The film I have chosen to do my critique on is Zack Snyder’s 300. 300 is a film about King Leonidas, the King of Sparta, and his 300 Spartan warriors who all stood up against the God-king Xerxes and his massive Persian army from annihilation. After watching the film very closely for my critique I believe there is a serious underlying theme that everyone has the right to be free and sometimes you have to stand up and make sacrifices to keep your freedom. Standing up for freedom is never an easy task as shown in 300 but, everyone deserves to be free. In discussing the storytelling, acting, cinematography, editing, sound, style and directing, the impact of society on the film, genre, a formalist approach to analysis, and the overall textual theme of 300 I will attempt to back up my belief.
Storytelling
300’s narrative structure is the first-person point of view of Dilios, a Spartan solider under the command of King Leonidas. The film is presented in chronological order and takes place in Sparta and Thermopylae, Greece. The major conflict in the film is that the Persian army has come to Sparta and requests their submission or will kill them and enslave their women and children. King Leonidas makes the decision to stand up to the Persians but; is not allowed to go to war with the Xerxes, the Persian God-king, because the Ephors deny him the right. The Ephors are later found out to be traitors. Unfortunately, by the end the Spartans are betrayed by Ephialtes, a deformed Spartan outcast, and Xerxes orders all 300 Spartans to be killed. However, in doing so Xerxes really only unleashes the full strength of Greece as Dilios is able to rally all Greeks with his story of the brave 300. There are both internal and external conflicts present in the film. The obvious external conflict is the 300 Spartans fighting against the massive Persian