In the pre-release hysteria, I found myself researching the Battle of Thermopylae. The movie is based on a little moment in history... and really does a good job of that little moment. If you want character development, go read a history book.
• The movie style is much like Sin City, and if you'd watch them back-to-back, you wouldn't say the effects sucked in either - both are "artisitic". The "fuzzy" blood is there as a "placeholder", it wasn't the focus, and wasn't what you should've been watching anyway. By making it "fuzzy", your eyes snap back to the action automatically.
• The 'monsters' complaint is bunk. The rhino and the elephants, completely possible: they are just larger than average specimens. It is well known that Persians used war elephants. The big pizzed off ogre, possible. (Andre the giant, anyone?) Disfigured hunchback? Possible. And that hacked up dude with the "blade arms"... well, that dude was grotesquely butchered and disfigured. We've got prosthetic arms and such... how is this so hard to imagine? As for the immortals, who knows what sort of tortures they had to endure to get their faces jacked like that. Filing down teeth? Possible. If Spartans were thrown into the warrior world at 7, there's no telling when the immortals started getting teeth pulled forward and faces stretched... or whatever.
• That little moment in history, the Battle of Thermopylae, was actually well portrayed considering it was a movie. The hot walls were located near hot springs, and actually called the hot walls. The lines "Then we will fight in the shade" (response to the arrows blacking out the sky warning), "Come and take them" (repsonse to 'lay down your arms'), and Leonidas' sending one soldier back to tell the tale: all documented.
•In fact, there is a monument there on which it is enscribed the bit about the "300 dead here by Spartan Law". The enscription has been translated many ways, but the gist is "Passerby, here lie 300 dead, Spartans by law, go and tell them all." The rough meaning conveys Leonidas' wish that those dead Spartans be remembered; for their bravery, for their sacrafice, for their dedication, etc.
•The Spartan (allied) army was, indeed, betrayed by a herdsman (or something similar) who had shown the persians a path to go around in the mountains.
•The actual numbers were initially something like 7000 Spartans and Allies against some 200,000 Persians/Allies. There was some sort of festival, and upon orginal confrontation, the Spartans and Allies retreated to a spot where they could hold off the Persians while the rest fell back to regroup and gather reinforcements in Sparta. In addition to the 300 Spartans, approx. 1400 + 400 stayed. The Spartan 'Army' that remained did, indeed, unleash some serious butchery.
•There were huge piles of bodies documented.
Given that the movie was about that one battle, a battle where 300 Spartans seriously butchered a bunch of Persians in order to buy time for their Army to gather and the festival to finish, I'd say it was an awesome movie. The embellishments, effects, dialogue... trivial. The plotline had to be there in order for women to be able to stomach the violence. Remember how Fight Club was criticised for it's violence? Same thing. The chick I was with loved it. So, cool.
Having been in the service, things like honor, bravery, valor, sacrafice, and glory give me a chubby. So, I have nothing bad to say about the movie...
except for the puss on those monk dudes' faces in the same scene with the t!tt!es. Ewww. And puss dude licking that chick?!?! Double Ewww.
