History Headscratchers / ThreeHundred

* So during the first skirmish with the 300, the Persians first try to crush them under weight of numbers by melee combat, but they funnel into the chokepoint and can't break through the phalanx, then the Spartans break out and hack and slash their way through them. Not very historically accurate to throw away the viable defensive formation so quickly, maybe, but I don't mind that. Then, having cleared that wave, the Spartans are forced to take cover under their shields in the face of an absolute maelstrom of arrows. Very cunning of them. But then, one ponders why the Persians didn't try to combine these approaches. Why not send the first wave of melee infantry, then send the archery barrage while the Spartans were too busy fending them off? Maybe the phalanx formation combined with the mountain pass would mean the barrage would mostly just hit shields and Persian infantry, with few arrows managing to sail over and impale a Spartan here and there. Ok, so then the preferential time to do it would be during the break out where the Spartans are shown striding forward to murder their opposition one or two at a time. You can't both squat and shield in a stationary position against projectiles, ''and'' be charging forward to slice through infantry simultaneously. The Spartans would have been killed in great numbers with survivors forced to hastily retreat in an easily-spun (for propaganda) display of cowardice, which the Persians would use to show that these legendary soldiers could fall (and scatter) like any other warriors. [[WeHaveReserves And, I don't think Xerxes or his generals would have any qualms about sacrificing large numbers of their own melee soldiers to fall to their arrows.]] He could justify the thousands of friendly fire deaths in this initial (and likely final, at least for the first 300 of the Spartans to join Leonidas) battle as being worthy and necessary sacrifices to prevent many thousands more falling to Spartan steel. Also, if for some reason the strategy didn't occur to them at this early battle, perhaps witnessing the ways the Spartans countered two separate modes of attack should have forced creativity to use the strategy for subsequent exchanges.

** You mean non-white Americans. So [[ AngryWhiteMan many white Americans]] are so used to being portrayed positively, they go berserk every time a movie doesn't depict them as the all-conquering hero protagonist, to the point that Hollywood is afraid to make movies depicting them as villains.