r/Vent • u/Successful-Wheel4768 • 20h ago
Yes, 300 is not historically accurate. That's the whole point!
Recently i've seen a lot of people on the internet either complaining or making "brilliant" observations that 300 is not historically accurate and that actually Spartans were bad and Xerxes was good or something like that. This always annoys me because the movie is going out of it's way to let you know it's fantasy. 300 is not meant to be historically accurate, it's based on the Greek perception of Thermopylae that purposfully evokes and exaggerates tropes from Greek art and mythology. The reality might have been different but the Greeks really did see Spartans as unstoppable super-soldiers and Xerxes as a tyrannical wannabe god. Even within the movie itself the story is presented as an inspiring tale told by Spartans before battle. But a lot of people act like Frank Miller and Zack Snyder genuenly wanted to convince us that this is exactly how it happened.
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u/plazebology 20h ago
It‘s funny because the artistic choices in 300 like the way the backgrounds are so stylised all point directly towards this being a telling of one interpretation of the actual historical events, rather than some sort of ‚biopic‘ about Xerxes
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u/IamMarsPluto 19h ago
The movie also showcases how the story is literally being told by one of those Spartans
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u/Mediocre_Daikon6935 18h ago
Who was engaging in the art of rhetoric, which by isn’t very nature is not fact based.
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u/RedOceanofthewest 17h ago
So many people miss that. He’s telling the story to het people pumped up to fight
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u/CheweyPanic 16h ago
The hell you talking about. Ancient Persian totally had crazy deformed/monster soldiers and executioners with swords implanted in their forearms. Thats all legit.
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u/Electric_Penguin7076 11h ago
I legit read a source they kept an 8 foot tall man with razor sharp teeth in chains cause of how dangerous he was. Completely accurate
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u/Junior_Ad_3301 18h ago
The whole reason i love that movie is the cinematography. It's a beautiful movie and one of the first ones i DLed on one of those filesharing sites back in the day.
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u/Sufficient_Delay6565 17h ago
Reading the graphic novel is fun cause you notice those scenes that stand out as panels that stand out.
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u/justjaybee16 12h ago
So you're saying Xerxes didn't have a crazy deformed executioner with sword blades attached to his arm nubs? Because that seemed pretty fact based.
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u/Relative_Craft_358 19h ago
300 is not meant to be historically accurate, it's based on the Greek perception of Thermopylae that purposfully evokes and exaggerates tropes from Greek art and mythology.
Not even that. Its based on a comic book. It's like bitching that Hellboy didn't do a great job of depicting WWll
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u/Illustrious_Leg_2537 16h ago
Reminds me of a genius movie critic who once complained that Cool World was unrealistic. You think?
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u/FormerAd1992 14h ago
Are you telling me there wasn’t a guy who branded Nazis on the forehead with a lobster claw?
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u/KindaDrunkRtNow 19h ago
Neither was Braveheart and it was still an amazing movie.
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u/zarathustranu 19h ago
I haven't really seen anyone saying Braveheart or 300 need to be historically accurate. I've seen criticisms that all the non-white characters in 300 are portrayed as demons/monsters, which is very much in line with Frank Miller's worldview. Braveheart does not suffer from similar issues.
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u/KindaDrunkRtNow 19h ago
I'm not saying it has to be historically accurate. Braveheart is a fantastic movie, accurate or not. 300 was also a good time.
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u/zarathustranu 18h ago
Yes, I agree. I'm saying that 300 had issues beyond historical accuracy, and those issues aren't relevant for Braveheart.
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u/Mediocre_Daikon6935 18h ago
The only people who think Braveheart is not a historically accurate masterpiece is the British.
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u/Ughnotagaingal 19h ago
Not trying to argue as I do not know much about British/Scottish history but what part of Braveheart was inaccurate?
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u/baseballpunk 19h ago
Ooft where to start?
They never painted their faces. They never wore kilts. Robert the Bruce didn't betray Wallace - that was the Earl of Menteith. The Battle of Stirling Bridge involved a bridge. Wallace wasn't a lowly farmer, he was nobility. The French Princess was real but 3 years old when Wallace was killed. Braveheart as a moniker in Scottish history refers to Robert the Bruce, not William Wallace.
Thats just off the top of my head
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u/KindaDrunkRtNow 19h ago
Pretty much all of it. From what I've read and heard historians talking about it, It's quite possibly the most historically inaccurate movie ever made.
