Snyder did deliberately do that but he was being true to the source text.You would have to blame Frank Miller as the movie follows his graphic novel pretty closely.It could be argued that Miller was being accurate in showing the Spartans and ancient Greeks had a deep seated prejudice against barbarians(anyone who is not Greek).Even the Greek word barbarous meant to invoke the babbling sound of foreign languages. There is a vein of Greek thought that Persians were weak and effete because of their dress and method of fighting by bow instead of hand to hand like the Greeks.The question is whether Snyder should have done the historical politically correct clean rinse like in Kevin Costner's Robin Hood or Ridley Scotts' Gladiator,Kingdom of Heaven and Robin Hood.It felt more accurate in the way he filmed it even though it jars with our modern sensibilities.

Batman's origin story has been done to death. What hasn't been done, I think, is a Batman who is at the top of his game. Just for a change we don't need a villain to threaten the Batman; we need a villain who threatens Gotham and to watch the massive resources of Bruce Wayne pitched against them. We've all invested some time and effort in watching how Batman came to be, so surely there is some mileage in watching Batman be Batman.

Laughter: the best medicine

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDajL441mZc

...they were about to get fucked over, pretty badly. Prejudice aside, I think it's fair that they shat bricks and went to fight them.

I've heard people argue (possibly with tongues in cheeks although I wouldn't like to give them the credit) that the Halo series is also not just 'macho wish fulfilment' but also 'anti-multiculturalism', due to how the Covenant (the bad guys) are made up of multiple races and therefore cultures. People seem to forget the flip-side; they're also a genocidal, totalitarian dictatorship who's basis for everything they do comes from religious whims.

I like to think I can spot 'FedEx arrows' most of the time and to be honest nothing about 300 bothered me at all. I can see WHY people might figure it out the way they do but I don't generally agree. Except the 'homo-eroticism', which last time I checked was not a bad thing as such. 21st century and all?