buddha1822 said:
Yea... I have high hopes for this movie. All of a sudden (tonight) I am excited for it again (even tho it is March 07 release). Looks so amazing.
I have a feeling that it has all of the right elements, especially Frank Miller's comics as guidance/inspiration... and hopefully Zack Snyder to push it into a very stylized and re-excitement of this so called "sword & sandal" epic. As herakles said, if it does as good as Gladiator - then perfect.
btw, herakles, what's Gate of Fire or 10,000? never heard of them?!
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Gates of Fire is novel by Steven Pressfield that is about the same event as in 300. I like the book better because as in all novels it has depth and detail (GRAPHIC and GORY)
Here is summary:
In Gates of Fire, Pressfield recounts the Battle of Thermopylae through Xeones, a Spartan squire and the lone survivor of the battle. At Thermopylae, the allied Greek nations deployed a small force of between four and seven thousand Greek heavy infantry against the invading Persian army, which Pressfield puts at 2 million (and could have been as many as five million, according to Herodotus, or three million, according to Simonides, though modern historians evaluating ancient sources and logistics determine that these are impossible figures and the exact size is unknown, but most modern historians believe it to be between sixty thousand and a quarter million). Leading the Greeks was a force of 300 Spartans -- all "sires," warriors chosen not only for skill, but also because they were fathers to male children, which would preserve their bloodlines after what was to be a suicide mission.
Thermopylae was chosen for its strategic location — a narrow pass bordered by a sheer mountain wall on one side and a cliff drop-off to the ocean on the other — to decrease the advantage of the Persian numbers, and to give the Greek allies enough time to ready a larger, main force to defend against the Persians.
Though critically wounded in the battle, the Persian King Xerxes orders his surgeons to make every effort to keep the captive squire Xeones alive, and in the book the squire relates the events of the battle, and those leading up to it, to Xerxes and his royal scribe as the Persian army advances toward Athens.
Much of the narrative explores Spartan society, the agoge — the military training program through which all Spartan boys must complete to become citizens, or Peers — and the heroics of several dozen Spartans, including their king, Leonidas, the Olympic champion Polynikes, a young Spartan warrior named Alexandros, and the Spartan officer Dienekes. Pressfield employs detailed descriptions of the Spartan phalanx in battle, as well as the superior training and discipline of the Spartan warriors.
10,000 by Mickeal Curtis Ford is about the Xenophon and the 10,000 Greek Mercenaries hired by Persian Prince Cyrus (just after the Peloponnesian war) to upsurp the Persian throne from his older brother. Cyrus gets killed and the Greek commanders are betrayed and murdered while the rest of the army is stuck in the middle of the Iraqi desert. Instead of just giving up the Greeks elect new leaders who in turn elect a CIC Xenophon. Xenophon leads the Greeks from Iraq North through the mountains to the Black Sea and accorss Northern Turkey back to Greece. This is TRUE story!!!
This book is my favorite behind Gates of Fire. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND BOTH or anything by both Authors who have several books on the GrecoRoman subject!
Here a the wikipedia links to the event of 10,000
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Thousand_%28Greek%29
