300 the movie?

[Tarbicus]

To an enormous degree, it was a rip-off of "The fall of the Roman Empire"

I saw "The Fall of the Roman Empire" fairly recently and Gladiator is pretty much the exact same story. The earlier film had more accurate armour as well :wink:

Speaking of which, even though "Antony and Cleopatra" was set probably too early for segs, the armour was fantastic, especially considering when it was made. Modern costume designers have seen "Mad Max" far too many times methinks.

[Theodosius the Great]

I think they should do a movie on Xenophon. On second thought, maybe the story is too complicated to put on screen ?

[hoplite14gr]

I think they should do a movie on Xenophon. On second thought, maybe the story is too complicated to put on screen ?

The Anabasis is not so interesting but the return of the Myrrioi-well it can be done as a serial I guess.

The "fall of the Roman empire" had the best carafracts I have seen so far on screen. Cleopatra was exellent for its time. The remake was lousier and inaccurate in costumes!! Think I agree with Paul and Tarbicus here.

Alexander would be OK but I can´t stand the fact they show him on horse with a kopis!! Cavalry of the time used long swords from the time of Xenophon! The old fim with Richard Burton had better persian costumes.
Kind regards

[Arthes]

Greetings,

.
What did you think of "Alexander?" I thought the costumes were good, the battles pretty well done and the acting not bad, but its omissions and the overall presentation were bad - contributing to its flop at the box office. Another project that fell short of its immense potential.

I love the film, overall it gives a very good and fairly authentic view of what it shows about Alexander and his life, although not fully enough for some people.
I think everyone likes watching Gaugamela....!
I don't like Colin Farrell as a rule, but I thought he was brilliant as Alexander. Although I have read comments that he was not quite 'strong' enough in some scenes, he tried to put everything he could into the role and to think like Alexander would have done. He refused doubles and did all the riding, stunts and fight scenes himself on those grounds.
All the actors and actresses had attended a 'boot camp' where modern conveniences were banned and even the diet was similar to what Alex and his soldiers would have had. This had the effect of bringing them together as companions and making the film left some of them with a feeling, as though they had really stepped back in time.
I think all the the publicity about the so called 'gay' scenes, stopped people going to see it. They were very tastefully done and at the end of the day, in Alexander's time, relationships between males were the norm in certain circumstances, you can't judge that by modern standards or ideals.
If they made a film about the Sacred Band of Thebes, people would refuse to go and see it because they discovered it was a band of male 'lovers' and the cinema would be full of voyeurs no doubt expecting something erotic ... :evil:
regards
Arthes

[Anonymous]

[quote="qcarrWhat did you think of "Alexander?" I thought the costumes were good, the battles pretty well done and the acting not bad, but its omissions and the overall presentation were bad - contributing to its flop at the box office. Another project that fell short of its immense potential.[/quote]

I enjoyed it and I thought the producers had tried quite hard for accuracy. - Not hard enough for a real expert, perhaps, but certainly for a historically-aware layman like me. I've said before that I had a seat at the front of the cinema and this gave me a very realistic need to keep turning my head to see what the **** was going on in the battlefield "around" me. Cool!

[MikeArledge]

I think Gates of Fire is still on the table for shooting, and according to Pressfield's website, Last of the Amazons is about a go, and there are talks for Uma Thurman starring in it. That could be very cool.

I always thought a movie about Delium or Luektra could be a great movie, especially if it incorporated some good stuff about Socrates and other thinkers of the time. You could really do something cool like making it so that by some chance Xenophon, Plato, Socrates and Thucydides all were there or characters representing their trains of thought on the Peloponnesian War kinda like a ancient Greek Gettysburg.

Mike

[Arthes]

There have been some video updates in the 300 Journal.....training to be a Spartan and costuming, which doesn't want to play on my computer..oh, it just takes a while to download....and ladies (and maybe some men :wink: ) - prepare to drool.... !!! (and I don't just mean the clothes..)
The fight scene in the 'training' vid looks very fierce...even if the Persian enemy look like Ninja Mutant Turtles at times...
The lady in the film bears a resemblance to Ursula Andress in that dress...(Ursula Undress as she was sometimes known.. :wink: )
The making of Leonida's helmet crest using layers of feathers and horsehair will obviously start a thread of comments.....!
PS.....It would be useful if I posted the link........[url:1o62w3wk]http://300themovie.warnerbros.com/[/url] :oops:
regards
Arthes

[Muzzaguchi]

Hi All,

I have a copy of the script of 300 (a friend auditioned for a role) and the inaccuracies in the film script are much worse than in the graphic novel - oh well!

