going on. I don't know if it was intentional or not (usually just when someone's getting killed, but I guess the way they get killed), but it seemed almost appropiate.

There were a lot of cheers too whenever you see a Spartan jumping, and a lot of laughs as well (again, usually cause something funny happens). Kind of corny and over the top at times, but it doesn't detract from the movie at all, unless you like nitpicking every little flaw and detail in a movie.

Having read the graphic novel ahead of time (and liking it too), I like that they stayed relatively true to the source material. There were some changes here and there, but it was mostly minor stuff, and for the most part, probably stayed about 90% the way it happened in the book (certainly during the battle scenes).

And don't worry if you think this movie won't have much action in it. Although it's a little slow to start, once the fighting starts, the movie hardly gives you too much time to "catch your breath". There are a few "slow" scenes in between the battles, but for the most part, blood spills, limbs fly, and bodies fall quite a bit.

In case you're wondering, here's some discrepancies from the graphic novel and the movie that I noticed:

Spoiler:

In the beginning, they develop Leonidas a lot more. You get to see stuff he had to do growing up. In the graphic novel, the only flashback you get to see is him facing off with the wolf. However, the scene where he kills the wolf happened almost exactly the same way, where you only see the shadow of the spear gutting the wolf.

The deformed guy, I forget his name, who wanted to fight for Leonidas jumps off the cliff in despair in the graphic novel. Much to his dismay, he also survives the fall, and then defects over to Xerxes's side. In the movie, he just drops the shield down the cliff, but the message is still essentially the same.

Maybe I glanced over it in the graphic novel, but the sub-plot involving Leonida's wife going to the Senate in the movie never happens. Again, it might've, but I don't have the book on me atm, as I loaned it out to a friend so he can read it. If I'm wrong on this, go ahead and correct me. Btw, these are the "slow" scenes I mentioned when the fighting starts. And no doubt this scene was added to give her more development, and to tie the Greeks to the Spartans more closely together at the end of the story. In the graphic novel, I only remember Leonidas sending his messenger, who spins up a tale to rile up the Greeks into fighting after they die at Thermopylae.

And the ending part showing the large Greek army charging towards the Persian army didn't happen the same way, but it was still a cool ending nonetheless.

So yeah, if you like those kinds of ancient war movies, you'll love 300. Some stuff seems almost fantasy-like, but again, this is a fictionalized account of it, so don't sweat it if every detail isn't right.

Spoiler:

A funny thing I noticed was another friend of mine watching it, and when that one Greek ally leaves Leonidas near the end, he says "godspeed". My friend then starts going off on a "WTF" rant, saying it's referring to the Christian God, who shouldn't "exist" during this time period. I then told him it was fictionalized, and then asked him why he's worried about that one line, but has no trouble accepting giant animals, deformed but powerful superhumans, and other fantastical stuff, and he more or less shut up lol.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by chibilola

best story about 300 everrr.





I would totally hurl a spear at some people.

LOL, if this really did happen, I would've loved to have seen that, as bad as it sounds.

Originally Posted by Hantei

One thing I noticed, upon my second viewing tonight, for only one time in the movie that it really seemed like there were 300 spartans (which was pretty much just the first battle). After the first day's battle, it just seemed like there only 30 or so for the rest of it (clear example would be the immortals battle). Heh, that really kinda bugged me as I thought there'd be a least half or so left after sustaining casualties.

This is unfortunately a side-effect of telling large battles, whether on film or in images (aka comics). The numbers tend to fluctuate a lot (unless it really is a small force, like less than 10 guys), and my guess is that they cut down the number of soldiers you see because to be honest, the only one that you could really tell who it was is Leonidas (and even then, only because the camera focuses almost solely on him in most fights).

I would've loved to seen more Spartans getting hurt/killed throughout all the fighting, but if they threw all 300 of them (assuming none were killed or badly wounded yet), the fighting scenes would get pretty confusing after a while, and it'd be like watching a battle take place in a Total War game from far away.

Other war movies usually do stuff like this as well. For example, in Gladiator, the first battle focuses almost solely on Maximus (but you do get to see other soldiers fighting from time to time, and when you do, it gets kind of confusing as to what's going on exactly).

And in Saving Private Ryan, I don't remember how many soldiers the Americans had, but guys die left and right, including main characters, and more just seem to keep popping out of the woodwork, at least until the very end of the battle. And this is particularly true of the German soldiers. It seems like for every one that's killed, 3 more guys show up out of nowhere to take his place (almost like a WW2 shooter lol).

This is slightly less related, but really funny when you notice it. Watch action movies (particularly Jackie Chan ones) where the hero and maybe his sidekick approach some bad guys, or get approached by bad guys, and once the fighting starts, more bad guys just start spawning out of nowhere (sorry, video game reference again lol). In some cases, it makes you wonder where the heck those other guys were at the whole time lol. If you do a body count of how many guys get taken down, and then how many more guys show up, you'll notice some pretty funny stuff.

Hot Shots: Part Deux makes fun of this too. In one scene, the movie starts to keep track of how many bad guys the hero's killed, and then starts to compare the body count to other movies. And no matter how many bad guys he kills, more just come out of nowhere (of course, since this is a spoof movie, the "deaths" are pretty funny, and nothing really serious:

Spoiler:

like when the hero runs out of bullets, but sees a box of bullets in front of him. Instead of loading them into his gun, he simply picks some bullets, throws it at the bad guy, and that's enough to kill him.

And in another scene, one of the good guys has a sniper rifle, and looks like they're about to use it to shoot someone far away in what could be a very serious scene. When the camera pans out however, the front part of the rifle has a wooden mallet attached to it, and the far away guard is actually very close, to the point that he gets hit with the mallet.

One final one, which really has nothing to do with the topic, but it's really stupid and funny. When one of the bad guys comes out to fight, he has a banana. When the good guy grabs him, they fight and struggle with each other as if it's a knife, and the bad guy attempts to "stab" the good guy with it. The good guy can't overpower him right away, so he takes a bite of the banana, the beats the bad guy up lol.

Oh, and...

"This is Sparta!"

There's nowhere I can't reach.