About 2 weeks ago, a certain movie opened in American theaters. In those two weeks, it has managed to earn almost $130 million, and create a massive controversy, to boot. Here’s my review of the bare-chested spear-and-sandal epic.
The Film
What can I say? It has vast CGI armies, massive battles, heroic Spartans, lots of sword- and spear-play, and bad guys that look like they escaped off a Lord of the Rings set (Peter Jackson called, he wants his mumakil back). What’s there not to like? Yes, the plot consists of “Hurr…We are Spartans….Must Kill Persians…We are Manly….Hurr!” Yes, talk of Freedom coming from the Spartans is cringe-worthy. I don’t care! This movie is like the ultimate guy film, and it has completely ensnared me.
8/10
The History
Let’s see…it’s a movie based on a comic book based on a 1962 Hollywood film based on a real historical event. Just how accurate do you expect it to be?
Let’s put it this way: you wouldn’t think that Sin City is an accurate depiction of urban life? In the film, they got the date correct, and also the names of the places (Persia, Arcadia, Sparta, Thermopylae) and the leaders (Xerxes and Leonidas). The battle was fought at Thermopylae (the “Hot Gates”), but the valley itself looked nothing like the one in the movie. They were betrayed by Ephialtes (who was not a hunchbacked Spartan reject). That’s about it. Everything else is pretty much wrong.
No, the Ephors were not Orcs who lived on a mountain and molested oracles, no, Leonidas would not have a romantic parting with his wife (such things were forbidden. He would be living in the barracks, coming only at night, she would be living at home, but with her hair cut, and dressed as a man). Speaking of which, she would not be called a whore for sleeping with the Traitor Dude, either: wife-sharing was encouraged. As you can see, Sparta was hardly the land of freedom it was portrayed as. In fact, it has the dubious honor of being the world’s first totalitarian state, a country where all aspects of it’s citizens’ lives were controlled by the government. It was also the only Greek state to enslave another people based on ethnic principles (Afrocentrists take note). It kept its slaves (helots) in line, by instituting a reign of terror, where Spartan teenagers, freshly out of agogae training assembled in groups and killed any helot they could find. Remember the scene of Leonidas vs. the wolf? Here’s a hint: in the real world, he wouldn’t be hunting wolves. They also practiced eugenics (that part was shown), and both boys and girls had to go through the agogae .
Let’s move to the battle. There were the 300 Spartans, 700 soldiers from a city near Thermopylae called Thespia, and a coalition of about 6,000 other troops, represented in the film by the Arcadians (“useful amateurs”). Unlike the Spartans in the film, they actually used something called armor. In fact, it was their armored phalanx that allowed them to stand against the Persian hordes. To leave one’s place in the phalanx was a crime, as it would leave a gap, which could be exploited by the enemy (remember Leonidas’ killing spree?). Of course, the Spartan fighting style was nothing like the one depicted in the film- that was based on Eastern martial arts, a deliberate choice by the director, because it “looked cool.”
Now, here’s my biggest gripe with the whole “300 Spartans” deal. After the coalition forces withdrew, and Leonidas offered to cover their retreat, the 700 Thespians chose to stay with him. That’s right, the potters, and sculptors, and goatherds, and what not VOLUNTEERED to stay with the Spartans, and also died to a man. And unlike the Spartans, they didn’t have a “manly man” code of honor that forbidden retreat. And while the Spartans never had their city threatened, Thespia was burnt to the ground by Xerxes, precisely because of it’s citizens’ last stand. If you ask me, they’re the true heroes of the affair, yet they are ignored and forgotten.
The Persian army was not sized in the millions, the current estimates place it in the 100,000-700,000 men range. Xerxes could not have fed a larger army. Speaking of which, the real battle that won the war, Salamis, was not even mentioned. Yes, the Spartans kicked the Persians’ ass at Platae, but only after the Athenians destroyed the Persian fleet at Salamis, and thus cut off the army from supply. The Persians were retreating from Greece, when the Spartans attacked.
There’s a lot more, but I’ll stop here. My conclusion: the movie got some things right, so it’s not entirely hopeless.
1/10.
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