zohrabi64 Review of 300: Rise of an Empire

300: Rise of an Empire (2014)

This movie is an insult to any Persian

[1/10 · 13 March 2014]

I'm a Persian, I watched the movie last night and I think it was really unjust to our history, and it's not making it OK by simply saying that it was made upon a comic book, there are many points which I couldn't close my eyes on and this is why I'm writing this. if you don't care about the accuracy of historical events you will probably enjoy the movie and in that case you don't need to read this review just move on to the next. But if you are aware of the conflicts between the east and west, the history of Greko- Persian wars and relationships etc you will suffer thorough the movie and here is why: 1- The history is twisted in the movie and very one sided 2- The movie makers present Persians as terrorists since they use suicide bombers to win the battle which is a shame, how could they relate something that accrued just in the recent history to a great nation like Persia!. 3- The Persian king Xerxes, is presented as a cowered, Darius, father of Xerxes was killed by Themistokles, a Greek general, and before his last breathes he tells Xerxes that "do not repeat my mistake, only gods can defeat Greeks"! while Darius never left Persia to attend this war and he was not killed by Themistokles and until this day, Iranians are visiting his tomb and paying him respect. 4- The customs for Iranian soldiers and the king himself are simply Arabic customs, the general who trained Artemisia is a black person, with my respect to Arabs and every other racial group, I'm I the only one who notices this movie and feels deeply sorry for the racist movie makers?! Is it hard to tell Persians and Arabs and Blacks apart? It's just sick man who are these wild, not civilized people with long beards in this movie? With a simple look at the statues of Persepolis you can find out how Persians looked like. 6- Muhammad Dandamayev a Russian historian, mentions in his famous book "A political history of the Achaemenid empire"; that after the Spartans killed the Persians messengers they realized what a big mistake they did and sent two soldiers to Persia so they can be killed instead of the Persian messengers and Xerxes tells them "I would be like a nation that violated the internationally known values and performed a disrespecting act of cowardliness" apparently this scene was shown as a remarkable thing to do in the movie 7- Last and most important point is in the movie, the Persians did not care about the slaves and the soldiers who were killed but the Greeks were defending not only their country but the freedom and democracy and apparently they don't have any slaves working for them, while slavery was widely spread at that time and it wasn't like the recent slavery of African people, the color did not matter and the Greeks were using them to build their citadels like Acropolis, surprisingly the Persians were paying workers to build Persepolis! the reason I remember this one in particular is that it was discovered just recently, archaeologists found some payment receipts made of rocks if I'm not mistaken belonged to workers who participated in building Persepolis from different nations. Democracy does not have the same meaning as the democracy we know nowadays, it's funny how this movie reflects the American perspective toward Middle-east.