If you want a good great book(novelization, but historically acurate) read Steven Pressfield’s Gates of Fire

It is written from the POV of a “squire” who was among the Spartans.

I loved both this book and Miller’s. The movie is just freaking AWSOME as the kids these days would say.

“My gosh, fight for your freedom, you don’t say, how does my hair look, should I get my rectum bleached?”

See the movie, it will inspire the American inside of you!

If 300 is gay, it’s my kind of gay… The pro-freedom, pro-military, ass-kicking, curb-stomping, West-defending kind of gay.

Lehosh on March 13, 2007 at 2:55 PM

Plataea was a tremendous greek victory, and the Spartans put their full force into effect there, but it was such an overwhelming victory that it seemed almost anticlimactic. Historians doubt the numbers again, but the “dramatic” numbers were 110,000 Greeks vs. 300000 Persians. 159 Greeks were killed, 257,000 Persians.

Like I said, those are the “dramatic” numbers. Some say over a thousand Greeks perished, or there were less than 100,000 Persians, but the most consistent (if not always most accurate) reports trend toward larger Persian numbers.

The Persian survivors were set up by Alexander as they fled and nearly all were killed, pretty much ending Persia’s interest in Greece.

Part of Persia’s problem was – lightly armored, fast moving troops with light bows are GREAT in Persia and India against peasants and farmers.

But against heavily-armored Hoplites in any numbers, they’re like water over stone. It’s like small arms against tanks, the Persians had massive numbers, but not massive enough.

I’m probably over-emphasizing Spartans here, Athenians, Thespians, Corinthians, and many, many others fought and kicked enormous amounts of ass at Plataea.

(Zulu Dawn (1979) was actually the “prequel” about the disastrous Battle of Isandlwana. Disastrous for the British, and only a Pyrrhic victory for the Zulus.)

Valley of Tears – October 9-10, 1973. Avigdor Kahalani’s 77 Regiment of the 7th Armoured Brigade, North Israel.

Turned back a force of 1200 Syrian armored vehicles. By the end, the Syrians, with Russian night-vision equipment the Israelis didn’t have, stormed the Israelis at night. The Israelis ended up in close combat – in tanks at extreme close range. Their superior mobility allowed them to hit the Syrian tanks in their vulnerable rears AFTER the Syrians had broken through the lines.

On the last day, the Israelis had six tanks left, and the Syrians were about to wipe them out – but 15 more Israeli tanks roared onto the battlefield. The Syrians assumed they were the first of many reinforcements and withdrew, but in fact they had been repaired behind the lines and were being brought back into service by volunteered and injured soldiers.

At that moment, those men were the last line of defense in Northern Israel, and the Syrian miscalculation may have actually saved Israel.

That’s the way the story was told to me, anyway. Make a great movie! Close Tank Combat!

I’ve noticed that there’s a general tendency among modern academics to discount the accomplishments of the ancients. There are those who, however implausibly, number the Persian army at less than 200,000, despite all accounts.

2 million is not impossible, given the resources Xerxes had at his command, and contemporary accounts list the “support staff” in extraordinary numbers. The 2 million included the naval forces as well.

There are no doubt many “inaccuracies,” but this is not being pushed as a documentary. I believe accurate history CAN be made into good cinema, but I don’t believe that’s the only kind of cinema.

Think of this movie as an emotional polemic, just coming from a different perspective than almost all Hollywood emotional polemics.

From what I’ve seen, I’m thoroughly on board with this style, and I would love to see a “prequel” about Marathon, an equally amazing battle.

To make the trilogy philosophical rather than historical, you could have the third movie about Salamis or Guagemala, or Artemisium.

In fact, the same kind of style could be adapted with great success with other similar battles such as Agincourt, Bannockburn, or for that matter Camerone (62 Legionnairs vs. 2000 Mexican troops), Rorke’s Drift (139 vs. 6000 Zulus), Long Tan (108 vs. 2500 NVA), Pervomaika (10 Russian GRU with light arms against 400+)…

Chosin, I think, hasn’t been movie-ized. SOmething like 13,000 US/Commonwealth troops against about 360,000 (22 divisions) Chinese troops in 1950. The US forces knocked 7 divisions completely out during that engagement.

The Warsaw Ghetto uprising would make a great movie.

‘Tis a pity he recycled one scene twice in the video, though.

This movie can’t be gay because it totally gave me wood…

I think the next battle in the series was at a place called…Marathon.

And you would be…wrong.

Marathon took place a generation before Thermopylae…in fact, Xerxes’ attempted conquest of Greece was revenge for his father, Darius’ defeat at Marathon.

There were two major battles following Thermopylae, both of which saw the Persian forces get their asses decisively handed to them by first the Greek navy at Salamis, and then by the fully-assembled Greek army at Plataea.

Seriously, they should consider doing a trilogy of these, or maybe a trilogy + a prequel for Marathon.

Who wrote the tune? Sounds a bit like Tool, but that may just be me projecting.

That’s the DOOM 3 theme by Chris Vrenna, formerly of Nine Inch Nails and currently of Tweaker.

Um… You might want to put a content warning with that video for the blood and boobies, Allah.

What boobies? Did I miss that?

How does it compare to the “300″?