Frank Miller's '300' [Spartans] to be filmatized

[Zuffox]

I thought of myself to be pretty acquainted with Frank Miller's comics, but somehow I've managed to miss his 300 comic - probably since it wasn't shown at Play.com's store, when I had my Frank Miller obsession.

To sum up the story:

Shot using the same green screen techniques that brought Miller's 'Sin City' to life last year, '300' revolves around the Battle of Thermopylae, in which King Leonidas (Gerard Butler) and 300 Spartans took on the might of Xerxes and his massive Persian army.

- Source

An infamous trailer has also surfaced, although the people behind the movie have done their best to have it removed again from the sites showing it for some reason. I did, however, manage to get a link to it, and in case this movie picks at your curiosity, and the trailer gets removed, just PM me. I don't really see how they would want to remove the trailer, since it's pretty darn cool. Perhaps they've scrapped some of the scenes from it or something.

To me, this is a f****** interesting project; think about it, either it will lure movie-goers with the Frank Miller caption, or it will attract the attention of those familiar with the story of the 300. I myself love both so to me, Frank Miller's hit the jackpot.

I'll go ahead and buy the book, when it's available in hardback from Play.com or Amazon.co.uk.

More about the - amazing and authentic - story here for those of you who don't know about the tale here.

*edit* The trailer has been removed, so PM me if you want to get a look at the trailer

 

[Eli]

Let me guess, the movie will show us how 300 Spartans defeated half a million Persians, right?

 

[Zuffox]

Let me guess, the movie will show us how 300 Spartans defeated half a million Persians, right?

I haven't read the book - yet - so I don't know if that will be the main focus of the movie, but we'll undoubtably see something of the like.

 

[Zuffox]

Some behind the scenes material involving the sculpting and creation of the various - supernatural - creatures here.

Obviously, the movie/book isn't going to follow the authentic story very meticulously.

 

[sydhe]

Let me guess, the movie will show us how 300 Spartans defeated half a million Persians, right?

My money's on the Persians.

 

[Panda]

I think this just might be worth the wait

 

[Volum]

Bah, whats the point of seing a movie where you already know the ending? If i was makeing a movie of the Battle of thermopylae i would have the Greeks win it, just have Keanu Reeves come in there and kick ass.

 

[Verbose]

Bah, whats the point of seing a movie where you already know the ending? If i was makeing a movie of the Battle of thermopylae i would have the Greeks win it, just have Keanu Reeves come in there and kick ass.

Well, Miller's story revolves around 300 Spartans being so bad-ass, while being Free Men about to embark on an Era of Greatness (Gods knowing how they knew that, and leave democracy to the Athenians), unlike these greasy oriental slaves they're facing, that they put an allmighty fear in the Great King and his sea of human debris.

And then it ends the night before Plataia, when the Persians know this time it won't be 300 of these guys, but 10.000.

Pretty evocative.

Not too sure I approve of the 19th century kind of putting-down of the Persians Miller engages in though. The Greek, Herodotus at least, knew that their glory was the greater for presenting the Persians as brave and virtuous, with this one fatal flaw giving the Greek victory.

 

[Rambuchan]

I myself love both so to me, Frank Miller's hit the jackpot.

I'm with you there! And for the same reasons. More Frank Miller please!

Bah, whats the point of seing a movie where you already know the ending?

To see how it is told and what that says about the society that produced it?

I vaguely recall that Herodotus wrote of this same battle. But I might be wrong here. Whether I am or not is beside the point I hope to make. Herodotus wrote of the battle by placing a certain respect and value in what the Spartan Greeks stood for. Miller does similar in his telling. It's all about the context in which it is being told, for no history is merely just an enquiry into a sequence of chronological events from the past. They are all posited in, defined by and loyal to the social, cultural and ideological contexts in which they are told.

By the way, what tellings are there of this event from the Persian perspective?

