"300" is a 2007 American action film adapted from the graphic novel of the
same name by Frank Miller, a fictionalized retelling of the Battle of
Thermopylae. The film was directed by Zack Snyder, while Miller served as
executive producer and consultant. It was filmed mostly with a super-imposition
chroma key technique, to help replicate the imagery of the original comic book.
King Leonidas (Gerard Butler) leads 300 Spartans into battle against Persian
"God-King" Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro) and his army of more than one million
soldiers. As the battle rages, Queen Gorgo (Lena Headey) attempts to rally
support in Sparta for her husband. The story is framed by a voice-over narrative
by the Spartan soldier Dilios (David Wenham). Through this narrative technique,
various fantastical creatures are introduced, placing 300 within the genre of
historical fantasy.
300 was released in both conventional and IMAX theaters in the United States on
March 9, 2007, and on DVD, Blu-ray, and HD DVD on July 31, 2007. The film's
opening was the 24th largest in box office history, although critics were
divided over its look and style. Some acclaimed it as an original achievement,
while others criticized it for favoring visuals over characterization and its
controversial depiction of the ancient Persians.
Plot
Dilios, a Spartan soldier, narrates the story of
Leonidas, from boyhood to the throne of Sparta. Years later, a Persian messenger
arrives at the gates of Sparta demanding it submit to King Xerxes. In response
to this demand, Leonidas and his guards kick the messenger down a well. Knowing
this will prompt a Persian attack, Leonidas visits the Ephors—ancient,
leprosy-ridden priests whose blessing he needs before the Spartan council will
authorize going to war. He proposes they repel the numerically superior Persians
by using the terrain of Thermopylae (the Hot Gates), and funnel the Persians
into a narrow pass between the rocks and the sea. The Ephors consult the Oracle
Pythia, who decrees that Sparta must not go to war during their religious
festival. As Leonidas departs an agent of Xerxes appears, who bribes the Ephors
with concubines and money.
Leonidas follows his plan anyway, setting out with only 300 soldiers, which he
calls his personal guard to avoid needing the council's permission. Though he
knows it is a certain suicide mission, he hopes the sacrifice will spur the
council to unite against Persia. Along the way to Thermopylae, the Spartans are
joined by Arcadians and other Greeks. At Thermopylae, they construct a wall to
contain the approaching Persian advance. Meanwhile, Leonidas meets Ephialtes of
Trachis, a hunchbacked Spartan whose parents fled Sparta to spare him certain
infanticide. Wanting to redeem his father's name, he asks to join the fight, and
warns him of a secret path the Persians could use to outflank and surround them.
Though Leonidas is sympathetic and suggests he aid the wounded, he turns him
down, as Ephialtes cannot properly hold a shield, which would compromise the
Spartans' phalanx formation.
Before the battle, the Persians demand that the Spartans lay down their weapons.
Leonidas refuses, and with their tightly-knit phalanx formation the Spartans use
the narrow terrain to repeatedly rebuff the advancing Persian army. Xerxes
personally parleys with Leonidas, offering him wealth and power in exchange for
his loyalty and surrender. Leonidas declines and Xerxes sends his elite guard,
the feared Immortals, to attack them. The Spartans successfully dispatch them,
but Ephialtes defects to the Persians and informs them of the secret path. When
they realize Ephialtes' treachery, the Arcadians retreat and Leonidas orders
Dilios to return to Sparta to tell the Council of their sacrifice. Though Dilios
had recently lost his left eye in combat, he is still fit for battle, but
Leonidas decides to use Dilios' gift for storytelling to appeal to the Spartan
council. Though reluctant to leave his brothers behind, Dilios leaves with the
Arcadians.
In Sparta, Gorgo, Queen of Sparta and Leonidas' wife, reluctantly submits
sexually to the influential Theron in exchange for his help in persuading the
Spartan council to send reinforcements to Leonidas. Following her address to the
Council, Theron publicly betrays the Queen, prompting the councilmen to cry out
in outrage and Gorgo to kill him in a fit of anger. The dagger pierces his
purse, spilling Persian coins from his robe, and the Council agrees to unite
against Persia.
