wats better this or 300

It depends on what you would consider better? If your looking for something a with a little more historical accuracy, then "The 300 Spartans" is the way to go. If your looking for mindless violence and cartoonish characterization of events in bold sepia tones and loud digitally mastered sound, then "300" will be your cupo of tea.

Personally, I'm waitng for Stephen Pressfield's book, <u>Gates of Fire</u> to be made into a film.

They are two different movies with two different interpretations based on the same event. I enjoyed both for different reasons. People are going to dislike the 1962 version simply because it's over 40 years old. Believe it or not, there were good movies before CGI. People are going to dislike the 2007 version simply because it's new. Believe it or not, just because it's CGI heavy, doesn't mean it's a bad movie. As far as the historical "errors," this is an event that happened 2500 years ago. People are arguing about exactly who did what to who in Iraq, and that started just four years ago.

Ok. Here's the deal. Yes, both movies are "sort of" about the same event. But the main thing to keep in mind is that THEY ARE NOT AT ALL THE SAME MOVIE. 300 is based off of a comic that was loosely based off of a historical event. 300 Spartans is based on the actual event. It's like asking which is better, X-Men or any other movie involving the oppression of a given group.

Personally, I prefer the 62 film...and i'm only 25 so not that old.

They both have different things to offer but I wasn't into the comic book style, especially the visuals, of 300. I like comic book films but would have preferred a more 'realistic' version of the events at Thermopylae.

The main plot of The 300 Spartans and the character portrayals therein are probably more accurate than those in 300 (although having a bunch of white guys running around in 300 Spartans and calling some of them "Persians" is completely inaccurate). However, The 300 Spartans was trying to give an accurate portrayal of the events at Thermopylae, whereas 300 was much more about style and the subtle elements underlying the plot, such as what it means to be a Spartan and the burden of the storyteller (or at least that's how it came across to me). I think 300 achieves its goal better, and, further, I think it's more entertaining.

Here's what bothers me about The 300 Spartans:

1. The love stories. It's been mentioned before, but I'm mentioning it again. If you went back to ancient Sparta, I'm telling you that you wouldn't find much of anything to make a love story out of. The Spartans were tough, the Spartans were warriors, and the Spartans barely had time for women, anyway. They had wives so that they could have a son, and that was pretty much it. I'm not going to say that the Spartans were necessarily "too tough for love"...but they probably were too tough to be talking about it, and they certainly wouldn't have spouted all that sappy lovey-dovey nonsense in the movie. It bugs the crap out of me that moviemakers think they have to turn stories about war into stories about war AND love...it ruins movies, and it didn't help this movie at all. It was incredibly fake and incredibly off-putting, and the only people who would like it would be silly teenage girls or soppy older women and housewives. And it was completely inaccurate, too...yeah, maybe that's how love worked in some idealized 1962 mentality, but it sure as heck wasn't how it worked in Sparta. Besides, although neither movie featured manlove, if you'd wanted historical accuracy, that's how you'd achieve it.

2. Based on the way everyone acted and spoke, the movie could have just as easily been set in 14th Century England or 17th Century France...the character's personalities just seemed to be all-purpose war-movie-set-in-the-past-and-including-some-form-of-royalty personalities. It didn't seem like the moviemakers really tried to portray true Greeks or Spartans, just that they sort of thought, "okay, so this takes place in the past, so let's just give everyone accents and have them talk all funny and proper".

3. All that crap about fighting for freedom and uniting Greece. I know everybody thinks that Greece was all about democracy and freedom and everything that Americans hold dear, but the typical American perception of "Greece" is incredibly Athenocentric. This movie is about SPARTA, and sorry, but in the realm of Greece Sparta was the polar opposite of Athens. Sparta was an oligarchy, and as for freedom...well, if you think hauling all boys off to the agoge for intensely harsh and long military training at age 7 and turning their lives into not much more than being in the army, then you're deluded, but I guess you won't have a problem with the portrayal of Spartans as "champions of freedom". And as for "uniting Greece"...first of all, Athens and Sparta were RIVALS, and all that buddy-buddy crap going on between them annoyed me. Speaking of rivals, there was plenty of rivalry between Greek city-states, and that's just how Greece was and that's how Greece apparently liked it. Greek city-states were loosely connected...some were more tightly connected than others (because they were allies, but alliances could always change), and some had large rifts between them (because they were rivals), but all in all, that entity that we call "Greece" was just a group of loosely connected city-states.

