300 (film)

"We will block the Persian coastal assault by rebuilding the great Phocian Wall. And from there, we will funnel them into the mountain pass we call the Hot Gates. Now, in that narrow corridor, their numbers will count for nothing, and wave after wave of Persian attack will smash against Spartan shields. Xerxes' losses will be so great, his men so demoralized, he will have no choice but to abandon his campaign!"

"[after Daxos and his men withdraw] No retreat, no surrender. That is Spartan law. And by Spartan law, we will stand and fight... and die. A new age has begun: an age of freedom! And all will know that 300 Spartans gave their last breath to defend it!"

"THIS IS SPARTA!!!"

"Spartans! Ready your breakfast and eat hearty, for tonight, we dine in Hell!"

"[last words] My Queen!... My Wife!... My love..."

"Councilmen, I stand before you not only as your queen. I come to you as a mother. I come to you as a wife. I come to you as a Spartan woman. I come to you with great humility. I am not here to represent Leonidas. His actions speak louder than my words ever could. I am here for all those voices which cannot be heard. Mothers, daughters, fathers, sons. Three hundred families that bleed for our rights. And for the very principles this room was built upon. We are at war, gentlemen. We must send the entire Spartan army to aid our king in the preservation of not just ourselves, but of our children. Send the army for the preservation of liberty. Send it for justice. Send it for law and order. Send it for reason. But most importantly, send our army for hope. Hope that a king and his men have not been wasted to the pages of history. That their courage bonds us together. That we are made stronger by their actions, and that your choices today reflect their bravery."

"[Regarding Leonidas' upbringing] From the time he could stand, he was baptized in the fire of combat. Taught never to retreat, never to surrender. Taught that death on the battlefield in service to Sparta was the greatest glory he could achieve in his life."

"They have served the dark will of Persian kings for 500 years. Eyes as dark as night, teeth filed to fangs - soulless. The personal guard to King Xerxes himself. The Persian warrior elite. The deadliest fighting force in all of Asia. The Immortals. The god-king has betrayed a fatal flaw: hubris. Easy to taunt, easy to trick. Before wounds and weariness have taken their toll, the mad king throws the best he has at us. Xerxes has taken the bait. "Immortals" - we put their name to the test."

"[As the Arcadians join the fight with the Immortals] They shout and curse, stabbing wildly, more brawlers than warriors. They make a wondrous mess of things. Brave amateurs, they do their part."

""Immortals". They fail our king's test. And a man who fancies himself a god feels a very human chill crawl up his spine."

""Remember us." As simple an order as a king can give. "Remember why we died." For he did not wish tribute or song. No monuments, no poems of war and valour. His wish was simple: "Remember us," he said to me. That was his hope. Should any free soul come across that place, in all the countless centuries yet to be, may all our voices whisper to you from the ageless stones: Go tell the Spartans, passer-by, that here, by Spartan law, we lie. So my king died, and my brothers died, barely a year ago. Long I pondered my king's cryptic talk of victory. But time has proven him wise. For from free Greek to free Greek, the word was spread that bold Leonidas and his 300, so far from home, laid down their lives, not just for Sparta, but for all Greece and the promise this country holds! Now, here on this ragged patch of earth called Plataea, Xerxes' hordes face obliteration! Just there the barbarians huddle, sheer terror gripping tight their hearts with icy fingers, knowing full well what merciless horrors they suffered at the swords and spears of 300. Yet they stare now across the plain at 10,000 Spartans commanding 30,000 free Greeks!"

"Tonight we dine in Hell!"

"Prepare for glory!"

"They were 300 men, against a million!"

"A God-King must die!"

"A beautiful death!"

"Madness? THIS IS SPARTA!"

"SPARTANS, What is your profession?"

"Give them nothing but take from them everything!"

