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300
File:300Poster.jpg
Directed by	Zack Snyder
Written by	Screenplay: Zack Snyder Kurt Johnstad Comic Book: Frank Miller
Produced by	Gianni Nunnari Mark Canton Bernie Goldmann Jeffrey Silver
Starring	Gerard Butler Lena Headey David Wenham Dominic West Rodrigo Santoro Andrew Tiernan
Cinematography	Larry Fong
Edited by	William Hoy
Music by	Tyler Bates
Distributed by	Warner Bros.
Release dates	March 8, 2007 March 9, 2007 April 5, 2007 March 23, 2007
Running time	117 mins.
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$65 million

300 is a 2007 film adaptation of the graphic novel 300 by Frank Miller, itself a loose adaptation about the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC. The film is directed by Zack Snyder with Frank Miller attached as an executive producer and consultant, and was shot mostly with bluescreen to duplicate the imagery of the original comic book work.

Spartan King Leonidas (Gerard Butler) and 300 Spartans fight to the last man against Persian King Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro) and his enormous army of more than one million soldiers. Facing insurmountable odds, the Spartans' sacrifice inspires all of Greece to unite against the Persian invaders. In Sparta, Queen Gorgo (Lena Headey) attempts to rally support for her husband. The story is told through narration by Dilios (David Wenham) lending the film a historical fantasy feel.

It was released in both conventional and IMAX theaters in America on March 9, 2007. The film became a box office record-breaker, although critics were divided over the film's look and style. Some acclaimed it as the next level of filmmaking while others accused it of favoring visuals over characterization. Some have also accused of it of racism in its portrayal of Persians.

Since its release, 300 has generated controversy due to modern-day Iranians being upset by the film's depictions of ancient Persians.

Plot

Template:Spoiler A group of Persian messengers arrive at Sparta, demanding submission to King Xerxes. Outraged and offended, Spartan King Leonidas kicks the messengers into a pit, and resolves to fight Xerxes. He visits the Oracle, explaining his plan and offering gold to the grotesque priests, as per custom. Τhe priests, who had been previously bribed by Xerxes, interpret the Oracle as saying Sparta should not march against Xerxes, so as to not interrupt the Carneian sacred festival.

Nevertheless, Leonidas gathers 300 of his best soldiers to stop the Persian advance. On their way, they are joined by a group of Arcadians and other Greeks. They build a wall past the set of narrow cliffs of Thermopylae (or "Hot Gates") in order to block them. Using the phalanx formation, the Spartans fight off numerous waves of Persian attackers, including an elite group of Persian soldiers called the Immortals. The 300 are successful in defending their position for a number of days and suffer few losses. An impressed Xerxes approaches Leonidas directly and promises wealth and power in return for his surrender. The Spartan king declines, saying that he will instead make the "God King" bleed. Enraged, Xerxes threatens that Leonidas will soon meet his demise.

Shortly after, Ephialtes, a hunchbacked, deformed Spartan whose parents had left the city to prevent his customary death, approaches Leonidas requesting to redeem his father's name in battle, and warns about a secret goat path the Persians may use to surround them. Leonidas turns the man away because his inability to hold a shield properly would create a weak spot in the phalanx. Devastated, Ephialtes informs Xerxes of the goat path in exchange for wealth and power.

Back in Sparta, Queen Gorgo is tipped by a councilman to convince the influential Theron in order to help her persuade the Spartan council for sending troops to help Leonidas. When invited in the palace, Theron agrees, but demands she sleeps with him. Gorgo reluctantly gives in to the blackmail. Meanwhile, Leonidas realizes that Ephialtes has betrayed them, and with the Arcadians deciding to retreat, he asks Dilios to use his gift of speech to tell the story of the 300 to the Spartan people, and to be remembered. Following orders, Dilios reluctantly retreats along with the Arcadians. The next day, when Queen Gorgo appeals in front of the council, she is surprised to receive the rejection of Theron, who also accuses her of adultery. The Queen, enraged at his trickery, kills him with a nearby soldier's sword. Persian coins fall from Theron's purse exposing his treason, and the Council unites in support of the 300.

