[Professor S]

If you haven;t seen the movie yet, do yourself a favor and don't do any reserach into Sparta or the battle itself before you go. The film is very good (not excellent, missing an epic quality seen in films like Braveheart and Troy) but its historical quality is skaky at best.

***Historical Spoiler***









Throughout the movie, Leonidas (who was a serious badass in reality) keeps talking about an age of freedom and even the ending suggests that Spartans and Greeks in general created the idea of freedom. The problem is that Sparta was a slave state. They had LOTS of slaves, and in fact they were the only Greek city-state that enslaved other greeks (Messenia), and thats why other city-states disliked the Spartans so much. That and Spartan rutinely kicked their collective asses and subjugated them for hundreds of years until they finally fell to Thebes, victims of the groudbreaking Echelon formation.

So when they talked about Freedom, it really took me out of the movie. Too much suspension of disbelief.







***end historical spoiler***