"300 opens on a scene with a chasm full of baby skulls, the remains of the infants who were deemed unfit. Leonidas has no visible disabilities, so he gets to live. Then, as a kid, he’s indoctrinated into the warrior society, taught to fight or die, then sent off to survive on his own. He goes into the snow and kills an enormous CGI wolf; a real trained wolf, apparently, would not have looked badass enough. Snyder presents all this as badass shit. And later, he implies that the Spartans were right to kill off all their disabled children, since it’s a hunchbacked troll escapee who ultimately betrays Leonidas."

"The Persian side, on the other hand, the opposite. We see the emperor Xerxes as a 9-foot dandy with a seductive foghorn for a voice and a face full of jangling piercings. And the way Miller and Snyder depict them is just fascinatingly weird. A couple of early messengers are inky in their exaggerated blackness, and the Immortals, Xerxes’ regiment of elite fighters, are mutant ninjas who, when they get their masks knocked off, look like Jabba The Hutt’s palace guards. There’s also an executioner with crab-claw blades for arms and a massive warty ogre who looks like Sloth from The Goonies and who was played by the former WWF giant Kurrgan (Robert Maillet). The bad guys are so othered that they don’t even seem human."

"I was surrounded by hundreds of stuntmen, who were amazing. Stuntmen are my favourite people on a film set, but I had this thing that really helped me get through, which was this thought in my head that, ‘If I can train in such a way that they’re actually going, “He is a badass…” – because I know stuntmen and they like actors but mostly they see them as wet blankets. [I wanted] to train in a way so they would actually take their hats off to me, and in a way so that you would believe that they would actually follow you. I was [working out] six hours a day: two hours with them, two hours doing the 300 work-out, two hours with my own bodybuilder… pumping 25 times before each take. But I was also surrounded by a lot of guys putting in a lot of effort. It was great having that unity of purpose both as an army and in terms of what we were trying to make in this movie and in terms of fitness, training and that warrior spirit. It was a very powerful place to be."

"There was a time [on 300] when three nights in a row people were taken to hospital during the fights. One time I was supposed to turn and hit a guy with my sword and I turned to whack him and he was gone, and then I looked down and he was lying there going [grabs arm], 'Arrgghh,' and he’s broken his arm. And the night before a guy got a spear in his eye. He almost lost his eye; he had to get stitches. It was insane."

"What was your actual involvement?"

"300 is largely faithful to your material. But it takes the character of Queen Gorgo, who only appears in a couple of panels in your version, and gives her a major subplot with a character called Theron, an evil politician. What did you think of that addition?"

"JA: Obviously, doing this movie probably caused you to do a lot of research on Greek and Persian armies. What was the most interesting thing you learned about this culture and the history of this? Did you get a good feel for that outside of Frank's work?"

"MP: Did you use any other films as reference materials for this? Something like Ben Hur, Gladiator (2000 film), or Lord of the Rings?"

"The director says that the film’s (homo)sexual undertones were intended to make young straight males in the audience uncomfortable, because “What’s more scary to a 20-year-old boy than a giant god-king who wants to have his way with you?”"

"The movie, true to Miller’s vision, is also loaded with sweaty hunks running around in those tight leather Speedos and capes. None of this is played for gay appeal, but could induce snickering among some teens. Snyder shrugs it off. ”Some people have said to me, ’Your movie is homoerotic,’ and some have said, ’Your movie’s homophobic.’ In my mind, the movie is neither. But I don’t have a problem with people interpreting it the way they’d like to.” As long as they buy tickets first."

"Q. Has the response from Iran surprised you?"

"Gerard Butler – Spartan King Leonidas"

"Lena Headey – Queen Gorgo, Leonidas' wife"

"David Wenham – Dilios, Narrator"

"Dominic West – Theron"

"Vincent Regan – Captain Artemis"

"Michael Fassbender – Stellios"

"Tom Wisdom – Astinos"

"Andrew Pleavin – Daxos"

"Andrew Tiernan – Ephialtes"

"Rodrigo Santoro – Xerxes"

"Peter Mensah – Messenger"

"Stephen McHattie – Loyalist"

"Giovanni Antonio Cimmino – Pleistarchus"

"Tyrone Benskin – Persian Emissary"