Don't Know Much About History...

But that ain't it.

Many thanks to LawDog for his review of 10,000 B.C. WARNING! LINKED BLOG POST INCLUDES SPOILERS!

As I stated in my comment to his post, I won't be taking Mrs. Drang to that movie, because she would be to embarrassed at being ejected from the theater when I start yelling at the screen. I enjoyed Mr. Emerrich's Independence Day, had no desire to see The Day After. I was mildly interested in seeing this one, although the references in the commercials to "Lost Civilizations" had both Mrs. Drang and I rolling our eyes. Still, what the hell?

Now, I have been known to describe myself as a History Geek. It annoys me, for example, when I see a movie set in the Civil War and they are carrying Colt Single Action Army revolvers. (Model of 1873, get a clue, guys!)
OTOH, I can handle WWII movies with, say, M46 tanks subbing for German Panzers or whatever mark, since there is not exactly a surplus of surplus (ha!) WWII German Panzers out there. (Although that seems to be changing, and I loved the Soviet T34s converted to Tiger Mark Is in Kelly's Heroes, which is my favorite Clint Eastwood movie, but I digress.)

I guess it all comes down to whether the historical inaccuracies are something they should and could have done something about.

I never really thought about it much until 300 came out last year, and I read Victor Davis Hanson's musings about it on seeing the premiere, posted to his Works and Days Blog:

There are four key things to remember about the film: it is not intended to be Herodotus Book 7.209-236, but rather is an adaptation from Frank Miller’s graphic novel, which itself is an adaptation from secondary work on Thermopylai. Purists should remember that when they see elephants and a rhinoceros or scant mention of the role of those wonderful Thespians who died in greater numbers than the Spartans at Thermopylai.

Second, in an eerie way, the film captures the spirit of Greek fictive arts themselves. Snyder and Johnstad and Miller are Hellenic in this sense: red-figure vase painting especially idealized Greek hoplites through “heroic nudity”. Such iconographic stylization meant sometimes that armor was not included in order to emphasize the male physique.

So too the 300 fight in the film bare-chested. In that sense, their oversized torsos resemble not only comic heroes, but something of the way that Greeks themselves saw their own warriors in pictures. And even the loose adaptation of events reminds me of Greek tragedy, in which an Electra, Iphigeneia or Helen in the hands of a Euripides is portrayed sometimes almost surrealistically, or at least far differently from the main narrative of the Trojan War, followed by the more standard Aeschylus, Sophocles and others.

Third, Snyder, Johnstad, and Miller have created a strange convention of digital backlot and computer animation, reminiscent of the comic book mix of Sin City. That too is sort of like the conventions of Attic tragedy in which myths were presented only through elaborate protocols that came at the expense of realism (three male actors on the stage, masks, dialogue in iambs, with elaborate choral meters, violence off stage, 1000-1600 lines long, etc.).

{Critique of Oliver Stone's Alexander deleted. DWD} ...But the “300” dispenses with realism at the very beginning, and thus shoulders no such burdens. If characters sometimes sound black-and-white as cut-out superheroes, it is not because they are badly-scripted Greeks ... but because they reflect the parameters of the convention of graphic novels, comic books, and surrealistic cinematography. Also I liked the idea that Snyder et al. were more outsiders than Stone, and pulled something off far better with far less resources and connections. The acting proved excellent-again, ironic when the players are not marquee stars.

Fourth, but what was not conventionalized was the martial spirit of Sparta that comes through the film. Many of the most famous lines in the film come directly either from Herodotus or Plutarch’s Moralia, and they capture well, in the historical sense, the collective Spartan martial ethic, honor, glory, and ancestor reverence (I say that as an admirer of democratic Thebes and its destruction of Sparta’s system of Messenian helotage in 369 BC).

Frankly, there was much in 300 that still bothered me: The rhinoceros, the elephant, Xerxes portrayed as a clean-shaven asexual giant, the leather Speedos. Also, Spartans shaved their upper lips, but never cut their hair, as "Long hair makes a pretty boy ugly, and an ugly man terrifying", to freely translate Sparta's laws. (I'm certain Professor Hanson would give a more accurate quote.)

The 1962 Richard Egan, Ralph Richardson movie The 300 Spartans was about as accurate--wearing Roman Legionary helmets, references to Jove rather than Zeus--but may have been more enjoyable. Or not. It wasn't based on a comic book, so if that's what you like...