 

[steviejay]

I can't wait for the film to come out. I'm really excited about it. And please, this is a movie based on a comic, I'm only thinking of it as such, take your 'historical inaccuracies' and go watch The Bridges of Maddison County or something if you're really bothered by the details

 

[Zuffox]

By the way, what tellings are there of this event from the Persian perspective?

From what I could find googling "persian sources thermopylae":

Ctesias of Cnedus who, as mentioned earlier, was Artaxerxes Mnemon's personal physician wrote a history of Persia according to Persian sources that unfortunately has not survived, and gives 800,000 as the total number of the original army that met in Doriskos. Modern scholars have proposed different numbers for the invasion force, estimations based on knowledge of the Persian military systems, their logistical capabilities, the Greek countryside, and supplies available along the army's route, especially water.

There are two schools of thought about the size of the Persian army. The critical school assumes that the figures given in ancient texts are exaggerations on the part of the victors, and a critical analysis of the resources available to the armies of the ancient era. According to this school of thought, the Persian force was between 60,000 and 120,000 combatants, plus a collection of non-combatants (especially large because of the presence of the Persian king and high-ranking nobility). More recent scholarship generally accepts these numbers, agreeing that the Persian force had an upper limit of around 250,000 total land forces. The main reason most often given for these values is cited as a lack of water; Sir Frederick Maurice,[92] a British general in World War I, was among the first to claim that the army could not have surpassed 175,000 due to lack of water. This school of thought is predominant today among Western scholars of the Greco-Persian wars.

The other school of thought, prevalent in the 19th and early 20th centuries, contends that ancient sources might be exaggerating in some aspects, but do give realistic numbers. Calculating the size of the two forces by relying on the surviving ancient texts yields the following analysis: The Greeks managed at the end of the campaign in the battle of Plataea to muster a force of 110,000 troops (according to Herodotus) or 100,000 (according to Pompeius). These were 38,700 hoplites and 71,300 light troops according to Herodotus (or 61,300 according to Pompeius, the difference probably being 10,000 helots, see table below). In that battle, according to Herodotus, they faced 300,000 Persians and 50,000 Greek allies. This gives a 3 to 1 ratio for the two armies which proponents of the school consider a realistic proportion since individually the Persian archers were no match for the heavily armed Greek hoplites. Furthermore, Munro[93] and Macan.[94] argued for this point of view based on Herodotus giving the names of 6 major commanders and 29 μυρίαρχοι (muriarxoi) - leaders of the baivabaram, the basic unit of the Persian infantry, which numbered about 10,000 strong [95][96] [97] As troops were lost through attrition, the Persians preferred to dissolve crippled baivabarams to replenish the ranks of others.[98] It is likely that the units were at full strength, since Xerxes, upon leaving Greece after the battle of Salamis, had taken with him a large part of the army, 60,000 according to Ctesias,(though Beloch believes that Xerxes very few of his troops with him) and the remaining troops would have been folded together into full-sized units. Adding casualties of the battles and attrition due to the need to guard cities and strategic passes a force of 400,000 seems like a minimum, based on analysis of the surviving texts. According to that view lack of water is not the determining force. The available surface water in Greece today satisfies the needs of a much larger population than the number Xerxes' troops, though the majority of that water is used for irrigation.

From what it reads, it seems to me that the Persian sources are lost - although Artaxerxes Mnemon's personal physician seems to be one left, however a secondary, if not tertiary or worse, and not a primary one - and that the literary sources are ones such as those of Herodot.

 

[Verbose]

By the way, what tellings are there of this event from the Persian perspective?

None.

It's all Greek narrative, and Herodotus at that. (There are fragments of alternative narratives about things like the battle of Marathon, with gods bestriding the earth to aid the Athenians etc. But it's just fragments.)

It's Greek all the way to the point where Aischylos wrote a whole tragedy "The Persian Women" (that would be a fair translation into English I think), which means a Greek representing to other Greek how the shock and consternation over this defeat should have played out among the Persians as news of it is brought back. A nice piece of Greek wish fulfilment...

Really, we know very well how the Greek wanted to represent events, and we know how they would have liked the Persians to understand it all, we just have no idea what the Persians thought about things.

