10 Movies That Ruined Real Life People's Reputations

In fairness, basically everything about Zack Snyder's 300 screams "I'm not a history lesson!!!," from its over-stylised colour palette to its perfectly-chiselled Spartan soldiers, and yes, its WWE-worthy one-liners.

As much as the film is praised for its splashy style, many took umbrage with 300's depiction of the Persian Empire, which some even dubbed outright racist.

In the film, the Persians are shown to be primitive, savage "others" in contrast to the archetypally masculine and handsome Spartans, with much of the Persian army comprised of sub-human mutants and other grotesque abominations.

The most egregious singular portrayal, however, is that of King Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro) himself, re-imagined here as a decadent, towering demi-God, counter to the decidedly more modest reality that Xerxes was a totally regular-looking dude.

Historical license obviously speaks for itself in a movie like this, but you can also appreciate why 300 ruffled so many feathers in Iran, given how rarely Hollywood depicts Middle Eastern characters with anything even remotely close to nuance.