According to "300 sequel slays competition at US box office", 300: Rise of an Empire, which "depicts a sea battle between Greeks and Persians" (para. 4) in ancient Greece, was the most financially successful film shown in cinema's over the past weekend (2014). Although less successful than the earlier 300, the film was more popular than competitors, such as Mr Peabody & Sherman and "Liam Neeson's airborne action film Non-Stop" (para. 11), which earned the most last week.
First, I have to admit that it's Liam Neeson's action film that I'm looking forward to seeing. I often read fairly serious books, but my taste in films is more popular: I just want to be entertained, and fairly mindless action films do that very well. For example, I greatly enjoyed Liam Neeson's two Taken films, which really are pretty silly. I also liked his performance as Zeus in the films Clash of the Titans and Wrath of the Titans, but again, I don't think either of these were particularly great films. They were, however, fun, and that's all I want.
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| Artemisia armed and fighting |
Even if they do distort historical details a bit, or make revisions to what is already a story of doubtful historical accuracy, I think films like this serve a useful purpose apart from entertaining. They also bring an awareness of our cultural legacy to audiences who might not otherwise be aware of them, and this might inspire more people to learn more from the historical sources. They might even read Homer. Homer, I think, is the founding source of Western civilisation, which is now the world's civilization, and the historical events of the failed Persian (Eastern) conquest of the the West (Greece) related in the film in the battles of Thermopylae and Salamis have much to teach about the historical origins of such ideals as democracy and its conflict with the various forms of despotism. And they are fun.
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I have already seen this movie on saturday. It's make me curious and need to find out more details about Persian emperor named 'Xerxes', an immortal god king in this story. I just want to know that he is a real person or just one character that writer create him to be outstanding? Why he wears a weird costume like that? Overall, this movie make me impress and I enjoy the whole story because of graphic design, how smooth they run the story and it 's real for me. The best scene I won't forget is when Greek general named 'Themistocles' ride his horse and jump across many of broken war ships to getting closer the commander of Persian named 'Artemisia'.
ReplyDeleteI can now answer Kwang's question about Xerxes' costume.
DeleteAfter my class this morning, I met a friend at Paragon to celebrate his son's 7th birthday. After we'd enjoyed far too much food at MK, for which many animals were killed, Ea was keen to visit the toy department, followed by the BE Trend shop, which we usually visit to check out the latest DVD releases. He chose a cartoon I don't know, and a Discovery Channel series on dinosaurs. My choice was 300, which I had not previously seen. Given the fuss over 300: Rise of an Empire, which I discussed obliquely in my post above, I thought it was about time I saw it, and I do generally like Gerard Butler.
I've just finished watching 300, and I can assure you that neither Xerxes, who really was the historical Persian god king in the story, nor any other Persian king of kings would ever appear in public in the rather post-punk heavy metal style he and other Persian nobles are portrayed as wearing in this film.
Did I like it? It was fun, easy entertainment to relax with, which is really all I usually look for in films: lots of action, a little plot to hang it on, and some silliness to laugh at, such as the absurd costumes and some of the fantastic persons and other beasts, not excluding Xerxes, whose kinky dress seems straight out of a drug fuelled nightclub of the sexually experimental. And I mean fantastic in the original, literal meaning of this adjective = closest to def. 3 in the OALD, but really def. 1 in the OED = "Existing only in imagination; proceeding merely from imagination; fabulous, imaginary, unreal".
On the other hand, it isn't totally rubbish from the historical perspective. The presentation in some of the speeches between the despotic East drowning in mystery (such as Judaism, Christianity and Islam), and the Greek (Western) ideals of reason, democracy and justice has some basis in history, but it did seem very weird to hear Leonidas, as Spartan, praising reason and democracy - those were more things admired in Athens and other Greek cities than among the Spartans. If the get some people to learn a bit of the real history, that will be great - I hope, after seeing that amazingly costumed and implausibly behaving Xerxes that no one will think these films are reliable guides to history in more than the broadest way.
Fun, but not one of the great action films even, and definitely not to be taken seriously. I would recommend it for a couple of hours relaxation when you really don't want to think and can welcome a good laugh at some of the fantasy being passed off as history - but then, it was based on the comic book series, not the Greek historians and later classical scholars.
I'm looking forward to seeing the sequel.
I really like the 300 movies but my friend told me that the new one is not so good as he expected. But I want to watch it next week instead.
ReplyDeleteI also like Taken I because of it's story and Liam Neeson's performance. I don't like Taken II because it seems to me that the story is not well proceeded.
To Kwang, I think Xerxes is the real person according to Wikipedia but I have no idea about his costume. lol
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerxes_I
I like Book's idea to quickly check Wikipedia or Google. One of the great conveniences of modern life is that it's so easy to do this - and Wikipedia is generally very reliable, although not normally recommended as a source for academic work.
DeleteAnd to save a bit more trouble, Wikipedia also has a very useful set of tools, including a "Cite this page" tool to automatically generate correctly formed reference citations. If you do cite Wikipedia as a source, always use this tool, never try to write the reference citation yourself.
For example, Book looked at the article "Xerxes I", for which the URL is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerxes_I; however, when we click on the "Cite this page" tool in the left hand column, Wikipedia creates a new page listing "Citation styles for 'Xerxes I'". The first of these is the APA Reference style citation. APA is the style that Hartmann and we are using. Just copy and paste it into your list of reference citations - editing if needed. That's what I've done below. Note that the URL is not the same as the one that Book gave: it is a URL to the archived version of the page as it was when we retrieved it, so your source won't go out of date.
Reference
Xerxes I. (2014, March 11). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 00:32, March 12, 2014, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Xerxes_I&oldid=599202125
And I agree with Book about the Taken films - the first one is definitely better.
DeleteI haven't seen either 300 yet - I'm hoping both will shortly appear together in the Mangpong shop at Paragon. I usually prefer to watch films in the comfort of my home, in the the DVD version.