At Warner Bros.’ presentation for Zack Snyder’s movie version of Frank Miller’s graphic novel 300, they debuted a clearly R-rated teaser of footage from the movie. Miller’s comic mini-series is based on the 5th Century battle of Thermopylae where 300 Spartans faced and held back thousands of soldiers in the Persian army.
After the introduction of director Snyder, actors Gerard Butler (King Leonidas) and David Wenham (Delios)–both of whom walked out to screams and squeals–and 300 creator Frank Miller, wearing a fetching straw hat.
The teaser starts with King Leonidas’ cry of “Spartans, tonight we dine in hell!” with a title card saying “From Frank Miller’s graphic novel” before getting into a brief history of Leonidas’ life from birth, where the voice-over explains how Spartans are weeded out at birth if they’re not up to snuff. It also shows Leonidas as a boy, being trained as a fighter and facing the giant wolf which would be pivotal in his rise to King.
There’s a sample of what to expect in the battle scenes and a gorgeous scene of Persian warriors riding across the fields supposedly towards Spartan. A lot of the scenes are shown in slow-motion, but Snyder also uses this neat trick of speeding up and slowing down the film speed to make it look rather surreal. The teaser showed a longer scene showing Leonidas pushing the Persian messenger into the pit in Sparta, followed by a steamy sex scene between Butler’s Leonidas and Queen Gorgo, played by Lena Heady, as well as a glimpse of the Oracle, wearing a rather revealing robe.
The rest of the teaser was made up of short shots of the other characters from the book, scored to Nine Inch Nails to give it a modern feel, including a shot of the Persian king Xerxes (played by Brazil’s Rodrigo Santoro), the blind Persian executioner with swords for arms, a couple shots of the hunchback Ephialtes (Andrew Tiernan) and a brief glimpse of a new character designed just for the movie, a Persian giant played by the big actor who faced Brad Pitt in the opening sequence of Troy. There also was a brief glimpse of a severed head flying through the air, probably also Leonidas’ work, and an armored rhino.
The most impressive scene in the teaser was probably the final battle sequences that show the Spartans in action against the Persians, with one memorable exchange being a Persian telling Leonidas that their “arrows will block out the sun” and Leonidas responding that they’ll “fight in the shade.” (Another memorable scene from the book present in the teaser shows the Spartans fighting a bunch of Persian warriors towards and over the edge of a cliff.)
The teaser was a great synopsis of the historic tale with many scenes looking exactly like the way they’re depicted by Miller in the graphic story. Although Snyder said that a lot of scenes were unfinished, the crowd ate it up, cheering and applauding until they agreed to show it again.
Look for more from the creators and cast of 300 right here on ComingSoon.net/SuperheroHype.com.
Source: Edward Douglas
