Whatever may have happened to some of Zack Snyder’s later efforts, nobody can deny that the Dawn Of The Dead remake was a solid horror, and his follow-up movie 300 may well be his best. At the time it came out, nobody had ever seen anything quite like it.
It took the look and feel directly from Frank Miller’s comic book re-telling of the historical Battle Of Thermopylae. In the comic and the movie, 300 Spartan warriors held back the might of the Persian Army in a heroic final stand.
In the real historical battle, fought in 480 BC between the Persian Empire under Xerxes I and an alliance of Greek city-states led by Sparta under Leonidas I, there were 300 Spartan warriors present at the defense of Thermopylae, but there were at least 4,000 allies involved on the first two days and 1,500 men from across Greece were involved in the last stand.
While the engagement did last over the three days shown in the comic and the movie, it occurred simultaneously with the naval Battle of Artemisium, both of which delayed the Persians enough to allow the Greeks to retreat and regroup to eventually defeat the Persian invaders decisively at the Battle of Salamis and the Battle of Plataea.
Sorry to spoil the myth for everyone. On the upside, anyone who studies war and conflict uses the Battle of Thermopylae as a case study of the power of an army defending its native soil, and why the invaders always need massive numerical supremacy (7:1 in modern force doctrine, if you were wondering) to dislodge defenders. This is why it has taken China decades to get strong enough to think about taking Taiwan.
The performance of the Greek defenders is also used as an example of the advantages of training, equipment, and use of terrain as force multipliers.
Anyway… back from our historical rabbit hole. We were talking about Zack Snyder. According to a report in Variety he is in talks to direct and executive produce a prequel TV series to 300.
Producers from the original film including Gianni Nunnari, Mark Canton, and Bernie Goldmann. Deborah Snyder, and Wesley Coller would also return and the project would be mobilized under Snyder’s Stone Quarry.
Lena Headey, David Wenham, Dominic West, Vincent Regan, Tom Wisdom, and Michael Fassbender co-starred in the original alongside Gerard Butler as Leonidas and an array of bare-chested, buff men in leather underpants.
300 was a major hit, grossing over $450 million from a very modest $65 million budget. Remember when movies were reasonably priced?
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