er… dumb OAF not OFF.
I’d say the biggest difference between classic story and movie is the absence of the Godsand how mortals view the gods. The Greek epic is a story of the powers of the Gods and the effect these uncontrolable powers have on mankind. Divine beings are prone to take sides, to jealous fits, sulking and ragging lust. Hey just like our heros! All of the heros had wonderful qualities that we admire and want to emulate but also they had flaws. Some were very presice, like Achilles heel. Others had flaws of character, like vanity. All had to strive against the forces of the Gods.
This story is in large part responsible for the form our western stories and dramas have taken. This movie is a disservice to that heritage. But what do I expect. Hollywood has messed up so many good books. Even the Scarlet Letter had a happy ending in the movies.
Boy this was bad on so many levels.
The Judgement of Paris in 5 minutes in a cave. No Apple of Dis, no recommendation of Paris by Zeus.
Cassandra had no gift of prophecy until she was a teenager, a gift of seduction by Apollo, who when rejected by Cassandra, adds the qualifier; “No one will believe you.”
When Agamemnon sacrifices Iphigenia, she is a teenager and the King tells her and her mother that he has arranged a marriage for her. Agamemnon cannot kill her himself, but gives her to the guards at the alter to kill. (Euripides in the 5th cent. has her rescued by Artemis, but in Homer she is sacrificed).
Pollux did not kill Theseus. (Apollodorus in the 1st cent. has Theseus kidnap Helen as a warm up act, for going to Hades and trying to steal Persephone. In that Version Pollux and Castor, his twin, storm Theseus’ castle and rescue the young Helen, but Theseus is not there. Homer never mentions this at all).
Paris was an effete little bugger, who was brought to Menelaus’ court by Aphrodite, and welcomed hospitably.
Priam knew that Paris would be trouble, and so he kept him out of the city, but never did he try to kill his own son.
It was Helen’s father, Tyndareus, who forced the other Greek chieftains into an alliance. He knew that regardless of who married Helen, the other chieftains would be angry andunite against them. He made them swear an oath to defend each other before he picked the groom of Helen.
And that’s in the 1st hour.
Bad
Incidentally, was The Illiad a poem? Or was it written in the same style as the Odyssey
Umm… the Odyssey is a poem, as is the Iliad.
Hmmm…well it has been quite a while… 
Best thing I can say about it is that I’m more interested to reread The Odyssey and The Illiad now.
I, too, was a bit surprised by the nudity. On the other hand, I knew better than to expect a face to launch 1,000 ships out of the lead actress; this is still a cable mini-series, afterall. I definitely missed the role of the gods in this version and got a headache from the pseudo-Gladiator-style battle scenes.
Well… the good thing here is that it leaves the door open for, a few years from now, a sequence of miniseries’ titled “Homer’s Iliad”, “Homer’s Oddyssey”, “Aeschylus’ Oresteiad”, etc., that will be a wee bit closer. (BTW, Iphigenia dies in this scenario, too)
The way I see it, this is not really an attempt to stage Homer, or even actual mythology, but rather The Decline and Fall of Mykenaean Greece (Sex and Violence Mega-Mix). It’s not bad. They could have done a lot worse. Also, to be honest: they are badly hobbled to begin with. Knowing much of their audience probably got their Greek mythology from Xena reruns and vaguely remembers from High School history that the Greeks were up to something way back – i.e. they can’t tell Mykenae from Mylanta and Apollo is a character in the Rocky movies, named after a space rocket of some sort – they try to cover a lot of ground to get you to why the heck is anybody bothering to besiege Troy and why should we care, while leaving enough time for people getting naked.
That can also explain the exclusion of the gods – at the production-meetings level: too little time has passed since Xena, which on top of the heritage of 50+ years of bad Hercules movies and Herryhausen SFX flicks, has absolutely ruined the Greek gods as worthwhile characters for most of the audience.
Did anyone else find it weird that after the ten years past, they didn’t even try to make the characters look older?
Well, it was much better than what I expected. I was also wondering about the historical/mythological accuracy. My mother(who is Greek, but forgot history/myths) complained that the Greeks and Trojans looked like the Romans and it wasn’t supposed to be that way.
I got the feeling from the prologue that this is set up to be the “true” story of the Trojan War–as opposed to the mythological version most people know. For instance, it is fairly obvious that Agamennon is going to go to war with Troy (over riches) one way or another, the “abduction” of his brother’s wife is just a good excuse. The Gods aren’t players because, in the real world of men, the Gods don’t make an appearence until the victor want to legitimatize his actions.
Think of Virgil writing The Aenead to give Rome a heroic (and Godly) history–this mini-series is the opposite of that process.
Of course, reducing the story to one of man’s greed and lust only, as opposed to the greed and lust and jeolousy bwtween the Gods, makes the story both less coherent and less powerful, but that’s life on USA Network–weak and incoherent.
I actually found it wierd just how quickly and without much mention ten years passed.
It was like ‘oh, it’s been ten years, let’s challenge them now’.
I found Part the Second to be far inferior to Part the First. The war was staged in Reader’s Digest version, for sure. I, too, thought the armies looked very Roman, but then the Romans copied everything the Greeks did, no? So maybe what we know of the Roman look was really just their version of the Greek look.
It bothered me that those Trojan archers were so accurate in mowing down the Greek troops as they were sloshing through the sea. They were how far away???
