300
Zack Snyder's 2007 comic adaptation: 300 Spartans against the Persian king Xerxes, rendered bronze-and-crimson with slow-motion everything. It broke the March box-office record, launched a thousand ab jokes, and gave the internet "This is Sparta!"
Zack Snyder adapted the 1998 Dark Horse comic by Frank Miller and Lynn Varley, and Warner Bros. released 300 on March 9, 2007. The story is a fictionalized retelling of the Battle of Thermopylae: Gerard Butler's King Leonidas leads 300 Spartans against the invading Persian king Xerxes. Snyder shot his actors against chroma-key screens and built the world in post-production — a "digital backlot" approach designed to replicate the comic panel for panel. The finished film carried more than 1,500 visual-effects shots, heavy speed-ramped slow motion, and a bronze-and-crimson palette that mimicked Miller's artwork.
The budget was $65 million. It opened to $70.9 million, breaking Ice Age: The Meltdown's record for the biggest March — and spring — opening weekend at the time (the March record stood until Alice in Wonderland in 2010), and went on to gross $468.9 million worldwide. The true legacy was cultural: Leonidas kicking the Persian herald into the pit — "This is Sparta!" — became one of the late 2000s' defining internet memes, with "Tonight we dine in hell!" and a thousand ab jokes close behind. The movie was absurdly quotable, visually unmistakable, and primed for remix. A sequel, 300: Rise of an Empire, followed in March 2014.
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