Zach Snyder's 300

The bones of 300, the film by Zach Snyder, captures the essence of glorifying a story’s events by distorting facts and figures during its retelling. It accomplishes this task by having a survivor from the 300 Spartans who fought at Thermopylae, recount his experience and what took place during this battle. Without context, 300 seems logical enough if you are willing to buy into its caricatures and overt messaging. The film features real-life characters from the war and displays the ebbs and flow of the fighting but fudges some of the details along the way in favor of showing painted on abs and recreation of gruesome images from the comics this film is based on. In some ways, it stumbles into forms of nuance either intended or not, but once this film is viewed with a modern understanding of the work, its filmmaker, and the historical context, the story begins to be swallowed by its own grandiose images drowning in orientalist stereotypes and style over substance. 

First, I must acknowledge the accuracy comparing it to the book, before the paper rambles on into an opinion piece. The start of the film begins with a messenger going to Sparta and asking for earth and water. We see this request in the opening scene as well as Herodotus’ The Histories (Herodotus, 7.32). The film then follows the 300 Spartans who fought at Thermopylae. Despite the film's portrayal of this battle, there were other Greeks fighting alongside the Spartans who held their own and deserve credit (Herodotus, 7.202). While the Spartans did set out first (Herodotus, 7.206), they were not the only ones to die in Thermopylae despite the film's portrayal of “cowardice” from other Greek armies. The film does capture the early success of the Spartans versus the Persians and how they first fought common warriors then the “Immortals”(Herodotus 7.211). The film also explores the terrain where they were fighting. In the film, it was a narrow passage on a giant cliff which is a tad over-exaggerated, but the battle was fought on a narrow passage (Herodotus 7.211). A smaller detail from the book which is featured in the film that demonstrates the magnitude of the Persian army was that when they launched arrows in an attack it would block the sun (Herodotus 7.226). In the end both the book and film describe how the Spartans understood the inevitable and fought to their death with pride (Herodotus 7.220, 224), but the film leaves out the other Greeks who stayed by the Spartans’ side (Herodotus 7.222).

The main characters and symbols of good and evil in the film are present in the book. Xerxes, the Persian leader, is portrayed as a threat to Greek freedom. In the film, Xerxes does not share the same nuance and backstory as he gets in the book. Instead, Xerxes is left as a symbol without any explicit character development and we rarely hear his perspective. In the book however, we see his reasoning for fighting this war, to avenge his father (Herodotus, 7.8). We also get to see more of his complexities and motivation by getting a major character moment where he wept (Herodtus 7.45-46) over the topic of being remembered in history, which is similarly displayed in the Greek hero of Achilles in The Iliad. One thing that the film got right about Xerxes is the scale of his power, which is reflected in the book by him being compared to Zeus by an onlooker who watched him cross into Europe (Herodotus 7.56). We also see the opposing figure of Leonidas, the leader of the Spartans. Leonidas is portrayed similarly to the movie, as an honorable war hero (Herodotus 7.224). While we do not see as much backstory in the book, Leonidas does get portrayed in the book similarly to the film, without critique towards his refusal to retreat and honoring him as a great war leader. 

One aspect of the film that is heightened to the maximum level, is the “greatness” of the Spartans. In the film, the Spartans defeat their enemies due to their superior skill, while the book accounts for their longer spears (Herodotus 7.211) and showed them using tricky tactics rather than experienced fighting skills like their attempt to fake run away (Herodotus 7.211). Also, the film portrays only one Spartan returning, who is a messenger and leads the Spartans in the next battle. However, in the book, when one of the soldiers returned home he was condemned for his cowardice (Herodotus 7.231). The book also mentions another survivor who was a messenger who kills himself (Herodotus 7.232). In these cases, the film softens the edges of the Spartans by only depicting the positives rather than showing the nuance of the battle tactics and the Spartan culture. 

