Reel History: 300 a Review of a Nonhistorical Movie

US history after 1877

Professor Weintz

Reel History: extra credit

The Reel history film for the month of March was 300, it was presented by Michael Broyles.300 tells the story of the Battle of Thermopylae and is an engaging movie, thought not exactly historically correct. The movie follows the group of 301 Spartans (300 in the king’s body guard and the king himself) as they go up against all odds to thwart off the Persian attempt to come through Hells Gate.

Even though the movie is not historically accurate I felt that it got the story across to the viewer. It had a powerful message and would definitely pump you up before you played a game. I would put this film into the top ten movies that would inspire your performance in a game, which is pretty high praise if you look at the classic movies on the list. It is defiantly a quality film.

The presentation by Mr. Broyles was very good, it was complete and engaging. He did not inject too much during the movie which was nice and allowed the film to flow nicely. To start out the presentation he laid out the details of what lead up to the battle. This included the previous time when the Persians attack under Darius and were slaughtered by ten thousand Athenians, and how the Athenians then proceeded to hold it over all of Greece but especially the Spartans whom they had an alliance with. So this time when the Persians came the Spartans were ready and waiting. Greek historians of the time stated there was 2 million Persian that had came over for the battle. Today the figure is disputed but even if they added an extra zero there still was two hundred thousand soldiers converging on Greece. Fortunately for the Greeks there is only two feasible landing spots for the Persian ships and they able to know exactly where the Persian fleet would come in.

There were some memorable quotes from the movie which I enjoyed.

These include; Dilios “Immortals... we put their name to the test”, Stelios: “It is an honor to die...