The next morning finds the 300 surrounded by the Persians. Xerxes' spokesman asks for surrender, saying that Leonidas may keep his title as King of Sparta and become warlord of all Greece, answering only to King Xerxes. In defiance, Leonidas throws his spear at Xerxes, cutting the Persian's face, delivering on his promise to make the "God King" bleed. Xerxes is shaken by the reminder of his own mortality and quickly signals for his archers to fire. The remaining Spartans are cut down in a flurry of arrows, Leonidas being the last to die.

Dilios returns to Sparta and inspires the council with the bravery of the 300. Finishing the story on the battlefield, he states that the Persian army must be quaking with fear, because they know how difficult it was to fight only 300 Spartans, when they now face 10,000 of them, as well as 30,000 Greeks from the other city-states. The Greek army heads off to fight the Persian army, beginning the Battle of Plataea.

Template:Endspoiler

Cast

• Gerard Butler as King Leonidas: King of the Spartans
• Lena Headey as Queen Gorgo: Leonidas' wife
• David Wenham as Dilios: Narrator
• Dominic West as Theron: A conniving Spartan politician
• Michael Fassbender as Stelios: Young & spirited Spartan soldier
• Vincent Regan as Captain Artemis: Leonidas' loyal captain & friend
• Rodrigo Santoro as King Xerxes: King of the Persians.
• Andrew Tiernan as Ephialtes: deformed Spartan outcast
• Andrew Pleavin as Daxos: Arcadian soldier & Leonidas' friend
• Tom Wisdom as Astinos: Captain Artemis' eldest son
• Peter Mensah as Persian Messenger
• Kelly Craig as Oracle Girl
• Tyler Neitzel as Leonidas as teenager

In August 2005, Gerard Butler was cast to portray King Leonidas. On September 26, 2005, a casting call was issued for the role of Pleistarchos, younger portrayals of Leonidas, as well as a Persian messenger. Three days later, a second casting call went out for the role of the Oracle Girl, a slave to the Ephors.

In October 2005 Lena Headey was announced to join the cast as Gorgo, Leonidas' wife. Actors David Wenham, Dominic West, Rodrigo Santoro, and Vincent Reagan were also announced to join the cast. Santoro was familiar with the graphic novel before ever auditioning.

Production

Producer Gianni Nunnari had a passion for the Battle of Thermopylae since he was a child yet the story was already in development under director Michael Mann as Gates of Fire. He discovered Frank Miller's graphic novel 300 and felt that the film should be made the same way and negotiated with Miller. By May 2003, the project was being produced by Nunnari and Mark Canton, whilst Michael B. Gordon had completed a second draft of 300 that was 121 pages long. In June 2004, director Zack Snyder (Dawn of the Dead) was hired to direct the film. Snyder had tried to make the film before Dawn of the Dead, and worked with screenwriter Kurt Johnstad to rewrite Gordon's script for production. Frank Miller, the author of 300, was also attached to the project as executive producer and consultant.

The film is a shot-for-shot adaptation of the comic book, similar to the film adaptation of Sin City. Snyder said that he had photocopied panels from Frank Miller's comic book and worked to plan out the shots that would lead up to the moment and the shots to get out of it after. "It was a fun process for me to kind of have to go, to have a goal, to have a frame as a goal to get to," said Snyder. The director also worked to craft the film style to be similar to the comic book. Numerous images and pieces of dialogue are taken frame for frame from Miller. One exception to the direct adaptation was using the character Dilios to narrate the story. Dilios was used by Snyder to show the audience that the surreal "Frank Miller world" of 300 was through the perspective of Dilios taking artistic license in his storytelling about the Battle of Thermopylae. Snyder also added the sub plot of Queen Gorgo trying to rally support for her husband.

The film spent two months of pre-production in creating 125 shields, 250 spears and 75 swords, although some were recycled from Troy and Alexander. An animatronic wolf and 13 animatronic horses were also created. The actors trained alongside the stuntmen, and even Snyder joined in. 600-700 costumes were created for the film, as well as extensive prosthetics for various characters and the corpses of Persian soldiers.

