The Battle of Thermopylae according to classical Greek legend took place in the year 480 BCE. Three hundred Spartan warriors, under the lead of legendary king Leonidas I, fought an epic battle to withhold the Persian god-king Xerxes from subjecting the Greeks. Frank Miller produced an epic comic about the battle and his interpretation of the character of the Spartans and king Leonidas I in his cult series entitled 300 in 1998. Later this year, Warner Bros. will release a spectacular movie re-enacting Miller’s comic book. Although I am not a big fan of multi-million Hollywood productions not of comic books, I am set to go and see it.

There seems to occur a revival of the classic theme in Hollywood and in the consumer’s taste. With Achilles costing $250 million dollar, Frank Miller’s movie adaption by Warner Bros. costs the lesser sum of $60 million dollar, but including the mega million blockbuster The Passion of Christ by Mel Gibson, Hollywood is putting the classics back on track of mass audiences. Now, you can argue about the artistic value of a movie like Achilles and few would dare to defend it, but the artistic contribution of the cult strip by Frank Miller would be hard to deny. The movie to be released later this year was directed by Zack Snyder, who also directed Dawn of the Dead, and will be true to Miller’s interpretation rather than to the historic document by Herodotus. Frank Miller was influenced on his turn by the 1962 movie of the epic entitled The 300 Spartans by Rudolph Maté. (lees verder…)