Zack Snyder's 300 really is as bas as advertised. It's a silly, juvenile fascist fantasy. Based on the graphic novel by Frank Miller and Lynn Varley by the same name, 300 has King Leonidas (Gerard Butler) engage in a personal war against Persia's King Xerxes. Although the movie isn't a literal adaptation, Snyder does faithful to (most of) Miller's vision. The real issue is slavery versus freedom as the Spartans are meant to represent the forces of Western progress and so on and so on. There was indeed a famous Battle of Thermopylae that had 300 Spartans sacrifice themselves.
BUT Leonidas had 4000 men fighting under him. In any case, Spartans were notorious slave-owners. Accurate this film is not. But, more critically, some critical elements are missing in this film translation. Miller's 300 is more subtle and more humorous - elements sorely missing here. But even at the purely visual level Snyder is too derivative and brings nothing to the table except letting the CGI go wild. There are too many good things in 300 to write it off completely as a perverse neo-Nazi, wish-fulfillment. Yet it comes damn close; too close for comfort.
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