أهلاوسهلا!

As some of you know, I studied archaeology and have a dabbling in classciv. As some of you might suspect, I made notes.

I am currently an hour 12 into this damned thing.

My thoughts, let me show you them

Wow it really big ups the Spartan everything. I get that this was before it got better known how fucked up Sparta was but uh also. Bad

The colour grading on this makes me want to punch something. It's like every FPS shooter of the era - brown and greige.

Very occasionally it manages to use that colour grading for dramaticism but it generally isn't.

I am an hour in. There are two female characters. I don't think either has been named yet and one we're informed gets assaulted regularly.

There's a lot of stylistic overlap between this and Gladiator.

Oh yeah also

Of those two (2) female characters we have seen the tits of two (2) out of two (2). I get that we're also being shown the man tiddy here but we're shown the women tiddy in the "this is hot and eroticised" way while the man tiddy is "this is aspirational". Very different vibes. We aren't meant to be horny about the man tiddy.

Oh yeah, also also:

The racism. They make black people who would have been way more mixed and nuanced. Persia was not in fucking Africa. It included a chunk of Turkey and some of North Africa, sure! But the bits of it closest to Greece that would have provided a chunk of the soldiers for easiest travel would have been as Mediterranean as the Greeks! Stop making them racially different!

The ableism! I feel bad for Ephialtes. Especially as a bunch of the Spartans go to the knee when fighting which would be entirely within protectable range for his shield. Also, if you're gonna piss off and deny the hopes of someone like that, especially someone who you know would have been killed by your societies laws - he has so many reasons to be resentful. If you don't think he should live, be as hard as a Spartan is supposed to be and kill him.

Also, I'm pretty sure the way the Persians found the path in history was a local. Just an ordinary local. Who wanted, likely, to not fucking die at the hands of the Persians. You didn't have to make him disabled and thereby 1. Justify the Spartan ableism and 2. be more ableist by having him "betray" them.

Also, ableism x2 with the ephors like what the fuck

Also, historically the ephors weren't priests. They were magistrates. Why did you make them deformed inbred serial assaulters of women they get as tribute and then drug to high heaven. Dafuq

Like. The Battle of Thermopylae is an interesting story and worth retelling. But every addition and change here so far seems like it makes it fucking worse, by justifying or claiming as righteous Sparta's worst excesses, and adding racism and sexism and ableism on top of it.

... I am offended on the behalf of Rhinoceri everywhere by the Rhinoceros setpiece

WHY ARE THERE CARTHAGINIAN WAR ELEPHANTS

cmon man.

also the metal music is mediocre and getting on my nerves. very early 00s.

But of course it's got to be a "betrayal" by a spartan who would never be and is within your film's canon never accepted by spartans - so why does he owe them loyalty if they show him none?

From a purely writing standpoint i can understand the logic chain. Ephialtes being just a guy is boring and anticlimactic, its better if he has some kind of connection to the central story. Therefore he should have some kind of connection to Leonidas. But making him a Spartan or someone kicked out of Sparta is the laziest route. Have Leonidas be a dick who pissed off a local farmer who then betrays them!

But of course, that doesn't let the film be ableist or big up Sparta or have this weird horny scene of unnamed women mobbing the guy while he signs up to the Persians. And there's gotta be women tiddy because otherwise all this male machoness starts feeling kind of homoerotic. And we can't have that after they shat on Athens for being gay.

[long, long sigh]

Let me sit you down. Let me have a word with you.

But there's so much shit that picking them apart fully would take longer than the film itself.

it's so easy to spew out shit. its much harder to refute it all - not because the shit is right but because to be provably right you've got to have the evidence and make the argument

this film, apparently, was shown to US forces to get them amped up for fighting in iraq and afghanistan. i can believe that

this is exactly the kind of warmongering, racist, misogynist, ableist, homophobic "oo-rah" fucking nonsense you want to use to amp up a bunch of men who want to believe they're cool and strong before they go and commit acts of horrific violence purely to further their own country's cultural hegemony.

For one, those are either so soft as to provide no protection whatsoever (not that they're wearing any bloody armour) or they have to chafe like a bitch.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; he leadeth me beside the still waters.

here it is compared to hubbles image: