YMMV / 300

These. Are. YMMV. Items!

• Accidental Aesop:
  • The film adaptation of 300 is often interpreted to glorify secular, Westernized countries standing against the religious extremism and intolerance of the Middle East. However, some critics pointed out that in the film, Persia is a massive, wealthy and culturally diverse empire bent on expanding its influence throughout the world, while the Spartans are a small group of dedicated, zealous fighters who are willing to break the rules of war and martyr themselves to resist the invaders, which makes Persia represent the United States and Spartans represent the terrorists instead.
  • Given that the Persians are written as one-dimensional villains (despite the fact that in Real Life, they were actually pretty tolerant and civilized), while the Spartans are presented as heroes and in such a badass way, one could think that the movie teaches that "it's A-OK to dehumanise/mock certain cultures to make other cultures seem superior".
• Adaptation Displacement: Despite creator Frank Miller's pedigree in the comics world, the comic was not very well known in the mainstream before the film came out.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: Was Leonidas content to prove his point by just "making a god-king bleed", or was he aiming to kill? For one thing, Xerxes still bleeds anyway if he's killed, and that can't happen because of history. The comic had no such ambiguity since there Leonidas screams "Xerxes, die!" Then in both the comic and movie, the narrator (who wasn't a witness anyway) is making excuses why the spear throw only grazed Xerxes (long distance, he's tired, etc).
• Americans Hate Tingle: Naturally, the film was condemned as "Western Propaganda" in Iran due to the way it portrayed Persians.
• Applicability: As noted above under Accidental Aesop, fans and critics alike have often debated whether Sparta or Persia is meant to represent the United States, and which is meant to represent the Middle East. While the film came out at the height of The War on Terror, it was based on a graphic novel from The '90s, predating the war and the "clash of civilizations" discourse that surrounded it.
• Awesome Art: The comic book contains some of the best art Frank Miller ever drew. The coloring also falls under this.
• Complete Monster: Theron is a Spartan Senator who betrays his people to Persia in exchange for riches. Manipulating the Senate and military into standing idly by while brutal Persia slowly conquers the land, Theron deliberately isolates King Leonidas and his army of 300 soldiers without backup so they will be slaughtered by the Persians. When Queen Gorgo comes to him desperate to send aid to Leonidas, Theron claims he will help her, but first violently rapes her. He then refuses to keep his promise and tries to frame Gorgo as a harlot so as to silence her for good and leave Sparta in Theron's hands to deliver to Persia.
• Designated Heroes: Ordinarily, you wouldn't be rooting for a side that glorifies warfare, practices eugenics, is profoundly xenophobic, executes diplomats and systematically kills wounded and those attempting to surrender. The film gets away with it through sheer Black-and-Grey Morality, as the Persians are portrayed as even nastier tyrants who employ literal monsters, enslave entire cultures and massacre villages on their path, but this does not erase the Spartans's own crimes by modern standards (and cannot be accomplished without a healthy dose of Artistic License – History, as those who are more familiar with the historical Greco-Persian Wars will know). As a consequence, 300 can be perceived to make an awkward stance, because it paints the Spartans as morally relatable even though it doesn't bother to cover most of their barbarism. It's tempting to view the Persians as misunderstood heroes leading the charge against a group of backwards, psychotic slavers who physically and sexually abuse their children. This is taken even further by 300: Rise of an Empire, where the Spartans' Training from Hell is shown from the perspective of Athenian Themistocles, and there's nothing glorious about it, just four grown men beating up a child.
• Designated Villains: The Persian soldiers are repeatedly mentioned to be nothing more than slaves forced by their fear of the king to fight. This is even meant to be derisive, as it implies they are at fault for not having enough bravery, strength or virtue to rebel against Xerxes or die trying as the Greeks do. Naturally, it doesn't make them any less sympathetic, especially to modern sensibilities. (Also because, as said above, this happens to be a huge historical deviation: Persian soldiers were certainly citizens forced into service by their monarchy, but they weren't literal slaves, while the Greeks didn't shy away from slavery themselves, especially the Spartans, where the majority of the population consisted of enslaved Helots.) The Persian Empire was known to be fairly cosmopolitan and tolerant in real life, so their portrayal as cruel tyrants relative to the supposedly heroic Spartans feels more than a little suspect.
• Estrogen Brigade: When your movie's cast is mostly made up of buff men who seem unacquainted with the concept of a shirt, getting one of these is inevitable.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
  • The movie was a massive hit in Greece and cultural neighbor Cyprus, most likely because it depicts Greeks as total badasses.