As an aside - one problem with the Alexander battle scenes were the close order phalanx being far to far apart and the effect of Persian volley fire (from an inordinate distance too) was too devastating. f you could decimate a Macedonian phalanx with such volleys that would have been all the Persian's would have done and Alexander's numbers would have dwindled far too quickly. But that is just being picky!

Cheers

Murray

[hoplite14gr]

Murray,
I think that the threads RACING WITH ARMOR and OTHISMOS TRUE NATURE will give you enough insight how the Persian Arrow strom could have been countered. Also the Linothorax thread will give you the info fo armor resistance. Hope I helped.
Kind regards

[Narukami]

Some years ago, at a used book store in North Hollywood, I found a pre-publication copy of Gates Of Fire with notes indicating that film rights had been optioned by George Clooney.

As we all know, nothing has happened -- yet.

Now Clooney has a lot more clout in Hollywood so that if he still wanted to make this film he could, but will he?

Gates Of Fire could be a very good feature film, but I wonder if it might not work better as a multi-part "series" on HBO? Not the same visual impact perhaps, but more time to tell the story and at least as much freedom as a feature film would allow.

As for Miller's The 300...

It is an amusing graphic novel, no doubt it will be an amusing film.

Narukami

[spartanwarrior]

Well i enjoyed gladiator even if it wasnt accurate and i will go see 300 either way because its 1 of my fave stories of heroics but I would prefer it to be more accurate but oh well :roll:

[Idomeneas]

First of all im glad to be here .

I enjoyed 300 as a comic from the artistic perspective. Although i tend to like more realistic styles than free style of Frank Miller and the coloring gave so much movement and life that really taught me something.

About the movie. I really hate the abuse of history and especially the abuse of greek history (guess why lol: . If they pass it as an interepretation of the comic as they did with Sin City i wont be minded at all and actually i will like it. Cause in that case they wont be trying to represent history but a comic which used a real fact as refference to pass a story full of heroism.

I understand that Miller bent the rules in the plot and used alot of imagination but he passes the the meanning of Thermopylae and that is important. If he was doing something like Shanower's Age of Bronze it would be closer in my tastes but.. its ok .

[Niedel]

I don't really see this as a historical film but rather a comic book adaptation. The clips I've seen so far seem to suggest it definitely follows the "Sin City" route, imitating comic book pictures exactly on film and the like. Since it takes that approach, I can't really complain about the authenticity of costumes etc.

[Narukami]

The Warner Brothers booth at the E3 convention here in LA presented a preview of the video game based on the film The 300 March To Glory, followed by a presentation by the director of a rough anamatics he did to convince the studio to green light the film.

According to the director, he a few friends spent the weekend in a warehouse filming a battle scene to show the studio execs what his vision was for the project.

It opens with a shot of some Spartan warriors. They are waring greaves, red cloaks and simple Corinthian style helmets. They appear to be bare chested, and armed with spear, sword and large hoplon (shield). Their hair is long. The images seem naturalistic, not highly stylized as in Sin City or even the graphic novel, though the color values on the film are very high so it looks more like a video game than photo realistic.

One warrior strides forward and engages half a dozen presumably Persian soldiers -- could be Immortals it is hard to say. The Spartan kills two with his spear. A Persian arrow becomes lodged in his shield. The Spartan pulls this out and uses it to kill a third Persian. He then draws his sword and dispatches two more Persians, blood spraying out from their slit throats.

The Spartan then drops to his knees and cries out : "Die free!"

The rest of the Spartans march forward and the lone warrior rejoins the formation.

We now see an over the shoulder shot looking toward the enemy, the vast Persian army covering the entire country side. The camera pans up to the sun which is blotted out by flights of Persian arrows headed straight at the camera, and us.

Fade out to the title: The 300 March To Glory.

The quality of the video projection (which is what I was there to see) was excellent.

As to the footage...

Again it looked very much like a video game, not highly stylized as was Sin City. But then this is not the film but a "promo" to sell the studio on investing their money and resources in the project.

Obviously it did the job as the film will be out next year (?).

I do not know Greek armor and weapons well enough to pass judgment on what I saw. The Spartans did not appear to be wearing any armor other than greaves, shield and helmet. The helmets had no crests or other markings on them. The shields seemed to have a V embossed into the metal itself, not painted on.

No doubt this anamatic will be a bonus feature on the DVD.

As for the game itself: The plan is to release it day & date with the film. What we saw of it looked like pretty standard stuff -- good but not breath taking. Now Caesar IV at the Sierra booth did look great, but that is another report for another topic thread. :wink:

Narukami

[Arthes]

Latest video journal for '300' can be found here......
[url:pm2fe6u4]http://www.apple.com/trailers/wb/300/feature5[/url]