Just finished 300 (the graphic novel by Frank Miller) and 300 (the movie based on the graphic novel).
First the good news. The graphic novel is pretty good. Miller has always been dark and full of the good fight lost. No Christian sentimentality for him. You don't turn the other cheek - you rip off the other guy's leg and beat him with it. His Batman rules. There is a definite subtext to the Spartans fighting the invaders from Persia, but it remains subtext. Anachronisms are kept to a minimum, though there are serious liberties taken. The Ephors bear no relation to what history knows and are basically an invention. No mention is made of the Helots, 700 of whom went to the battle along with the 300 Spartans.
The movie is another matter. Kill Bill meets Triumph of the Will.
* The subtext is now front and center. The Persian are not just evil, they are deformed and subhuman. The Spartans are beyond good and seek only their own freedom and that of the other Greeks.
* Historical error abound and is subject to the point being made. I HATE people who twist history to their ends.
* Sparta fought in the phalanx. The movie is full of Kill Bill type acrobatics and individual heroics, just the opposite of what made Spartans so feared. They were not a collection of "army of ones", but a extremely coordinated force with no weak links.
* Persians splatter blood when wounded, as if they were watermelons and not people. Spartans don't bleed even if you cut off their head. No amount of arrow wounds result in even a trickle of blood.
* Spartans fight with honorable swords and spears, while those evil Persians use the most impractical arrows ever devised. They sure look cool though.
* The 300 Spartans brought 700 Helots with them. They all died too, but were never free. They lived and died in serfdom.
* The Ephors were not a hereditary priesthood, corrupt and decadent. They were elected annually by the citizens as a check on the two hereditary kings.
* Yes, two kings.
* No Spartan oracle - stolen from Delphi.
* Spartans did not care about freedom as we know it, nor the Greek heritage. Nor were they gentlemen farmers. They were an elitist warrior caste, supported by their serfs/helots. They would later lay waste to much of Greece themselves.
* When asked to join Alexander in fighting the Persians, the only Greeks to avoid the expedition were the Spartans.
* The whole section with the corrupt politicians who refuse to support the brave soldiers is unknown to history (and isn't in the book). Added merely to give comfort to those who think "support the troops" means "support the failures in our government."
* That those politicians are sexual corrupt too and are then exposed by a brave woman after having fooled the "politicians" with their words is tripe and sentimental manipulation. ALL citizens were warriors. To be other was to forfeit citizenship.
* Later on, there are 10,000 Spartans rallied to the cause. All of them would have been electors of the ephors that told Leonidas not to go. Most would have wanted to fight at Corinth and not all the way north.
In all, very well executed propaganda. We are right, brave and clean and they are wrong, deformed and enslaved by their false god. Bad history. It left a bad taste in my mouth.