You and I know the 300 as the CG-heavy movie retelling the story of the Spartan’s fight against the Persian King. I thought it was based on Frank Miller’s graphic novel, but Sony Pictures’ Yair Landau is calling it a videogame translation.
“Even though it’s based on a graphic novel, the execution of that graphic novel was more to video games – and so you could say 300 is the first video game movie translation even though it’s not really based on a video game.”
He discusses film-game crossovers in the Gamasutra interview:
“I actually think that the phenomenon of 300 is really, in fact, a manifestation of the video game experience in kind of the collective conscience. The audience who came to see 300 was weaned on video games and what they saw in the marketing materials for 300 was a similar experience. They didn’t show up because they were interested in the Spartans, or because they read Herodotus, or because they thought the Battle of Thermopylae was a great, untold story.”
“They showed up because they saw a movie experience that was the most similar to the game experiences that they’ve grown up playing. The movie works because it’s violent and it’s actually very video game-ish.”
What about you? Were you into the 300 for its videogame-like qualities, or was it just another Hollywood thing you wanted to see.
