# 300: ah, OK **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 9, 2008, 4:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/300-ah-ok/440688 "2008-03-09T04:06:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2008, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/300-ah-ok/440688/41 "2008-03-09T23:32:01Z")
I thought the queen was hot. And that dance by the oracle on the mountaintop… smokin. That was enough for me. Back to the OP question about the hunchback. I imagine any of the Spartans would just killed him out of hand, as an abomination that shouldn’t have been allowed to survive infancy. ---
**Author:** ![lissener](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lissener/32/6139_2.png) [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2008, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/300-ah-ok/440688/42 "2008-03-09T23:37:53Z")
[QUOTE=Boyo Jim] I thought the queen was hot. [/QUOTE] Yeah, [he](http://beaut.ie/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/xerxes.jpg) was. ---
**Author:** ![chaoticbear](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f07891/32.png) [@chaoticbear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chaoticbear)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2008, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/300-ah-ok/440688/43 "2008-03-09T23:40:15Z")
I went with a group of friends just for Gerard Butler. I didn’t (and don’t) care about action films or history (especially Greek history). But I couldn’t pass up the chance to see hundreds of men in leather underwear all at once. ---
**Author:** ![Equipoise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/equipoise/32/151_2.png) [@Equipoise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Equipoise)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2008, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/300-ah-ok/440688/44 "2008-03-10T01:00:39Z")
[QUOTE=chaoticbear] I went with a group of friends just for Gerard Butler. I didn’t (and don’t) care about action films or history (especially Greek history). But I couldn’t pass up the chance to see hundreds of men in leather underwear all at once. [/QUOTE] That’s the spirit! ---
**Author:** ![mack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b19c9b/32.png) [@mack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mack)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2008, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/300-ah-ok/440688/45 "2008-03-10T02:17:11Z")
[QUOTE=smiling bandit] Eh, I kept hearing people talk about it like it was the Second Coming. I just expected more is all. _Shrug_ [/QUOTE] The thing about 300 was it had one of the greatest trailers in recent memory. From the imagery to the crushing Nine Inch Nails groove. All I could think was “I have GOT to see this”. ---
**Author:** ![DKW](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dkw/32/3118_2.png) [@DKW](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DKW)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2008, 2:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/300-ah-ok/440688/46 "2008-03-10T02:47:12Z")
Re. slavish devotion to the comic book (as Tuckerfan mentioned): My big, big beef with this movie was that it slavishly adhered to various _scenes_ from the comic (with the occasional, er, “embellishment”…the oracle was neither half-naked nor bilingual) while absolutely trashing the _story_ as presented by Frank Miller. The liberties taken from beginning to end are truly astounding, and the rampant politicizing is downright offensive. I think it speaks volumes that Miller was allowed about 20 seconds of commentary on the DVD; it’s pretty obvious that he did _not_ like how this turned out. Anyway, smiling bandit brought up quite a few issues, so it’s only fair that I direct my response to the OP. > [@](#): > > Wait, why did Leonidas reject the hunchback dude? His given reason was that the Spartans fight in formation. Except that not in one single bloody scene did they in fact do that. They run around like ninja-hoplites. I haven’t seen more bouncing around since Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. This is simply the difference between two people making a series of comic books and a great big bunch of writers, directors, producers, and editors making a blockbuster movie. No doubt they found disciplined, controlled phalanx combat just plain boring, and figured audiences would as well. Leonidas is also much more callous in the original comic (to the point where Ephiates attempts suicide!), never coming across that he’s trying to let him off gently. > [@](#): > > The Persians are sort of presented, when they have faces at all, as either inhuman creatures or cruel tyrants. Sometimes both. Uh, what? Seriously, what? Don’t know, inasmuch as _none_ of it was Frank Miller’s creation. No sword-armed executioner, no Goroesque unstoppable destroyer, no lizard-faced Immortals. (No “magicians”, either.) My guess is that the novel isn’t extremely blatant about the Persians being evil…sure, Xerxes is arrogant and power-hungry and the ambassador is a snob who sticks his neck out way too much, but for the most part, the army is mostly a bunch of guys doing a job who happen to be way over their heads. Apparently, somone decided that we really, _really_ needed a reason to root against them. (I figure that’s the same rationale for the Dead Naked Bodies Tree, which also was not in the comic.) > [@](#): > > Continuing in that vein, what was with mixing all the modern feminism in? Join the club. I _hated_ this garbage. Just to keep things in perspective, the wife gets _one page_ in the comic. And the messenger in the opening scene didn’t object to her talking to him. My guess was that someone in production