300's Sequel Stars The Bad Guy
- Thread starter vansau
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Oh joy, more Frank Miller insanity. 300 was enjoyable in a "watch tons of dudes get killed" way, but let's face it, Frankie hasn't been good since he finished writing The Dark Knight Returns. Yes I know Sin City also exists, but I don't care. I hate this grim and gritty nonsense he ushered in. Yeah Alan Moore contributed to it, but you have to remember that Moore's contribution to the rise of "grim and gritty" was friggin' Watchmen.
You could do a good movie about Xerxes, but not set in that universe/version of things. It's a matter of timing and what story you tel about him. The way to really make him more sympathetic would be to say tell the story of him uniting that empire to begin with, and the good that came of it and it's conquests... even if we side with the Greeks and support his empire ending given that we have hindsight behind us, and the origins of our own civilization, it is a matter of perspective.
It's short of like how Ghengis Khan and Kubla Khan are presented as being bad guys traditionally for obvious reasons, but you could definatly do some interesting things with them in their own enviroment before the events that lead to their villain status.
I'll also say that the Persians didn't really do anything paticularly bad in 300 overall. Understand it's a war, we were on the side of the greeks. Xerxes wanted Greece, he was a conquerer. He tried to take it relatively peacefully through bribery and failed, he then moved in and tried to conquer it. He's holding his empire together through his personal charisma and perceived invincibility so any kind of serious diplomacy on the spot isn't really viable if he doesn't want to seem weak to those he's commanding.
The Persians slaughtered villages and such, but that's just what a real war is like. The Greeks and especially the Romans were just as brutal in their own offensive wars. Alexander The Great wasn't exactly known for being a nice guy in war, on some levels he's the Greek version of Xerxes.
It's short of like how Ghengis Khan and Kubla Khan are presented as being bad guys traditionally for obvious reasons, but you could definatly do some interesting things with them in their own enviroment before the events that lead to their villain status.
I'll also say that the Persians didn't really do anything paticularly bad in 300 overall. Understand it's a war, we were on the side of the greeks. Xerxes wanted Greece, he was a conquerer. He tried to take it relatively peacefully through bribery and failed, he then moved in and tried to conquer it. He's holding his empire together through his personal charisma and perceived invincibility so any kind of serious diplomacy on the spot isn't really viable if he doesn't want to seem weak to those he's commanding.
The Persians slaughtered villages and such, but that's just what a real war is like. The Greeks and especially the Romans were just as brutal in their own offensive wars. Alexander The Great wasn't exactly known for being a nice guy in war, on some levels he's the Greek version of Xerxes.
Are you even vaguely serious?OutrageousEmu said:
Let's imagine you went to see Downfall, and instead of Hitler committing suicide in his bunker, a younger, muscular Stalin personally kills Hitler when he knocks him off his giant Tiger tank with a single grenade. Because that would basically be the modern day equivalent of 300.
Now imagine said someone wanted to make a sequel to this.
pfft...and Hollywood says the Assassin's Creed movie will fail...Also, and I know I'm a noob for thinking this but, I thought Immortal was a spiritual successor to 300. This movie just sounds a bit unnecessary but hey, however Hollywood feels it'll make money...
They...they do realise Artemisia was a place not a person right? Thats kind of why it was called the Battle of Artemisium. Because thats where it was, not thats who started it.
And why is Themistocles in it? His false side-switch to trick the Persians into battle was Salamis not Artemisium...
And why is Themistocles in it? His false side-switch to trick the Persians into battle was Salamis not Artemisium...
It's hard to say that this is going to be good without that small core of real historical epicness that surrounded the first film, but hey this film hasn't been made yet, lets wait and see
As far as the conversation on Frank Miller goes I feel that this point cannot be emphasized enough. This was a movie so awful that even Scarlet Johansson and Samuel L. Jackson (dressed up as a Nazi no less; for some reason) could make it watchable.vansau said:
I'm not being passive aggressive towards you at all. I didn't say you complained about it not being depicted realistically. Other people made that comment, and it was more of my commentary towards them that made it appear in my response to you. It's pretty strait forward in the accounts that do exist, such as the one found in the book, "50 Battles That Changed the World". Also, as another poster pointed out, they were defending a retreat. That clearly didn't happen in the movie 300. Nor was Persia's armies filled with mutants and freaks. Also, Spartans were not supermen as they are mostly depicted as the movie. Nor do they talk about a mutated man who survived Spartan Eugenics, only to help the Persians overcome them. What more clear separation would you need for this to be considered separate from history?The_root_of_all_evil said:
I didn't question your knowledge of any subject. Just because it's based on real events does not mean that it is not a work of fiction, such as is the case with Maus. It is based on Art Spiegelman's fathers life. But, it strays into a work of artistic fiction when the Jews are depicted as Mice and the Nazi's as cats. If this were not intended, then why did he not just depicted his fathers life with people instead of animals? But, I'm not afraid to say that it kept events much closer to reality than the movie version of 300 did.
