For whatever reason I was always obsessed with the potential of humanity's physicality. Especially since we grew up with such a non-physical philosophy.

You know it has all the kind of fun stuff. It has the countermeasures - we always talk about the countermeasures because people are like, "What the heck is countermeasures?" You know if I shot a missile at it, flares would pop out of those holes and stop the missile from hitting it.

I imagine the film ["300"] as if I was a Spartan and I had never seen an immortal or a Persian, or an elephant or a rhino for that matter.

The eyes get lost in 3-D. With 3-D, your eyes are looking for the plane of focus, right? And the problem is, when you do quick cuts, your eyes can't find it.

Reality's its own thing. And I'm not really into reality that much. I'm into this cinematic stylized reality that can comment on reality. It's like the most beautiful parts of reality and the saddest parts, but it's none of this middle ground.

Look, if you have a problem with distilling the Battle of Thermopylae down to freedom versus tyranny, you need to read Herodotus because he's the one. It's his fault, not modern culture's fault. He did it.' [Victor Davis Hanson] references a lot of things like that because he feels like the spirit of the book and of the movie ["300"] are very close to the Spartan aesthetic. That's really kind of what he feels."

It's difficult to find a movie that feels true to itself. You feel the hand of Hollywood, the moviemaking by committee, on everything.