Wikipedia is exellent. anything with a bias has a big warning at the top of the screen unlike any other type of book or website which keeps there bias hidden.
Except Fox which is like a Republican Pravda.
I was not impressed with 300. I am a big comic book geek but the battle scenes were bad ,there were millions of Persians and all you see were about 45 and that awful plot with the queen was put in by studio execs to appeal to women under 25. Changing movies based on focus groups is the worst idea ever. It was also way to homoerotic for my taste.
I went back and read the comic, looking for exact places where the movie strayed, and there were reletively few compared to other comic interpretations. in fact, I would almost say that it was the closest comic interpretation ever put to film. People said that silent hill sucked because it didn't make sense, but that was mostly because it followed the game to closely (a good thing).
As far as not showing the size of the battle - a 50mm lens can only show you a horizontal viewing angle of 40 degrees, and a verticle viewing angle of 27 degree's. you cannot fit more then 45 people on the screen at any given time unless your camera and lens are about a mile away from the scene, making it impossible to see any detail of what the main characters are doing.
and they did show millions, just as much as the comic - only in a very, very slightly different compasity. the only frame in the comic that showed the amount of troops was the scene of the hill covered in them as they marched forward. It looked like a lot - but so did the movies shot of the encampment spreading out over the horizon. slightly different structure, same effect.
You may say that the battles in the comic book had mor people "in the fray", as in each spartan was dealing with 5 guys, 7 arrows, and 3 chucked spears at every single moment. You cant do that in film. not uless you have it in slow motion the entire time, or you make it appear so cluttered and fast as to be cluttered and unrealistic. The
onlydifference beyond not having 30 spears and arrows on the frame at all times I saw as far as the actual battles go was the fact that the spartans were naked except for their capes and helmets in the comics. And the use of "super beings". and the fantasy swords the spartans were using. those swords were dumb.
they removed a lot of dilios's stories, wich I'm sure they did for pacing and character concentration. the scene with his wife before the march to the hot gates
was in the comic books, it was only referenced by one line "north. the
hot gates. this explains your
enthusiasm last night."
so that particular scene most certainly came from somewhere.
the oracle scene - look in the comic book. you see a girl in a slight sheet (nothing more). The exact lines preceding the frames in the comic are this - "the earth coughs up
vapors. the oracle
moans, swimming in trance."
If your going to complain about that scene - complain about it being taken to literally from the comic book. in the comic, it has 3 frames of the girl moving (still captured images showing no actually usable motions that could be transfered to film, only poses), and then her stating what the ephors had stated. The color scheme is in blue. If you look at the comic, you know that the girl is hopped up on methane fumes or whatever volcanic fumes they funneling to her, the scene is bathed in blue, and all you know is that she's moaning and "swimming in trance" - the only thing they could have done that would have been more "realistic" is to remove the effect they had, and just had her writhing around in blue light. keep in mind that they are all probably just a little messed up by the presence of whatever gas was having the effect on her.
and there are little differences that are simply not plausible to transfer to film - such as the pile of gold directly after that scene. leonidas could not have physically carried that much gold up the mountain. Simply not possible.
I'm looking at the book right now - there is 1 single frame describing the immensity of the persian army. the first wave and second waves in the movie lasted hours that were not shown. The amount shown in the movie is on par by reference to what was in the book. And hell, the first wave was done fantastically accurate to the comic. "
joined--fused--a single
creature--indivisible, impenetrable, unstoppable--we
push."
Most of the time in the comic, it looks like more men due to franks style of line work, it makes the image look cluttered and like there is more present then there actually is on further inspection. though there may only be 10 guys on the frame, it feels like 30 because of the amount of ink spattered in between and across them.
The one scene where I think they really innaccurately described numbers was the very last scene with the armadillo formation. in the comic, the first frame shows an obvious 300 spears, the second shows much, much, much less then that. so the comic was innacurate to begin with, but Its forgivable becuase the first frame with 300 was an "introductory" chapter frame. in the movie it looked more like 60, but was referenced as 300.
There was a lot of "superhumans" in the movie, men who were larger then life, giants and guys with.... You'll see (or have seen) what I'm talking about. no such thing in the comic. everyone was normal sized men. when frank miller wants his guys "larger then life", he makes them minute and marv size, around 7 to 8 feet tall, and built strong. not 12 feet tall.
as far as his wife and the council - dilios was not discussed after he left the spartan camp at the hot gates. nor was his meeting with the council, or how sparta and the rest of greece decided to join forces to fight the persians. in the comic it is just assumed that dilios was able to spur them into a combined effort.
The comic was very short as far as a feature film goes. They needed to fill space. For me, it showed that element of greece falling, and the idea that if spartan rule and law and ethics were left to die or be extinguished, then greece would make slaves of itself from the inside out without the need of xerxes armies. It showed that the council was easily swayed and convinced, wich just helped to polarize what was shown of sparta proper, and the rest of greece.
if they didnt have that (and the extended the heck out of ephialtes scene with xerxes), they would have had to either extend another set of scenes, or come up with another referenced storyline from the book to fill out the time scale for the movie. I think they could have done much, much, MUCH worse then they did.
