I did a quick check and it seems I’m the first to bring this up. Did anyone else see part 1? It was on USA last night and part 2 will be on tonight.
I saw it and I thought it was pretty good. Granted I don’t know how accurate it is, or how accurate it could be in light of the history it covers.
There were several things that I thought were interesting. One was the nudity. This movie was on USA at 8pm, which is basic cable, and throughout it there were several times when you could see Helen’s nipples through her outfit, and there were also several times when she was completely naked and the audience saw her ass for several minutes. Neither of these things really bothered me, as I’m all for cursing/nudity to be allowed on television, but it did make me think-are we really going toward a new age of television standards?
Another thing, which actually did bother me, was Achilles. The actor who plays him seems to be a bit of a dufus, IMO. Maybe it’s just me but Achilles seems somehow not too intelligent.
All in all, I thought the movie was good, what did you all think?
What are the chances of them releasing this on DVD? I really want to see it but I can never seem to sit through a movie with commercials in it. It totally spoils it for me.
Can I recommend a TiVo. My TiVo, (I think) is planning to record Helen Of Troy tonight. It would have done it last night, but it would have overlapped with FAMILY GUY. (I’m so glad they put that back on, now if they would only make new episodes).
I expected HELEN OF TROY to be really cheesy, so imagine my surprise when it was nothing of the kind! I really enjoyed Part 1 and am looking forward to tonight’s conclusion.
I had never studied the ILLIAD or ODYSSEY when I was in school and I am too undisciplined to crunch into them myself. So I am enjoying getting all the ducks in a row, so to speak. Agamemnon is a bit of a prick, no? But I really felt sorry for him when he had to sacrifice the adorable Iphegenia to get the winds to blow.
What I don’t understand, and what my history major son couldn’t explain to me, is why Helen is called HELEN OF TROY when she was really HELEN OF SPARTA. Anybody know? (And I don’t really think the chick who is playing Helen is all that gorgeous, certainly not in the Catherine Zeta-Jones school of gorgeosity!)
I always thought it was because she fell in love with Paris who was a ‘Troy’, or am I wrong? I have to admit I got a little confused between the two sides…
USA Networks is always a sucker for the costume drama, eh? I flipped onto this last night, and ended up watching most of it. Not bad. Bad acting (with exceptions), I could choreograph better fight scenes, but it was still alright. And you gotta love them see through outfits!!
Maybe it is OK if you never read the original story. But I think not. The story of the Trojan war and the people involved has been a fovorite for thousands of years because it was and IS a great story. This is not it!
I will mention only a few of the problems with having a screenwriter redo Homer. First of all the Gods are not here. We had only 10 seconds of the 3 Goddeses as they appeared to Paris. In the story the Gods were involved all the time making appereances to support one side or the other and to change the course of the action. The Gods were just as important characters as the humans.
Agememnon did not kill his daughter to get correct winds. The Goddess Artemis carried Iphingenia away at the last moment.
Theseus was not killed by the brother of Helen. And where was his twin?
Paris did not fight his brother Hector.
Cassandra did not have the power of insight into the future as a child. And no one ever belived her.
That is just for starters.
This is a very poor version of the story IMHO
[obligitory Simpson’s reference]
Troy McClure:
Not just the McBain movie, but maybe my own fragrance: Smellin’ of Troy!
[/obligitoy Simpson’s reference]
Dang Stellablue , now that you put the inaccuracies into perspective, I’m not too sure about this one. I mean, as far as films go I guess it’s still okay, but I was expecting a little more accuracy. I’ve never read the illiad, so I didn’t have anything to guage it on.
I do appreciate your analysis, do you (or anyone else) have any others?
Stellablue mentioned that Paris never fought Hector. But an additional problem is that if Paris ever had fought Hector, he would have lost horribly.
The whole presentation of Paris bugged me a whole lot more than minor changes to the storyline. Paris is not a hero. He’s not a great fighter. He’s a pretty boy. He never wants to fight in the Iliad. He wants to have sex with Helen. And when he does fight he’s a fairly ineffective warrior. He’s a WIMP. And USA is here trying to make him look like a hero… bleh.
