ow my eyesOriginally Posted by Desslock
Exactly. They may be right (and my recollections are the same as some of the others, Achilles being blond, et. al.) but I would never, ever, ever quote that Neo-Nazi trash if I was actually trying to butress an argument. What I think we have here is a case of "Google-itis", made harder by the fact that nothing on that page distinguishes itself from any number of bland school or historical society web pages. Only the url gives it away.
Sure is! He abandoned his old Grimoire website, and apparently the game too. Now he's working on... Civil Defense Commander!
I didn't know what kind of site it was. The name "stormfront" doesn't mean anything to me. I never heard of them.
I just googled "ancient greek complexion" and they came up.
Achilles being blond? Huh? Why do goofy and POPULAR movies bring us into Stormfront (good site btw, if you want to know what the opposition is doing) and then believing Achilles is blond? Achilles was Greek, maybe even Minoan, and defifinately not blond. Or Blonde or even brown. Just a herioc dude with black hair.
http://www.stormfront.org/forum/
I've read a lot of Aristotle and never run into this. I'm going to need something better than "natural laws manifest". He had over a dozen scientific treatises, many lost.
It's odd that almost every example being raised is of a fictional character. Helen, Achillies, Aphrodite...The mortals from an historic period before the Dorian migration replaced the Mycenaean domination of the Peloponnesus in the 7th century BCE.
(Alexander the Great was blond, by the way. Macedonian father, Epirote mother.)
In any case, a few blonds do not an Aryan appearance make. Greece was the crossroads of the Mediterranean for centuries before the setting of "300", and they didn't leave a lot of realistic colored art to work from.
Troy
How was he blonde? One good example.
It's generally accepted by historians that he was blond, though, to be honest, they aren't working from a hell of a lot.
There is a Macedonian mosaic of Alexander on a lion hunt which shows him as having fair hair.
The Issus Mosaic at Pompeii (considered a Roman copy of a Greek original) gives him brownish hair with a lot of yellow streaks in it.
In his biography of Alexander (probably working from the now lost Ptolemaic history), Plutarch notes that one then famous drawing of Alexander gives him a general complexion that is too dark, since the king had a "fair and light color" but with ruddiness in the face.
Of course, Plutarch then goes on to discuss how nice Alexander smells so make of that what you will.
Troy
Yeah, give him Greek and work out from there. The best translation you can get is that he had brown hair. He wasn't blond like Slavs or Germans...just lighter haired (brown) than most greeks.
And I guaratee you he smelled nice. <sniff> Oh, Alexander!
Plutarch goes on about how fragrant his sweat was - his clothes would smell like flowers when he took them off.
Subsequent research suggests that the Issus Mosaic could be the painting of Apelles that Plutarch is complaining about (it is often attributed to him) hinting that this brown is too dark.
But, yeah, it's a big leap from light brown/dirty-blonde to Norwegian supermodel. And a bigger leap from one guy to a national character.
FWIW, Richard Burton wore a blonde wig and Colin Farrell dyed his hair for their portrayals of Alexander. And we all know Hollywood wouldn't lie to us about something this important.
Troy
Saw it tonight. Visually amazing, but that isn't enough to carry the movie for me. The awful acting from pretty much everybody, terrible dialog, and useless meanwhile-back-in-Sparta subplot made this a waste. Even the fighting stuff got dull and sort of all blended together after awhile, because it was almost all the same and shot in the same style. Holy crap, they impaled that guy on a spear, what were the odds?
A couple of high points: putting in the (apparently historically accurate) "Then we shall fight them in the shade" and "Come and get them" one-liners. Also, that guy who played the captain, because he's great and he played the exact same guy in "Troy."
I dug it. The fighting scenes were spectacular and never wore thin for me. I would agree with the Rywill about the back at home base scenes and the Queen and Evil Politician's speeches were meh. However, it lulled me with its tedium enough to be caught totally offguard by the Queen's actions at the end (in case anyone still hasn't seen it). The acting did not bother me as it sorta fit the over-the-topness of it all, for me at least.
I must admit after the early sex scene it was worth going back to her to see how she had arrayed the bed sheet about her for the remainder of the scenes.
THis may have been talked about earlier, but I was irritated by the blood. Not the amount of it or the color or the spray, but the fact that it was all CG. I don't mind the comic book (excuse me graphic novel) treatment of the action sequences or the improbable stunts themselves, but the blood simply evaporating when it came in contact with the air, ground, what have you became irritating. They would have a spray visibly trace across the ground and then just dissapear. I would imagine it would have taken hundreds of gallons of blood placed in thousands of exploding blood packets for it to have come off in the impressive amounts that the battle produced, but it got on my nerves.
Perhaps this makes it easier for the producers to make the airline version, in which the blood can be replaced, Street Fighter II-style, with colorless "sweat".
Hey i have seen the movie now... my first thoughts after 15 min. or so where:
Whow! I thought Leni Riefenstahl was dead, silly me. She couldnt have made a better film for the führer.
Good looking übermenschen against the untermenschen... The action part was ok but all in all i can understand now why the iranians are upset with the movie.
They're just resentful because they are always willing to claim ties with Persia when convenient. It's as farcical as if the US government took offense on behalf of Native Americans who were portrayed as savage losers in a movie.
I was all on board about the Iranian government being full of shit about the film until the last monologue.
If that doesn't evoke "Islamic fascism*," I don't know what does. Combine that with the the incessant talk about free men and freedom this and I think there is a case. Well there is at least a case for the film projecting modern democratic values and current events on ancient Greece."This day we rescue a world
from mysticism and tyranny
and usher in a future brighter
that anything we can imagine."
From what I've come across, the Spartans were hardly the bastion of freedom in the ancient world. In some ways they were more free than Athenians but in other ways less.