The major aspect that I did enjoy from the film is its exploration into oral history and how stories get glorified and distorted over time. In The Histories, Herodotus learns all of his history from conversations. He learns the glory of the 300 by hearing those repeat the names of everyone who fought (Herodotus 7.224). Without intention, the information sources are biased, so instead of comprehending the Spartans' defeat as the loss that it was, it was instead heralded as a battle of ideology and a symbolic moral victory. This style of oral history is the same type of history explored in the film, by having the “sole” survivor of the 300 telling the story. This unreliable narrator portrays the real life event with mysticism, making the opposition and the heroes into a fairy tale battle of good versus evil. Like a game of telephone, the original events will get distorted over time when people pass the word along. In the case of the film, the story is distorted and glorified by a veteran while in the book the story is remembered with respect by those who know the names of the 300. From this perspective, it made sense to portray the 300 as a glorious fighting unit and display the overt caricatures of their opposition. These caricatures of beasts with saws for hands, animals playing instruments, and other over-exaggerations are understandable from the perspective of a survivor recounting the tale of the “barbarians” they were facing. 

To understand the film better, I must acknowledge the filmmaker, Zach Snyder, who is infamous in the comic book world. This film is based on the comic series that took the story of the 300 dying in Thermopylae and created a grand retelling with flashy imagery. Snyder in some instances is directly taking famous images from the comics and places them inside the film. While I have not read the comics, I do believe I can fairly say that the story of Thermopylae can get lost in translation when Snyder prioritizes the glamor rather than the nuance. Another example of Snyder recreating comics successfully in the imagery depicted but leaving behind the commentary the original work was making was his adaptation of the beloved comic series Watchmen. I say all of this to acknowledge the perspective this film comes from. Snyder is a notorious image-driven director who compromises his characters’ values/substance for his desire to show cool visuals. Snyder’s compromisation for style is seen across his works including his portrayal of Batman in the DC films.. While some may argue that it's the director’s right to display their intended vision, in the name of the auteur theory (Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Two Takes), as viewers called for his version of the Justice League, I find myself left unsatisfied by the result in this case. Snyder’s portrayal results in a fairly black-and-white story, which makes sense due to a Spartan narrating, but it loses the charm of the way Herodotus leaves it up for the interpretation of the reader. To be fair, I am highly intrigued by the folk-lore oral history aspect of the story of the 300, but the blatant Orientalist depictions leave a taint on the enjoyment of the viewing from someone viewing the film’s context. 

Also, another problem I have with the film is that I find the exaggerated display of the Persians pries into harmful depictions of Middle Eastern culture for the sake of negativity during a time of villainizing the “other” in American history. This film, created in 2006, was during the War on Terror where Islamophobia and hatred for the Middle East were at an all-time high. While I do think that the themes of freedom vs “slavery” were a major part of the text and ideology around these battles, I think the integrity of their depiction in this film carries with it an overt bias that is bolstered by the film’s historical context. 

Then, there are the weird other aspects of orientalism in the film. The main example of this is the Immortals for some reason being samurai-like figures. While we do not get explicit explanations of their attire in The Histories, I feel like their depiction in the comics and the film was mainly because they looked cool and not for any historical reason. Other orientalist aspects are how the culture of the Persians is displayed as barbaric and weird. Xerxes is also depicted as a weird over the top caricature, specifically his accessories.

There is something to be said about how storylines and our context of an event change over time depending on the world we live in and our national perspective. In the times of The Histories, those recounting these stories are removed from the actual battles, so the loss at Thermopylae can be praised as an act of heroism but that is hindsight bias, just as Themistocles’ tactic at Salamis would be regarded differently if it wiped out the Greeks who fought there. Just as there is historical bias on the greatness of the events of Thermopylae for those during Herodotus’ time, there is also a cultural bias in the “whiteness” of the film, fighting against the oppression of Middle Eastern culture. Personally, I think the film is tainted from the ability to truly see historical similarities to the commentary made in The Histories, without being overcome by the inherent stigma attached to the work due to the historical context and past works of Zack Snyder. Due to these reasons, while the film is a feast for the eyes, I did not come away with a positive impression on the commentary and the depictions made in the film.