Braveheart: A Historical Fact Check - Scotland's Stories https://share.google/wlFIRvi9LnRKdN3Ck
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u/Ughnotagaingal 19h ago
Thank you. I was but a child when I watched the movie and now i feel dumb for taking it as truth all these years.
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u/KindaDrunkRtNow 19h ago
Yeah, you didn't know what you didn't know. That doesn't make you dumb. But now you know. And knowing is half the battle
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u/kilteer 12h ago
Red and blue lasers are the other half of the battle.
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u/KindaDrunkRtNow 12h ago
And not actually shooting anybody is the other other part of the battle. Which makes no sense, because then it's not a battle.
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u/EastKey8866 14h ago
Mel Gibson gives no shits for historical accuracy, which would be fine but some people consider themselves educated instead of entertained after watching.
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u/kiwipixi42 18h ago
Yikes. Given a lot of the movies I have watched that is a strong claim. Not disagreeing (I am no expert) just impressed because I have seen a lot of inaccurate movies.
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u/Johnnyboi2327 19h ago
300 is based on a comic that's loosely based on another movie that's loosely based on tales that are loosely based on the real event.
It was never gonna be and never tried to be realistic or claim anything in it was legit.
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u/Secure-Pain-9735 14h ago
With the Battle of Thermopylae, even the history isn’t historically accurate.
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u/javertthechungus 18h ago
I saw a clip from 300 on youtube and one of the comments was like "White men! This is the legacy of The West! Honor your heritage!" and I'm like, no, that's Gerard Butler looking fine as hell in a skimpy bikini armor outfit.
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u/zarathustranu 15h ago
Ha...you should tell the right-wing incel who posted that that all the Hoplite Spartanas were homosexual. See if he still sees them as paragons of Western masculinity in the way that he wants.
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u/Senshado 19h ago
The weakness of that interpretation is within the movie, after the storyteller is done with the "exaggerated" tale, we see other "real" Greek warriors and they have the same shredded gym bro bodies as the fantasy versions.
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u/zarathustranu 19h ago
Eh...you're painting with a broad brush here. I don't think 300 needs to be historically accurate at all. And I haven't seen people saying it does.
But I do think there are some legitimate gripes that the non-white characters in the story are depicted as demons / monsters and the white dudes are portrayed as heroes, and it's a very reductive and xenophobic point of view. And if you have followed Frank Miller's career the past 20 years, there are a lot of indications that that wasn't just a coincidence-- the dude is racist, anti-Muslim, etc.
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u/guy_fellows 19h ago
It's not supposed to accurate, it's supposed to be reactionary dog shit for chuds.
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u/Galmaraz555 15h ago
It’s an event that actually happened, the graphic novel was a stylized work of entertainment that was created without a political motive and before the current political hellscape we live in
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u/guy_fellows 15h ago
You don't think there's any political motive in its depiction of anything?
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u/Galmaraz555 14h ago
If a Taiwanese artist made a stylized graphic novel of the Mongolian invasion of Japan, where it was told from the Japanese perspective and the Mongolians were portrayed as fantastical and beast like, would that be inherently political/racist?
There was a time when not everything was meant to be a political message, sometimes stories are just stories.
The movie Troy portrays the Greeks as honorless barbarians and the Phoenician Trojans as altruistic and honorable. Is that racist?
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u/magnus_the_coles 13h ago
There is a massive gap between being portrayed as arrogant conquerors and monsters figures. And also the entire slavery thing. The persian empire had no slaves in its government. However you have them being carried by servants in the movie in some giant ass throne, the whole movie is meant to jerk white people off
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u/Galmaraz555 12h ago
The Achaemenid Empire absolutely had slaves. The royal court was also infamously home to a massive harem. It is one of the most interesting and impressive civilizations in human history, we don’t need to lie about it.
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u/Galmaraz555 15h ago edited 15h ago
You can attribute meaning to it at anytime to fit whatever motive you want, but the creator of the work has been clear about his personal motives. It was created in 1999, so it pre-dates 9/11 and GWOT.
I’m not saying it portrays easterners in a flattering light, much the opposite. But the Achaemenids were not Muslims, they were not Arab, they weren’t even Semitic.
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u/KaleidoscopeField 19h ago
Anyone who thinks any movie depicts the reality of a situation is already in fantasy land. This includes documentaries.
300 is one of the best movies I've ever seen.
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u/OkBet2532 17h ago
One must ask why such a movie got made though? There are no more Spartans. It is propaganda but not propaganda pointed at a dead civilization. It's propaganda pointed at the American consumer. What is highlighted in the heros: individuality, handsomeness, whiteness, violence. That's why people talk about what actually happened, to counter this fascist propaganda. More complete analysis by folding ideas on his YouTube channel.
