It still makes sense to me that I loved this movie as a teenager. And though I do not do now, it's still hard to let go of my admiration for its achievements. Conceived as an adaptation of an already problematic graphic novel, 300 only exacerbates its problems. The eponymous book, written and drawn by Frank Miller, is one of the most acclaimed comic books ever made. Despite its clear ahistorical bias towards the Spartans, it leaves enough room for the opposite interpretation. Frank Miller clearly understands (or, well... understood) that the source of evil is suffering, that morality and efficiency have little to do with each other, that political affiliations are a complicated matter and they don't necessarily reflect the feelings of the affiliates, and that there are other, more integral things that can bind people together. His Leonidas fought for democracy while clearly forbidding democracy in his own ranks, thus virtually admitting his hypocrisy. Spartans made homophobic remarks towards Athenians while clearly exhibiting homosexual tendencies themselves. They made fun of Arcadians' lack of skill, yet fight side by side with them. Poor Ephialtes was left a shred of dignity past his betrayal, not demonstrating any sign of hatred or greed, simply being an outsider with a hunger to belong. There was plenty of complexity in the original book that didn't make it into the film. Zack Snyder's version of the story removes a lot of that complexity and doubles down on moral duality. His objectivist take on 300 leaves us with very clear, very simple concepts: good Spartans protecting democracy, evil Persians trying to destroy it, vindictive Ephialtes betraying his kind out of greed, etc. But, as if that wasn't enough, he adds a bunch of pointless filler that is not only equally objectivist in nature, but also just repeats already pre-existing story details: corrupt politicians (repeating corrupt ephors), clumsy elephants (repeating clumsy rhinos), more strange soldiers from other parts of the empire, and so on, and so forth. Storywise, this movie adaptation is way inferior to the focused and almost minimalist in comparison book. The book created a lot of room for interpretation precisely because it didn't expand on a lot of the areas that the movie expands on. However, where Zack Snyder scores is in the visual department. I'll be honest, from the aesthetic standpoint, I consider this movie to be one of the most important mainstream Hollywood movies of the 2000s. The visual language Zack Snyder invents here had not been done before, definitely not to this degree, and it was a breath of fresh air among the stale shaky-cam montages that were passed off for fight scenes in Hollywood at the time. When it comes to the visual interpretation of the book, Zack Snyder just gets it. This movie looks like classicist paintings of ancient Greek motifs. And this follows not just through cinematography, lighting and color, but to the very character and costume designs. And yes, most of them are from the book, but this movie really does greatly expand on the number of weird creatures and soldier classes. The action scenes are actually well-choreographed, and the slow-mo is used to achieve the maximum impact effect. It is very easy for me to understand why an ignorant boy, such as my younger self, would fall in love with this movie. And I honestly still love parts of it to bits. And since the majority of this film stays very true to the source material, Zack Snyder's objectivist propaganda hasn't managed to taint the entire movie. This is easily Snyder's best, and I doubt he will ever eclipse it.