300 entered active production on October 17, 2005 in Montreal, and was shot over 60 days in chronological order. Warner Bros. provided a budget of $60 million to back the 300 project. The director employed the digital backlot technique for the film, which was shot at the now-defunct Icestorm Studios in Montreal using bluescreens. Gerard Butler said that he didn't feel constrained as an actor by Snyder's direction of the film, however saying, "If you are performing in a way that's trying to be so truthful to the comic, then, of course, there are certain freedoms that are limited to the way that you perform." David Wenham said there were times where Snyder wanted to capture iconic moments from the comic book specifically and times where the director gave actors "absolute freedom and liberty to explore within the world and the confines that had been set". Lena Headey said of her experience with the bluescreens, "You can't sort of relate to any world, so it's very odd, and emotionally, there's nothing to connect to apart from another actor." The only scene shot outdoors is a shot of horses travelling across the countryside. The film was an intensely physical production, and Butler pulled an arm tendon and gained a foot drop.

In post-production Snyder enlisted the assistance of Montreal's Hybrid Studioas and other vendors in Los Angeles and Australia to work the more than 1500 visual effects shots to fill in the film footage of bluescreens and near-empty film sets. Chris Watts and Jim Bissell created a process dubbed "The Crush". It allowed the team of 70 Meteor artists to manipulate the colors in 300 by increasing the contrast of light and dark, and certain film sequences were desaturated and tinted to establish different moods for the scenes. Ghislain St-Pierre, Meteor's GM, described the look, "Everything looks realistic, but it has a kind of a gritty illustrative feel." The filtering meant props were painted differently on set due to the eventual process. The team worked on creating visual effects shots for scenes including a battle between Spartans and Immortals (elite Persian soldiers) and an expansion of the city of Sparta. The programs Maya, RenderMan and RealFlow were used to create the blood, and Piedmont contributed to 45 minutes of the film, including the wolf and the Persian army. Overall, the year long post-production was handled by a total of ten special effects companies.

In August 2006, Warner Bros. announced that 300 would be released on March 16, 2007. In October 2006, Warner Bros. moved the release date to March 9, 2007, a week earlier. The MPAA issued an R rating for 300 for graphic battle sequences throughout, some sexuality and nudity.

Soundtrack

In July 2005, composer Tyler Bates had begun work on the film, describing the score as having "beautiful themes on the top and large choir", but "tempered with some extreme heaviness". The composer had scored for a test shot that the director wanted to show to Warner Bros. to illustrate the path of the project. Bates said that the score had "a lot of weight and intensity in the low end of the percussion" that Snyder found agreeable to the film. The score was recorded at Abbey Road Studios and features the vocals of Azam Ali. A standard edition and a special edition of the soundtrack containing 25 tracks was released on March 6, 2007, with the special edition containing a 16-page booklet and three two-sided trading cards.

300's soundtrack borrowed many elements from Elliot Goldenthal's 1999 soundtrack for Titus, causing some controversy in the film composer community. 300's "Remember Us" is identical in parts to the end of Titus's "Finale". Also similar is 300's "Returns A King" and its similarities to "Victorius Titus". Other, smaller, similarities have been found throughout the film.

Marketing

The official site for 300 was launched by Warner Bros. in December 2005. The Conceptual art work and Zack Snyder's production blog were the initial major attractions of the launch. Later on the website added video journals that covered a range of production details from comic-to-screen shots to creatures of 300.

At Comic-Con International 2006 in July, the 300 panel showed a preview of the film. Afterward, a Q&A session was held with panelists Zack Snyder, Frank Miller, Gerard Butler, and David Wenham. Due to the audience's positive reception of the 300 preview, the footage was shown twice more before the conclusion of the panel.

The the promo trailer for 300, shown at Comic-Con International 2006 on September 20, 2006 was leaked onto the Internet. Warner Bros. released the official trailer for 300 on October 4 2006, . The background music used in the trailers was "Just Like You Imagined" by Nine Inch Nails. A second 300 trailer was attached to Apocalypto, which was released on December 8 2006. The trailer was released online the day before. On January 22, 2007, an exclusive trailer for the film was broadcast during prime time television.

In April 2006, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment announced its intention to make 300: March to Glory, a PlayStation Portable game based on the film 300. Collision Studios is working with Warner Bros. to capture the style of the film in the video game. 300: March to Glory will be released simultaneously with the film in March 2007.