demanded it, or it was a feeble attempt to get women to watch a hack-and-slash gorefest. > [@](#): > > The whole reason versus mysticism bit was pretty ridiculous. The Greeks had no trouble with either. More to the point, it was done so ham-handedly that I couldn’t help but laugh: > > Villain: Blah blah blah Gods. > Hero: Blah blah blah Reason. > Villain: Blah blah blah Blasphemy! > Hero: Blah blah blah Die! This part didn’t really stand out for me, but I’m guessing it was a badly bungled interpretation of what Frank Miller really wanted to get at. What Miller criticized was injustice and mindlessly clinging to the old ways. A good society progresses and discards ideas, practices, and laws that prove to be unjust. What went wrong here, IMO, was the marginalization of the Ephors. THEY were the useless geezers stuck in the past, THEY were the ones who turned on Sparta for gold, THEY were the ones stifling the spread of freedom. (Of course, reality was a litttle more complicated than that, but that’s defintiely how it played out in the comic.) Instead we have a Star Wars-esque council meeting, all kinds of political flapdoodle, and a totally made-up character who seemingly serves no purpose other than an excuse to inject aformentioned feminizing (he’ll always be “Gratuitus” to me), to the point where the whole message is muddled beyond repair. > [@](#): > > Spartan-Traitor-dude-with-no-hunchback. Seriously, that was bloody convenient, wasn’t it. He just happens to be carrying around a load of gold so she can just luckily cut it off of him. Good thing, wasn’t it, cause otherwise she’d have lost her head and her case. Plus, he was so completely unnecessary. That entire subplot was pretty much irrelevant. Yeah. Don’t forget, too, that the problem wasn’t convincing Sparta to go to battle. They’re _Spartans_, fer chrissake; battle is their reason for living. It was the Carneia, and later the Spartans’ foolish provinciality (clearly shown in The 300 Spartans, BTW), that ultimately doomed Leonidas. What the point of Gratuitus was other than some unnecessary nookie and some campy dialogue, I haven’t a clue. > [@](#): > > So, it’s the defeat of Xerxes with but a single off-handed mention of Athens? Sparta may have won the battle, but Athens won the war. You’d think that deserved just a little bit, _somewhere_? But no. Yeah, and especially since in the comic, _Dilios himself_ announces the Athenian navy’s triumph to the Spartan army. I dunno…maybe inclduing this after Leonidas had called them “boy lovers” earlier would’ve created massive confusion in movie audiences. > [@](#): > > All in all, I give it a B-. Enjoyable, but not really worth the price of a full movie ticket. Melodramatic, and way too full of itself , it amounts to war-porn with a faux-intellectualism veneered on top. The cinematopgraphy and SFX were nice, but all in all, it felt like watching a puppet show. Actually, I’ve seen puppet shows which felt more real. Sounds about right to me. I gave it 5/10 on IMDB. What should’ve been glorified was Spartan _ideals_, not war. War is just a means to ensure that the ideals get to survive. > [@](#): > > The problem was that every time I got into the groove and started thinking, “Ok, this is just a crazy fiction thing.” They stopped killing, stood around, and started yakking like Shakespeare a Retarded Constitutional Scholars conventional. And then I started laughing. Some of it was made up, of course, but it was made worse by the marginalization of Dilios. You _have_ your big espouser and storyteller, USE him! Furthermore, he only tells stories when _not_ in the heat of combat, adding a bit of realism. This reminds me, actually, of the Hong Kong Initial D movie. What I wanted…what I _prayed_ for…was that everyone involved would be totally lazy and stupid. That means that we’d lots of racing action, incredible stunts, spectacular wrecks, and thrilling wheel-to-wheel sprints to the line, and _nothing else_. You’re cheapo Hong Kong cinema, for crying out loud. It’s not going to be deep. It’s not going to be intelligent. ANY attempt to follow the source material will result in loud complaints from the hardcore fans. Knowing this, why even try to include a tedious, treacly, preachy romance/prostitution story, turn Bunta into a useless drunkard, turn Itsuki into a good-for-nothing parasite, etc.? **Give us cars and mountains and racing** , dammit, and we’ll walk away satisfied! That’s exactly the way I felt with 300. All the politics, feminizing, fancy dialogue, philosophy, they’re just an annoying distraction from bodes being sliced in half and panicked soldiers tumbling into the sea. ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2008, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/300-ah-ok/440688/47 "2008-03-10T03:11:25Z")
[QUOTE=smiling bandit] Continuing in that vein, what was with mixing all the modern feminism in? Dude, WTF? That just doesn’t fit. Likewise all the blab about justice and freedom and reason. It freaking sounds like a militant libertarian convention in there! And not a bit of it makes any sense in the context of Sparta. [/quote] Actually the justice and freedom thing belongs in there. In Herodotus, following the murder of the Persian ambassador the Spartans send two of their own to Persia to act as a sacrafice to atone for what happened. On their journey the two Spartans stay as a guest in the home of someone who is friendly to them as well as a client of Persia. Their conversation goes something like this: Persian Client: Why do you not give Darius what he wants? You can see that I live a comfortable life and you could also live a comfortable life. Spartan: You have not tasted freedom and do not understand what it means to be free. We would be willing to do anything it takes to remain free for we could not bear to be slaves. We would even be willing to fight with axes if necessary. Within the context of Spartan society all the “freedom” talk make sense. Just remember that they’re not exactly talking about freedom for most of the helots. Or even freedom in the sense that we think about it today. Marc ---
