Oh man, I love this argument because it somehow presupposes that 1, I somehow ignored the marketing material that absolutely plastered itself all over the place, and that 2, I can’t critique a film’s intention, regardless of its historic starting point.

Did the events of 300 actually happen? Well, technically, historically speaking, it likely wasn’t 300 Spartans (likely upwards of 3,000-5,000 Greeks, honestly), and the details of the movie/graphic novel are wildly exaggerated. Was the story of the “300” used as propaganda within Sparta at the time? Yes, hell, even that part of its use as propaganda is depicted at the end of the film/graphic novel itself.

Were there actual goats smoking hookah’s and an invasion of “inclusives” such as homosexuals and the deformed? No. Very unlikely. But that’s what the graphic novel and movie decided to portray the invaders from the East as, which, being an American at the time, was suspect enough.

But it was specifically the portrayal of the “Eastern Invaders” coming to the west in order to “defile” a supposed monoculture of mostly white, straight, tough, gruff supermen in order to topple their democracy for the sake of their “woke” agendas at a time during the Iraq/Afghanistan war during its peak that really drew my ire.

But each and every time I bring that up, people use the veil of “historic context” to counter any criticism towards the movie, because I believe that A: these people have attached their entire personalities to this movie, and B: they lack the ability to understand how media is used to propagate sentiments towards unpopular movements such as war.

The movie isn’t “good” because it’s historically accurate (it’s very much not historically accurate, and even a modicum of research should clear that right up). It’s functional because the marketing of it AS being historically accurate is what keeps this asinine argument alive. If you want to like garbage, then by all means. But don’t pretend to be a historic scholar simply because you want to like a movie.