WAMG At The 300 : RISE OF AN EMPIRE Press Day Featuring Zack Snyder

300 : RISE OF AN EMPIRE, the much-anticipated follow-up to it’s 2006 fantasy/action predecessor 300 hits theaters this Friday. Recently, WAMG attended the press day where Lena Headey, Eva Green, Jack O’Connell, Callan Mulvey, Noam Murro (Director), and Zack Snyder (Producer and Screenwriter) held a press conference to talk about the film. Check it out below.

Unfortunately Sullivan Stapleton and Rodrigo Santoro were not in attendance for the press conference. I did, however, get to speak with them at an intimate press conference at Comic-Con 2013. You can check that out HERE.

“300: Rise of an Empire,” told in the breathtaking visual style of the blockbuster “300,” is a new chapter of the epic saga, which takes the action to a new battlefield—the sea.

The story pits the Greek general Themistokles against the massive invading Persian forces, ruled by the mortal-turned-god Xerxes, and led by Artemisia, the vengeful commander of the Persian navy.

Knowing his only hope of defeating the overwhelming Persian armada will be to unite all of Greece, Themistokles ultimately leads the charge that will change the course of the war.

The first film is very mythic, and demanded a kind of theatricality from the actors. This film explores the ambiguities of war somewhat more realistically. What challenges did the actors face balancing a sense of myth-making with something more emotionally authentic or relatable?

Callan Mulvey: I think you have to be as realistic as you can, but at the same time, you need to give a performance, and it needs to be heightened because there are such high stakes. Although the battles and all of the physical elements of the film which you have to do as an actor certainly help create that, I think you just be as real with that as you can and make it high-stakes. And also, if you keep that real, everything around you, because we were in a green room on a soundstage with a bit of dirt and there’s green walls around you, and you have to trust in the amazingly talented crew and post-production people to create that world, and do a lot of the work for you.

Eva Green: And also, Noam loves classical music, opera, so he used to play opera music. He wanted not for us to be afraid to be theatrical, in a good way – I mean, my character is full-on, so to go all of the way and not play natural. So it’s kind of great, it’s cool.

Lena Headey: I think there’s a kind of giant science to it, do you know what I mean? It’s like you’re playing a mother who’s losing a son or a father who’s losing a son or a son who’s losing a father – there’s something at stake, and it’s not like you have to write every single word down. Some of it is just done with pure emotion – and, you know, this piece is about war and death. So I think we’re already set up to be emotionally raw; I don’t think it needs much more than that. You don’t need to do some big theatrical acting, because that’s mental (laughs).

Jack O’Connell: It’s kind of a variation on what Callan said, in the sense that I felt there were two primary priorities with this role in particular, and there was the emotional nature involved in it, and also physicalities, which to some degree were pretty extreme. I believe we all did our own stunts here, so that enabled us to introduce anything sort of outwardly extravagant into the fighting styles – which meant we could afford to be subtle, I guess, with the realities. Which I think with a piece like this gives it a real heartbeat, you know? It’s very astonishing to watch, but to also to really feel and empathize is, as an actor that’s a luxury to be able to perform. But there was definitely a distinction between physicalities and emotion.

I really enjoyed the family relationships. Not only between father and son, but everyone else… They had their motivations on things that had happened to their families, and defending family. Can you talk about the element of protecting, and defending your family, and having the honor with the defense theme?

Zack Snyder: I think what Kurt and I were talking about when we originally started talking about how we would incorporate the different characters, and make them do what they were going to do in the movie… I think it’s always like “Oh, the dad, the wife, the mother… “, those are strong things that we always talk about. For us, it’s just sort of talking about the origins of the story – that these guys go into battle for their families, or their children. It made it’s way into the story pretty easily.

How was working out for this film?

Lena Headey: I loved it, but then I’m a sadist and a tomboy. But the sad thing is when it’s over, it all kind of goes, “Bluh.”

Callan Mulvey: I think everybody went straight to fat camp once we stopped filming. I think, for me personally, I never want to look at chicken and broccoli again which is basically all we ate. Just lifted things constantly. We were learning all our fight sequences right up to the shoot and training throughout the shoot so it was quite exhausting. But the great thing was they trained us in such a way you weren’t trained to have your chest look like this or an aesthetic look. You were trained so that you could move and you really see that with everybody in their fight scenes that they could actually move the way they were supposed to and you didn’t have to have the stunt doubles in as much.

Eva Green: I was kind of lucky because I didn’t have to be naked like the guys so I was allowed to have my glass of red wine in the evenings. I’m so not physical so that was such a big challenge. You feel very powerful actually but not straightaway. It’s very scary at the beginning to have to do all the squats and lunges. It’s like, “Oh my God.” It’s painful. But then it helps you for the fights. You can go quite low. After a while you feel very proud of yourself and that was the best thing. I adored it. The stunt guys are just amazing because they’re so passionate. They love it and they’re fun. It was my favorite bit I have to say.

