300 dvd out today in Australia!

Oh yeah! Before I forget, after Aeris went to sleep last night, I went out and plonked myself onto my living room couch and read Frank Miller's 300 HC again. I think I've only read it once before, way WAY back when I first purchased it in 2001, when I was holidaying in Melbourne, so I practically walked into the movie forgetting the details of what happened in the graphic novel.

It was such a good read once again, showing why Frank Miller is such a creative genius. Yes, obviously the stuff in the 300 graphic novel isn't historically accurate...or at least NOT totally accurate. A Sydney Morning Herald reviewer even TRASHED the 300 movie for being inaccurate! Check this out:

300 - There must be 300 reasons to avoid this violent exercise in military propangada


Military propaganda? What an ignoramus! He's obviously never read or heard of the story before. What, has he thought that 300 is a work completely fictitious?

Anyway, if you're interested in reading my thoughts on HIS review:

My rebuttal

Yeesh. Anyway, the reason why I chose to read 300 again last night was because of the timeliness of the DVD being released in Australia today! I think it was released in some places yesterday, since JB Hi-Fi had them on the shelves, and I'm planning to get the 2-disc version for Ezy DVD because it has a collector's tin case.

I vaguely remember some parts of the movie (will get to watch it again once I have the dvd!) but from reading the graphic novel, I'm amazed at how much dialogue makes the transition into the movie. Stuff like "We'll fight in the shade" and "I'm going out for a walk"...I honestly thought that the scriptwriters just threw those lines in to give the movie a bit of humour. Amazed to see that Frank Miller was the one that actually crafted those lines in the graphic novel!

There's more stuff in the movie...the graphic novel really just concentrated on the battle and the lead up to and aftermath of it. Nothing about Queen Gorgo sleeping with Theron and then killing him in front of the council. There wasn't an uber Immortal in the graphic novel either.

And of course, there are some other pretty major changes, though I'd like to think that they're improvisations and personal characterisations by the actors. In the graphic novel, as can be seen from the image below, Leonidas just casually said: "This is Sparta." But of course, and you'll get this from many spoof and humour sites around the world, in the movie version he yells and drags out the word "Sparta" and cinematic history was made.


Imagine if Gerard Butler hadn't yelled it out so spontaneously (or was he told to by Frank Miller or Zack Snyder?)...we wouldn't get this classic scene:



Ditto his yelling for "Tonight we dine in hell!" Leonidas simply just speaks the words in the graphic novel.

Woo...can't wait to watch the movie again!