The National Entertainment Collectibles Association is producing a series of action figures based on the film, including the characters King Leonidas, an Immortal warrior, Queen Gorgo, and Ephialtes, to be released in the winter of '06-'07. In addition to the figures, NECA is producing prop replicas based on the film, including an Immortal mask, dual Immortal swords, a Spartan sword, and a Spartan helm.

Warner Bros. Pictures plans to promote 300 in a unique sponsorship of Ultimate Fighting Championship's light heavyweight champion Chuck Liddell beginning with a match on December 30, 2006. Liddell will also make personal appearances as well as participate in other promotions of the film up to its release.

In January 2007, the studio launched a MySpace page for the film. As promotion for the movie, MySpace users were given the opportunity to upload 300 pictures to their profile.

At WonderCon on March 2, 2007, a special screening of 300 was available to be seen by convention attendees.

On March 4 2007, it was announced that the National Hockey League and Warner Bros. would be partnering to make a 30-second TV spot to promote the film as well as the upcoming Stanley Cup playoffs. The commercial uses a combination of teaser footage from the film, and recordings of several notable NHL players, and will be broadcast on NBC, Versus, TSN, as well as at games.

The Art Institutes launched a micro-site to promote the film and a Q&A session with Frank Miller and Zack Snyder. The micro-site was marketed to over 200,000 Art Institute students and prospective students.

Some reporters have lauded Warner Brother's marketing campaign which began generating excitement last fall when the first trailers debuted. Gitesh Pandya of Boxofficeguru.com stated that, "The studio should send a case of Cristal to the team that cut the trailers as they certainly ignited the spark leading to the fever-pitched anticipation."

Reception

Box office

Released in both conventional theaters and IMAX theaters, 300 made $28,106,731 on its opening day and ended its North American opening weekend with $70,885,301, breaking the record held by Ice Age: The Meltdown for the biggest opening weekend for the month of March. 300's opening weekend gross was the 19th best in box office history, coming slightly below The Lost World: Jurassic Park but higher than The Incredibles. The film also set a record in IMAX cinemas for a $3.6 million opening weekend ($54,839 average on 62 screens).

It is also the third biggest opening for a R-rated film ever, behind The Matrix Reloaded ($91.8 million) and The Passion of the Christ ($83.8 million). Studio executives were surprised by the showing, which was twice what they had expected.

They credit the movie's stylized violence, strong female role of Queen Gorgo which attracted a large number of women to the movie, and the MySpace advertising blitz which also sparked interest. Producer Mark Canton said, "MySpace had an enormous impact but it has transcended the limitations of the Internet or the graphic novel. Once you make a great movie, word can spread very quickly."

The film also had a strong opening in five other markets as well, grossing $6.2 million in the first stage of its overseas rollout.

300 set a record in Greece at $2.9 million, supplanting last year's Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, and opened No. 1 in Taiwan, the Philippines, Singapore and Malaysia.

Critical reaction

Template:List to prose (section) 300 has received generally mixed reviews. Professional reviewers are divided, while polls of movie goers show a strong approval. On Rottentomatoes.com, it has a "fresh" 61% approval rating from listed critics, a 51% from its "Cream of the Crop" column, and a 89% approval rating from users. On MetaCritic.com, 300 recieved a 53/100 based on 32 reviews, resulting in "Mixed or Average Reviews" status. Over 29,600 Internet Movie Database users had rated the movie by March 15 2007 with the weighted average being 8.3/10 putting the movie at #157 on their top 250 list.

• Mark Cronan of Comic Book Resources gave a positive review for the film. Cronan described most of the film as being "a bit of a cross between Gladiator and several scenes from the Lord of the Rings movies". He found the film compelling, leaving him "with a feeling of power, from having been witness to something grand". However, he admitted, "This is a chest thumping, dirty, writhing mass of violence at times... It is all quite stylized and probably less gory overall than Miller's other big screen success, Sin City. Still, it's there, and if you don't want to see men fighting and dying, do not see this movie."

• IGN's Todd Gilchrist disagreed. Giving the film a score of five stars out of five, he said "Leonidas' relationship with his wife Gorgo offers a rare display of tenderness and devotion that is seldom seen in 'guy movies' like this one". He acclaimed Zack Snyder as a cinematic visionary as well as the visual sensibility of the film. George Rousch acclaimed the film, citing its visual appeal and Gerard Butler's performance.

