Comic Con:300

CON: 300

Jul. 28, 2006


Source: JoBlo.com
by: Mike Sampson


300 PANEL:

Participants:
Director Zack Snyder
Creator Frank Miller
Gerard Butler
David Wenham



The first standing ovation of the 2006 Comic-Con took place at this year’s presentation for Warner Bros upcoming adaptation of Frank Miller’s graphic novel 300. Was it well deserved? Better believe it! Heck, it was so well received they couldn’t calm the fans down until they played it again. And again!

We were cautioned that the effects weren’t final in the piece but it everything looked pretty sharp if you ask me. We open with Gerard Butler bellowing the line, “SPARTANS! Tonight we die (or dine) in hell!” From there we see how the Spartans became such fearless warriors. The voiceover explains that each newborn mail is inspected for even the slightest imperfection. The priest/doctor performing said inspection is standing at the top of the cliff. At the bottom, a pile of baby-sized bones. That’s right - if you’re not a perfect physical specimen, off the cliff you go. Pretty harsh stuff.


We now see the infant from earlier growing up and being trained to be a warrior. He’s engaged in combat with a man twice his age and size who cracks him pretty good. But our warrior has been trained well and we see a brutal slo-mo shot of him on top of one of his peers pounding him in the face and blood (a bold and vibrant red) flies out. Then a quick shot of him facing off against a Miller-esque wolf and promptly impaling him through the mouth with a spear.


From here our man grows up. There are a lot of quick shots so I’ll try to recount everything I saw. There’s a giant, seemingly bottomless pit that a man is cornered against and subsequently kicked into. Numerous battle sequences, very often hitting slo-mo right at the most violent point. A man says that they will launch so many arrows it will block out the sun to which a Spartan ( Butler again) replies that they will then fight in the shade. There are some pretty impressive and nasty looking Frank Miller “monsters” as well as a rampaging giant rhino.

Oh and did I mention the, um, nudity? Yeah, there’s plenty at WB wasn’t ashamed to show it off. Our hero rolls in the hay with a beautiful, unclothed lady while another undulates in the buff underwater. Another half-naked woman is licked across her face by a nasty looking beast. The action at the end got really intense and really quick but the highlight was a severed head doing a slow-mo 360 in the air.

If you thought Robert Rodriguez did a good job adapting Miller’s visuals for the screen, just wait until you see what director Zack Snyder has done. The look of this film is absolutely incredible with sharp colors, impressive effects and a no holds barred style. Next to the SPIDER-MAN 3 footage, the best thing I saw at Comic-Con this year.

In attendance for the panel were Snyder, Miller, Butler and Wenham, and here are some notes on what they had to say.

Snyder said he wanted to remain religiously faithful to the source material and not “f*ck it up Hollywood-style.”

To that end, he said it was difficult to train everyone on his crew not to “over design” the film. He had a lot of different interpretations in the conceptual stage but he kept reminding everyone that the artwork was already laid out for them in Miller’s book and to keep it simpler by staying as faithful as possible to the existing art.

Butler said he trained very hard for the film and incurred a number of injuries both while training and filming

The cast trained together to increase the brotherhood and ramp up the testosterone to make filming some of those intense battle sequences easier

The male stars of the film, particularly Butler and Wenham, had to wear leather codpieces and Butler says “I never felt so stupid in my life.” He felt especially embarrassing walking past “manly” crew man in leather underwear

The capes worn were quite heavy and after 15 minutes would begin to wear down the actors. They also, as they were designed to flow around them, would get caught up in the swords during the battle sequences. Frank Miller teased the actors that it wasn’t very Spartan-like to be complaining that their capes were too heavy.

Normally a film of this scope would never have been able to wrap in their time schedule but because of all the work that was to be done later with blue screens they were able to finish filming on time.

Snyder said he used the technique of changing the camera speed to during battle sequences to make the Spartans appear almost superhuman in their abilities.

As you might expect from what I described, 300 will definitely be R-rated and they’re trying to something completely different from comic adaptations like SUPERMAN, BATMAN or FANTASTIC FOUR.

300 doesn’t yet have a release date but it’s very likely it won’t be until next year some time.

Check out the 300 production blog below

http://joblo.com/index.php?id=12260