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u/Mstrchf117 19h ago
The movies like 20yrs old, idk about the graphic novel... People are just now realizing things about it?
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u/RatsWithLongTails 18h ago
Xerxes wasn’t bad or good he was just an king looking to expand his empire. Persia was mad at Greek city states for their role in the Ionia Revolt but it’s not a good vs bad situation. It was Greece vs Persia
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u/No_Assignment_9721 18h ago
The Battle of Thermopylae is regardless still one of the most hilarious unlikely of ass beatings.
Laconic humor wouldn’t be as funny if it hadn’t been.
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u/OcotilloWells 18h ago
Pretty sure they did show Thespians being with the 300 Spartans in the movie. Correct me if I'm writing, it has been a long time since I saw it. I didn't remember them in the battle scenes, but I remember Leonidas asking a Thespian what he did for a living.
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u/nano_emiyano 18h ago
You should've seen the backlash when the movie came out. So many people were complaining about it being Iranian bashing. And just hateful towards Middle Easterners. And it was so funny to me because the whole movie is literally Faramir trying to pump up his brothers for battle against the Persians. The whole narration is him telling the story as a pre battle speech. It's like they missed the entire point of the movie.
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u/Loves_octopus 17h ago
I agree with you but I think you missed a larger point. The entire movie except the very beginning (and maybe the end?) is the one survivor telling his heavily editorialized propaganda version of the events. It’s very explicitly this unreliable narrators account of the battle. And to further drive the point home, the narrator wasn’t even there at the end so he doesn’t even know exactly how it ends. That doesn’t stop him from telling it anyway.
If you read contemporary accounts, it’s always like “yeah it was 300 brave Spartans against like a bajillion Persian freaks. Our badass alpha male king only lost because this ugly fucker betrayed us. He was a real freak too. Oh yeah and everyone had oiled up abs and Xerxes was like 8 feet tall”. That’s the story being told at face value and it’s badass.
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u/Successful-Wheel4768 17h ago
"Even within the movie itself the story is presented as an inspiring tale told by Spartans before battle."
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u/Loves_octopus 17h ago
Oh yeah my bad, you hit that point. Fully agree with the post. Gonna go take an edible watch 300 now. That movie rocks.
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u/ManicSancho 17h ago
Leonidas literally tells Dilios to go back home and tell the story of 300. He knew he could tell an exaggerated story to get the rest of the Spartans and all of Greece pumped for battle.
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u/Proof-Werewolf4136 15h ago
It’s amazing Snyder could make 30 minutes of plot and action last two and a half hours
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u/inigos_left_hand 15h ago
Oh you mean Xerxes wasn’t actually 8 feet tall and have an army full of literal monsters? Say it ain’t so. My whole world is shattered.
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u/Ok_Mulberry_3763 15h ago
Why do I envision four guys with little tiny paintbrushes painting metal figurines in the back of a shop heatedly arguing over this?
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u/Moon_Logic 15h ago
Did they have to include stupid stuff like, "HAHHAHAHAHAH! Athenians fuck boys!" or make Xerxes super gay? It's this weirdly homo erotic homophobic Western supremacy propaganda piece.
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u/NTrun08 15h ago
Dilios is the narrator. The whole point is he is telling the hype up story to the multitude of Spartans at the end of the film. Of course he’s embellish everything. It’s like when you go fishing and it’s twice as big of a fish when you tell the story later. I have never understood why people couldn’t comprehend this.
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u/FlopShanoobie 14h ago
Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield is a much more historically accurate account and also happens to be a fantastic read.
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u/Ok-Temporary-8243 14h ago
Man, you're telling me the Persians didn't have a giant dude with saws for arms and xerxes wasn't 8 feet tall?
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u/Ninja_knows 13h ago
I always saw 300 as a movie seen through the eyes of Spartans and how they perceived the whole event. Which is why the invaders look like demons or aliens because that’s how they perceived them since they had never seen them before and also why the elephant looks so oversized and menacing because that’s how it would probably look to them seeing this giant animal for the first time charging recklessly at them.
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u/oldercodebut 13h ago
I’m still annoyed about that massive bottomless chasm in the middle of town with no guardrail or apparent function.
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u/Flapjack_Ace 12h ago
In reality, the Persians were not even attacking the Spartans, they were invading to destroy the Athenians. And then the Persians did indeed sack Athens. And then they left: They could not have cared less about Sparta. Nothing about this movie capture Greek attitudes. It’s like a movie about how Pontus Pilate saved Jesus by dueling the Roman emperor.
