300 is a 2006 American epic historical action film[4][5] directed by Zack Snyder, who co-wrote the screenplay with Kurt Johnstad and Michael B. Gordon, based on the 1998 comic book limited series of the same name by Frank Miller and Lynn Varley.

The plot revolves around King Leonidas (Gerard Butler), who leads 300 Spartans into battle against the Persian "God-King" Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro) and his invading army of more than 300,000 soldiers.

Dilios, now head of the Spartan-led Greek army, gives a rousing emotional speech in tribute to King Leonidas and the 300 who sacrificed their lives a year prior.

Visual effects supervisor Chris Watts and production designer Jim Bissell created a process dubbed "The Crush",[18] which allowed the Meteor artists to manipulate the colors by increasing the contrast of light and dark.

[27] In July 2005, composer Tyler Bates began work on the film, describing the score as having "beautiful themes on the top and large choir", but "tempered with some extreme heaviness".

[58][59] 300's opening weekend gross is the 24th-highest in box office history, coming slightly below The Lost World: Jurassic Park but higher than Transformers.

[65] They credited the film's stylized violence, the strong female role of Queen Gorgo which attracted a large number of women, and a MySpace advertising blitz.

The site's critical consensus reads, "A simple-minded but visually exciting experience, full of blood, violence, and ready-made movie quotes.

A. O. Scott of The New York Times described 300 as "about as violent as Apocalypto and twice as stupid", and he also criticized its color scheme and suggested that its plot includes racist undertones; Scott also poked fun at the buffed bodies of the actors who portrayed the Spartans, declaring that the Persian characters are "pioneers in the art of face-piercing", and declaring that the actors who played the Spartans had access to "superior health clubs and electrolysis facilities".

[72] Kenneth Turan wrote in the Los Angeles Times that "unless you love violence as much as a Spartan, Quentin Tarantino or a video-game-playing teenage boy, you will not be endlessly fascinated".

[64][75] Variety's Todd McCarthy described the film as "visually arresting" although "bombastic"[76] while Kirk Honeycutt, writing in The Hollywood Reporter, praised the "beauty of its topography, colors and forms".

[78] Empire gave the film three out of five, writing, "Visually stunning, thoroughly belligerent and as shallow as a pygmy's paddling pool, this is a whole heap of style tinged with just a smidgen of substance."

The historical consensus among both ancient chroniclers and current scholars was that Thermopylae was a clear Greek defeat, and the Persian invasion would be pushed back only in later ground and naval battles.

[91] Cartledge wrote that he enjoyed the film but found Leonidas' description of the Athenians as "boy lovers" ironic since the Spartans themselves incorporated institutional pederasty into their educational system.

[92] Ephraim Lytle, assistant professor of Hellenistic history at the University of Toronto, said that 300 selectively idealized Spartan society in a "problematic and disturbing" fashion and portrayed the "hundred nations of the Persians" as monsters and non-Spartan Greeks as weak.

"[93] Victor Davis Hanson, a National Review columnist and former professor of classical history at California State University, Fresno, wrote the foreword to a 2007 reissue of the graphic novel and said that the film demonstrates a specific affinity with the original material of Herodotus in that it captures the martial ethos of ancient Sparta and represents Thermopylae as a "clash of civilizations".

He remarked that Simonides, Aeschylus, and Herodotus viewed Thermopylae as a battle against "Eastern centralism and collective serfdom", which opposed "the idea of the free citizen of an autonomous polis".

"[99] Kaveh Farrokh, in the paper "The 300 Movie: Separating Fact from Fiction",[100] noted that the film falsely portrayed "the Greco-Persian Wars in binary terms: the democratic, good, rational 'Us' versus the tyrannical, evil and irrational, 'other' of the ever-nebulous (if not exotic) 'Persia'".

He highlighted three points regarding the contribution of the Achaemenid Empire to the creation of democracy and human rights: "The founder of the Achaemenid Empire, Cyrus the Great, was the world's first emperor to openly declare and guarantee the sanctity of human rights and individual freedom.... Cyrus was a follower of the teachings of Zoroaster, the founder of one of the world's oldest monotheistic religions....

[102] Media speculation about a possible parallel between the Greco-Persian conflict and current events began in an interview with Snyder that was conducted before the Berlin Film Festival.

Slate's Dana Stevens compared the film to The Eternal Jew "as a textbook example of how race-baiting fantasy and nationalist myth can serve as an incitement to total war.

[107][108] Newsday critic Gene Seymour, on the other hand, stated that such reactions are misguided, writing that "the movie's just too darned silly to withstand any ideological theorizing".

[109] Snyder himself dismissed ideological readings, suggesting that reviewers who critique "a graphic novel movie about a bunch of guys... stomping the snot out of each other" using words like "'neocon', 'homophobic', 'homoerotic' or 'racist'" are "missing the point".

[110] Snyder, however, also admitted to fashioning an effeminate villain specifically to make young straight males in the audience uncomfortable: "What's more scary to a 20-year-old boy than a giant god-king who wants to have his way with you?

"[111] The Slovenian critic Slavoj Žižek pointed out that the story represents "a poor, small country (Greece) invaded by the army of a much large[r] state (Persia)" and suggested the identification of the Spartans with a modern superpower to be flawed.

[113] Frank Miller, commenting on areas in which he lessened the Spartan cruelty for narrative purposes, said: "I have King Leonidas very gently tell Ephialtes, the hunchback, that they can't use him [as a soldier], because of his deformity.

[132] Reviewers in the United States and elsewhere "noted the political overtones of the West-against-Iran story line and the way Persians are depicted as decadent, sexually flamboyant and evil in contrast to the noble Greeks".

Moaveni suggested that 300's box office success compared with Alexander's failure (another spurious period epic dealing with Persians), was "cause for considerable alarm, signaling ominous U.S.

[134] According to The Guardian, Iranian critics of 300, ranging from bloggers to government officials, described the movie "as a calculated attempt to demonise Iran at a time of intensifying U.S. pressure over the country's nuclear programme".

[138][139][140][141][142] Skits based upon the film have appeared on Saturday Night Live[143] and Robot Chicken, the latter of which mimicked the visual style of 300 in a parody set during the American Revolutionary War, titled "1776".