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If you're looking to make the statement that your Spartan warrior epic is something new and different, a good start is to populate it with skin-flashing troops, fetishistically pierced enemy hordes, quasi-mutant combatants, and — why not? — even a battle rhino. Or to really drive home the point, how about ramming a spear through a bad guy's eye socket?

All this and more awaits audiences in the euphorically gory landscape of 300, director Zack Snyder's adaptation of the award-winning graphic novel by Frank Miller. It's as distinct from other entries in the genre as Miller's Sin City is from conventional film noir — and like Sin City, it was created by filming the cast on a bluescreen stage and adding their stark digital environment later.

"Sword-and-sandal movies are never going to be the same, hopefully, after we're done with them," says Snyder (2004's Dawn of the Dead), reiterating the argument that finally sold Warner Bros. on the project despite concerns that Troy and especially Alexander had underperformed. (Of course, it didn't hurt that Snyder handed the studio brass a two-minute test shot opening with the Warner shield getting speared, and segueing into a 360-degree ballet of cutting-edge ultraviolence.)

The film recounts the battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C., in which an absurdly shorthanded Spartan detachment — just 300 men — marched to a geographic bottleneck to make a doomed stand against a massive Persian invasion force. Miller had been fascinated by the battle since seeing 1962's The 300 Spartans as a kid; the story and its downbeat ending informed his sensibilities to the point that he even shoehorned a capsule version into an early Sin City comic. "I've loved this story since I was six years old, and was always aching to do it," says Miller, who poured several years of writing, drawing, and research into 300, originally published in serialized comics form in 1998. Given his creative and intellectual investment, Miller had long been leery of okaying an adaptation. Now, he says, "the way Zack shot it, with the bluescreen and slo-mo and fast motion, it doesn't feel at all like it's an old story. When the Spartans go into action, they look like superheroes. In a good way."