300 (Zack Snyder)

quote:

The Thermopylae 300

Forget Butch and Sundance, leave aside Ned Kelly and definitely don't mention Custer. In what is unquestionably the greatest last stand in history, King Leonidas of Sparta and his 300 bodyguards once held a narrow mountain pass, the Gap of Thermopylae, against King Xerxes' Persian army (numbering by some accounts over 100,000) for a week. All the Spartans died, of course, but not before they had decimated the enemy forces and given their fellow Greeks time to unite against the invader and layeth the smackdown on Xerxes and all his men.

This may all have taken place in 480 BC, but after the worldwide success of Troy a mere couple of millennia is no obstacle to box-office success. Sure enough, a new screen version of the ancient battle is to be produced, based on Frank Miller's graphic novel 300, with Dawn of the Dead director Zack Snyder signed on to direct.

After his zombie success, Snyder clearly has the guts for action, but can he tackle the sheer scale of this story? Producers are calling it an "anti-epic", but hopefully that won't stop them from inserting a whole heap of desperate bravery, desperate odds and desperately cool fighting from the world's greatest warrior race. A few good-looking bronzed types in skirts wouldn't hurt either, for if Troy and Gladiator have taught us anything, it's that you can never go wrong with muscley men in skirts – unless they're members of the Real Madrid squad, that is.

The legendary battle already appeared onscreen already, in 1962's The 300 Spartans, and has been much imitated throughout film history (and in real life - there was a second Battle of Thermopylae, fought between Romans and Aetolians, in 191 BC. Never say we don't tell you these things.) So will Snyder successfully raise the dead? Or will this be dead on its feet? Only time will tell.

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