Yes. Freedom doesn't describe Sparta. A battle for sovereignty and identity would be a better fit.
This would make an unbelievably good movie without the fantasy.
Absolutely. Hollywood hasn't learned that sometimes history doesn't need to be embellished....like the proposed movie about Valerie Plame and her worthless husband.
Perhaps (I'm no expert), but here is what Victor Davis Hanson (who is one) says about the film (see post #15):
"If critics think that 300 reduces and simplifies the meaning of Thermopylae into freedom versus tyranny, they should reread carefully ancient accounts and then blame Herodotus, Plutarch, and Diodorus — who long ago boasted that Greek freedom was on trial against Persian autocracy, free men in superior fashion dying for their liberty, their enslaved enemies being whipped to enslave others."