In the shot right before Astinos gets beheaded by a Persian warrior, you can see the white horse and his rider in the dust behind him waiting for his cue to ride forward into the shot. [Having watched this over and over, the Persian warrior is always in motion from the time he first appears on screen.]
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Stelios: It is an honor to die at your side.
King Leonidas: It is an honor to have lived at yours.
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When the camera is focused on an actors face, most of the time you can see white screens and stage lights in their eyes. See more...
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Remarkably, there was nothing CGI about the incredibly fit Spartan soldiers. All the actors went through an extremely rigorous bodybuilding regimen to achieve the desired image in the movie. The workout, now known as the 300 workout, is available from numerous sites all over the internet. Caution: it's not for the faint of heart. See more...
300 (2006) - 24 corrections
starring David Wenham, Dominic West, Gerard Butler, Lena Headey (add more)
Comments made in brackets are corrections from other visitors. As such, any aggressive/abusive corrections (and I get quite a few) written as if they're comments I've made myself will be ignored. To submit your own corrections for mistakes, just click the edit icon under an entry, then choose "correct entry". Some entries have "duplicated entry" after them - these are entries which were already listed on the main page, but were submitted again. I occasionally leave these online for a while, just in case they were moved in error, so don't worry about pointing them out to me.
In the shot right before Astinos gets beheaded by a Persian warrior, you can see the white horse and his rider in the dust behind him waiting for his cue to ride forward into the shot. [Having watched this over and over, the Persian warrior is always in motion from the time he first appears on screen.]
In the actual battle of the 300 Spartans, Leonidas was killed on the first day. [According to Heradotus, who provides the only detailed account of the battle, Leonidas was not slain until the third and final day of the battle, although he did fall prior to the final showers of arrows that put an end to the Spartan force.]
Leonidas gets a cut that runs from above his left eye, all the way down to past his cheekbone during his battle with the Uber Immortal. During many shots of Leonidas you can see that the cut is on his lower eyelid, yet when they show him at the end of the movie (the shot before he takes his helmet off) he just has the scratch above his eye. You can see at least 1/2 of an inch below his eye, but there's no sign of a scratch. When Leonidas takes his helmet off, the scratch is there beneath his eye and goes all the way up to his eye. [I've watched the movie several times, and if you watch closely when the über Immortal delivers the blow to Leonidus' face, you can see that it starts breaking his helmet first and doesn't actually touch his skin until about 1/2 way down. Thus, creating a physically smaller scar on his face and longer on the helmet itself.]
In the first battle scene, Leonidas uses throws his spear and it sails through the air. It hits a Persian in the chest and he falls, and the guy right next to him falls at the exact same instant, but there is nothing making the other guy fall, since the spear only hit one Persian. [The Persian that got hit by the spear fell down and grabbed the other Persian while falling. No mistake here, no one said that both men died from one spear.]
The Persians are shown as revering their emperor as a "god-king". Not true - they were known for being monotheistic (believing in one god) which meant that they did not see kings as gods at all. It was the Greeks who were polytheistic (believing in many gods). [False. This is one part of the movie that was taken right out of the history books. Just read a little bit about Xerxes and you'll see. Also, even if it wasn't true about him, this movie is NOT a factual movie, Frank could have just taken artistic liscense, which wouldn't be a mistake at all.]
In this movie, Xerxes is told to have employed war elephants against the Spartans. The Greek - along with the Macedonians - actually never encounter elephants until the Battle of Gaugamela, in 331 BC - 149 years later. [Xerxes also didn't have bagpipe playing goatmen, or blade-armed executioners. This isn't a documentary. It's a highly stylized, highly fictionalized account of a historical event.]
In the scene where Leonidas speaks to Xerxes, it is obvious that the actor playing Xerxes is looking clear over Leonidas' head, rather than back at his face - no doubt a side effect of the special effects process of making Xerxes 8 feet tall in post-production. [Xerxes thinks he is a god and is superior to everyone. Xerxes was not looking Leonidas in the eye initially because a god-king does not look at an inferior.]
When the Spartans are watching the Persian ships being destroyed by the wind/waves you see Leonidas holding his shield up to protect himself from the rain. The rain is blowing toward him from his left as though driven by the wind, but his cape is not moving. The "rain" is sprayed on an angle not pushed by wind. [The capes are made of very heavy fabric. Once wet, that amount of wind couldn't move them.]
At one point of the movie, a Spartan complains about Persians using arrows, as it's quite cowardly to kill your opponent from a distance. Yet, before the first big battle a Persian asks the Spartans to lay down their weapons, only to be killed by a spear thrown at him. Are Spartans applying double standards here? [A spear can't be thrown from as far as arrows can. You are still somewhat "face-to-face" with your opponent, whereas arrows can be sent from a cover. No double-standard there.]