At Thermopylae, the Persians use the goat path to surround the Spartans. Xerxes'
general demands their surrender, again offering Leonidas titles and prestige.
Leonidas seemingly bows in submission, allowing one of his men to leap over him
and kill the general instead. Furious, Xerxes orders his troops to attack.
Leonidas rises and hurls his spear at Xerxes, cutting the King on the cheek,
thus making good on an earlier promise to make "the 'god'-King bleed." Visibly
disturbed by this reminder of his own mortality, Xerxes watches as all the
Spartans are slaughtered by a massive barrage of arrows. Moments before his
death, Leonidas pledges his undying love to Gorgo.
Concluding his tale before an audience of Spartans on the edge of the
battlefield a year after Thermopylae, Dilios relates how the Persian army is
depleted by desertions, out of fear, and the heavy casualties they suffered at
the hands of a mere 300 Spartans. Word of the valiant resistance of the 300
Spartans spread across Greece, inspiring the different city-states to unite
against the Persians. Now the Persians face 10,000 Spartans commanding 30,000
Greeks. Although still outnumbered, Dilios declares that the Greeks shall be
victorious, and praises the sacrifice of King Leonidas of Sparta. He then leads
the Greeks in a charge against the Persian army, beginning the Battle of Plataea.
Cast
- Gerard Butler as King Leonidas: King of Sparta
- Lena Headey as Queen Gorgo: Queen of Sparta
- Giovani Cimmino as Pleistarchus: son of Leonidas and Gorgo; idolizes his father.
- Dominic West as Theron: A corrupt (fictional) Spartan politician
- David Wenham as Dilios: Narrator and Spartan soldier
- Vincent Regan as Captain Artemis: Leonidas' loyal captain and friend
- Tom Wisdom as Astinos: Captain Artemis' eldest son
- Andrew Pleavin as Daxos: Arcadian soldier
- Andrew Tiernan as Ephialtes: Deformed Spartan outcast
- Rodrigo Santoro as King Xerxes: King of Persia
- Stephen McHattie as The Loyalist: A loyal Spartan politician
- Michael Fassbender as Stelios: Young, spirited and highly skilled Spartan
soldier
- Peter Mensah as Persian messenger
- Kelly Craig as Pythia
- Tyler Neitzel as Young Leonidas
- Robert Maillet as Berserker
- Patrick Sabongui as Persian General
- Leon Laderach as Executioner
Production
Producer Gianni Nunnari was not the only person planning a film about
the Battle of Thermopylae; director Michael Mann already planned a film of the
battle based on the book Gates of Fire. Nunnari discovered Frank Miller's
graphic novel 300, which impressed him enough to acquire the film rights.
300 was jointly produced by Nunnari and Mark Canton, and Michael B.
Gordon wrote the script. Director Zack Snyder was hired in June 2004 as he had
attempted to make a film based on Miller's novel before making his debut with
the remake of Dawn of the Dead. Snyder then had screenwriter Kurt Johnstad
rewrite Gordon's script for production and Frank Miller was retained as
consultant and executive producer.
The film is a shot-for-shot adaptation of the comic book, similar to the film
adaptation of "Sin
City". Snyder photocopied panels from the comic book, from which he planned
the preceding and succeeding shots. "It was a fun process for me... to have a
frame as a goal to get to," he said. Like the comic book, the adaptation also
used the character Dilios as a narrator. Snyder used this narrative technique to
show the audience that the surreal "Frank Miller world" of 300 was told
from a subjective perspective. By using Dilios' gift of storytelling, he is able
to introduce fantasy elements into the film, explaining that "Dilios is a guy
who knows how not to wreck a good story with truth." Snyder also added the
sub-plot in which Queen Gorgo attempts to rally support for her husband.