Edit: Or at least Religious fascism.
Last edited by Mordrak; 04-15-2007 at 11:21 AM.
I dunno, actual Islamic fascism? This case for 300 being a subversive paeon to America and the war in Iraq is retarded. I have heard this argument brought up over and over, for a litany of films and more than just this war. This ranks in my mind as the biggest stretch yet. Ancient Greece, yo.
Most war films filmed by American studios are inevitably going to skew the protagonist of the film so that his/her/their/its political agenda reflects America's. That there happens to be a war occurring is mostly, or even totally, irrelevant. Hollywood makes war films when we aren't at war, nobody says anything. Coincidentally enough, the complaints only start when a war is currently happening. Even if, you know, the film was in production prior to the war or my favorite, the war in question is an historical one in x year, B.C.
Last edited by Bill Dungsroman; 04-15-2007 at 01:03 PM.
Believe me, this movie was ALL about fascism, but not the fascism of others.
And it was about Manowar. I even think this could well become the official Manowar movie.
Uh, no. You don't understand very well, and I suspect unwittingly picked up your "understanding" from the same sort of place you unwittingly found your reference.
"Fair skinned" and "fair haired" are quite relative terms. An ex girlfriend of mine was called "blonde" in Italy -- her hair was slightly lighter than mine: http://brass-golem.com/wp-content/th...r/my_photo.jpg
Doesn't anyone remember in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, Eli Wallach kept calling Clint Eastwood 'blondie'? The first time Lee Van Cleef sees Eastwood he refers to him as "A golden haired angel". Meaning is created dynamically.
Not only America's, but particularly skewed toward the viewpoint of those who made it. There's a difference between claiming that a historical war is about a current war (that the historical war is prophetic) and saying that the film recast it with modern themes and dilemmas. In this case, however lightly, it does touch on religious (mystical) fascism (tyranny) in contrast to Sparta's "free men."
It doesn't matter that it's Sparta and Persia. It could have been the Kingdom of Strawberry versus the Peaches' Palace. With the same dialog and emphasis, I would make the same conclusion. Iran is a little wacko to say it's propaganda that's aimed directly at them, but they wouldn't be far off in saying that is (probably unwittingly) propaganda aimed at theocracies like them.
However, if the comic emphasizes that as much as the film (dialog and all), then the argument is undermined. The comic came out in 1999, well before our hard on for Islamic-fascists.
Edit: The other thing to consider is the phrase, "usher in a future brighter than anything we can imagine." It's an odd phrase to end the film with. It implies the audience's present, because their present is the only post-battle future they would likely know (more or less). It would be pretty hard for a Spartan to imagine our present.
Last edited by Mordrak; 04-15-2007 at 09:36 PM.
Saw this on the weekend and yeah it was stylish, artsy, surrealistically over the top and the excess of gore and violence tickled my hypothalimus but as a movie it was a miserable failure.
The film generated so much unitentional laughter that it was worthy of the admission fee, but the 'well it's a comic book' defense is no defense at all. No comic book that I have ever read is this bad.
Yeah, but Manowar rocks and are the real deal (they play on 10 afterall); they could even kick 3 times the Spartan ass. A quick calculation makes that about 900 Spartans.And it was about Manowar. I even think this could well become the official Manowar movie.
Last edited by Myth; 05-07-2007 at 08:18 AM.
No, taller.
saw this tonight, and sorry, what a piece of shit.
Just had to double check that the king is indeed Scottish (he ish, sorry, is) which might forgive shome of the the connery impershonationsh.
And oh. My. God. If they didn't do the "Come home with your shield, or on it" line not half a second after I'd muttered to the Mrs "at least poster woman didn't say the shield line".
That it's based on a comic book really shows. Visually stunning (if not reminescient of both Gladiator and Troy) but so weak otherwise that when, at the end, the voice over or Faramir makes a comment about why they died we both looked at each other and shrugged our shoulders, I kept quiet just in case someone actually makes a half decent film about either thermopylae or re-writes that comic book with a decent enough script to turn into a movie.
Never thought I'd say this, but I'd actually rather watch Troy than sit through this again.
Final rant, if you're going to harp on about the importance of a Phalanx, at least form one and stay in it for 30 seconds or so. Sheesh, I really wanted to like this, but it just fails on so many levels, at least Troy has the comedy fight with Pitt and the Hulk.
Actually that was Eric Bana battling the Hulk (Big Ajax).
Oh wait, I get it. Duh.
I definitely wish they could have emphasized the phalanx more, especially after Leonidas was all about fighting in one, but of course showing one in action is probably not nearly as interesting as showing individual combat. Hell, in that notion, even Alexander is a better movie. If they had put equal emphasis that would be have been great, but instead you see little glimpses here and there of getting into formation or regrouping but really don't see much else (of course it also gets very repetitive).
--- Alan
I thought I'd wait for the Blu-ray edition but it was slow in coming, and then the Extremetech podcast warned me of encoding issues, so I got the DVD which is fairly cheap by now...
...and I'm glad I did. What a silly, silly movie. The overly stylized action scenes were fun, the rest was terrible. At less than two hours it's actually too long because there are already too many scenes that don't involve Spartans butchering Persians. Fairly cheaply made, too -- you get either close-ups of sweaty abs or obvious CGI shots of those ridiculous pseudo-Persian monster armies. Add the intentional graininess and strange colorization, and I don't think I'd even want to watch a hi-def version of this movie.
If you went in expecting a documentary, you were mislead.What a silly, silly movie.
I loved 300. Every second of it.
If you own the dvd for this (and liked MST3k) you owe it to yourself to get the Rifftrax for it.
Agreed.
Sword porn, with the same level of writing and acting as regular porn.
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