Frank Miller was just 6 years old when he first saw The 300 Spartans, a Cold War-era sword-and-sandals flick based on the ancient battle of Thermopylae, which pitted King Leonidas and his 300 men against a vast Persian army. Thirty-five years later, the mastermind behind Sin City and Batman: The Dark Knight Returns re-created that epic struggle as a gritty, blood-soaked graphic novel. Now, director Zack Snyder (2004’s Dawn of the Dead) is bringing his brutally violent, brilliantly stylized, R-rated adaptation of Miller’s work to the big screen. “I stayed true to the graphic novel. It’s not supposed to look real,” he says of his $60 million film (modest by action-movie standards), shot in just 60 days followed by a year of postproduction. Snyder, whose next project is Alan Moore’s notoriously “unfilmable” Watchmen series, invited wired to his home in Pasadena, California, to pore over his trove of storyboards, sketches, and film stills for an early — and exclusive — sneak peek. — Scott Thill
Into the Breach Snyder explains how 300 hit the big screen.
THE PLOT King Leonidas and his 300 Spartans block the only route into Greece for Xerxes’ Persian army — the Thermopylae pass — in a desperate fight to the death. Snyder elaborates:
A) KING LEONIDAS This doomed Spartan leader stayed behind with his men to halt the Persian advance. “Leonidas is Batman and ’s Marv. They are all the same character — dark guys doomed by their physicality, grappling with their place in the world.”
B) STELIOS The Spartan leaps to attack a Persian. “We used wires to launch him toward the throne. The whip and the background were added later.”
C) THE TRAITOR Ephialtes, the spurned hunchback, betrays Leonidas. “He’s all prosthetic except for one eye. The other eye is a CG-eye. CG-eye! Get it?”
D) SPARTANS IN ACTION “This is an iconic scene from the graphic novel. Technically, the sun is in the wrong place to cast that silhouette, but it’s wrong in the book too, so it’s OK.”
E) THE EVIL KING Rodrigo Santoro (Lost) plays the pierced god-king Xerxes. “All of this is bluescreen. I drew sketches on paper bags so the cast would understand.”
F) THE ORACLE To capture the fluid images, “we shot her underwater, then sped up and slowed down to create a freaky look.”
Frame by Frame From graphic novel to cinematic marvel.
Early in 300, a young Leonidas battles a menacing wolf in the snow-covered wilderness. Snyder walks us through his process: (1) “The wolf panel you see here [from Miller’s 300] is how every shot was done. I literally sat there, pointed at the book, and said, ‘This is what I want, guys. Build this panel.’” (2) “This is a rough sketch for blocking animation, to determine where the wolf will be.” (3) “We nail down the animation to see how the muscles and the fur are going to move.” (4) “This is the photography shot on-set. To ‘create’ the wolf for the crew, I’d walk on my hands, wheelbarrow-style — like a fool.” (5) “For the CG snow, we directed each individual flake — ’Is this one too sharp? Too flat?’ — and we’d fix them one by one.” (6) “Here’s the final composite. People sometimes ask me, ‘Is this the future of movies?’ I hope not. It’s exhausting.”
credit:
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A Spartan’s Last Stand