Can someone please fill in some gaps for me? I was on the couch, very tired, and was dozing off intermittently througout the program, so there are a bunch of holes of around five minutes length in my memory, plus I’m fuzzy on the sequence of events…
[spoiler]
What was the deal with the cow? I got that Paris was fighting in a tournament, and that a stolen cow had something to do with why he was there. What gives?
There was a scene where Helen (I think) was making cow eyes at a guy in a barn, and as she left another guy with some soldiers came in and killed the barn dude – but not until barn dude exacted some damage of his own. Could someone please set up this scene for me? Who’s who? Why are they pissed at barn guy? What gives? I thought maybe it was Paris who went in with the soldiers, but then later it appears that Paris meets Helen for the first time when he sees her nekkid at the dinner (mmm…nekkid Helen…).
I am basically very confused about everything that happens after Paris is revealed to be nobility but before Helen’s nekkid stroll, as this was the period I was most woozy. Nothing like a nekkid bottom to wake you up. Can someone give a brief sequence of events? I got that the leaders all were banding together, and did the ring-toss thing to see who would be the ultimate leader (and Helen’s hubby), but I’m not even sure about that. I was pretty groggy at the time. [/spoiler]
OK, in retrospect, that’s a lot of gaps. Can someone just do a brief plot summary?
I just can’t get over how breathtakingly beautiful Sienna Guillfory )sp) is. Id launch 1000 ships too. Anyone see the cover of NYT Television section? Sure wish women still wore tunics.
[spoiler]It was a bull, not a cow that was stolen by the man working for the king (the king being Paris’s biological father). The bull belonged to Paris, so naturally he wanted to get it back after it was stolen from him.
The guy in the barn with Helen was a king (don’t remember what he was king of) who won Helen after some guys kidnapped her from the hallway after she momentarily left her sister’s wedding feast. He had told her the truth of her mother’s death - that she had committed suicide after giving birth to Helen - and that her mother had been raped by Zeus (Helen’s biological father) which explained Helen’s beauty that no man could resist. The guy in the barn had told Helen she would become his wife, but that she was too young, even though she felt ready to do it.
It was Helen’s brother, not Paris who found her outside the barn, and it was Helen’s brother and his men who fought the guy in the barn.[/spoiler]
[spoiler]Paris did meet Helen for the first time at the dinner, but he also saw her in a vision in the beginning. The goddesses Hera, Aphrodite, and Athena appeared to him and told him to choose which of them was the fairest. They all promised him gifts if he picked them. He picked Aphrodite, because her gift was the love of the most beautiful woman in the world, Helen. Helen also saw Paris in a pool at the same time.
Also, the ring-toss thing was not to determine who was the leader, it was only to determine who would marry Helen and then the rest of the kings pledged to defend that man’s sole right to Helen. Agamemnon was going to be the high king no matter what. Agamemnon’s younger brother Menalaus won the ring-toss.[/spoiler]
I think the changes that USA is making are to give the story more of a hero-villain feel. In the Iliad, every character has their problems, so there’s really no one to root for. It’s not even clear who should win the war, the Greeks or the Trojans. USA has changed the character of Paris to make him into the hero and it has definitely made the Greeks look like the bad guys. I remember when I read the Iliad I was rooting for the Greeks because Achilles was such a bad-ass and Paris was such a pansy.
The first King who kidnapped Helen was Theseus, of Athens- according to the movie.
Well, actually- it’s Achilles who is the pansy- “not that there’s anything wrong with that”.
But here is my point- we have a 4 hour miniseries- about the big huge ten year war- and here we are, after 2 hours- and we aren’t quite at the war yet.
annie- she is called “Helen of Troy” as she was kidnapped by the Prince of Troy, who made her his wife. She wasn’t born there. But I agree- the actress, while not a dog by any means- is hardly “the face who launched a 1000 ships”.
This has support in ancient mythology. There is a story that Theseus kidnapped Helen when she was younger, and her brothers had to get her back.
Well, that depends. According to some stories he did (according to Homer and Aeschylus) according to others she was replaced by a deer and whisked away to Tauris (according to Euripedes and others). In either case, Agamemnon and the others believed that Iphigenia had been sacrificed. Which was one of the reasons his wife Clytemnestra killed him when he came home from the war.
I saw parts of it. I have to agree with those disappointed in the Achilles character. I never pictured him being a dumb off who looked like the Mr. Clean guy.
