With Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel coming out this summer, his previous film 300 has come up each time Superman’s trailer plays, though they’ve kept it off of the Man of Steel posters, instead using the vaguely ominous “A Film By Zack Snyder.” Well the 300 prequel is finally making its way into promotional territory, with a few different stillsrecently battling their way to the Internet.
In fact, the poster you see above is the first one released for Noam Murro’s 300: Rise of an Empire, and would you look at that? The first four words on the poster are “From Producer Zack Snyder,” while Murro’s name isn’t mentioned until the usual director spot near the bottom of the cast and crew listing. Granted, Murro’s only previous film is 2008’s romantic comedy Smart People, but still. I always feel sorry for people who don’t know any better than to realize that producer credits usually mean squat. A nod to Frank Miller’s upcoming graphic novel Xerxes--the one the film is based on – would have also been kind of corny, but it would have been a more faithful sentence.
Instead, they point out Snyder’s Man of Steel ties, even though that film hasn’t even been released yet, and still has the tiniest possibility of not becoming the major blockbuster everyone expects. I’m just saying, don’t count your Greek chickens before they hatch. Or your Persian chickens.
And why am I choosing to go on and on about Snyder? Because for a film that will encompass six gigantic battles, both on the high seas and off, this poster of a shadowed warrior in the pouring rain standing in front of a muddled shipwreck is both boring and unmemorable. Two words I sincerely hope don’t describe the finished product.
300: Rise of an Empire will tell the story of those numerous battles, focusing on Themistocles (Sullivan Stapleton) and Artemisia I (Eva Green). The film is also supposed to delve into the backstory of the God King, Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro). Callan Mulvey and Lena Headey also co-star. The film, as the poster says, will be out in 3D, IMAX 3D, and regular old 2D on August 2, 2013.
