Its actually crap as far as history is concerned. They (spartans) had invited war upon themselves by burning a persian village. And King Xerxes was definitely not the way he was shown in the movie. And there were no trolls and gollums in the persian empire. This movie is basically a poor mix of Troy, Lord Of The Rings and Kill Bill. There are coins and inscriptions that show Xerxes to be a well-clad man with long hair and a beard (like most persian kings and men of the time).
This movie shows only 2 things:
1) How poorly researched the historic facts really are. 2) Shows the biased western mentality towards the now-islamic persians.
- Persia has a much richer history and civilization than the west (greeks at that time). Sadly, most of the existing history has been written by Greeks (herodotus, etc.) which explains the biased view.