"In the horrific "Tree of the Dead" created for the film, one hundred and twelve corpses of dead Greek villages drape the branches in a grisly tapestry of broken bodies. In dramatizing the gory violence of the story, the filmmaker's philosophy is clear: "The depiction of violence in 300 is not going to be realistic. 300 is Frank Miller's comic brought to life, his visual aesthetic realized through a fusion of photographed reality and highly stylized visual effects. It's the depiction of an actual historical event, but it is more fantasy than fact. 300 is like twenty dozen Frank Frazetta illustration made real, edited into an anti-anti-war film, where battle, death, and sacrifice are things to be celebrated. Every slash, impalement, and decapitation should be rendered as a thing of beauty. It's transformed into art."