Oct 26, 2025
Leonidas, King of Sparta 300 (2006) dir. Zack Snyder
seen from Germany
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seen from Canada
seen from China
seen from Malaysia
seen from Türkiye
seen from Malaysia
seen from Türkiye
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Saudi Arabia
seen from Malaysia
seen from Malaysia
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seen from Malaysia
seen from Canada
seen from Spain
Leonidas, King of Sparta 300 (2006) dir. Zack Snyder
Okay, so while I did work from home stuff today I decided to watch a film - and for some godsforsaken reason, I chose to watch 300.
As some of you know, I studied archaeology and have a dabbling in classciv. As some of you might suspect, I made notes.
I am currently an hour 12 into this damned thing.
My thoughts, let me show you them
Wow it really big ups the Spartan everything. I get that this was before it got better known how fucked up Sparta was but uh also. Bad
The colour grading on this makes me want to punch something. It's like every FPS shooter of the era - brown and greige.
Very occasionally it manages to use that colour grading for dramaticism but it generally isn't.
I am an hour in. There are two female characters. I don't think either has been named yet and one we're informed gets assaulted regularly.
There's a lot of stylistic overlap between this and Gladiator.
Oh yeah also
Of those two (2) female characters we have seen the tits of two (2) out of two (2). I get that we're also being shown the man tiddy here but we're shown the women tiddy in the "this is hot and eroticised" way while the man tiddy is "this is aspirational". Very different vibes. We aren't meant to be horny about the man tiddy.
Oh yeah, also also:
The racism. They make black people who would have been way more mixed and nuanced. Persia was not in fucking Africa. It included a chunk of Turkey and some of North Africa, sure! But the bits of it closest to Greece that would have provided a chunk of the soldiers for easiest travel would have been as Mediterranean as the Greeks! Stop making them racially different!
The ableism! I feel bad for Ephialtes. Especially as a bunch of the Spartans go to the knee when fighting which would be entirely within protectable range for his shield. Also, if you're gonna piss off and deny the hopes of someone like that, especially someone who you know would have been killed by your societies laws - he has so many reasons to be resentful. If you don't think he should live, be as hard as a Spartan is supposed to be and kill him.
Also, I'm pretty sure the way the Persians found the path in history was a local. Just an ordinary local. Who wanted, likely, to not fucking die at the hands of the Persians. You didn't have to make him disabled and thereby 1. Justify the Spartan ableism and 2. be more ableist by having him "betray" them.
Also, ableism x2 with the ephors like what the fuck
Also, historically the ephors weren't priests. They were magistrates. Why did you make them deformed inbred serial assaulters of women they get as tribute and then drug to high heaven. Dafuq
Like. The Battle of Thermopylae is an interesting story and worth retelling. But every addition and change here so far seems like it makes it fucking worse, by justifying or claiming as righteous Sparta's worst excesses, and adding racism and sexism and ableism on top of it.
... I am offended on the behalf of Rhinoceri everywhere by the Rhinoceros setpiece
WHY ARE THERE CARTHAGINIAN WAR ELEPHANTS
Expect more thoughts as I watch
Big 300 feels tonight and I remembered I had never posted these from last year so here is my humble offering to myself and the maybe two other 300 enjoyers on Tumblr 🤲
If Leonidas from 300 (the movie) was the one assigned to escort Ellie Williams to the Fireflies, how would they fare compared to Joel?
Gets emotionally attached / successfully escorts Ellie to the hospital
Gets emotionally attached / fails to escort Ellie to the hospital
Doesn’t get emotionally attached / successfully escorts Ellie to the hospital
Doesn’t get emotionally attached / fails to escort Ellie to the hospital
Do you want to submit a potential protector for Ellie? Click here if you do!
300 is like the script author and the art director got high in a museum, surrounded by Roman Marmor sculptures, and romantizied painting about the Roman Empire painted in the 16th century and decided to make a movie
Then they added a few REALLY famous Hollywood actors, a lot of naked men, a bunch of color correction, a few arthouse vibes and called it a day
Just because it looks epic doesn’t make it an epic movie. Compared with that…. Gladiator was a masterpiece
And the villain is queercoded of course.
Men really watch that and call it the greatest movie ever made?!
Edit: and don’t get me started on the racism and ableism. I honestly consider stop watching this movie…
300 (2006) dir. Zack Snyder
You don’t even have to know what ableism means to know that 300 is probably one of the most ableistic Hollywood movies ever made