300 Trailer at NoFace for Film

300 Trailer

Published by Kaonashi February 14th, 2007 in Trailers.

Last night as I was watching American Idol, I was reminded of why I can’t wait for March 9 to come. The latest trailer for Frank Miller’s 300 popped up during the commercial break, and once again my jaw hit the floor. I’ve seen plenty of films in my lifetime, and I think I can safely say that judging from the trailers, 300 is the most beautiful looking film I have ever seen. Yes, there is some definite Gladiator influence in terms of lighting and cinematography, but every frame in the 300 trailer looks like a freaking painting, a work of art. I just hope that the acting, plot, and other film elements are just as stunning. I do not want to be disappointed.

This wasn’t the trailer that I saw last night, but it was the first one that grabbed my attention when I saw it in a movie theater. It’s my favorite.

Technorati Tags: 300 trailer, Battle of Thermopylae, King Leonidas, Frank Miller, Gerard Butler

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2 Responses to “300 Trailer”

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1 Cineaste Feb 17th, 2007 at 7:22 pm

This should be good. The make your viewing experience richer, I recommend reading Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae by Steven Pressfield for background. Here is an excerpt…

Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that here obedient to their laws we lie.

Thus reads an ancient stone at Thermopylae in northern Greece, the site of one of the world’s greatest battles for freedom. Here, in 480 B.C., on a narrow mountain pass above the crystalline Aegean, 300 Spartan knights and their allies faced the massive forces of Xerxes, King of Persia. From the start, there was no question but that the Spartans would perish. In Gates of Fire, however, Steven Pressfield makes their courageous defense–and eventual extinction–unbearably suspenseful.

In the tradition of Mary Renault, this historical novel unfolds in flashback. Xeo, the sole Spartan survivor of Thermopylae, has been captured by the Persians, and Xerxes himself presses his young captive to reveal how his tiny cohort kept more than 100,000 Persians at bay for a week. Xeo, however, begins at the beginning, when his childhood home in northern Greece was overrun and he escaped to Sparta. There he is drafted into the elite Spartan guard and rigorously schooled in the art of war–an education brutal enough to destroy half the students, but (oddly enough) not without humor: “The more miserable the conditions, the more convulsing the jokes became, or at least that’s how it seems,” Xeo recalls. His companions in arms are Alexandros, a gentle boy who turns out to be the most courageous of all, and Rooster, an angry, half-Messenian youth.

Pressfield’s descriptions of war are breathtaking in their immediacy. They are also meticulously assembled out of physical detail and crisp, uncluttered metaphor:

“The forerank of the enemy collapsed immediately as the first shock hit it; the body-length shields seemed to implode rearward, their anchoring spikes rooted slinging from the earth like tent pins in a gale. The forerank archers were literally bowled off their feet, their wall-like shields caving in upon them like fortress redoubts under the assault of the ram…. The valor of the individual Medes was beyond question, but their light hacking blades were harmless as toys; against the massed wall of Spartan armor, they might as well have been defending themselves with reeds or fennel stalks.”

Alas, even this human barrier was bound to collapse, as we knew all along it would. “War is work, not mystery,” Xeo laments. But Pressfield’s epic seems to make the opposite argument: courage on this scale is not merely inspiring but ultimately mysterious.

A couple of flaws i noticed in the trailer were the Spartans have no chest armor and only Leonidas is wearing a helmet crest. They must be staying faithful to the comic and not the history. This is fine. It should be a really exciting movie.
2 Toni Feb 18th, 2007 at 10:54 am

Hi Cineaste-

Thanks for the excerpt. I’ll check out the book when I get the chance. I’d also like to definitely check out the Frank Miller graphic novel. As for the appearance of the Spartan army, you’re probably right- they’re staying true to the graphic novel rather than the history. I know that many scenes in the film are right out of the graphic novel. I’m really looking forward to 300!

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