300

"Brutal, bloody and breathtakingly beautiful"

The film 300 is faithfully adapted from the graphic novel 300 by Frank Miller in which Spartan King Leonidas (Gerard Butler) and 300 Spartans fought to the last man against Persian King Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro) and his massive army. Facing insurmountable odds, the Spartans' heroism and sacrifice inspires all of Greece to unite against the Persian invaders. The story is based on the famous Battle of Thermopylae which took place in the summer of 480 BC and was a turning point of the Greco-Persian wars.

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Thermopylae is a pass in Greece between Mount Oeta and the Maliac Gulf, famous as the scene of several great battles. Leonidas' small Spartan army defended it bravely but vainly against Persians in 480 BC; in 279 BC a Greek army failed to hold it against invading Gauls: and here the conquering Romans were checked for a short time by Antiochus of Syria in 191 BC. In World War II, the pass was a scene of a galant Australian/New Zealand defence against German forces.

Source: The New International Illustrated Encyclopaedia, Volume 6, 1954.

It was a bloodbath at the U.S. box office this weekend. Warner Bros. told me this morning its 'R'-rated 300 about the epic Battle of Thermopylae shattered the record for the biggest March opening ever, and scored the 3rd biggest 'R'-rated movie debut ever, with its $70+ million. (Or, $70.025 mil to be exact, though the studio didn't provide a breakdown.)

Other studios say this 'Gladiator Gore-Fest' raked in $27.7 mil to $28 mil Friday and $24.3 mil to $24.8 mil Saturday and an estimated $16 mil to $17.2 mil Sunday from its 3,103 theaters.

Toldja so... I said back on Tuesday that 300 was tracking huge -- even though most of its target audience fell asleep during that history lesson in school. But rival studios were complaining to me this weekend that the much-buzzed pic was pitched heavily to the youth market despite the 'R' rating.

But Warner's maintains "we were very careful to market to 17 and above, in accordance with the R rating." Helped by omnipresent advertising, this CGI extravaganza was sold out even for Thursday midnight sneaks, including all 57 IMAX theaters. This pic from the creator of Sin City was cheap to make and shot in only 60 days and cast with no stars, so it ends up one of Warner's most profitable. So who was seeing 300? I'm told that the audience was about 60/40 male-female and about evenly split younger/older. Warner Bros. moguls were thrilled after enduring expensive disappointment after disappointment in 2006 (Poseidon, Superman Returns, The Lake House, The Ant Bully, Lady In The Water, etc.) with the notable exceptions of Oscar winner Happy Feet from director George Miller and The Departed from Martin Scorsese.

Especially with a per screen average of $9,045 Friday and $7,965 Saturday, 300 easily overtook the current record-holder for March: 2002's Ice Age and its $46.3 mil take. That was accomplished Saturday! (FYI: Since 2006 sequel Ice Age: The Meltdown opened March 31-April 2 with $68 mil, it can't be considered a March weekend record-holder. But 300 surged past that, too.)

Though 300's haul is amazing considering its 'R' rating: it placed behind only Matrix Reloaded at $91.7 mil in May 2003 and The Passion of the Christ at $83.8 mil in February 2004 but bested Hannibal at $51 mil in February 2001.

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Viral Internet marketing was likely responsible for the astonishing success of Warner Bros.' 300 over the weekend, the Los Angeles Times indicated today (Tuesday). The newspaper observed that the movie, which earned nearly $71 million over the weekend, originally got a big push at last year's Comic-Con convention in San Diego when the movie's visuals excited attendees. Berge Garabedian who runs the fanboy website Joblo, told the newspaper that many websites like his began hyping the movie. "Everybody was talking about it," he said. Warner Bros. then developed a MySpace page for the film, including a feature upgrade on the 300 site that permitted users to store 300 photos on their profile. That "stroke of genius," as the Times referred to the photo ploy, resulted in billions of ad impressions and 8 million viewings of the trailer for the film. 300 went into the record books as the third-biggest opening of an R-rated movie in history (after The Passion of the Christ and The Matrix Reloaded). It was also the biggest opening of any film debuting in March and the biggest IMAX opening.

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Warner Bros.' hit movie 300 has become the latest powder keg in relations between the U.S. and Iran. The movie, which earned $71 million at the box office last weekend, is based on the ancient battle of Thermopylae in which, according to Western lore, a force of 300 Spartans held off thousands of Persian soldiers. As reported by the Associated Press, Javad Shamghadri, cultural adviser to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, charged that the film represented another effort by the U.S. to humiliate Iran in order to "compensate for its wrongdoings in order to provoke American soldiers and warmongers" against Iran. The independent newspaper Ayende-No, said beneath the headline, "Hollywood Declares War on Iranians," "The film depicts Iranians as demons, without culture, feeling or humanity, who think of nothing except attacking other nations and killing people. ... It is a new effort to slander the Iranian people and civilization before world public opinion."

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The recent Hollywood film '300' about the defeat of Dorian Spartans by the Imperial Iranians has created a storm of protest from Iranians worldwide. This is not surprising, since the film makers got the entire story wrong, turning the heroic Iranian victors of the battle, the defenders of Cuneiform civilization, into villains, and morphing the tribal Dorians militants from Sparta into heroes. In fact, the film is full of obvious cinematographic errors: Xerxes is shown as an alien with glowing skin, piercings and vines growing from his body, and rhinos, ogres and dragons are depicted on the Imperial side to further subhumanize the Iranians. This article shall not analyze these aberrations and mistakes, but instead focus on the historical inaccuracies and political propaganda of '300'.

Not sure where the dragons were in the film, but if you wish to read the lengthy response go here.