The Miller Effects

Comics icon Frank Miller has been down this road before, when Robert Rodriguez used computer imaging to recreate the noir world of Sin City. The film adaptation, of his 1998 book 300, has a much broader palate. In book form, 300 is an outsize hardcover that focuses on the epic scope of battle, as 300 Spartans take on massive Persian armies. Inspired by these true events, and by the 1962 film The 300 Spartans, Miller prefers to let powerful images overtake narrative specifics. That won’t work in a film version, which is why all eyes are on director Zack Snyder (2004’s Dawn of the Dead). Not because 300 is such a beloved property amongst graphic novel geeks, but because it got him a more significant job: shepherding Alan Moore’s Watchmen to the screen.