300: A good place to start

I will begin with one of my top five movie trailers: the first trailer for the 2007 semi-classic 300, a minimovie marked by several memorable lines and a sequence of exciting shots (in an unusual comic-book inspired visual style) tied together by great music, that last being the key to almost any trailer (the song is "Just Like You Imagined," by Nine Inch Nails, for the curious). Watch it here. Not only is it one of the finest trailers of all time, but never was a trailer better than the movie it previews by wider margin. 300, if you somehow did not see the movie, tells the tale of a detachment of 300 Spartan soldiers who fought a suicide mission, outnumbered more than three thousand to one, to save their homeland from an invading Persian army. It seldom hurts a trailer to start with one of history's most epic stories (though the same cannot be said about movies), and from there, this one hooks us with several mysterious shots followed by a thunderous line. The music is enough to let them serve us a more or less unconnected series of shots and bring us to the theaters, but here's the glowing material it played over:

Memorable Lines:

1. "Spartans! Tonight we dine in hell!"

2. The worthwhile but mildly wince-worthy "Madness? This. Is. Sparta."

3. "Then we will fight in the shade."

4. "This is where we fight! This is where they die!"

Memorable Shots:

1. The Spartans pushing some silhouettes over a cliff.

2. A man sitting on a giant silver throne, the sides formed by silver bulls.

3. The frenzied face of Leonidas (Gerard Butler) as he delivers line #1.

4. Leonidas whipping out his sword and pointing it at a Persian messenger, the messenger standing before a circular pit in an otherwise empty brick background.

5. Leonidas kicking that messenger into the pit as he shouts line #2.

6. A soldier in all black with an angry silver mask, at the head of a similarly clad army, raising his hand to stop a march.

7. The Spartans whipping their shields over their shoulders in perfect unison to form a wall.

8. The sun blotted out by Persian arrows.

9. A spartan breaking a bunch of arrows off of his shield with his spear