Reservoir Underdogs: Interviews from the 300 Press Junket

American audiences have always seemed to favor the story of the underdog. We as a culture love to cheer on the little guy as he attempts to take down his larger opponent. There was David versus Goliath, the Rebel Alliance versus the Galactic Empire—hell, even Rocky versus Apollo Creed. Yet few underdog stories are as mind-bogglingly massive as that of the 300 Spartans who fought over 100,000 invading Persians at the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C. This story has been told before—in 1962’s The 300 Spartans—yet the new film 300 is based on writer and artist Frank Miller’s graphic novel. Thus, the film is an operatic bloodbath blending ancient history with crowd-pleasing action-packed spectacle, fueled by the animalistic sprit of its 300 underdogs.

“These guys are pretty much the toughest heroes you’d ever come across,” said actor Gerard Butler at a press conference in LA. “They don’t apologize to the audience [and] they don’t make excuses. We start off saying, ‘Hey, if I’d been an ugly baby, I’d have been thrown off that cliff, but I’m not, so I’m here.’”

Butler, who plays Spartan King Leonidas in the film, was referring to the film’s opening sequence depicting Spartan parents deciding if their child will grow to be an adequate warrior—for them, it’s literally a life-or-death decision. The film’s director Zack Snyder—whose debut feature was 2004’s Dawn of the Dead remake—insisted that 300 is not a simple good versus evil parable. “[300] is a fun ride to go on, but to identify with the Spartans—you’re kind of missing the point,” Snyder said. He argued the Persia versus Sparta conflict was, in essence, “a reasonable offer versus a philosophy that can’t accept it.” Snyder recalled Frank Miller telling him that if he had written the Persian version of the story, the Spartans would be the bad guys.

“We wanted [the film to have] a purely Spartan perspective,” Snyder said. “If you’re gonna get around a fire with a bunch of Spartans, they really kind of know how not to ruin a good story with the truth.”

Therefore, the 300 film depicts the Spartan rebels as towering Greek gods, righteously defending themselves against an enemy that’s not necessarily more evil than they are.

Like 2005’s Sin City, the previous film adapted from a Frank Miller graphic novel, 300 was filmed entirely on green-screen in an empty Montreal soundstage. All the actors labored under the intense physical training of Mark Twight, whose other clients include undercover operatives and cage fighters. Butler, who pumped weights before every shot, was especially driven to getting in shape for the role.

“I had to wear a six-foot beard that was like a lethal weapon in itself, and then a helmet with a chicken on it, so I needed to have a body that matched my head,” Butler said. “I also wanted to feel like a f—king king!”

Butler also had a knee injury that caused his foot to grow weak. He jokingly said, “I could fight a million men as long as I didn’t have to put any weight on my leg.”

In the role of Xerxes, the Persian king who believes himself to be a god, actor Rodrigo Santoro spent nearly five hours each day getting into costume and makeup. Yet the most grueling part of the experience for Santoro was getting his chest waxed.

“I have a lot of respect for women after the waxing,” Santoro said. “It was like [the scene] in The 40-Year-Old Virgin. I was crying and biting a towel.”

The actor admits he agreed to do the film because of the source material’s power, as well as his character’s ambiguity.

“I don’t even think [Xerxes is] human; his voice is like a deep thunder,” he said. “I wanted the movie theater shaking when I opened my mouth.”

For Santoro, this role was a chance to not be typecast in stereotypical Hollywood roles for Latin actors. “When I first saw that figure [of Xerxes] in the graphic novel, I was literally salivating,” said Santoro, “I think it’s a gift to have this opportunity.”

After relatively subdued roles in The Phantom of the Opera and Dear Frankie, Butler jumped at the chance to play the larger-than-life role of Leonidas. It allowed him to balance extreme machismo with subtle dramatic nuance. “More is said in this film about [character emotions] with silence,” Butler said. “You can trust that what can be shown in one glimpse or the raising of an eyebrow can say so much about a person.” The actor also relished his character’s streak of arrogant humor.

“It’s not like I’m a great guy but I don’t know it. I f—king know I’m amazing!” exclaimed Butler with the same macho zeal he brought to his fierce performance.

Yet such self-confidence was essential during filming, since the look of the final product had to be taken on pure faith.

“We shot the movie in sixty days,” Snyder said, while emphasizing that the limited time frame intensified the grueling nature of the shoot.

Butler felt equally unsure about the film’s fate, as he ran with several actors wearing codpieces and flimsy sandals through endless blank space. When Butler finally got to see a three-minute test shot Snyder made with the special effects added, he was blown away. “It was so cool,” he said, “Like I literally could put that thing on a loop, and just sit for three days and watch that three-minute piece over and over again. But now [Snyder’s] made an hour and fifty minute thing that I’ll put on a loop.”

That thing will be in theaters March 9th.