Director Zack Snyder pleased about debate. "If that's a by-product, that's good," he says.
Warner Brothers' new release “300” will premier in the U.S., England and Australia early March 2007. Based on Frank Miller’s award winning graphic novel from 1998, the movie “300” is the story of the Battle of Thermopylae. It is also a story that is 2,500 years-old. In 480 B.C., King Xerxes' fleet of Persian ships sailed the coastline from northern Greece into the Gulf of Malia on the eastern Aegean Sea towards the mountains at Thermopylae. The king of Greece, Leonoidas responded. The battle lasted just three days. One month later, Xerxes invaded Athens and burned it to the ground.
Parallels to the Iraq War are being seen, because the film tells the story of a Western nation confronting a Middle Eastern one on the battlefield. The filmmakers assert that none was intended. Warner Brothers Studios released both films, “Troy” in 2004 and “Alexander” in that same year.
According to the film’s director, Zack Snyder, after advance screenings, he was taken aside by a reporter representing the international press, who insisted that Xerxes had to be symbolizing George W. Bush. The reporter’s theory was based upon the fact that “300” depicts a great leader taking a large, powerful army into a foreign country and confronting a small local guerrilla force to finish a war he believed his father had left unfinished. Xerxes was the grandson of Cyrus and the son of Darius and like them was king of the Persian Empire.
When “300” was shown at the Berlinale Film Festival in Berlin, Germany, attendees walked out of a screening there. Others stated they wished to stay and edify themselves regarding the propaganda in support of possible U.S. military action against Iran (modern-day Persia) over the possibility of that country developing nuclear weapons. "Don't you think it's interesting that your film received funding at this point?" Snyder says he was asked there. This leads Snyder to believe that members of the foreign press think his funding came directly from the U.S. government.
Warner Brothers has scheduled the release of “300” for early March, 2007 in the U.S., Britain and Australia. The countries worse hit by the war in the Middle East. If there are any parallels here, they are that when empires expand, they expand quickly. Often, if not always, they gobble others in their wake. And, it will be coming to a theater near you soon.
On the real story of the Persian Wars and of Thermopylae, the ancient Greek historian Herodotus writes in, Book 7, 228: “The men were buried were they fell; and for these, as well as for those who were slain before being sent away by Leonidas, there is an inscription which runs thus: Here once, facing in fight three hundred myriads of foemen, Thousands four did contend, men of the Peloponnese." War then, as now, may be with us to stay.