• Greek newspapers have been particularly critical."

• The New York Times film critic A. O. Scott, described 300 as "about as violent as Apocalypto and twice as stupid." He also criticised the color scheme of the film and implied that it includes racist undertones.

• 300 had its world premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival on February 14, 2007, in front of 1,700 audience members. According to Warner Bros. and director Zack Snyder, it received a standing ovation. However, it was reportedly panned at a press screening hours earlier, with many leaving during the showing and those that remained booing at the end.

• Alex Billington said "be ready to be blown away on March 9th," calling it a film ahead of its time. Kirk Honeycutt praised it, saying "those turned off by the sex-and-violence cartoonery of Sin City can embrace 300".

• Emanuel Levy also praised the film, complimenting Snyder in that he "retells Miller's saga not as an ancient tale (sort of "once upon a time..."), but as a classic and eternal one." Todd McCarthy of Variety gave it a positive review, and praised Lena Headey, though he criticised Butler as he "bellows most of his bellicose lines, which become tiresomely repetitive", as well as the lack of focus on geography. Erik Davis heavily criticised the film, calling it "one of the most overly hyped films in history... a boring, fast-food version of better films, with better scripts, better acting and better battles. 300 men fought to defend their freedom but, in the end, 300 people (including me) wanted their two hours back."

• Film critic Wesley Morris wrote: "the film never feels like more than an exercise, for the filmmakers and the actors."

• Greek film critics Dimitris Danikas and Robby Eksiel have blasted the Hollywood film. Robby Eksiel said moviegoers would be dazzled by the "digital action" but irritated by the "pompous interpretations and one-dimensional characters."

• Film critic Curt Holman called the film a "ultraviolent, hyperstylized treatment of the Battle of Thermopylae". Holman also expressed concerns about the content of the film as "In the wrong hands, 300 could be a lethal weapon."

• Victor Davis Hanson, a neoconservative military historian and classicist, was asked to write a forward to the graphic novel, which was released with the movie, in which he put forward his thoughts on why critics may not like the film:

"Ultimately the film takes a moral stance, Herodotean in nature: there is a difference, an unapologetic difference between free citizens who fight for eleutheria and imperial subjects who give obeisance. We are not left with the usual postmodern quandary ‘who are the good guys’ in a battle in which the lust for violence plagues both sides. In the end, the defending Spartans are better, not perfect, just better than the invading Persians, and that proves good enough in the end. And to suggest that unambiguously these days has perhaps become a revolutionary thing in itself."

• Washington Post's critic Stephen Hunter considers the film "too cartoonish to be taken seriously". He criticized the action as being "all showy and stylized, never quite realistic". Hunter added: "It's kind of a ghastly hoot, and while I suppose it does no harm, it also contributes nothing. It's a guilty unpleasantness."

Historical accuracy

The film's director Zack Snyder has claimed that "The events are 90 percent accurate. It's just in the visualization that it's crazy. A lot of people are like, 'You're debauching history!' I'm like, 'Have you read it?' I've shown this movie to world-class historians who have said it's amazing. They can't believe it's as accurate as it is".

Ephraim Lytle, assistant professor of Hellenistic History at the University of Toronto has argued that the film severely distorts history beyond the superficial visual level: "the ways in which 300 selectively idealizes Spartan society are problematic, even disturbing.... the Persians are turned into monsters... the non-Spartan Greeks are simply ... moral universe would have appeared as bizarre to ancient Greeks as it does to modern historians".

Political aspects

The filmmakers assert that any parallels to the current Iraq War that some in the media have implied were not intended. Indeed, Zack Snyder sees that comparison by some as a possible hindrance in the long run. The studio and filmmakers had discussed the sensitive issue about the film's "contemporary resonance" of the East versus West conflict.

Snyder reports that after advance screenings, he was taken aside by reporters at a screening for the international press, and asked about political implications by one reporter who insisted that Xerxes had to be symbolizing George W. Bush, only to have a second reporter suggest that Leonidas represented Bush. At a later showing at the Berlinale, Snyder says, he was asked, "Don’t you think it’s interesting that your movie was funded at this point?" Snyder clarifies, "The implication was that funding came from the U.S. government."