Two months of pre-production were required to create hundreds of shields,
spears, and swords, some of which were recycled from Troy and Alexander.
Creatures were designed by Jordu Schell, and an animatronic wolf and thirteen
animatronic horses were created. The actors trained alongside the stuntmen, and
even Snyder joined in. Upwards of 600 costumes were created for the film, as
well as extensive prosthetics for various characters and the corpses of Persian
soldiers. Shaun Smith and Mark Rappaport worked hand in hand with Snyder in
pre-production to design the look of the individual characters, and to produce
the prosthetics, props, weapons and dummy bodies required for the production.
300 entered active production on October 17, 2005, in Montreal, and was shot
over the course of sixty days in chronological order with a budget of $60
million. Employing the digital backlot technique, Snyder shot at the now-defunct
Icestorm Studios in Montreal using bluescreens. Butler said that while he did
not feel constrained by Snyder's direction, fidelity to the comic imposed
certain limitations on his performance. Wenham said there were times when Snyder
wanted to precisely capture iconic moments from the comic book, and other times
when he gave actors freedom "to explore within the world and the confines that
had been set." Headey said of her experience with the bluescreens, "It's very
odd, and emotionally, there's nothing to connect to apart from another actor."
Only one scene, in which horses travel across the countryside, was shot
outdoors. The film was an intensely physical production, and Butler pulled an
arm tendon and developed foot drop.
Post-production was handled by Montreal's Meteor Studios and Hybride
Technologies filled in the bluescreen footage with more than 1,500 visual
effects shots. Visual effects supervisor Chris Watts and production designer Jim
Bissell created a process dubbed "The Crush," which allowed the Meteor artists
to manipulate the colors by increasing the contrast of light and dark. Certain
sequences were desaturated and tinted to establish different moods. Ghislain
St-Pierre, who led the team of artists, described the effect: "Everything looks
realistic, but it has a kind of a gritty illustrative feel." Various computer
programs, including Maya, RenderMan and RealFlow, were used to create the
"spraying blood." The post-production lasted for a year and was handled by a
total of ten special effects companies.
Soundtrack
In July 2005, composer Tyler Bates had begun work on the film, describing the
score as having "beautiful themes on the top and large choir," but "tempered
with some extreme heaviness." The composer had scored for a test scene that the
director wanted to show to Warner Bros. to illustrate the path of the project.
Bates said that the score had "a lot of weight and intensity in the low end of
the percussion" that Snyder found agreeable to the film. The score was recorded
at Abbey Road Studios and features the vocals of Azam Ali. A standard edition
and a special edition of the soundtrack containing 25 tracks was released on
March 6, 2007, with the special edition containing a 16-page booklet and three
two-sided trading cards.
The score has caused some controversy in the film composer community, garnering
criticism for its striking similarity to several other recent soundtracks,
including James Horner and Gabriel Yared's work for the film "Troy".
The heaviest borrowings are said to be from Elliot Goldenthal's 1999 score for
Titus. "Remember Us," from 300, is identical in parts to the "Finale"
from Titus, and "Returns a King" is similar to the cue "Victorius Titus."
On August 3, 2007, Warner Bros. Pictures acknowledged in an official statement:
... a number of the music cues for the score of 300 were, without our
knowledge or participation, derived from music composed by Academy Award winning
composer Elliot Goldenthal for the motion picture Titus. Warner Bros. Pictures
has great respect for Elliot, our longtime collaborator, and is pleased to have
amicably resolved this matter.
Promotion and release
The official 300 website was launched by Warner Bros. in December 2005. The
"conceptual art" and Zack Snyder's production blog were the initial
attractions of the site. Later, the website added video journals describing production
details, including comic-to-screen shots and the creatures of 300. In January
2007, the studio launched a MySpace page for the film. The Art Institutes
created a micro-site to promote the film.
