the thing i always found clever & interesting about the original 300 is when you realize that the whole thing is being told by Dilios. the guy who got sent home before the battle ended, specifically to tell said story and rally the greeks.
everything from "we spartans are the manliest men in the world, and the athenians are a bunch of pussies" to "the traitor was a weak deformed reject, and the xerxes is a big gay body-mod fetishist" is essentially self-aggrandizing spartan propaganda.
the movie is basically a really subtle stealth parody of it's self. like if paul verhoeven had ever heard of the concept