Upon Ships of Gold...or CGI Anyway

Preparations for the sequel to the blockbuster movie 300 are well under way.

How is this possible you might ask?

Yes, I know that at the end of the first movie, Leonidas and his Spartan elite were beaten handily by the Persians before a unified Greece struck back. The filmmakers, and creator of the graphic novel that inspired the movie, Frank Miller, are basing the sequel, actually a prequel, on the exploits of naval admiral Themistocles and his battles against the Persian king, Xerxes...all 7 feet of him (in the movie, not in actual history).

I think that this is an excellent way to go about a sequel to 300. Frank Miller, famous for his work on the Sin City graphic novels, in set to release the graphic novel on which the movie will be based sometime this year. His work is entitled Xerxes, but it has already been noted that the movie version will not bear the same name. Zack Snyder, who directed 300, is in talks for directing the prequel.

From what I understand, the prequel will be based on the series of wars between the invading Persians and the Delian League (unified city-states of Attica and the Peloponnese, such as Athens and Sparta). There were four crucial battles that took place between the Persians and the Greeks, including Thermopylae (depicted in 300), Plataea (the very end of the 300), Artemisium, and Salamis. The latter two were sea battles led by Themistocles, and both conflicts took place before Thermopylae and Plataea. The ocean scenes from 300 looked amazing under the direction of Snyder. I can already imagine and entire movie pretty set on the same sort of scale, which seems an exciting concept. Anyway, the prequel will mainly focus on the Battle of Salamis, in which Themistocles wiped the floor with Xerxes and the Persians.

Themistocles' story also makes for a good movie, in that he, a purveyor of Attican silver mines, all but completely funded the construction of the Athenian triremes himself. He handed the Persians decisive defeats only to later be ostracized by the fickle whims of the Athenian demos. Ostracism became common practice in the Athenian government, basically banishing the ostracized individual for a period of ten years. Men became ostracized if they were unpopular, if they came to wield too much power, or if they ardently supported an unpopular reform. Clearly, Themistocles wielded too much power after his naval victories at Artemisium and Salamis. If Zack Snyder decides to go with the project, we should expect more of what we saw in 300...but better (?).