Modern War Porn

Rating: 1/10 (29 March 2007)

Let's see - for culture warriors, the west is represented by one-dimensional, pederast, baby-killing slave owners, while the Persians are a multi-ethnic, culturally and religiously diverse society where women and men are equals and slavery has been abolished for fair wages. Personally I'm going to have to go with the Persians on this one.
BTW, Iranians - your ancestors murdered or converted the Zoroastrians of the real Persian empire so you can stop whining about their portrayal any time now.
As far as this movie goes, it was incredibly boring. The trailer was the best part (and is still really good). But in the movie, I had no interest in any of the characters, though Xerxes seemed like a pretty fun guy to party with. I was happy to see the Spartans finally killed off just so they would stop shouting ridiculous clichés.
One thing about its accuracy though - Herodotus' original story probably wasn't very accurate to the actual battle - he would have endowed all sorts of noble traits upon the Spartans and many ignoble ones on the Persians. Herodotus wrote war porn for the Greeks. Modern historians accept this war porn as history, thus a modern movie becomes modern war porn.
Overall, the fact that Victor Davis Moron Hanson had anything to do with this movie should be a flashing red light that what you are about to see completely sucks.