Western Civ. 1100
Cody K. Carlson
Film Review
Ryan Little
300 Review
I felt that the movie was really enjoyable it gave the viewers a brief over view of what life in ancient Sparta might have been like. I truly do love this movie I could watch it a million times over anything that has to do with ancient Greece, Egypt etc. Really interests me. I felt that it stayed along the lines of the battle pretty well and tried to show us as much about the Spartans in the shortest time possible.
The movie overall was really good but it laced quite a few historical accuracies first there was 300 Spartans fighting but the movie failed to leave out the other about 7,000 soldiers from surrounding nations that helped fight, that being said they still faced ridiculous odds against about 200,000 Persian soldiers they were more than capable of block the sun with arrows if they were all too shoot there bows at once. Also they were not all free men Spartans did also use slaves in there army and used them at home as well and the movie depicted them as not using slaves anywhere. I felt that the Persians a little over done and farfetched with their jewelry and metal masks and creepy faces behind them. Not saying that isn’t possible just think it went a little over board with trying to make the Persians look as if they were cast from hell or something. The way that the movie depicts how the Spartan boy children were raised is actually really accurate even to the throwing out/ discarding defective new born babies.
Also in the Spartan city they obviously didn’t have a deep random pit in the city to randomly push people down so that was defiantly added for movie effect. Although the Spartans were really taught to become very strong and smart warriors even with the words that they used so a lot of the quick come back/ remarks were actually most likely said or used by the Spartans so that was defiantly interesting to read and find out. The ending to the movie was completely inaccurateaccording to historical facts they were actually about 1,400soldiers that consisted of 300 Spartans, 700 Thespians, 400 Thebans and perhaps a few others. that stayed to fight and die in the end although 300 Spartans did stay they had a lot of help but all that stayed were killed. The delay worked and the Persian army had to try and catch up to them the armies and eventually were defeated about a year or two later by the Greeks and historians believe that if the Persians would have won then western civilization would probably not be as it is today.
This ties into our course work because of the time period that it took place in and the area it was at. Currently we are learning about the different time periods and ancient Greece is one of them this movie shows you a great depiction of an actual event that took place and even if all the facts are not perfect it still gives you a better understanding of what went on during that era and how the people used to live, survive, grow and battle one another. It shows you the dominance that different nations of the time played in there history’s and also shows you what roles each of those nations did in history. It also gives you a pretty good idea of how the government was ran at the time, how the citizens of the cities lived and raised their children. All in all this film did a pretty decent job depicting what happened during the battle of the 300 Spartan soldiers against the overwhelming odds of the Persian army and I think it helps a lot with the image of what went on during that particular era in time.
Work Cited
300: The Movie Vs Real Life, Cracked.com,