Jack O’Connell: I think my favorite element was feeling triple hard and ready to go, hard in a strong sense, not… [LAUGHS]

Zack, what was it about Noam’s directorial background that drew you to him as your successor? 

Zack Snyder: When Noam came to us to talk about the idea of making the movie.., because we had the script, and we knew that I was going to go do MAN OF STEEL and there was, no way, honestly, I was going to be able to do anything. It was a big decision to say “Oh, well maybe we should get another director to direct the movie”. So, we started to talk about directors, and Debbie had worked with Noam on a TV commercial back in Toronto, and we talked. She had been a big fan of Noam’s, and still is of course – and now in this new incarnation. That originally initiated the idea that we might work with him, and then he came and told us a little about what he wanted to do with the movie… Frankly, it was a lot of the things that I had said to these guys all those years ago when I was pitching the original movie. What I felt, was a symmetry in the full circle aspect of it. Then he did this cool presentation, and then we felt like he had the, sort of, vocabulary to make something cool, and he has. That’s how we sort of came to it.

What was the choreography like for learning all the fight sequences and stunts?

Eva Green: It’s like a dance. I’ve always been an enormous fan of those Chinese films, “Hero,” “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” and all that. So I felt like a little girl and I had great masters. At the beginning, you can’t think too much. You just have to do it. So that’s a great thing, just let it all out. Just go for it. But it takes a while to digest it and be able to do it. It requires lots of work.

How comfortable were the costumes to wear, especially during the fight scenes?

Callan Mulvey: Just one word: Vaseline. [LAUGHS] You’re wearing leather underpants. They’re not the most comfortable garment to run around chopping people’s heads off in. But the negatives were taken care of by plenty of Vaseline to stop the chafing.

Jack O’Connell: I’d just like to second what Callan said. We went through a lot of Vaseline. [LAUGHS] We actually shared some, didn’t we?

Callan Mulvey: I have to say he loved it. We had an incredible costume designer. I’m sure there was a lot of thought going into what we would have to do within these costumes and it was very easy to move in them, for myself anyway.

Eva Green: Alexandra Byrne is very talented and very brave. I love that outfit that she made with the golden spikes erupting from my back. I look like kind of a dinosaur or something. It was very cool and very easy to move. Sometimes my hair got caught in the spikes but you don’t see that in the film. Otherwise, it’s my favorite outfit. I look like a weird animal. It’s cool.

How do you keep this story exciting without using the robotics and sophisticated weaponry? When you’re talking about a period like this, and it’s a big action movie, and we’re so used to seeing robotics and big action?

Zack Synder: I mean, truthfully, there’re robots in the movie. [laughs] I’m kidding. Kurt and I, when we – and he can speak for this too – When we were working out 300 originally, it was a thing that we just thought was cool. Clearly there is cool action, and stories to be told that don’t take place necessarily in a sci-fi environment, or an environment that needs… We have a great tradition of historical films that make for good drama and action. We have an amazing fight choreographer, and stunt coordinator, Damon Caro. One of his favorite languages is swords and soldiers, and may be better than… well perhaps I won’t say that [laughs]. I think when Kurt and I talk about it, these are things that we find cool. So, by the time Noam gets it I hope the spirit is infused with the energy anyway, that might help this to be interesting visually. Those robots just don’t have the abs [Laughs].

Any thought you want to leave us with?

Zack Snyder: I guess, well, look, we have an amazing cast and you can see that they’re funny and smart and physical and amazing actors. We have an awesome director who made I think a picture that, it is true that when we made 300, in truth, a lot of the movie was also created with economic restrictions. We had this idea of the style of the movie we wanted to make, and we knew it was a boutique-y movie; we thought it was a movie for kind of a small audience that would be into this kind of crazy, comic-booky sword and sandals movie. It was kind of a genre that didn’t exist – you know, there are sword and sandals movies and comic book movies, but there wasn’t the rules of mashing those things up wasn’t really [around]. And Frank had done it in the comic book, and to me when I read the comic book, it was oh, this is an amazing comic book, I remembered, and I the cool thing about what these guys have done and the movie has done is that it took that language without a comic book, because Frank hasn’t finished it, but sort of with Frank’s inspiration flowing across, frankly, her and I first and then Noam and now these guys, that what he did in that book is kind of echoed across in the movie. And I think that’s what he did, because I was not 100 percent sure when we first – when we finished 300, it’s like, well, they all died, I guess that’s it. We didn’t really think there could be another movie. B ut I think when Frank came and said this other thing happened on the same three days as Thermopylae, we were like, what? That’s cool. And actually it’s really fun for me to see these two movies kind of exist now next to each other. We were talking about how, oh, you could cut them together, actually, if you were ambitious – and maybe some fans will do that. But it’s really satisfying for me because in a way it’s come full circle for me.

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300: RISE OF AN EMPIRE HITS THEATERS MARCH 7