Leonidas boots the Persian emissary into what appears to be a huge well - has he just poisoned his own city's water supply? [I highly doubt that the king was that stupid, or that there would be a huge open well in the middle of the city. There was nothing on, or around the hole that would lead anyone to believe that it was a well for drinking water (no mechanisim to lower and raise buckets, plus I've never seen a well that huge). More than likely it was some sort of garbage dump.]
At one point in the film someone (Theron, I believe) says that Leonidas might go to jail for breaking Spartan law. Jail did not exist at this time, nor did anything similar to it. Spartans didn't lock up their criminals. [Not true, according to Wikipedia and numerous other sources, in approximately 491 BC Cleomenes I was was imprisoned in Sparta, in fact by his half-brother Leonidas.]
In the opening scene we see how Leonidas, as a baby, is being examined at a cliff. Now this makes no sense, as you would only go to the cliff to ditch a baby and not to examine it there. [Why not? If they brought the baby there to examine then it would be pretty easy and simple to get rid of it right then and there. I imagine it would be easier to have all the mothers bring the babies to the cliff instead of have the "inspectors" go around to every house and look at all the babies.]
During the scene where king Leonidas has his conversation with the hunchback Ephialtes, he explains to him the importance of the phalanx in the Spartan battle tactics and how their entire strategy revolves around the hoplite "shield wall" (and this is why Ephialtes, who can't raise his shield high enough, can't fight with them). Yet in numerous scenes throughout the movie, the Spartans, and Leonidas in particular, are shown casually leaving the phalanx formation to go on a personal killing spree, completely exposed. The Arcadians show a similarly lax attitude with their phalanx formation. This is a deliberate mistake as otherwise it would be impossible to showcase the elaborate "bullet-time" combat scenes, because the phalanx would restrict both their movement and our view. Nevertheless, it makes no sense to play up the phalanx to such a (ultimately fatal) degree, and then simply disregard it for the sake of showing off. [The phalanx was STILL a very important part of the battle. If there would have been one weak link during the first onslaught of Persians, the whole line would have been compromised and the Spartans would have failed.]
I found it curious how none of the Greek hoplites in this movie wear any armor (besides their shields and helmets). The Greek hoplites were famous for being particularly heavily armored, and the Spartans were better (and more uniformly) equipped than most as they were dedicated soldiers and not mere militia. Instead, they all have bare chests to show off their masculine figures and well developed torsos, even when such a lack of protection for the torso and abdomen would be a serious disadvantage in that kind of intense close combat. [This has already been submitted and corrected. This is not a documentary. It is a highly stylized and fictionalized account of an actual event. These "Spartans" may look and act any way their creators wish them to.]
In the scene where there are three scouts surveying the persian troops, there are a series of close-ups between one of the Spartans and the 'Arcadian.' Every time the camera cuts to an individual close-up of the Arcadian, there is an obvious vaccination scar on his upper arm. [Vaccination scars have been submitted and corrected many times already. It's not unlikely for a warrior to have a scar on his arm.]
In the first battle, we see three layers: 1: Leonidas, 2: Spartan Soldier, 3: Mountain/Hill/Rocks. At the end of the scene, where it switches from normal to slow motion back and forth. If you concentrate at the last hit, Leonidas strikes a Persian with his shield, and so does the Spartan Soldier in the 2nd Layer. When the Spartan Soldier strikes the soldier, he falls to the ground. He (the Persian) then starts moving his sword to swing at the Spartan. While this occurs, the Spartan also starts moving to stab the Persian with his spear. There is a great synchronized movement, BUT at the end of this part the Persian soldier backs out on his sword swing even before the Spartan's spear touches his body. [The Persian was facing death. There are any number of "in-movie" explanations for his actions. For instance, he may have thought he could beg for mercy if he gave up the attack.]
Are we to believe that the Persians who had more than 1,000,000 men had 30 scouts which were killed and used to build the wall and no more? And if that's not the case and they had hundreds of thousands of scouts why the heck didn't they find the goat path or go some other way like maybe not where the 300 Spartans were. (Yes the king wanted them dead but the idea of going around and surrounding is common knowledge to anyone). [Not only are we supposed to believe it, this is what actually happened at Thermopylae. The wall was rebuilt (though not necessarily with dead bodies), and the Persians did not find the goat path until Ephialtes showed it to them after three days of fighting. It is a piece of history, recorded by several well-known sources.]
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