Frank Miller Working on ‘300′ Sequel
Posted by Dirty Harry on Saturday, June 28th, 2008
Writer Frank Miller is the key to any “300″ follow-up I’d be at all interested in. While everyone did their jobs in bringing that magnificent film to screen, it was the themes that made it so much more than the hyper-stylized Troy (2004) it could’ve been.
The lost art of cinematic masculinity made a roaring comeback in “300,” as did such antiquated notions as sacrificing one’s self for liberty, the gift that is Western civilization to the world, and good versus evil. All the right people hated “300,” so much so, many stooped to gay-bashing with their childish snickering about “homo-eroticism.”
A follow-up without Miller’s hand on the tiller could too easily miss the very essence of what made “300″ a classic — too easily reduce itself to kinetic violence and thundering voices. Worse, in truly the wrong hands, the sequel could attempt to respond to, or apologize for, its predecessor.
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Templaron 28 Jun 2008 at 10:24 am 1Hmm, I wonder what the story’s going to focus on? The Battle of Plataea?
Stephanieon 28 Jun 2008 at 10:26 am 2Oh. Hell. YEAH!
Daniel Crandallon 28 Jun 2008 at 10:35 am 3I think one could make the argument, with regards to Miller’s work, that “[t]he lost art of cinematic masculinity made a roaring comeback” with Sin City. Much of the masculinity in 300 is also in Sin City. Marv (Mickey Rourke), Dwight (Clive Owen), and Hartigan (Bruce Willis) created the pallet for Millers King Leonidas.
JohnLockeon 28 Jun 2008 at 10:36 am 4I’m still waiting for “Holy Terror, Batman!”
E Porvaznikon 28 Jun 2008 at 10:41 am 5That’s it, I’m finally firin’ up 300 on the HD!!!
JohnFNWayneon 28 Jun 2008 at 11:00 am 6Miller, an unapologetic liberal, made one of the best rants I’ve ever heard on NPR about the war on terror. The guy absolutely gets it. I’m surprised he didn’t get censored. He called ridiculed Islamic-fascism for being backward, mocking it for using guns and airliners their way of life could never create it. He has brevity the Kossacks and the like could never possess.
Matt Helmon 28 Jun 2008 at 11:04 am 7I hope that Holy Terror, Batman isn’t like All Star Batman and Robin. It’s like he set out to ruin the DC characters.
memomachineon 28 Jun 2008 at 1:21 pm 8Hmmm.
I liked 300 because it was a good movie.
And because it didn’t dumb down the characters in order to move a plot point.
Mavison 28 Jun 2008 at 2:44 pm 9Maybe they’ll do the book of Esther. Imagine a giant gay Xerxes in that story…
[IMH]on 28 Jun 2008 at 2:45 pm 10I don’t think it’s correct to call Frank Miller a liberal, as one of his major acknowledged influences is Ayn Rand. Between her and Spillane, you can call him a lot of things, but liberal (as in “leftist”) doesn’t really seem to be one of them.
Is that NPR rant online?
Troyon 28 Jun 2008 at 3:25 pm 11For David… The Spartan 300 come back as a Zombie phalanx and re-kick the Persian zombie undead. The phalanx moves a bit slower, but it is implacable.
Troyon 28 Jun 2008 at 3:26 pm 12I realize “zombie undead” is redundant, but alas and alack… there is no edit function.
Troyon 28 Jun 2008 at 3:28 pm 13Frank Miller transcript on NPR… not the whole thing, but pretty telling.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5784518
Bloody Samon 28 Jun 2008 at 3:41 pm 14“Worse, in truly the wrong hands, the sequel could attempt to respond to, or apologize for, its predecessor”.
Sorta like Magnum Force?
Don’t get me wrong; I love all the Dirty Harry movies (up until The Dead Pool, that is), but the Magnum Force ultimatum scene between Harry and the vigilante motorcycle cops (”You’re either with us or against us”) always struck me as a heavy-handed apology for the perceived “fascism” of the first film.
David Marcoeon 28 Jun 2008 at 3:47 pm 15For David… The Spartan 300 come back as a Zombie phalanx and re-kick the Persian zombie undead. The phalanx moves a bit slower, but it is implacable.
I’m keeping an eye on those Chinese undead right now.
Stephanieon 28 Jun 2008 at 3:55 pm 16I would say libertarian….which would mean in some ways a classic liberal. I mean I don’t look at the word liberal the way a lot of people here look at it. To me it means our Revolution, it means people standing up for their individual rights, protecting ones home from tyranny. When I see someone like, oh, Sean Penn I see a leftist. I do think these people co-oped a word that doesn’t mean what they think it means. The real liberals like Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, all of them would be disgusted with the “liberals” now. One wonders what Andrew Jackson would even say.
NCCon 28 Jun 2008 at 4:08 pm 17I’ve got a better idea. Dump Miller and the comic book motif.
Make another film about Thermopale based upon the vastly superior story line in Stephen Pressfield’s novel Gates of Fire.
If the suits won’t go for two Thermopylae films this close together, adapt Pressfield’s The Virtues of War or Last of the Amazons.
Gina Dalfonzoon 28 Jun 2008 at 5:52 pm 18Sorry, but I thought that “300″ was just plain goofy.
Of course, that could be because the first time I saw it was with the accompanying RiffTrax (from the folks who brought you MST3K, for the uninitiated. And Mike Nelson’s a conservative!). Even without that, I’m afraid I still would have found it pretty goofy. Just the way the thing was made, and some of the ideas it expressed, left me cold. (Leaving deformed babies to die of exposure and starvation? Um, yeah, that really gets me pumped up.)
gzirraon 28 Jun 2008 at 6:13 pm 19Here’s another audio clip of Frank Miller laying the smack-down on a surprised Neal Conan’s Talk of the Nation (linked from the Might LGF):
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=24146_Batman_Artist_No_Moonbat&only
[IMH]on 28 Jun 2008 at 6:15 pm 20Troy: THANKS!
