Marvin wrote:But that's just me. For the record I thought the scene in King Kong where Kong fought a bunch of T-rex's was just about the greatest scene in cinematic history. That's the sort of stuff I could only dream about when I was a kid.
Good bloody stuff.
The only thing I disliked about the T-Rex fight in King Kong was that they kept going after the girl. Why would humongous dinosaurs care about such a little meal?
One point I am swayed on is that the film portrays that the fall of Greece (and freedom?) would be a tragedy for the ENTIRE WORLD. As if the rest of the world doesn't matter and all of our "advances" have come via the Greek civilisation.
Well, I would say that it's good greece survived, but it's not like that would've been the end of Greece.
Obviously, Greece was destroyed eventually, and I think it's very hard to say that there's any one part of history is integral to the creation of civilization. Or that greece would've been subdued by the persians without the sacrifice of the spartans - athens was sacked and burned, and that didn't stop it from having a post-persian impact on greek culture. The stand of the (actually around 7000) greeks, who included 300 spartans, was an early attempt to stop the advance, for all I know it would've worked if the persians hadn't gained the passes.
I'm a little surprised that Sparta was chosen as atheist. I'm fairly sure that atheism/deism was only present during Hellenic greece, around and after the pellopenesian war, and only among the elite of athens. A time of luxury and overindulgence, by the way.
The Roman Empire is said to decend from the Greek ways, and there are many similarities between it and the Persian Empire (everyone is welcome, as long as you submit to the will of the state, or the boss). One is as bad/good as the other IMHO!
Nah, Rome as a conqueror was far better at public works type stuff, and getting its conquered territories on its side (it phailed at that later but integrated earlier peoples in very effectively).
IMO I don't think anyone takes 300 as a good reason to kill black people or iranians or whatever, and it wasn't supposed to be historical.
I've mentioned it elsewhere, but there is an interesting book called "The Years of Rice and Salt" by Kim Stanley-Robinson. It's an alternative (theoretical!) history of the the last 1000 years, imagining what would have happened if Europe had ceased to be an influence. While not perfect, you can tell the author has done a bit of research into science, medicine and technology from central Asia etc. A lot of this stuff was around a long time ago, but for various reasons was kept secret, or we only learn about it as a "western" invention.
But at the same time, I'm pretty sure Rome was the first place where stuff like highways, aqueducts, slaves in the upper levels of society AKA servants (chinese slaves were always put to work in pubic works type styff), etc really developed. Also, industrialism, though much later, was literally destined to start in England; the only eastern country which had similar geological motivations for industry was Japan, which wasn't pushed into the modern era until after industrialization had started.
Comparing east and west advances is IMO wrong. Both had their impact.
The concept of East vs. West may be as old as civilization itself, seemingly, but that does not justify anything. The fact remains that the Persians are portrayed as authoritarian, strange, foreign, invasive, and contrary to everything that the West seems to stand for. The Spartans, on the other hand, are heroic, brave, democratic, and ultimately made to appear sympathetic because they defend liberty and tradition. Franky, while the film is visually stunning and the fight scenes are incredible, it's propaganda to a disturbing degree.
Not to mention that all those characteristics apply to Sparta. The dorians (ruling class of sparta) conquered the region of Laconia from the native ionians (who you find in Athens) and enslaved the survivors (basically).
I still enjoyed the movie.
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