COME BACK WITH YOUR SHEILD OR ON IT
To be honest, today's another one of those "saw a cool poster and wanted to share" deals, so here goes...
300 based on Frank Miller's graphic novel of the same name tells the story of the legendary Battle of Thermopylae, (480 B.C.) during which Leonidas, one of the two kings of the bad-assed Greek city state of Sparta, led an army of 300 Spartans and fewer than 3,000 allies against an advancing Persian army that numbered into the hundreds of thousands in a narrow pass known as the "gates of fire;" where, like the later defenders of The Alamo, they perished to a man. The Battle of Thermopylae is generally considered to have inspired the world's first democracy.
"The forerank of the enemy collapsed immediately as the first shock hit it; the body-length shields seemed to implode rearward, their anchoring spikes rooted slinging from the earth like tent pins in a gale. The forerank archers were literally bowled off their feet, their wall-like shields caving in upon them like fortress redoubts under the assault of the ram.... The valor of the individual Medes was beyond question, but their light hacking blades were harmless as toys; against the massed wall of Spartan armor, they might as well have been defending themselves with reeds or fennel stalks."
-- Steven Pressfield, Gates of Fire
Directed by DAWN of the DEAD's Zack Snyder, 300 stars Gerard Butler (as King Leonidas), Rodrigo Santoro (as the Persian King Xerxes) and The Red Baron (aka Nikolai Müllerschön's Der Rote Baron starlet Lena Hedley as the Spartan Queen Gorgo. 300 opens in March.
