The Problematics: In Zach Snyder’s ‘300’, The Greeks Don’t Want No Freaks

There was a sweet Australian coming-of-age-comedy in 1987 titled The Year My Voice Broke. When I think of my first viewing of the Zack-Snyder-directed “historical” action drama 300 back in 2006, I now realize that was the year my brain broke. For the first time, at least. 

Snyder didn’t seem like much of a threat to cinema — or culture — at the time. In 2004, his Dawn of the Dead had come out. A technically adept but utterly unnecessary (at least as far as I was concerned) remake of the still-pertinent and still-GOAT 1984 film by George A. Romero, it was just one of those things, I thought. A rehash to feed the content maw. Distasteful, but not necessarily disastrous.

To my broken brain, 300 — which was first released in theaters 15 years ago today — was something else again. This turgid, overstated, casually racist, pointedly homophobic, misogynist-by-implication, and eugenicist-by-even-stronger-implication cinematic whoopee cushion, adapted from a graphic novel by Frank Miller (a talented draftsman who’d been applying his lurid sensibility to giving actual fascism the hard sell since his script for 1990’s RoboCop 2) was being praised to the skies as some kind of breakout visionary work. At least that’s how it felt at the time. (Although its 61% Rotten Tomatoes rating makes a slightly different case.) In any event, I was beside myself. 

You know the setup: Gerard Butler’s King Leonidas, ruler of the Spartans, chooses to take on the overwhelming army of effete Persians despite being apocalyptically outnumbered. (Butler’s performance is in the classic mode of Richard Harris at his most pro forma: the “speak softly for a bit and then YELL SOMETHING” line reading strategy.) So it’s Leonidas’ 300 guys (hence the title) versus lots and lots more Persians. 

To make their probably already certain doom even worse, these noble warriors are subject to betrayal by a Spartan outcast — he is deformed, kind of Gollumesque, and incapable in battle. Rejected for duty by Leonidas, he turns traitor. The lesson here is that the disabled are really better left to die up on that mountaintop where the truest and noblest of Spartans were forged from infancy. (It’s funny how Frank Miller’s idea of an ideal society is one in which a spindly, hunched-over-an-easel creative type might not comfortably fit in.) 

And so of course the Spartans (spoiler alert) die. Bloodily, but also gloriously. Because these guys are all ripped; the desecration of their flesh as they go to their rewards is practically sacramental. Better to die heteronormative-with-homoerotic-implications (“Do you like movies about gladiators?”), than, you know, Persian. 

I recall on my first viewing being kind of appalled, first in the formal department. Snyder and cinematographer Larry Fong seemed to have shot the whole film through a dung-tinted filter. I took great glee, when arguing (or is it debating?) with people about the picture, in saying it literally looked like shit. On viewing the film today, I realize I was unfair: Snyder and Fong also shoot through a gray-green filter at times. And the topless interpretative prophecy dance of the oracle is shot through a charcoal blue filter. And so on. To be entirely honest, during my most recent viewing there were moments (and they were mostly when I was able to completely tune out the narration and dialogue) during which I enjoyed the faux-expressionist visual stylings here. The opening scene with its pit of skulls and threatening Cecil B. DeMille clouds suggested that on some level the movie was in fact my kinda thing. But…no. Not really.

One of the movie’s most notorious scenes is relatively early on: A Persian messenger, a person of color festooned with a fair amount of interesting face jewelry (this is a picture where you can tell the bad guys by their nose rings) arrogantly approaches Leonidas and tells of Persian leader Xerxes’ request for “submission” in the form of “earth and water.” Not only does Leonidas balk; his queen, played by Lena Headey, puts in her two cents, and is upbraided by the haughty messenger. And so, for his trouble, the messenger is kicked down a well by Leonidas, as his men jeer lustily. One can look at this as the first shot across the bow in a movie whose ultimate statement is that white supremacy is worth insisting upon to the point of literal suicide. But that might be overthinking it. What Snyder offers here, plainly, is the equivalent of the pleasure experienced by perpetrators of lynching, an “I showed that uppity so-and-so” kind of elation. And no, here I don’t think I’m making an overly big deal of it. It’s right there on the screen. 

When Leonidas meets the commander who will vanquish him in battle, he looks Xerxes up and down, mildly sneering at his metal finery, and says “Let me guess. You must be Xerxes,” as if addressing a eunuch. Look at this dude’s eyeliner, Snyder’s cinematic language tells us. The whole dynamic is weirdly schizoid when you get down to it. Effeminacy is associated with weakness, and yet, of course, the noble, ripped Spartans are doomed against the wily Persian sissies with their nose rings and their self-satisfied laughs and all. But in the end, 300 avers that this degenerate culture’s triumph is not sustainable.  

As we move to the bone-crunching resolution, the dialogue is punctuated with platitudes such as “Freedom isn’t free at all. And it comes with the highest of costs. The cost of blood.” Not to mention exchanges like “First, you fight with your head.” “Then, you fight with your heart.” Really? Really. And narrator David Wenham (he plays the role of Dikios) relates philosophy and exposition in Aussie tones that are both plummy and macho. At times you think he may be about to say, “That’s a knife!”

Back in 2006, 300 was just a movie about which you could argue, or, you know, debate. 

But in today’s oppressive on-campus atmosphere — oh excuse me, wrong article. 

Anyway. To go back to 2006 — back then 300’s ultimate deleterious effect on, um, film culture was just a gleam in some Ain’t It Cool News reader’s (or writer’s) eye. The emergence of social media has, over time, created an atmosphere in which some people can call Snyder’s 2016 Batman Vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice a peak of cinematic intellectualism, and do so with an entirely straight (one might even call it a defensively straight) face. We are way beyond mere discrete Problematics here, brothers and sisters. Yippee!

Veteran critic Glenn Kenny reviews‎ new releases at RogerEbert.com, the New York Times, and, as befits someone of his advanced age, the AARP magazine. He blogs, very occasionally, at Some Came Running and tweets, mostly in jest, at @glenn__kenny. He is the author of the acclaimed 2020 book Made Men: The Story of Goodfellas, published by Hanover Square Press.