we have a hard time getting baby sitters, so we catch up on the movies late. This weekend we watched The Terminal and Troy.
I’m not gonna talk about Terminal – it was Pepper Mill’s choice. She said I was welcome to watch “Troy” by myself if I wanted, but she got suckered into it.
My Zeus!
I know they change things for the movies, but this film needs a disclaimer that says “The Characters in this film are fictional; any resemblance between them and mythical characters is coincidental”. You need to watch this with a big gong or a tallyboard so you can check off the howlers.
Now I know you have to change things to keep the film intelligible and believable to a modern audience. And I can appreciate Wolfgang Peterson’s desire to do the film without the Gods. It gets interesting to see how they’ll handle things without them. F’rinstance, they show the combat between Paris and Menelaos, which ends in the Iliad with Aphrodite breaking Paris’ helmet strap (by which Menalaos is dragging him back to the Greek lines) and spiriting him away to Troy. It’s the same interest I had in watching Steve Martin riffing on “Cyrano de Bergerac” with “Roxanne”.
But that doesn’ explain the changes they made for this film. You know you’re in trouble when the film shows “The Harbor of Sparta” – and the real Sparta’s a hundred miles inland. Geographical accuracy is usually the first thing to go in films based on Greek Myth (try watching “Son of Hercules Against Medusa” sometime), but this was totally unnecessary.
But then they go on to kill Menlaos right at the beginning (He ends up with Helen in the myth, and the two are shown together at his court in The Odyssey). Then they kill Ajax in the middle of battle, Agamemnon gets offed at Troy (There goes the Orestaeia!), Achilles lives long enough to take part in the Sack of Troy, Helen escapes the Greeks (and so, apparently, does Astyanax), Briseis accompanies Priam back to Troy, and Patroclus steals Achilles’ armor without permission (and gets snuffed by Hector all by his lonesome). None of this is necessary.
On the other hand, we get Achilles getting shot in the heel, Aeneaas carrying Anchises out of Troy, the Trojan Horse, and a lot of other stuff. I can’t help cynicvally thinking that Peterson et al. decided to keep the things that everyone probably still remembers from reading the Cliff Notes instead of the real poem, and changing all the rest (a la the “happy” ending of the Demi Moore version of The Scarlet Letter).
You didn’t mention the brevity of the siege but who cares the fight between Achilles and Hector was enough to forgive a few “minor” changes and Brad Pitt’s performance.
I knew up-front that it wasn’t going to be based on mythology.
Just like that horrible King Arthur-crapfest.
I actually quite liked Troy for what it was. (although I am really getting sick of this Orlando Bloom-kid, what a wimp)
I thought the movie had its moments, but I was irked by some of the things they changed just seemingly for the hell of it.
Priam only has two children (and Paris makes a comment about stealing his father’s horse when he was a kid- Paris didn’t know Priam when he was a kid).
Achilles was just a bit too 21st century sensitive male in his relationship with Briseis.
But to parrot what you said, killing Agamemnon (those two words sound like an arthouse movie) was just “Whoa… that’s crossing a line…”
Odd that Orlando Bloom simply can’t be in a movie without swords- his next is about the Third Crusade. I think he got one of those divine deals (“Alright… you’ll have fame and fortune, but only if you’re wearing armor in each movie”). His Paris manages to come across as even whimpier in this than he did in the original myths.
For a three-hour movie, Troy went by pretty quickly, and it was at least a little bit entertaining if you could ignore what you knew about the source material.
Plus, it was the inspiration for one of my favorite Penny Arcade strips. That’s gotta count for something.
I just saw this movie (finally) after having the DVD sit on my shelf for most of this year, which is why I’m reviving this thread…
Just thought I’d add, after all the “little nods” to those who know the “real” mythology mixed in with all the major changes, I was expecting some kind of comment in the end scene where Odysseus is lighting the funeral pyre. Something along the lines of, “Well, that’s that; let’s go home, I want to see my boy grow up”.
Well, Homer’s “Iliad” was largely fictional, too. At the very least, Homer played fast and loose with the facts of history. Why fault Wolfgang Petersen, whose vision of the Trojan War isn’t necessarily much more inaccurate than Homer’s?
The movie “Troy” was no masterpiece, but to be candid, I enjoyed it far more than I thought I would. There were a few howlers here and there, but I was prepared to hate “Troy,” based on all I’d heard. I’m surprised it was as compelling as it was.
I thought it was pretty mediocre overall, but the brief moment where Peter O’Toole, wracked with despair and horror, stares out across his burning city, was a stunner for me, and almost made the whole thing worthwhile. Almost.
That was the moment I knew the movie was in serious trouble. That, and when I saw Ajax walking around with a giant mallet. And there were llamas in Troy. Indigenous-to-South-America llamas.
By the end, I had some serious Achilles-level rage going on. Achilles is not freakin in love with Briseis. Patroclus was not his freakin cousin. Helen and Paris don’t escape together, Paris DIES. Besides, by the time of the Iliad Helen is sick of his poncy BS anyways. (Who doesn’t die? Menelaeus! Or Agamemmnon (until he gets home)! Or Ajax (until he goes nuts)!)
The sad thing is that a lot of the casting was really spot-on. Peter O’Toole and Sean Bean as Priam and Odysseus were particularly good.
Wolfgang Peterson (the director) and David Benioff (the screenwriter) should be ashamed of themselves.
I had such a hard time staying awake through Troy that any historical inaccuracies I might have noted otherwise completely passed me by.
Every scene seemed to drag on for an eternity. And with so many scenes, that was quite a long siege.
Actually, I think one can make a pretty good textual argument that Achilles does love Briseis.
Other than that - I just don’t get it. Did Petersen really think “Okay, here’s this story that’s done pretty well for itself for ~2500 years… I know! I’LL CHANGE THE PLOT BEYOND ALL RECOGNITION! My version can only be better!”
astorian, no one is depicting the Trojan War. We know so little about the historical event that some people argue that it may not even have happened. What Petersen inevitably was (supposed to be) trying to present was the epic cycle regarding the Trojan war, of which Homer is the biggest extant chronicler. As such, we can criticize Petersen’s deliberate and casual inaccuracy as much as we want.
Do you get equally agitated at Shakespeare for changing Achilles’ glorious triumph over Hector (according to Homer) into a virtual muder, in “Troilus and Cressida”?
Shakespeare wasn’t just retelling “The Iliad,” and neither was Petersen. Each was free to revamp or revise the story as he saw fit. Judge the results on their own terms.
I thought “Troy” was quite enjoyable on its own terms, in spite of a few groan-inducing moments.
There’s changing the emphasis based on whose side of the story we’re telling (Hector is killed well and then horribly mistreated vs. Hector is killed badly and horribly mistreated) and then there’s changing the plot.