The Horse was impressive, however.
There was one shot of Helen where she looked really, really cross-eyed and I thought “this face couldn’t even launch a canoe.”
Did anyone else get the idea that Clytemnestra travelled to Troy to make mincemeat out of Agamemnon? I thought he had made it back to Mycenae before she did him in.
And, yes, it bothered me that nobody except Priam and Mrs. Priam seemed to age during the 10 boring years of the war.
On the whole, I’d give the series about a C+ but I’m glad I watched itl.
[obligitory Simpson’s reference]
This is the face that launched a thousand ships. The other way!
[/obligitory Simpson’s reference]
And I still never got why the Trojans brought the stupid horse into the city. Granted the idea of a “Trojan horse” didn’t exist before this, but the concept of hiding things in other things sure did!
[obligitory Simpson’s reference]
“Hey do you guys have a wooden horse?”
“Well…I don’t have one from you.”
[/obligitory Simpson’s reference]
The second half was a mess. Someone remind me of what really happened in Homer’s Iliad, because I can’t remember the real story now.
[spoiler]
In USA’s version, Paris and Menelaus fought a duel. Menelaus won because of a poison-tipped spear, but he didn’t kill Paris. Then, Hector challenged Agamemnon to a duel. Achilles said he fights for Agamemnon and then told Hector he would duel him, but Hector could throw the first spear. Achilles then turned his back to Hector. (In Homer’s Iliad, Achilles skin was like impenetrable armor and I was sooooo waiting for Hector’s spear to bounce off Achilles’s back, but nooooo) Hector refused to throw, Achilles turned around and speared Hector right through the gut.
Then Achilles dragged Hector’s body around the Greek camp (this happened in Homer’s Iliad too) and Helen went to Agamemnon to give herself up to try to end the war. Agamemnon refused and Helen had to run for her life. Paris then showed up at the Greek camp looking for Helen. He challenges Agamemnon to a duel, but once again, Achilles says he fights for Agamemnon and he charges Paris with his chariot. In a nifty maneuver, Paris dodges the chariot, grabs the Greek soldier’s bow and an arrow, and then while laying on his back fires at Achilles, who has just raced by him. Achilles is struck in the heel and dies. (this makes no sense since he has never been established as having impenetrable skin everywhere else)
Then Paris and Helen meet up and flee the Greek camp together. Once they get through the frontline of Trojan soldiers they stop and embrace. Suddenly, Agamemnon appears in disguise and stabs Paris. Paris dies.
Now, who can tell me the differences between this account and Homer’s? I remember certain things from Homer, like Athena fighting for the Greeks and Ares fighting for the Trojans, but I don’t remember the specifics of the duels and how each character died. I do know, though, that Paris was not the one who killed Achilles, it was an archer and his secret vulnerable spot was revealed to the archer by a goddess, Aphrodite I think. I also am pretty sure Agamemnon killed Menelaus, but on USA, Menelaus survived.[/spoiler]
Or some intermediary’s inaccurate version of the Romans’version – so filmmakers give us “Generic Ancient Mediterranean civilization” rather than Greek or Roman warfare, which is not uncommon in art. For many centuries, art and now mass media, has tended to create something of a mishmash of periods when depicting the distant past. And this is distant. These Greeks should be historically from around 1200BCE, some 700 years and on the other side of a “dark ages” from what we think of as Classical Greece, almost 600 years before there even was a town of Rome, 900 before Alexander, 1200 before the Caesars.
Whatever you want to call it, the second part was so mindnumbingly boring I was ready to fall on my sword.
I’m unspoilering because the coding is messing me up. Fair warning.
Paris and Menelaus do duel, and it looks like Menelaus will win, but Aphrodite whisks Paris away to Helen’s bedroom in the middle of it.
Hector and Achilles do fight (it’s not exactly a duel though). Hector is reluctant to fight Achilles because he knows he will lose. Achilles wants to kill Hector because Hector killed his best friend/ lover Patroclus (I take it that this is not mentioned in the miniseries). Also, there is no mention in the Iliad of Achilles’ invulnerability, only that he is the greatest fighter of the Greeks.
The invulnerability schtick was a later invention.
Helen never goes to Agamemnon. Agamemnon doesn’t want Helen for himself. Paris and Agamenon never duel. Paris (with help from Apollo) kills Achilles in battle at the gates of Troy. Achilles’ death, adn the end of the war (i’.e. the Horse and everything) are not described in the Iliad which only goes up to Hector’s burial.
Oh the pain. Paris is killed in the fighting (I don’t remember by whom). Helen is then married to another of Priam’s sons Deiphobus
As I mentioned above, Paris did in fact kill Achilles (the only actual act df fighting he does, the pansy weenie), with help from Apollo. Agamemnon loved his brother and did not kill him. In fact, Menelaus and Helen show up in the Odyssey as a fairly happy couple, preparing for the marriage of their daughter (Hermione, I believe) to Achilles’ son Neoptolemus.
I want to see this movie, so that I and my Classics major friends can laugh and laugh and laugh.
You know what? It seems as though they tried to severly play down the role of the Gods in this movie; yet in the begining Paris sees the three Goddess…
Ah, so your sword was out too? Mine only came out when Helen was in the pool with Paris…
Sorry…I…I…had to…