An interesting later film by the director of the famous There Will Come Soft Rains (1984). It shows just how much directors can be influenced by the society around them, and what sort of audience they are aiming their film at. Back then, Tashkent was the 4th biggest city in one of the two global superpowers, and the director was aiming at a sophisticated, cosmopolitan audience, adapting a story that warns about humanity's future. What resulted was a striking film that won international awards and counts British royalty among its fans. In 2011, the potential distribution of his film was limited to just Uzbekistan, so he adapted a more mythic, patriotic story from the distant past.

There's a big change in animation technique too, of course. Although I think that in both cases, the films have some impressive and striking visuals, and a certain love of detail.

Speaking of the story itself, I went digging around and finally found the only surviving ancient Greek textual source. Finding it was made more difficult because all of the names are spelled differently in Greek than they are in Uzbek. Despite some differences, it's clearly a version of the same story, with the same names. It shows that the tale has been around for a long time, and I wouldn't be surprised if there were different versions of it even back then. Frankly, the ending of that Greek version - in which the army is saved after the Persian King Darius prays to the Greek god Apollo (wasn't Zoroastrianism the main religion there back then?) - seems pretty suspicious to me. I suppose they couldn't all die because in that version King Darius is with the army as well, and his date and place of death are well-known (the story wouldn't be believable if it claimed that Darius died there).

Regarding the translation, it is based entirely on the Russian voice-over dub. I don't know Uzbek, so if the Uzbek text differs at all from the Russian, the subtitles may not be entirely accurate. Also, the Russian actor interchangeably says both "Shirok" and "Shirak". The first is closer to the Uzbek name, and the second is closer to the one in "Strategems" ("Siraces").