  • It's also extremely popular with the European far-right for less wholesome reasons.
  • Also popular with the largely conservative Asian viewers.
• Gratuitous Special Effects: This movie makes heavy use of prosthetics, Green Screen and lots of CGI. The same battle was depicted in the movie The 300 Spartans decades earlier with little more than fancy costumes and prop swords. The comic is comparatively more realistic with its visuals.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: David Brin, in a critical review of the story which bashed Frank Miller for downplaying the efforts of the other Greeks, stated "That Athenian triumph deserves a movie!" Three years later, they got one in the sequel.
• Ho Yay: This movie might have been called Ho Yay: The Motion Picture, to the point where Cracked's YouTube series Hilarious Helmet History described the movie as a "Tom of Holland fest" (presumably a malaproper for Tom of Finland, instead of that dude who played Spider-Man). In fact, real-life Spartans in the agoge were encouraged to have a relationship with an older master who will train them. In some cases, girls had to shave themselves bald so that they could look like boys and get married.
• It's Popular, Now It Sucks!: Thanks to the movie's success, The Spartan Way and generally, the Spartan culture, have become pretty well-known to modern times. This has resulted in a backlash from people who were never fond of the Spartans, with argues stating that they were not as heroic as the film portrays them.
• Memetic Badass:
  • While the Spartans were already commonly regarded by historians as one of the most badass civilizations in all of history, this movie, also making bored high school students interested in a quaint little city state that they would not even know existed in the first place, exaggerated the idea further that the Spartans were really a race of hypermuscular Supermen who can each kill millions by themselves while wearing only underwear. It's like applying Chuck Norris Facts to an entire ancient city.
  • Spartans don't need armour. Their abs are harder.
• Memetic Molester:
  • Xerxes.
  • The Spartans also suffer from this as well due to all the massive Ho Yay Fanservice they provide, and the historical fact that Spartans tolerated active homosexuality and pederasty while living in communal barracks. It's telling that the Spartans were known to be much more enthusiastic about their pedophilia than the other Greek city states. Even though Xerxes is portrayed as a depraved weirdo, his perversion seems to begin and end with his flamboyant outfit and his lax attitude towards the people having an orgy in his tent (who are all at least consenting adults rather than preteen boys like what the Spartans prefer).
• Memetic Mutation: See! HERE!
• Moral Event Horizon: If Theron didn't cross it by using Persian money to bribe the ephors into warning Leonidas against going to war against Persia during an imminent religious holiday, he definitely did so by raping Gorgo and attempting to out her as an adulteress at the Senate meeting the next day.
• Narm / Narm Charm:
  • We could also call this Narm Charm: The Motion Picture, what with every single actor on a 100% scenery diet.
  • The sheer premise: muscled badasses taking on a technologically and numerically superior continental empire of a thousand nations (with MONSTERS and Ninja Orc Supersoldiers) while wearing only briefs. If that's not Testosterone Poisoning, nothing else is.
  • The Persian executioner, an ogre-like type with blades instead of arms, looks like he came out directly from either Diablo or Warcraft.
  • Gerard Butler's facial reaction when Daxos tells Leonidas that the Persians are on the high pass towards their rear guard. Instead of looking angry, frustrated, resigned or any other fitting emotion, he looks utterly confused, even doing a little goofy glance to the side. While it could be chalked up to him being shocked that the Persians found the pass (and being putting two and two together with his rejection of Ephialtes), it looks more like he cannot honestly remember what pass is Daxos talking about.
  • The weird, dome-shaped turtle formation the Spartans execute at the background when cornered by the Persians. Aside from looking odd, it also seems hard to pull physically - are the Spartans forming a human pyramid inside or something?
• Older Than They Think:
  • The concept of a purportedly historical chronicle 90% made of Rule of Cool is hardly new. One could read Silius Italicus's Punica and consider it basically the Roman version of 300, given that it presents a series of ridiculously badass Roman allies fighting a massive, grotesque multi-ethnic army complete with war elephants and led by cruel conqueror with a vendetta. Some of its passages are so similar to scenes and elements in 300 that it is hard not to think either Miller or Snyder had read it.
  • A number of lines from the comics and the movie are actually from Herodotus, including "fight in the shade" and "Tonight, we dine in Hades" (Hades is short for "Hades's kingdom", the underworld, which was where all afterlives were, for Ancient Greeks). The Spartan epitaph planted by the side of the road is actually still visible as a marker from the Classical period:
  Go tell the Spartans, passer by,
  That here, by Spartan law, we lie.