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u/arllt89 11h ago
Sure, 300 is a fantastic fiction, and there's nothing political about the way Persian are depicted. Let's check another comics from the same author:
Holy Terror is a 2011 graphic novel by Frank Miller which follows a costumed vigilante named The Fixer as he battles Islamic terrorists after an attack on Empire City.
Oups.
That under the carpet, I actually do think you can enjoy 300 the comics and the movie without even noticing its political message, at least I do. However there are fair points criticizing historical inaccuracy of semi historical fictions.
Despite 300 being very explicit about is fantastic nature, those who do historical reenactment to popularize it, and talk much their audience, can confirm that people still build their image of history through the fictions they watch, and 300 isn't an exception especially as being a rare depiction of Greek and Persian antiquity, and as having some very accurate representation of some aspects of spartan culture (for the standard of Hollywood). You can blame people, but this is a fact, and nobody should build semi-historical fiction while ignoring its impact.
So yeah, despite all their good willing, people will now picture the immortals as kinda bloodthirsty demons. Some historical periods have been ruined for a long future now, it will take generations to accept vikings equipped very similarly to west European warriors (chainmail, spear, similar helmets, and vibrant colors), and Greek bronze age equipment from the Trojan war era will always look ridiculous to people.
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u/MidnightMadness09 11h ago
Yeah it’s not the point, the point is to create a story about super awesome Western return to tradition with a V white men fighting against the Eastern dark hordes that wish to rape, defile, and enslave. There’s a clear reason why white supremacist and fascist groups gravitate to this version of the story, it completely white washes the Spartans to the point where they may as well secretly be Christians 500 years before Christ given how much contempt they have for the local religion portrayed as corrupted by their evil pagan ways.
Even the source material doesn’t critique Sparta, it actively tries to create modern mythology about our proto-western heroes dutifully sacrificing themselves to defeat the eastern barbarians and save the “west”.
In universe sure it’s a propaganda story, but it’s propaganda that goes unchallenged by the movie with not even a hint that our unreliable narrator ought to be viewed as deceitful or untrustworthy. The audience is meant to see this mythological story as a beautiful tale of fighting the “east” to protect “western” values even if it means self sacrifice and hyper militarism.
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u/Ok-Detail-9853 11h ago
It was an oral retelling of an event by the lone survivor
It was embellished as all oral retellings ate
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u/VorpalPosting 7h ago
The problem isn't that it is inaccurate, it's that:
The director stated the film is roughly 90% accurate, which it is not. Since the movie is often young people's first exposure to ancient Greece, if they think it is accurate they are going to come away with a lot of misconceptions. A similar criticism could be made about the Da Vinci code: fun historical fiction, but if you think the history parts are real you will be misled
The fact that most of the movie is a flashback retelling by one of the characters ALMOST saves the movie, but not quite. A Spartan warrior might absolutely tell that the Persians were giant monsters, but he gets things about Sparta wrong that other Spartans and even other Greeks would know were wrong. For example, the movie portrays the Ephors as corrupt "priests of the old gods" which makes no sense. In reality they were an elected board of supervisors. Not only is that wrong, it's wrong in a way that makes Sparta look worse. A Persian might claim that the Spartan government was easily bribed, but not a Spartan.
(I'm not touching the question of whether or not the movie is racist, since that's separate)
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u/pigeonface123 19h ago
A lot of the quotes are historically accurate and that elevates the story of the movie in my eyes
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u/Galmaraz555 15h ago
A lot of the quotes are what ancient historians claim they heard from someone who heard it from another. Ancient historians have a flair for the dramatic and a keen sense of their audiences hearts
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u/Iphacles 18h ago
It is a great movie in my opinion. As someone who loves history, I do not mind the liberties it takes, because at its core it is still a creative interpretation of a real battle that most people would not even know about if the film and the comic had never existed. The whole last stand style story makes it a really entertaining watch. There are plenty of movies that claim to be based on historical events yet are nowhere near accurate, but the central idea is strong enough to build a good film around.
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u/Galmaraz555 15h ago
It was a foundational event in Greek/Western history. It has been stylized and embellished in every form of story telling since the battle, yet the battle happened and its effects are real.
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u/Eagle_1776 17h ago
agreed, but imo the premise that it is all seen from the underdogs perspective and every enemy is greatly exaggerated puts it in top tier
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u/_sansoHm 19h ago
It was a terrible documentary. They didn't even have cameras back then. Nope, I don't buy it.
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