**Author:** ![Baldwin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baldwin/32/7264_2.png) [@Baldwin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baldwin)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2008, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/300-ah-ok/440688/48 "2008-03-10T03:24:21Z")
[QUOTE=Tuckerfan] But if you think the film’s bad, you should see the **original** _The 300 Spartans_, which inspired Miller to create the comic book. I only made it about halfway through before I gave up. [/QUOTE] Actually, I own that movie, and wanted to specifically recommend it. Sure, it contains plenty of hokiness, but also: it gives a clear sequence of the political and military events involved; the Spartans are played by soldiers, so they move well in formation; and there’s beautiful location filming on the Greek coast. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2008, 12:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/300-ah-ok/440688/49 "2008-03-10T12:27:18Z")
This movie was just made for poking fun at. See my comments in an earlier thread.: “That’s not a hunchback…THAT’S a Hunchback!” “Either the Spartan Elders are in TERRIFIC shape, or else Leonidas just likes taking the Hardd Way.” “It’s convenient that they have a Bottomless Pit with no railing right behind where the Persian Ambassadors walk. It justifies the kid or two that accidentally falls in every year.” –and so on. MAD did a great parody of this. So, apparently, did Rifftrax (I have to get this.) But you can’t blame it all on the movie produiction team. He may not have had all the scimitar-handed Eunuch/Executioners and quadriplegic courtesans, but Miller’s Graphic Novel was itself crammed full of plenty of the overblown, over-the-top imagery that was so faithfully and lovingly transferred to the screen. ---
**Author:** ![Least\_Original\_User\_Name\_Ever](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e480ec/32.png) [@Least\_Original\_User\_Name\_Ever](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Least_Original_User_Name_Ever)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2008, 1:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/300-ah-ok/440688/50 "2008-03-10T13:08:33Z")
I didn’t read the comic book, but I dug the movie. I can see all the homo-eroticism in it, but it’s a guy movie. I liked it. I wish I would have seen it in IMAX and I still would. ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2008, 2:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/300-ah-ok/440688/51 "2008-03-10T14:21:59Z")
[QUOTE=MGibson] Actually the justice and freedom thing belongs in there. In Herodotus, following the murder of the Persian ambassador the Spartans send two of their own to Persia to act as a sacrafice to atone for what happened. On their journey the two Spartans stay as a guest in the home of someone who is friendly to them as well as a client of Persia. Their conversation goes something like this [/QUOTE] Now THAT I could get behind. That’s how people might have talked. Unfortunately, that’s not how they did talk in the movie. They were blabbing about Liberty in some freakish Anglo-Saxon vein, like Thomas Jefferson in leather hotpants. Ironically, that’s such a small change, but it makes a big difference. Just saying, “We are free men, and we’re going to kick your butt if you come over here.” would have been _fine_. But they didn’t do that. They started talking about Freedom like modern Amnericans, and that just irritated me. Edit to add: Basically, you could transplant their statements into any other movie: WWII, Revolution, Civil War, and it wouldn’t matter. That’s the problem here. ---
**Author:** ![jsc1953](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/5daacb/32.png) [@jsc1953](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jsc1953)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2008, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/300-ah-ok/440688/52 "2008-03-10T16:04:12Z")
[QUOTE=thwartme] The Rifftrax of “300” are the funniest thing I have seen all year. For anyone who’s seen it … “That is one angry cow.” I just about died laughing. thwartme [/QUOTE] Oh god, yes. “This is…a SPARKplug”. “This is…PART of a BALANCED BREAKFAST!” ---
**Author:** ![Mahaloth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mahaloth/32/1079_2.png) [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2008, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/300-ah-ok/440688/53 "2008-03-10T20:11:56Z")
[QUOTE=smiling bandit] Now THAT I could get behind. [/QUOTE] [Snicker]. Homoerotic movie. You said, “get behind.” [/Snicker] Anyway, I saw the movie on DVD and found it boring. I really was excited about it and wanted to like it. I’m not sure what it is that made it so bad, but it just never clicked for me. ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2008, 9:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/300-ah-ok/440688/54 "2008-03-10T21:09:54Z")
[QUOTE=CalMeacham] “It’s convenient that they have a Bottomless Pit with no railing right behind where the Persian Ambassadors walk. It justifies the kid or two that accidentally falls in every year.” [/QUOTE] Given the Spartan propensity to put their young ones to physical tests, they’d probably just figure that the ones who fell in weren’t nimble and conscious enough to be Spartans. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/300-ah-ok/440688.md?page=2)