  • Queen Gorgo also apparently said "Only Spartan women give birth to real men." Though this is believed to have been said to another Greek, not to a Persian messenger.
  • The Spartan Way: the real life Spartans literally made this trope. However, real life Spartans didn't go to war naked; they were portrayed that way because in ancient Greece, muscular nakedness was a symbol of heroism.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Michael Fassbender plays Stelios. This movie came out a few years before his first truly famous roles so many people never really registered that it was him in this one.
  • Lena Headey had been working for over ten years but mostly in television roles, with maybe The Cave or The Brothers Grimm being her only recognizable films. Of course only a few years later, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and Game of Thrones changed that.
  • Peter Mensah, who plays the ill-fated Persian Messenger, would later become known for playing Oenomaus in Spartacus: Blood and Sand.
• Signature Scene: The scene where Leonidas kicks a Persian messenger into a well in a show of patriotism became the best-known moment in the film as a result of its over-the-top presentation and Leonidas' hammy delivery of the line "This! Is! Sparta!" The scene became a popular subject for parody, especially online, where it generated a popular YouTube Poop meme in the form of Sparta Remixes.
• Spiritual Adaptation: Frank Miller has openly admitted that 300 was inspired by the 1962 film The 300 Spartans and therefore it serves as its unofficial comic adaptation only if it ran on Rule of Cool and Artistic License. In some regions, the movie was given the same title as the original, as though if it were a remake.
• Strawman Has a Point: When the Persian herald confronts the Greeks building a wall from dead bodies and screams that they are barbarians, it's hard to argue that he isn't somewhat justified in his horror and rage.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: Most of Tyler Bates's score were derived from other works such as Titus, to the point that Warner Bros. not only apologized and resolved their mistake, but they also posted a note on later releases that the music was "derived from preexisting compositions not authored by Tyler Bates."
• Tear Jerker:
  • The finale: the camera pans across the horizon and shows that the sacrifice of Leonidas and his brave 300 has inspired thirty thousand Greeks to fight against tyranny.
  • The final scenes of the movie, though thanks to Dilios's verbal eloquence and expertise for Rousing Speeches it leaves a bit of a hope spot for the Greeks (See Quotes page for the full speech.)
  • Another scene that deserves mention is the one where Leonidas is leaving Queen Gorgo for the last time. As Dilios narrates with solemn dignity: "Goodbye my love. He doesn't say it. There's no room for softness, not in Sparta. Only the hard and strong may call themselves Spartans. Only the hard. Only the strong."
  • And that tearjerker inspires another tearjerker near the end, when Leonidas, peppered with arrows, the only Spartan left standing as his comrades die around him, raises himself up, and declares his love for Gorgo just before the final rain of arrows fall.
    "MY QUEEN! My wife. My love."
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The omission (in the movie) and downplaying (in the comic) of the Thespian contingent staying with Leonidas and his army, when seeing it emphasized how non-Spartans stayed, fought and died the same as Leonidas and his men could have gotten better play, especially if they'd been made to fight side by side.
• Watch It for the Meme: Let's be honest, one of the reasons why people watch this film is because of the "This Is Sparta" scene and the numerous musical remixes that have spawned from it.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?:
  • Complicated again, as the film was made during The War On Terror, which Frank Miller supports, but the original comic was written a decade earlier. This has lead to such a bad Misaimed Fandom that a March 2007 press conference saw director Zack Snyder asked by a reporter whether King Leonidas was meant to be George W. Bush or Osama bin Laden. Original author Frank Miller claims that his comic to a large degree was inspired by the 1962 film The 300 Spartans, which is often considered to be a metaphor for the Cold War. Whether such a message was intended or not is far from clear.
  • To further complicate things, people have made arguments for the movie taking both sides as an allegory for War on Terror: the Spartans can be seen as representing a small local native people being threatened by an enormous expansive imperial force, and white westerners boldly slaughtering dehumanized brown-skinned middle easterners.
  • Xerxes tempts Leonidas with the idea of becoming his vassal and "carry [Xerxes'] battle standard to the heart of Europe". It's unclear what does Xerxes mean by the heart of Europe, but if we follow the geography of the time, he is referring to either the Gaul or Germania - places that back then weren't that interesting to a faraway Asian empire, but which nowadays we consider to be centers of the western culture and the European Union. The previous metaphor of white westerners vs. brown-skinned middle easterners couldn't get any less subtle.

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