At Comic-Con International in July 2006, the 300 panel aired a promotional
teaser of the film, which was positively received. Despite stringent
security, the trailer was subsequently leaked on the Internet. Warner Bros.
released the official trailer for 300 on October 4, 2006, and later on it
made its debut on Apple.com where it received considerable exposure. The
background music used in the trailers was "Just Like You Imagined" by Nine Inch
Nails. A second 300 trailer, which was attached to "Apocalypto", was released in
theaters on December 8, 2006, and online the day before. On January 22,
2007, an exclusive trailer for the film was broadcast during prime time
television. The trailers have been credited with igniting interest in the film
and contributing to its box-office success.
In April 2006, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment announced its intention to
make a PlayStation Portable game, 300: March to Glory, based on the film.
Collision Studios worked with Warner Bros. to capture the style of the film in
the video game, which was released simultaneously with the film in the United
States. The National Entertainment Collectibles Association produced a series of
action figures based on the film, as well as replicas of weapons and armor.
Warner Bros. promoted 300 by sponsoring the Ultimate Fighting
Championship's light heavyweight champion Chuck Liddell, who made personal
appearances and participated in other promotional activities. The studio also
joined with the National Hockey League to produce a 30-second TV spot promoting
the film in tandem with the Stanley Cup playoffs.
In August 2006, Warner Bros. announced 300's release date as March 16, 2007, but
in October the release was moved forward to March 9, 2007. 300 was
released on DVD, Blu-ray Disc, and HD DVD on July 31, 2007, in Region 1
territories, in single-disc and two-disc editions. 300 was released in
single-disc and steelcase two-disc editions on DVD, BD and HD DVD in Region 2
territories beginning August 2007. On July 21, 2009, Warner Bros. released a new
Blu-ray entitled 300: The Complete Experience to coincide with the Blu-ray
release of "Watchmen". This new Blu-ray is encased in a 40-page Digibook
and includes all the extras from the original release as well as some new ones.
These features include a Picture-in-Picture feature entitled The Complete
300: A Comprehensive Immersion, which enables the viewer to view the film in
three different perspectives. This release also includes a Digital Copy.
On July 9, 2007, the American cable channel TNT bought the rights to broadcast
the film from Warner Bros. TNT started airing the film in September 2009.
Sources say that the network paid between $17 million and just under $20
million for the broadcasting rights. TNT agreed to a three-year deal instead of
the more typical five-year deal.
Reception
300 was released in North America on March 9, 2007, in both conventional
and IMAX theaters. It grossed $28,106,731 on its opening day and ended its North
American opening weekend with $70,885,301, breaking the record held by Ice Age:
The Meltdown for the biggest opening weekend in the month of March and for a
Spring release. Since then 300's Spring release record was broken by "Fast and
Furious" and 300's March record was broken by Tim Burton's, "Alice
in Wonderland." 300's opening weekend gross is the 24th highest in box office history,
coming slightly below "The Lost World: Jurassic Park"
but higher than Transformers. It was the third biggest opening for an R-rated
film ever, behind "The
Matrix Reloaded" ($91.8 million) and "The
Passion of the Christ" ($83.8 million). The film also set a record for IMAX
cinemas with a $3.6 million opening weekend.
300 opened two days earlier, on March 7, 2007, in Sparta, and across Greece on
March 8. Studio executives were surprised by the showing, which was twice what
they had expected. They credited the film's stylized violence,
the strong female role of Queen Gorgo which attracted a large number of women,
and a MySpace advertising blitz. Producer Mark Canton said, "MySpace
had an enormous impact but it has transcended the limitations of the Internet or
the graphic novel. Once you make a great movie, word can spread very quickly."
Reviews
Since its world premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival on February
14, 2007, in front of 1,700 audience members, 300 has received generally
mixed reviews. While it received a standing ovation at the public premiere, it was
reportedly panned at a press screening hours earlier, where many attendees left
during the showing and those who remained booed at the end. Critical reviews
of 300 are divided. Rotten Tomatoes reports that 60 percent of North
American and selected international critics gave the film a positive review,
based upon a sample of 216, with an average score of 6.1 out of 10. Reviews from
selected notable critics were 48 percent positive, giving the film an average
score of 5.6 out of 10 based on a sample of 40. At Metacritic, which
assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the
film has received an average score of 51 based on 35 reviews. Empire gave
the film 3/5 having a verdict of "Visually stunning, thoroughly belligerent and
as shallow as a pygmy’s paddling pool, this is a whole heap of style tinged with
just a smidgen of substance."
