Surprisingly good

Rating: 8/10 (10 July 2015)

When I first heard of this movie and it was based on the graphic novel by Frank Miller, I was half expecting another Braveheart, and in regard to the basic storyline and battle scenes that's what I got, a king fighting for his people's freedom against a greedy tyrant and memorable battle scenes, and the demonizing of the invaders, in this case the Persians. The Spartan society was on the whole rather harsh and cruel, unsurprising considering its warrior status designed to weed out the weak, and a lot of aspects of this were omitted. However Frank Miller and Zack Synder have said this movie never meant to be historically correct, it was essentially a propaganda story being told by a survivor from Thermopylae to rally the Greek army before going into battle. But this movie wasn't as inaccurate as I thought it would be, it contained actual quotes from accounts taken at the time, some battle scene's were authentically accurate and the depiction of the back story of Leonidas was on the most part correct with the exception of the final rite of passage. So to summarize this movie was entertaining and inspirational.