All events based off of any 300 spinoffs/sequels are going to be grounded in that movie/comic universe, and not at all grounded in real time. As it was never intended to be, even in Miller's 300 comic.
Also, I don't know if you actually know anything at all about writing Fiction, but the best fiction is based off of real life. That doesn't make it non-fiction, it's still fiction, even if it's based off of the Holocaust or 9/11. I would suggest, if you are interested, that you read novel called, "The First Circle". It's a complete work of fiction but one of the novels by Solzhenitsyn that won him a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970.
Also, in response to your responses by ChupathingyX, do you take Odysseus as reality? Or do you believe the the aliens from Dr. Who are real? In regards to Holy Terror, that is still fiction, even if it's based on real world views. Heroes in comic books exist to dispatch justice where normal people and the authorities cannot. Captain America fought Hitler in his earliest incarnations because normal people could not stand alone against Nazi forces. In reality, people would love to fly to the rescue of a bunch of miners in South America using their super powers to save them. But they can't, so they are offered fantasies where there are beings that can, and they read them because they like to read about a world like that. None of that defies what is meant by the concept of a fiction "universe".
I was very disappointed that the movie industry focused on making this obtuse retardation of the story instead of the real deal. Michael Mann's project "Gates of Fire" got frozen in limbo due to hollywood politics. The battle of Thermopylai is vastly more epic and fascinating than what this "300" movie portrayed. Before I get called out as a "troll", I do know this movie was based on a comic book by Frank Miller, and is only vaguely inspired by history. But the choice was still made. "Gates of Fire" put on hold, "300" made instead. Probably because I know and love the real history, I hated this movie.
But I was prepared for the fictional nature of the movie. I was just watching it as any other movie. Judging the movie on its own merits as a comic-based movie, let me explain my impression of the movie:
It's like a historical action movie directed by Uwe Boll, starring Chuck Norris, Dolph Lundgren, Hulk Hogan, Steven Seagal and Jenna Jameson.
But I was prepared for the fictional nature of the movie. I was just watching it as any other movie. Judging the movie on its own merits as a comic-based movie, let me explain my impression of the movie:
It's like a historical action movie directed by Uwe Boll, starring Chuck Norris, Dolph Lundgren, Hulk Hogan, Steven Seagal and Jenna Jameson.
At a guess, he thought the idea of starved people being forced to dig their own graves before being covered in quicklime would be upsetting, and it's an analogy rather than a re-telling.Baresark said:
But the Universe is undefined. It's only defined as our universe, unless Miller says differently at the time. That makes the entire "300" universe a Mary Sue.
You could look. There's quite a large amount of evidence to say that I've been writing fiction for decades.
They are a fictional reality based off of ours. Commonly known as stories. There is no such thing as the Odysseus Universe, and the Whoniverse has been defined strongly due to episodic content.
300 touches on neither of these. Neither does Holy Terror. It just borrows from ours when it feels like it.
You're not going to fly down a mine with ease.
Do you actually like fiction? Because you put it across as it's just a crutch for the weak.
It does when the definition of the universe is "Whatever seems cool". That's the Universe of Lucas and Bay.
Let's take a relevant example: Clash of the Titans (1981) vs (2010)
Both based in our reality. Both around similar times to 300. Both with fantastical elements in. Both with Kraken, Zeus and Medusa; fictional characters.
Why is '81 much more respected than '10?
Simple. 2010 took the idea of what is "cool" and made the Greeks into Atheists, denying the God's existence.
It took our universe (which can contain fantastical/fictional things - look at Santa Claus and Man-flu) and altered a very fundamental rule, without seeing things through.
'81 CotT knows that the entire story hinges on Heroes versus Gods, in fact Zeus's final message states that.
'10 CotT makes them all disbelieve from the start, thus shattering the battle.
That's because the 2010 version used it's own "Universe". It's not a catchword for franchise or IP. It is the way things relate to each other.
300 doesn't have a Universe of it's own. It just has ours with cool bits dotted in.
As does Miller's Batman, Holy Terror or Sin City. That's why he's a hack. Because the only canon that exists that he can draw on is ours. Unless it's a woman, then she's a whore.