Zack Snyder is teaming up with Frank Miller again. Need I say more? “Xerxes” will
see the light of day, and Holocaust denying mullah nut-jobs and the likes of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad aren’t happy about it (and that’s a good thing, my liberal moral relativist friends):
“‘300’ also became an international incident, of sorts. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad bitterly denounced the film and the Iranian Academy of the Arts filed a formal complaint through the United Nations that framed the movie as nothing less than an attack on the historical identity of a nation…”
To a lesser extent, we can all sit back and enjoy as liberal media outlets and the hollowed out cultural carcass that is Europe freak out over Xerxes’ political undertones and the positive messages the kids might take away as it regards to Western Civilization. If you think really hard you might remember reading about our German friends’ reactions to 300:
LOS ANGELES, March 4 — Three weeks ago a handful of reporters at an international press junket here for the Warner Brothers movie “300,” about the battle of Thermopylae some 2,500 years ago, cornered the director Zack Snyder with an unanticipated question.
“Is George Bush Leonidas or Xerxes?” one of them asked.
The questioner, by Mr. Snyder’s recollection, insisted that Mr. Bush was Xerxes, the Persian emperor who led his force against Greek’s city states in 480 B.C., unleashing an army on a small country guarded by fanatical guerilla fighters so he could finish a job his father had left undone. More likely, another reporter chimed in, Mr. Bush was Leonidas, the Spartan king who would defend freedom at any cost…
Some attendees walked out of a screening there, while others insisted on seeing its presentation of the Spartans’ defense of Western civilization in the face of a Persian horde as propaganda for America’s position vis-à-vis Iraq and Iran…
“Don’t you think it’s interesting that your movie was funded at this point?” Mr. Snyder recalled being asked in Berlin. “The implication was that funding came from the U.S. government.”
When you read the negative reviews of Xerxes, you might ask yourself if it’s because Frank Miller is one of those rare breeds in Hollywood—the openly patriotic artist:
“…Then came that sunny September morning when airplanes crashed into towers a very few miles from my home and thousands of my neighbors were ruthlessly incinerated — reduced to ash. Now, I draw and write comic books. One thing my job involves is making up bad guys. Imagining human villainy in all its forms. Now the real thing had shown up. The real thing murdered my neighbors. In my city. In my country. Breathing in that awful, chalky crap that filled up the lungs of every New Yorker, then coughing it right out, not knowing what I was coughing up.
For the first time in my life, I know how it feels to face an existential menace. They want us to die. All of a sudden I realize what my parents were talking about all those years.
Patriotism, I now believe, isn’t some sentimental, old conceit. It’s self-preservation. I believe patriotism is central to a nation’s survival. Ben Franklin said it: If we don’t all hang together, we all hang separately. Just like you have to fight to protect your friends and family, and you count on them to watch your own back.
So you’ve got to do what you can to help your country survive. That’s if you think your country is worth a damn. Warts and all.
So I’ve gotten rather fond of that old piece of cloth. Now, when I look at it, I see something precious. I see something perishable.”
Frank Miller isn’t perfect. If you haven’t seen The Spirit, consider yourself lucky. However, Frank does know how to join forces with some pretty creative guys, each with a track record of directing a cool movie or two.
See you on opening night, Mahmoud! I’d invite you to see Tron, but I heard Islamic police states have an aversion to Imax 3D versions of Jeff Bridges. Your loss.
Douglas Ernst Blog 