"Best movie ever" was probably an exaggeration on my part. But you know that feeling you get after you've seen a really good movie, and you can't help but just proclaim its greatness? Really loudly? That's what happened to me before. But once I talked about it to a few people, I was able to gather my thoughts and just coherently talk about it.
Frank Miller did a very good job of keeping a lot of historical accuracies in the story. I'm reading up on the Battle of Thermopylae, and so much of it was in the movie. I've never read the graphic novel, though I intend to soon, but I was reading that Miller took direct quotes from various accounts, including Herodotus, and I thought that was pretty cool. I also liked how he used real terms, like phalanx, hoplite, and hubris. I'm a literary nerd, so when I heard hubris, I got very excited. They also talked a lot about the honor of a Greek; in other words, gravitas. I thought that was very good, too.
I was the one who was saying from the time the trailer came out that I wanted to see the movie, and that it looked like it was going to be really good. All of my friends thought I was crazy. I'm glad I stuck with it for so long.
Also, LoTR was an amazing movie. It left me with that wow feeling, especially RotK. But it was a different kind of wow. LoTR left me with this .. really good feeling as a literary geek. 300 left me with a really good feeling of someone who's studied a lot of ancient Greek culture and writing. And my last wow movie, The Departed, left me with a good feeling of seeing another well done Scorsese film.
I just downloaded the soundtrack to 300. The music was very Sin City-esque. I don't know if it was the same composer or not, but I love the "To Victory" song, which is the title track. The songs will keep me entertained for a long time.
ETA: I just read this on wikipedia:
It makes me really happy that all of that was in the movie. I feel like such a nerd.