Actually Sparta lost the battle, which is kind of the point. Thermopylae to some extent falls into the same grand tradition as the Alamo, the siege of Masada or Dunkirk - “glorious defeats.”
In fact the Spartans badly screwed the pooch - Leonidas’s force was just supposed to be an advance guard for a regular field army that never arrived due to Spartan dithering. Leonidas holding for three days wasn’t the miraculous savior of the Greek position - it was a horrible setback. He was supposed to hold much longer. The loss of Thermopylae unhinged the naval front by exposing the Artemisium staging point to attack - this after the allied fleet had just fought the Persians to a standstill.
It was only in retrospect that it became such a proud source of propaganda and an important symbolic event.
You know, I thought Backdoor Cum Shower III lacked a lot of the subtled nuancy of Backdoor Cum Shower II, leading the series in its downward slide towards the total crap that it has become with Backdoor Cum Shower: Rave from the Grave
As far as 300 videos on YouTube, I’d like to suggest United 300, with Leonidas and his men stopping German hijackers from taking control of an airliner.
I saw it a month or two ago and thought it was God awful. But anyone I’d say it was God awful to just acted offended and strangely self-righteous about their ability to enjoy a serious piece of crap. Usually centered around how, if I thought it sucked, it could only be because I couldn’t accept historical flaws in a film.
I could go on at length about the historical problems but that honestly wasn’t the issue. The issue was the laughably poor acting, choppy plot, big plot holes and general silliness which was apparently supposed to have all been trumped by the visuals.
I watched it while working out on the elliptical. For that it was a great film: didn’t require too much concentration and enough action to help keep me moving.
In one or two early scenes, they did stand up in a big line. That didn’t exactly bother me, but it’s not how they fought, and if that’s all they did there should’t have been an issue with the crippled guy. Thing is, hoplites used those big shields to overlap a bit and have multiple ranks of spears levelled at the enemy. Thus, they were attacking every enemy soldier three times at once and presented a heavily armored front. Hence the big shields, thick greaves, and breastplates (which no one wore in the movie): in a tight formation this protected the whole body. IIRC, the later Macedonian phalanx was even deeper and had like 5 rows or spears stabbing.
They didn’t do that in the movie. They lined up (loosely), but every man fought for himself. And the furter along they went, the farther they got from any kind of formation. I almost busted a gut when the Akadians came onto the field and the voice-over started in about them being “more brawlers than warriors.” Aside from the fact that lots of Greeks, professionals or not, could handle their spears like pros (ooh, sex joke!), the Akadians did exactly what the Spartans were doing in the same scene!
The thing that irritated me most about this movie was what it did to my school. Y’see, our university nickname happens to be The Spartans, so after this movie came out the line “This is Sparta!!1!” started showing up all over campus - on the posters for our sports teams, on posters for various SGA elections, randomly chalked on the sidewalks. Every time I see it I pause for a second and think, “Uh, no, this is Tampa.” I don’t know why it bothers me so much, but it does. Sometimes the posters include a badly drawn cartoon of Leonidas, and that usually makes me giggle a little. You wish, guys.
I usually only see three or four movies a year at the theater and this was one of them. I was really looking forward to it, but all I got out of it was a big fat meh, pretty much for the same reasons as the OP.
I gave up watching 300 on DVD as I was just bored, and this was before any of the action even began (I switched off during the visit to the oracle scene). Of course a film doesn’t have to be high brow and historically accurate to be enjoyable, although those things certainly help me when watching a film. On the homo-eroticism bit, I say we need more of this in films, not less (although to be honest if I want gay porn I watch gay porn, I don’t go for the next best thing of ripped men killing each other).
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One interpretation I heard was it is supposed to be told through the eyes of the one Spartan who lived.
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Actually, it shows in the film that what you are seeing is from his perspective. The reason everything about the Persians is so exagerated is that he is not only telling the story, he is telling it as an inispirational tale to his soldiers the night berore they are going into battle to fight said Persians. Hence everything that the Persians are is protrayed as vile, debase, or terrifying beyond belief (like the “immortal” elite troops) and everything the Spartans were and did was noble and brave and, most of all, successful as it could be.
The story was not being told as a histroical tale, but in the form of propaganda to inspire his troops. The message he was sending was “forget what you have heard about the Persians. They sent the best they had against us and 300 Spartans stood up to it and you can too!”
That said , most of the fights scenes were pretty rediculous.
LOL! I haven’t even seen the movie and I’m laughing. The great thing is, that’s the perfect way you could describe the intellectual pretensions of almost any modern Hollywood historical epic. King Arthur in particular comes to mind.
Saxon: Blah blah blah Faith.
Arthur: Blah blah blah Free will.
Saxon: Blah blah blah Blasphemy!
Arthur: Blah blah blah Die!
I was turned off from the start by the marketing: the basic concept seemed to be the Battle of Thermopylae for WWF fans.
now that I think about it.