Variety's Todd McCarthy describes the film as "visually arresting" although
"bombastic" while Kirk Honeycutt, writing in The Hollywood Reporter, praises
the "beauty of its topography, colors and forms." Writing in the Chicago Sun
Times, Richard Roeper acclaims 300 as "the Citizen Kane of cinematic graphic
novels." 300 was also warmly received by websites focusing on comics and
video games. Comic Book Resources' Mark Cronan found the film compelling,
leaving him "with a feeling of power, from having been witness to something
grand." IGN's Todd Gilchrist acclaimed Zack Snyder as a cinematic visionary
and "a possible redeemer of modern moviemaking."
A number of critical reviews appeared in major American newspapers. A.O. Scott
of The New York Times describes 300 as "about as violent as Apocalypto
and twice as stupid," while criticizing its color scheme and suggesting that
its plot includes racist undertones. Kenneth Turan writes in the Los Angeles
Times that "unless you love violence as much as a Spartan, Quentin Tarantino or
a video-game-playing teenage boy, you will not be endlessly fascinated." Roger
Ebert, in his review, gave the film a two-star rating, writing, "300 has
one-dimensional caricatures who talk like professional wrestlers plugging their
next feud." Some Greek newspapers have been particularly critical, such as
film critic Robby Eksiel, who said that moviegoers would be dazzled by the
"digital action" but irritated by the "pompous interpretations and
one-dimensional characters."
Accolades
At the
MTV Movie Awards 2007, 300 was nominated for Best Movie, Best Performance for
Gerard Butler, Best Breakthrough Performance for Lena Headey, Best Villain for
Rodrigo Santoro, and Best Fight for Leonidas battling "the Über Immortal." It
eventually won the award for Best Fight. 300 won both the Best Dramatic Film and
Best Action Film honors in the 2006-2007 Golden Icon Awards presented by
Travolta Family Entertainment. In December 2007, 300 won IGN's Movie of the Year
2007, along with Best Comic Book Adaptation[ and King Leonidas as Favorite
Character. The movie received 10 nominations for the 2008 Saturn Awards, winning
the awards for Best Director and Best Action/Adventure/Thriller Film. In 2009,
National Review magazine ranked 300 number 5 on its 25 Best Conservative Movies
of the Last 25 Years list.
Historical accuracy
300's director Zack Snyder stated in an MTV interview that "the events are 90
percent accurate. It's just in the visualization that it's crazy.... I've shown
this movie to world-class historians who have said it's amazing. They can't
believe it's as accurate as it is." He continues that the film is "an opera, not
a documentary. That's what I say when people say it's historically
inaccurate." He was also quoted in a BBC News story as saying that the film
is, at its core "a fantasy film." He also describes the film's narrator, Dilios,
as "a guy who knows how not to wreck a good story with truth."
Paul Cartledge, Professor of Greek History at Cambridge University, advised the
filmmakers on the pronunciation of Greek names, and states that they "made good
use" of his published work on Sparta. He praises the film for its portrayal of
"the Spartans' heroic code," and of "the key role played by women in backing up,
indeed reinforcing, the male martial code of heroic honour," while expressing
reservations about its "'West' (goodies) vs 'East' (baddies) polarization." Cartledge writes that he enjoyed the film, although he found Leonidas'
description of the Athenians as "boy lovers" ironic, since the Spartans
themselves incorporated institutional pederasty into their educational system.
