300 Reasons Why this Movie is Awful

Rating: 1/10 (16 March 2007)

The number "300" must stand for the number of reasons why this movie is awful; and that's not counting the roughly 300,000 ways that this was historically inaccurate. Frank Miller's rewrite of an important historical event in world history fails on many levels: It's not entertaining, it's poorly written, it's poorly acted, it's poorly directed, and it's poorly produced.
The "300" focuses on the Battle of Thermopylae, a battle which took place in the year 480 BCE when Leonidas, a co-king of the Greek city-state of Sparta, led three hundred of his finest soldiers and an additional 6300 allied Greeks from other city-states to hold off an army of 300,000 Persians who intend to burn Athens to the ground. The goal of Leonidas was to stall the Persians long enough for his Athenian allies to defeat the Persian navy. That is recorded history.
Here is the premise of the movie: Let's watch the Spartans kill 10,000 Persians. Okay, let's watch them fight a rhino. Okay, let's watch them fight some elephants. Okay, now they they've killed hordes of Persians, elephants, and rhinos, let's have them fight mutated Persians! It's not hard to realize that "300" quickly devolves from the retelling of an epic, to a simple smut film for those who delight in senseless violence.
The writers of "300" forgot to bring the plot, which shouldn't have been so hard since the Battle of Thermopylae is among the greatest tales in western culture! The writers where obviously very gorked when it comes to history. Not only did they portray the Persians as a demon-like race, they turned the Spartan army into a mass of shaved and nearly nude men, who fought in an undisciplined manner and out of phalanx.
What of the 6300 other Greeks at Thermopylae? They are hardly made a mention of. And the 700 Thespians and 400 Thebans who also made their last stand alongside Leonidas were completely ignored. Even the heroic death of King Leonidas and the heroism of the last of the standing Spartans was erased from this movie and rewritten.
As for the Persians? King Xerxes of the Persian Empire is portrayed as dim-witted and evil, which is very far from the truth. The Persians themselves are shown was hideously twisted monsters, the likes of which only exist in Christianity's descriptions of Hell.
Sure, Hollywood has always altered history in moves: JFK, Spartacus, Gladiator, et cetera; but at least the men and women who produced those moves hired writers that lent intellectual entertainment to history, not this farce that is "300".
The common response to all of the criticism is, "Well, '300' is based off a comic book." Really? Let us not be so naive. The Battle of Thermopylae is the heritage of the entire western world. Every western nation has adopted the men who fought and died at Thermopylae as their heroes. This film not only insults Greeks, but it is a disgrace to the memory of those who fought and died at Thermopylae, these men who have had their legacy live on 2480 years, only to have it now perverted for the purpose of entertainment. The film is an insult to all of western culture.
It is also impossible to ignore several racist overtones in the movie, especially at a time when several western nations are at war with Middle Eastern countries that are home to modern Persians. In "300", it shows Persians to be inhuman deformed monsters, who are without morals. Even mighty Xerxes, a hero in Persian history, is made a mockery of. Along these same lines, is it coincidence that every "bad guy" who had lines in this movie is Black? A proper analogy for "300" would be that it is an enormous wall. Each brick in the wall is a lie and an insult to the entire world, and the mortar that holds it together is filth and excessive violence that would make John Rambo seem tame. All in all, this movie is a pack of lies sewn together with poor special effects and a loop of action sequences that has more in common with a broken record than cinematic art.