Stephanie: OK, I took “liberal” in its modern American context, i.e. “leftist”. Miller is definitely classically liberal, I can go with that.
amzarakon 28 Jun 2008 at 7:03 pm 21I never hope for sequels anymore to my favorite movies after “The Matrix” debacles. Leave “300″ alone. However, by all means tell us another story from the period. Just don’t make a sequel.
Templaron 28 Jun 2008 at 7:50 pm 22Leaving deformed babies to die of exposure and starvation? Um, yeah, that really gets me pumped up.
I rather liked that they referenced the custom (which, if I recall correctly, was widespread throughout most of Greece at the time, if not on the same institutional basis as in Sparta). It helps to establish that the Hellenes of the ancient world, while giving rise to many of the ideals that we hold dear now, were not simply 20th century Westerners in sandals and tunics, but creatures of their own times.
Then again, we really don’t have much room to criticize, societally-speaking. I mean, just picture, in the distant future, a cinematic recreation of historical incident in the mid 21st century, involving a small group of U.S. soldiers holding off a much larger enemy force, and the story begins with the character of one soldier explaining, via voice-over narration, how the practice of abortion, among other things, fits into the culture that produced him.
Bottom line is, the Spartans at least had the excuse of trying, as much as their primitive means allowed, to ensure that their children grew up to be strong and healthy. We, by contrast, kill our unborn and newly-born children for the sake of convenience.
JohnFNWayneon 28 Jun 2008 at 8:02 pm 23“Worse, in truly the wrong hands, the sequel could attempt to respond to, or apologize for, its predecessor”.
Sorta like Magnum Force?
Don’t get me wrong; I love all the Dirty Harry movies (up until The Dead Pool, that is), but the Magnum Force ultimatum scene between Harry and the vigilante motorcycle cops (”You’re either with us or against us”) always struck me as a heavy-handed apology for the perceived “fascism” of the first film.T
That explanation has been given a lot for the movie. I don’t think it was so much an apology as a statement that Harry’s first job is justice. Be it criminals or cops or both. I think it was a healthy retraction to critics, and it’s not like he didn’t deal with criminals heavy-handed, remember the plane scene?
carlon 28 Jun 2008 at 8:07 pm 24A trilogy maybe?
A treatment of Salamis would give the Athenians a chance to shine and the scheming Themistocles would be a nice contrast to the stalwart Leonidas.
Then do Plataea, and show how the Spartans and the Athenians (despite major differences) had to work together to keep from losing all they had gained in the first two battles.
carlon 28 Jun 2008 at 8:15 pm 25Actually, if he wanted to skip ahead a few centuries and do a Punic War story that would be cool too. I think Hannibal vs Scipio as envisioned by Frank Miller would be off the chain.
ArchiCrashon 28 Jun 2008 at 8:30 pm 26How about the 10,000. If Victor Davis Hanson is at all accurate,its about an army of greek mercenaries that fight thier way into Persia, watch thier employer get himself killed, and then have to fight their way back home. Not material for a true sequel, but it has the number-name, and could easilly be done in the same style. It could be narrated by one of the greek historians who (I think) was fighting along with them…
Scipio would also be cool…
carlon 28 Jun 2008 at 8:32 pm 27Xenophon wrote The Ten Thousand, and yes he was one of the leaders of the retreat.
Troyon 28 Jun 2008 at 9:18 pm 28Xenophon’s Anabasis would be a kick-ass movie. I read that last summer.
Jack Marinoon 29 Jun 2008 at 12:49 am 29I just read Miller’s article, he is right about patriotism, it is about survival. The fact that he discovered the founders on his own. I was lucky all the teachers I had that is all the talked about was the founding fathers and then there was world history. The classical era of the Greeks and Romans. lots of great material there for films.
I remember the 300 Spartans with Richard Egan as a kid which for me was a great picture. The new 300 was also a great films but with a whole different look and feel to it. But both films delivered the great ending where free men are willing to die to keep their homeland, the families and their culture free. The Greeks saved Western culture and gave us the foundations of our American liberty. We all share a great history.
pandaxon 29 Jun 2008 at 5:18 am 30gzirra
Wow,that was good stuff. My opinion of Frank Miller just skyrocketed. What’s really great is someone has finally called our enemies out for the savages they are.
The Anabasis was what The Warriors was based on.
Stephanieon 29 Jun 2008 at 6:00 am 31I think Miller is a totally honest man. Which I admire alot. If anyone could stand there and watch the towers get hit, see people leaping to their deaths, watch them burning and then fall and not be totally unglued and angry about it and have that anger grow exponentially everyday since is a dishonest human being. And lets say there are a lot of very dishonest New Yorkers and Politicians right now.
What makes me wonder is this: Why does a person who calls a spade a spade as in Islamic fascist terrorist is a savage a brave man when he is merely uttering a truth everyone knows in their heart? Because to say it means to go against the grain of the “popular” ideal. It is not pc.
Cambiason 29 Jun 2008 at 5:18 pm 32I don’t know if we all should be quite as eager for a Frank Miller sequel. This is the man who created _The Dark Knight Strikes Again_, which failed to live up to its predecessor by several miles.
Stephanieon 29 Jun 2008 at 6:24 pm 33HMmmmm well Cambias I say let us see what he comes up with. Maybe we will all be pleasently surprised or those of us who love 300 will be. Those who did not, who cares.
wfon 01 Jul 2008 at 12:07 am 34Based on that pic above, Miller will be played by David Thewlis in his biopic.