Ephraim Lytle, assistant professor of Hellenistic History at the University of
Toronto, states that 300 selectively idealizes Spartan society in a
"problematic and disturbing" fashion, as well as portraying the "hundred nations
of the Persians" as monsters and non-Spartan Greeks as weak (although because
the story seen in the film is told from a Spartan perspective, it can be assumed
that this is how the Spartans saw their allies and enemies). He suggests that
the film's moral universe would have seemed "as bizarre to ancient Greeks as it
does to modern historians."
Victor Davis Hanson, National Review columnist and former professor of Classical
history at California State University, Fresno, who wrote the foreword to a 2007
re-issue of the graphic novel, states that the film demonstrates a specific
affinity with the original material of Herodotus in that it captures the martial
ethos of ancient Sparta and represents Thermopylae as a "clash of
civilizations." He remarks that Simonides, Aeschylus, and Herodotus viewed
Thermopylae as a battle against "Eastern centralism and collective serfdom,"
which opposed "the idea of the free citizen of an autonomous polis."
He further states that the film portrays the battle in a "surreal" manner, and
that the intent was to "entertain and shock first, and instruct second."
Touraj Daryaee, now Baskerville Professor of Iranian History and the Persiante
World at the University of California, Irvine, criticizes the movie's use of
classical sources, writing:
"Some passages from the Classical authors Aeschylus, Diodorus, Herodotus and
Plutarch are spilt over the movie to give it an authentic flavor. Aeschylus
becomes a major source when the battle with the "monstrous human herd" of the
Persians is narrated in the film. Diodorus' statement about Greek valor to
preserve their liberty is inserted in the film, but his mention of Persian valor
is omitted. Herodotus' fanciful numbers are used to populate the Persian army,
and Plutarch's discussion of Greek women, specifically Spartan women, is
inserted wrongly in the dialogue between the "misogynist" Persian ambassador and
the Spartan king. Classical sources are certainly used, but exactly in all the
wrong places, or quite naively. The Athenians were fighting a sea battle during
this."
Robert McHenry, former editor-in-chief of Encyclopedia Britannica and author of
How to Know states that the film "is an almost ineffably silly movie. Stills
from the film could easily be used to promote Buns of Steel, or AbMaster, or
ThighMaster. It’s about the romanticizing of the Spartan “ideal,” a process that
began even in ancient times, was promoted by the Romans, and has survived over
time while less and less resembling the actual historical Sparta."
Controversy
Before the release
of 300, Warner Bros. expressed concerns about the political aspects of the
film's theme. Snyder relates that there was "a huge sensitivity about East
versus West with the studio." Media speculation about a possible parallel
between the Greco-Persian conflict and current events began in an interview with
Snyder that was conducted before the Berlin Film Festival. The interviewer
remarked that "everyone is sure to be translating this film into contemporary
politics." Snyder replied that, while he was aware that people would read the
film through the lens of contemporary events, no parallels between the film and
the contemporary world were intended.
Outside the current political parallels, some critics have raised more general
questions about the film's ideological orientation. The New York Post's Kyle
Smith writes that the film would have pleased "Adolf's boys," and Slate's
Dana Stevens compares the film to The Eternal Jew, "as a textbook example of how
race-baiting fantasy and nationalist myth can serve as an incitement to total
war." Roger Moore, a critic for the Orlando Sentinel, relates 300 to Susan Sontag's
definition of "fascist art." Alleanza Nazionale, an Italian
political party formed from the collapse of the neo-fascist party MSI, has used
imagery from the work within candidate propaganda posters titled: "Defend your
values, your civilization, your district".
However, Newsday critic Gene Seymour also stated that such reactions are
misguided, writing that "the movie's just too darned silly to withstand any
ideological theorizing." Snyder himself dismissed ideological readings,
suggesting that reviewers who critique "a graphic novel movie about a bunch of
guys...stomping the snot out of each other" using words like "'neocon,'
'homophobic,' 'homoerotic' or 'racist'" are "missing the point." Slovenian
critic Slavoj ˇi˛ek also wrote that the story represents "a poor, small country
(Greece) invaded by the army of a much larger state (Persia)," suggesting that
the identification of the Spartans with a modern superpower is flawed.
