by Mary Rose-Sellers

Created on: August 26, 2007   Last Updated: August 27, 2007

Being Greek I am always delighted when I hear that Hollywood is making a movie about Greek history. I was thrilled to hear that they made Troy and Alexander the Great, and of course, the latest Hollywood production of the movie "300". I wasn't able to see it at the show, so I rented it and watched it at home. I situated myself comfortably on the couch, turned the volume high, and pressed the play button. I was excited to see part of my heritage and history on screen.

Within the first 10 minutes I was already disappointed. But I sat there and watched it hoping that it will get better as the story progressed. No luck. I have to tell you what my dissappointments were.

1. The computerized generated scenes: I liked the battle scenes in the 1962 version of the 300 Spartans with Richard Egan. True, young boys will love these battle scenes and I'm sure these will attract a larger audience. I understand that nowadays it's easier to generate these scenes by computer than to hire tons of extras. But on the other hand, they should have made them look a bit more realistic.

2. Leonidas was portrayed as being very arrogant. In 480 BC they didn't even know what arrogance meant. The phrase that he used when he met Xerxes: "Let me guess, you must be Xerxes" is definitely out of today's vocabulary and not of the one in 480 BC. A phrase like that doesn't exist in the ancient Greek language.

3. Xerxes: The king of Persia didn't dress the way Hollywood portrayed him in this movie. If anyone looks at any of the history books he/she will see that Xerxes had a wavy beard and shoulder length wavy hair. Also, Xerxes in the movie is embellished with every piece of jewelry imaginable. He has rings on his eyebrows, ears, nose, cheeks and chains everywhere. On top of it all, he is 10 feet tall. Persians weren't 10 feet tall; they are not 10 feet tall now, much less back then, when people were very small; (King Philip, the father of Alexander the Great was only 4 feet tall).

4. Ephialtes (the traitor). I didn't understand why he was deformed. Ephialtes wasn't deformed in history. He was just a regular person who was bribed.

5. And last but not least the masks that the Persian soldiers wore. They were very unnecessary. They looked like they came out of a Venetian Mardi Gras ball.

These are just few of my disappointments of the movie. The way the movie was filmed reminded me a lot of the movie "Gladiator". There were a few similarities between the two movies. I can't say it was the worst movie I've ever seen. But I was hoping that when I saw this movie I would be proud of my history. We can't change of how history is made and I am glad that Hollywood kept it true in that respect. As for the extra embellishments I could do without.

From a scale of 1-10 with 10 being the best, I would give it a 5.

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