Numerous Historical Inaccuracies- Bad movie all together

Rating: 5/10 (11 March 2007)

So I was really excited to see the movie and enjoy the battle of Thermopylae having read extensively on the battle and having knowledge of the Spartans. However, I must say that I was very displeased when I left the theater, not just because of the mindless gore that was dominant throughout the movie, but because of the piling historical inaccuracies that just buried the movie for me.
Besides the obvious almost supernatural beings that were prevalent, the movie makers screwed up the fundamental strategies of the Spartans: the phalanx. The phalanx was their machine in domination and the reason they did so well in this battle; no man could get close to their seemingly unstoppable barrier that reached out with long Dory spears and reflected anyone who got close. The front Spartans would fight under their shields, deflecting the enemy, with men behind them using their spears to kill the oncoming souls. The Spartans would fight until the dories broke in which case they would switch to the sword. In the film, the Spartans hardly held a phalanx for more than a few seconds before carelessly chucking their spears through some worthless Persian's head and then pulling out their swords and decapitating heads and severing limbs. One of the greatest feats of the Spartans was the phalanx, it was their unstoppable strategy. The movie screwed this up royally and I could hardly sit through the movie that didn't even use the fundamentals, but rather relied on gore for entertainment. There was little-to-none character development, and in the end when Leonidas dies (Not a spoiler, it's history!), a woman was bawling uncontrollably next to me, leading me to question why? There's no emotional attachment to the characters who show little emotion themselves: the movie convoluted them into being dumb brutes (but great dumb brutes nonetheless). Seemingly all of the Immortals were portrayed as disfigured ninjas, which is obviously not accurate at all. I was also saddened at the choice to completely leave out the heroic doings of Themistocles, in the naval battles where he was outnumbered 6 ships to one and managed to hold the Persians off, preventing the navy from landing troops behind the Spartans. The film also made it seem as though the 300 were the only Greeks fighting in the battle (besides the dozen men who were blacksmiths and masons), whereas an estimated 7,000 men aided the Spartans in their tumultuous clash with the Persians.
All in all, I would not take this movie as a piece of history, but another blockbuster that's aimed at making money and killing off thousands of characters that we don't care about- which it is good at.