Depictions of Persians
Since its opening, 300 also attracted controversy over its portrayal of
Persians. Various critics, historians, journalists, and officials of the Iranian
government including President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad denounced the film. As in the
graphic novel, the Persians were depicted as a monstrous, barbaric, and demonic
horde, and King Xerxes was portrayed as androgynous. Critics suggested that this
was meant to stand in stark contrast to the masculinity of the Spartan army.
Steven Rea argued that the film's Persians were a vehicle for an anachronistic
cross-section of Western stereotypes of Asian and African cultures.
The film's portrayal of ancient Persians caused a particularly strong reaction
in Iran. Azadeh Moaveni of Time reported that Tehran was "outraged"
following the film's release. Moaveni identified two factors which may have
contributed to the intense reaction: its release on the eve of Nowruz, the
Persian New Year, and the common Iranian view of the Achaemenid Empire as "a
particularly noble page in their history." Various Iranian officials
condemned the film. The Iranian Academy of the
Arts submitted a formal complaint against the film to UNESCO, labelling it an
attack on the historical identity of Iran. The Iranian mission to the U.N.
protested the film in a press release, and Iranian embassies protested
its screening in France, Thailand, Turkey, and Uzbekistan. The film was banned
within Iran as "hurtful American propaganda".
In response to the criticisms, a Warner Bros. spokesman stated that the film
300 "is a work of fiction inspired by the Frank Miller graphic novel and
loosely based on a historical event. The studio developed this film purely as a
fictional work with the sole purpose of entertaining audiences; it is not meant
to disparage an ethnicity or culture or make any sort of political statement."
On January 27 2007, just prior to the release of the film, the original 300
creator, Frank Miller made the following political statement about the "State of
the Union": "For some reason, nobody seems to be talking about who we're up
against, and the sixth century barbarism that they actually represent. These
people saw people's heads off. They enslave women, they genitally mutilate their
daughters, they do not behave by any cultural norms that are sensible to us. I'm
speaking into a microphone that never could have been a product of their
culture, and I'm living in a city where three thousand of my neighbors were
killed by thieves of airplanes they never could have built." He also
explained the upcoming work "Holy Terror, Batman!", a story wherein Batman takes
on Al-Qaeda, as: "It is, not to put too fine a point on it, a piece of
propaganda ... Superman punched out Hitler. So did Captain America. That's one
of the things they're there for."
Popular culture
300 has been spoofed in various media, spawning the "This is Sparta!"
internet meme, with parodies also appearing in film and television. These
include the short United 300, which won the Movie Spoof Award at the 2007 MTV
Movie Awards. Skits based upon the film have appeared on Saturday Night Live and
Robot Chicken, the latter of which mimicked the visual style of 300 in a parody
set during the American Revolutionary War, titled "1776." 20th Century Fox
released Meet the Spartans, a spoof of 300. Universal Pictures is planning a
similar parody, titled National Lampoon's 301: The Legend of Awesomest Maximus
Wallace Leonidas. 300 was also parodied in an episode of South Park named
"D-Yikes!".
300, particularly its pithy quotations, have been "adopted" by the student body
of Michigan State University (whose sports teams are nicknamed the Spartans),
with chants of "Spartans, what is your profession?" becoming common at sporting
events starting after the film's release, and Michigan State basketball head
coach Tom Izzo dressed as Leonidas at one student event.
Prequel
In June 2008, producers Mark Canton, Gianni Nunnari and Bernie Goldmann revealed
that work had begun on a prequel to 300. Legendary Pictures has
announced that Frank Miller is writing the follow-up graphic novel, and Zack
Snyder has declared his interest in directing the adaptation, though he is
waiting until he sees the graphic novel before officially signing onto the
project. The new film's title is rumored to be Xerxes.
This article uses material from the
Wikipedia article "300" and is licensed under the
GNU Free Documentation License.