What's left of Herodotus in Miller is the insitance that the Greek aquire the virtue necessary to prevail by being free men, only subject to their laws, while the flaw in the Persians, and their allies, is that they are ruled by a despot.
If the despot is a good man it could work out, but being placed in the position of a despot by necessity will make the ruler turn hubristic, and then divine punishment of him and all his subjects follow.

The tragedy of the Persians in Herodotus is that they are individually noble and virtuous, but realise that as subjects of a despot, they will be going down to the Greek.

It's actually a major feature in Heredotus to mete out praise and blame on an individual level — the point of history being to keep the memory of great and ignoble deeds of individuals alive, fighting death and forgetfulness that way (very Greek) — this to the Persians as well as the Greek.

And that's conspiciously missing in Millers narrative, where the only "person" on the Persian side is the Great King Xerxes, thinking himself superhuman.
That's consistent with Herodotus, but he also had sympathy for the rest of the Persians et al. who mostly come across as a faceless mass in Miller.

Partly I think it may be because we today have problems relating to conflicts and killing between two parties viewed as roughly equal. The Greek never did graps ideas about "good" and "evil" in the post-Christian sense we still tend to think about conflicts in.

War was glorious to the Greek. The point of politics was to fight them, preferably winning. But Miller would have a hard time explaining actual Greek conceptions of warfare and enemity as a form of social relationship, where the point was always to prove your superiority, but traditionally never to destroy your adversary.

 

[Verbose]

From what I could find googling "persian sources thermopylae":

From what it reads, it seems to me that the Persian sources are lost - although Artaxerxes Mnemon's personal physician seems to be one left, however a secondary, if not tertiary or worse, and not a primary one - and that the literary sources are ones such as those of Herodot.

Ctesias of Cnidus (Knidos) was Greek, and as with a lot of things what has come down to us is a brief reference in a later compilers work.

What we get from actual Achmaenid sources is a number of official inscriptions, an incomplete set of bare statements. What we lack is Persian narrative and interpretation, which was exactly the strong point of the Greek.

 

[Rambuchan]

Thanks for the responses to the question

What we get from actual Achmaenid sources is a number of official inscriptions, an incomplete set of bare statements. What we lack is Persian narrative and interpretation, which was exactly the strong point of the Greek.

 

[Zuffox]

An official trailer has surfaced.

It doesn't showcase much, but it certainly picks at your curiosity.

 

[TrailblazingScot]

Let me guess, the movie will show us how 300 Spartans defeated half a million Persians, right?

All the Spartans will speak like Texans.

 

[Zuffox]

I once read that it wasn't correct that the Spartans wore uniforms, since they had to make their own armour, thus making them unique. I only know that this was the case for the Athenian hoplites, but was it also true for all other branches of Ancient Greece?

 

[steviejay]

from my understanding the armour was all unique to the Spartan but all had the similar characteristics of the red cloak and long(ish) hair to other soldiers at the time but I may be wrong

 

[Tathlum]

Let me guess, the movie will show us how 300 Spartans defeated half a million Persians, right?

The Persians won. With the 300 spartans were 300 helots, 400 Thebans and 700 Thespians. The 300 Spartans are remembered and glorified due to their discipline and stoic bravery. The other Greeks were quite justifiably terrified. Only the Spartans held them together long enough to fight at all.

The Spartans played up their macho image. For example, when the Persian archers opened fire, someone commented on how the arrows would blacken out the sun. Hearing this one of the Spartans is supposed to have said something like "Excellent news, if the Medes hide the sun, better for us. We can fight in the shade".

from my understanding the armour was all unique to the Spartan but all had the similar characteristics of the red cloak and long(ish) hair to other soldiers at the time but I may be wrong

And a shield with lambda on it. (upside down v).

I would love to see a film of this even. Especially the the "Molon labe" line.

 

[Zuffox]

And a shield with lambda on it. (upside down v).

Do you know what the lambda stood for? Leonidas perhaps?