Like a good college student, Zack Snyder, director of 300-a fictional retelling of the Greek Battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C.-did his research.
"I did a lot, so I do know what the Spartans and the 'Immortals' [elite Persian soldiers] looked like, but I thought, 'is that really cooler than what Frank [Miller] did?' In the end, I did a lot of arduous research and then didn't use any of it."
Hollywood films are criticized for misrepresenting historical events or for casually-or carelessly-representing them. However, in the case of 300, historical inaccuracies are not the product of laziness. The film actively de-actualizes the Battle of Thermopylae, constructing factual events as fantastic and unreal.
"Obviously there are ethical issues that come up in the treatment of "actual events" in a fictionalized recreation," Hank Okazaki, Film/Video/Digital Program coordinator Hank Okazaki said.
The film was shot entirely in front of blue and green screens and with a filter, making the action appear animated. 300 features a cast of mythic, inhuman and grotesque characters ranging from fang-toothed warriors to enslaved giants.
Okazaki said he believes that 300 makes clear that "it is taking a great deal of artistic liscence and shows... it is not aiming for 'documentary verisimilitude' or 'historical accuracy.'"
Peter Burian, chair and professor of classical & comparative literatures and theater studies recalls students asking him whether Brad-Pitt-vehicle Troy was historically accurate.
"The extent that people take the current wave of 'ancient history' in the media as history is problematic." Burian said. " I had to point out that it could be measured against the 'Iliad,' our only real 'record' of the Trojan War, and from that point of view it was pretty inaccurate, but that the real war is lost to us."
The specific type of fictionalizing in 300 is not something Burian said he sees as posing a serious-or a new-problem unless "people think that they are getting something else."
That something else is politics. Burian points to Michael Cieply's March 4 New York Times article, "That Film's Real Message? It Could Be: 'Buy a Ticket,'" which discusses the film's unintentionally controversial content.
"The story of Thermopylae can be hijacked to produce a West vs. East crypto-argument for the Iraq War, or a bumbling superpower vs. effective guerrillas argument against imperial overstretch today." Burian said.
Although Snyder said he never intended to make a political film, President George W. Bush still appears to be the heroic Spartan King Leonidas to some and the tyrannical Xerxes to others.
Burian said when/if the film is understood politically, the effect caused by fantastical elements of 300 becomes troublesome.
"Suppose that a president imagines he is the world's sheriff, bringing laws and order to the unruly bad guys," Burian said, comparing the effect to another mythicizing film, Wild Wild West.
"What might result from that?"
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