Outside of any parallel to current political events, certain critics have raised more general questions about the film's ideological orientation. Kyle Smith wrote in the New York Post that the 300 portrays violence as "war's goal rather than its means," adding that "it isn't a stretch to imagine Adolf's boys at a "300" screening, heil-fiving each other throughout and then lining up to see it again." Roger Moore, a critic for the Orlando Sentinel, made the same point more bluntly, writing that the film has a "fascist aesthetic," and matching it to Susan Sontag's definition of "fascist art": ""Fascist art glorifies surrender, it exalts mindlessness, it glamourizes death."

Outcry at depictions of ancient Persians

The film has attracted controversy over the portrayal of the Persians and some critics, press and Iranian officials have denounced the film.As in the graphic novel, the Persians are depicted as a barbaric and demonic horde, while the Persian emissary and King Xerxes are depicted as androgynous. This is meant to stand in stark contrast to the masculinity of the Spartan army.

• Greek critic Dimitris Danikas suggested that the film showed Persians as "bloodthirsty, underdeveloped zombies," and went on to say, "They are stroking (sic) racist instincts in Europe and America."
• Critic Steven Rea argues that along with references to slavery, mysticism and depictions of hyper-sexuality, the Persians become the vehicle for an anachronistic cross-section of Western stereotypes of Asian and African cultures.

• The president of Iran's Art Affairs Advisory also expressed strong condemnation over the movie which he said insulted the Persian civilization. Javad Shamqadri, who is also a filmmaker, said the film specifically had racist intentions but called the film's effort fruitless however, saying, "values in Iranian culture are too strongly seated to be damaged by such plans."
• Iranian Government Spokesman Gholam Hossein Elham described the film as an intrusion of the Iranian culture and fabrication of history, stressing that the movie is considered a hostile move against the Iranian nation. "Cultural intrusion is among the tactics always used by the aliens. Such a fabrication of culture and insult to people is not acceptable by any nation or government and we consider this attitude as hostile".
• Four Iranian Members of Parliament have called for Muslim countries to ban the film.

• Iranians worldwide have been protesting the movie which they say offers an "inaccurate and derogatory depiction of ancient Persians." Thousands of Iranians have signed an online petition addressed to the producers of the film 300, criticizing them for what they say is a distortion of historical fact.

Reviews including Slate's point out the "bad guys" are depicted as a conflation of the following categories: black people, Persians, brown people, handicapped or deformed people, gays and lesbians. In particular, the traitor Ephialtes is portrayed as a hunchback as in the graphic novel; however, historically there is no mention that Ephialtes was a hunchback.

A Warner Bros. spokesman said: "The film '300' is a work of fiction inspired by the Frank Miller graphic novel and loosely based on an historical event. The studio developed this film purely as a fictional work with the sole purpose of entertaining audiences; it is not meant to disparage an ethnicity or culture or make any sort of political statement."

Azadeh Moaveni of Time reported: "All of Tehran was outraged. Everywhere I went yesterday, the talk vibrated with indignation over the film..." Newspapers in Iran featured headlines such as "Hollywood declares war on Iranians" and "300 AGAINST 70 MILLION" (Iran's population). Ayende-No, an independent Iranian newspaper, said that "he film depicts Iranians as demons, without culture, feeling or humanity, who think of nothing except attacking other nations and killing people"

Moaveni identified two factors which may have contributed to the intensity of Iranian indignation over the film. First, she describes the timing of the film's release, on the eve of Norouz, the Persian New Year, as "inauspicious". Second, Iranians tend to view the era depicted in the film as "a particularly noble page in their history." Moraveni also suggests that "the box office success of 300, compared with the relative flop of Alexander (another spurious period epic dealing with Persians) is cause for considerable alarm, signaling ominous U.S. intentions."

See also

• The 300 Spartans
• Anti-Persian sentiments
• Battle of Thermopylae

References

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45. "See 300 Early at WonderCon". SuperHeroHype.com. 2007-02-14. Retrieved 2007-02-14. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
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95. Cite error: The named reference karimi was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

External links

• Official site
• Official trailers
• 300 at IMDb
• 300 at MySpace
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• 300 at Rotten Tomatoes
• 300 at Metacritic

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