Overall, The 300 Spartans came across as an attempt at a historically accurate movie that was ruined by the obvious projection of American ideals and perceptions on it. Also, it was boring.

As for 300, I personally think it portrayed the Spartan mentality much better...from an intangible standpoint, I think that 300 really did well with historical accuracy. On the other hand, it didn't really do that well with tangible historical accuracy, which is more noticable...there were characters (which really seemed to be more along the lines of "creatures") that obviously couldn't exist in reality. I think this is because 300 was going for a very stylized representation of Thermopylae which was evident from the tones that the movie was shot in, the artistic way blood splatter was depicted, etc. But underneath the physically impossible hunchback and the giant slavering Persian monster, there was storytelling and there were characters, and there was SPARTA. I think it's important to note that "This is SPARTA" was proclaimed in 300, and that's what was shown...Sparta. 300 was a movie about 300 men in Sparta, whereas The 300 Spartans was a movie about 300 Spartans in all of Greece...and I think that's an important distinction to make. The 300 Spartans was too concerned with the notion of "Greece"...300 stuck to Sparta, which is where I think the focus needed to be. The rough, gritty, bloody life of a Spartan soldier was portrayed much more accurately in 300, and as such I think the Spartan mentality was portrayed much more accurately. In The 300 Spartans, Leonidas looked very clean, groomed, and like the type of guy who would be shown on a magazine cover, winking, and with a glistening white-toothed smile. The rest of the Spartans looked pretty much the same. In 300, the soldiers were dirty, with blood-caked feet (Spartans fought barefoot...after the agoge, their feet were practically shoes, anyway), and actually looked like Spartan soldiers rather than eye-candy. I felt like 300 had a lot more substance to it, that you could actually empathize with the characters, and that there was more to the story than a battle. It was something different, it was something interesting, and while hardcore history buffs might have qualms with it, I think if you're more interested in plot (not whether it was "accurate" or not, just its substance), characters, and being able to feel like you actually experienced something worthwhile, 300 is your best bet.

Also, I will kill anyone who posts "TLDR". If you didn't feel like reading this, don't tell me. For me, "TLDR" translates to "I'm an illiterate moron," mmkay? Just so we're clear.

Well I have to say the 1962 version definitely. After watching it, it almost seemed as though 300 was a petty rip-off of it. I mean the historical truths should be the same, but even most of the historical inaccuracy was re-created in the new movie as almost a direct copy of the 62 version.

Obviously I agree that the 62 version acted as a better informant of history whereas the new movie was purely entertainment.
I always said that 300 was a great movie if you like effects and action, but the storyline was horrible. No good character development.
The 62 version does go into a lot more detail as far as characters go in a classic 1962 style of bringing out romance. Back then, little things like that were needed to make a good movie.

Considering how old The 300 Spartans is compared to the new one, and considering they're nearly just as good as one another, I have to give all the credit to the older movie. It entertained me a lot more than the new one did overall.

The 62 version is hokey, lame, and Ralph Richardson is the only actor who can deliver a line. The costumes are pure hollywood for sure. The dialogue is so bad as is the famous lines regarding the battle. I like Richard Egan but he was not a great actor....his best film was LOVE ME TENDER as one of the Reno Brothers. The new 300 is better written, visual beyond belief, and so what if they added Rhinos...it was based on a novel not on historical fact....bottom line old movies just dont cut the mustard compared to new ones.

I vote 300 Spartans. More realistic.