300

Spartan359 · 03-12-2007, 00:53

Has anyone seen 300 yet? Thoughts on the movie? Complaints?

82ndtrooper · 03-12-2007, 06:20

This is one cool movie !! The director, IIRC, is the same one that directed and did the over molded look for "Sin City" which is another great movie if you like the "comic book" look

17 beheadings, all of which are deserved, was a bit overkill, but none the less, a neat movie that pulls no punches.

Max_Tab · 03-12-2007, 06:51

Loved it. If you are anal about historical accuracy then you might want to skip it. The best way I can think of describing it, is a fantasy movie, loosely based on a historical event. I shut down my shop and took my whole section to see it on friday afternoon, and it was worth it. Great motivating movie that show's everything america used to stand for. Moral courage, physical courage, integrity, honor, doing the right thing for the right reasons.

I'll be adding this to my deployment movie collection.

Joe-Boo · 03-12-2007, 07:42

Gentleman, this is an essay that was published and spoken by the Director of The 300. I thought you would enjoy.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...toryId=5784518

That Old Piece of Cloth

by Frank Miller

I was just a boy in the 1960s. My adolescence wasn't infused with the civil rights struggle or the sexual revolution or the Vietnam War, but with their aftermath.

My high school teachers were ex-hippies and Vietnam vets. People who protested the war and people who served as soldiers. I was taught more about John Lennon than I was about Thomas Jefferson.

Both of my parents were World War II veterans. FDR-era patriots. And I was exactly the age to rebel against them.

It all fit together rather neatly. I could never stomach the flower-child twaddle of the '60s crowd and I was ready to believe that our flag was just an old piece of cloth and that patriotism was just some quaint relic, best left behind us.

It was all about the ideas. I schooled myself in the writings of Madison and Franklin and Adams and Jefferson. I came to love those noble, indestructible ideas. They were ideas, to my young mind, of rebellion and independence, not of idolatry.

But not that piece of old cloth. To me, that stood for unthinking patriotism. It meant about as much to me as that insipid peace sign that was everywhere I looked: just another symbol of a generation's sentimentality, of its narcissistic worship of its own past glories.

Then came that sunny September morning when airplanes crashed into towers a very few miles from my home and thousands of my neighbors were ruthlessly incinerated -- reduced to ash. Now, I draw and write comic books. One thing my job involves is making up bad guys. Imagining human villainy in all its forms. Now the real thing had shown up. The real thing murdered my neighbors. In my city. In my country. Breathing in that awful, chalky crap that filled up the lungs of every New Yorker, then coughing it right out, not knowing what I was coughing up.

For the first time in my life, I know how it feels to face an existential menace. They want us to die. All of a sudden I realize what my parents were talking about all those years.

Patriotism, I now believe, isn't some sentimental, old conceit. It's self-preservation. I believe patriotism is central to a nation's survival. Ben Franklin said it: If we don't all hang together, we all hang separately. Just like you have to fight to protect your friends and family, and you count on them to watch your own back.

So you've got to do what you can to help your country survive. That's if you think your country is worth a damn. Warts and all.

So I've gotten rather fond of that old piece of cloth. Now, when I look at it, I see something precious. I see something perishable.

BrianH · 03-12-2007, 07:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by 82ndtrooper

The director, IIRC, is the same one that directed and did the over molded look for "Sin City" which is another great movie if you like the "comic book" look.

Same producer and creator (Frank Miller), different director (Robert Rodriguez for Sin City, Zach Snyder for 300).

Still has a great look, though.

Smokin Joe · 03-12-2007, 07:56

Great movie! I'm defiantly setting money aside now for the DVD.

It made me evaluate "Glory" in a whole new light and cherish the moments I get to stand with my "Brothers". My moments may not be as grand but I have to take what I can get.

**Team Sergeant** · 03-12-2007, 08:47

Quote:

Originally Posted by Max_Tab

Loved it. If you are anal about historical accuracy then you might want to skip it.

There's never been a historical "movie" nade by hollywood that I can recall.

letinsh · 03-12-2007, 09:17

Fantastic movie. Even the girlfriend liked it (she normally can't stomach violence in movies...). It warms the soul to see those virtues that Max_Tab listed praised, as they are so often ridiculed.

**Razor** · 03-12-2007, 09:56

Quote:

...For the first time in my life, I know how it feels to face an existential menace. They want us to die. All of a sudden I realize what my parents were talking about all those years.

...Patriotism, I now believe, isn't some sentimental, old conceit. It's self-preservation.

"Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe."
- John 20:29

Jgood · 03-12-2007, 10:03

Great movie, cant wait for the DVD.

Sdiver · 03-12-2007, 10:29

Quote:

Originally Posted by Team Sergeant

There's never been a historical "movie" nade by hollywood that I can recall.

I'm surprised.

TS,
You wouldn't consider The Longest Day historically accurate?

Max_Tab · 03-12-2007, 10:55

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sdiver

I'm surprised.

TS,
You wouldn't consider The Longest Day historically accurate?

I was thinking of Oliver Stone's JFK. Can't get more accurate than that

Sdiver · 03-12-2007, 11:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by Max_Tab

I was thinking of Oliver Stone's JFK. Can't get more accurate than that

Back and to the Left.....Back and to the Left.....Back and to the Left......Back and to the Left.....Back and to the Left......Back and to the Left.......Sounds like which way Congress is going now-a-days....Back and to the Left.....Back and to the Left......

**Peregrino** · 03-12-2007, 15:49

Just saw it. It's a "graphic novel" writ large. One dimensional and grossly distorted, with every important thought reduced to the profundity of a "soundbite". Personally, I wish they had done "Gates of Fire" and left 300 with the other adolescent fantasies in the comic books section. The history and the ideals are far too important to be trivialized for a quick profit. Sadly, I have no faith that it will inspire today's youth to anything more than another bag of popcorn. I don't think we'll have to wait long for it to be on the shelves in Walmart. Peregrino

Intel_Airman · 03-12-2007, 15:57

I went out Friday afternoon to see it after finishing my urinalysis detail. I thought it was fantastic, easily one of the best movies I've ever seen. The parallels between the Spartans vs. Persians and our current GWOT were strikingly similiar. Especially, when the Queen went to the Congress and asked for more Spartans to be sent to the fight and was met by an unwilling group of "thinkers".