I can see your point.
WOW! There’s something you don’t see on the SDMB every day 
Granted it was 20 years ago, but I’ve read the original in the original Greek. I know this is going to be a modern rendition, not a retelling. With regard to the trailer, men did not ride horses into battle - they rode in chariots (Patroclus was a charioteer and stirrups were invented after 500 AD) - and if you’re going to show a trireme, give it oars. As for the undressing scene, they had a different view of clothing then - I don’t believe they’ll show all the male actors with their d*cks hanging.
This movie is at least going to be pure cheese and I’m going to enjoy every minute. If it clues people in to the Classics, then so much the better.
Helen’s ending varies in account to account, but she never
ends up with Paris
in any versions. In the Iliad she simply goes home, while in other versions she ends up being hacked apart by other Trojans, ravished by troops, marrying another king or, in some, she was never in Troy to begin with but lived out the war in Egypt while a divinely fashioned doppelganger went with Paris. How would you have ended her? (I suppose this greatly depends on whether you see her as a tragic heroine or a first order bi-atch; in most revisions Menelaus is shown as a prick and she flies off with Paris out of true love.)
I was thinking of Helen the other night and how much standards of beauty have changed. In the myth she was the most beautiful woman on Earth even though she had several children (the oldest one nine years old), which meant that
1- she wasn’t 21, which the standard for beauty today leans towards
2- she probably wasn’t a wasp waisted twig
3- even if she gave her children out to nurse, she wouldn’t have had Boobs by DuPont
Except for the slavery, human sacrifice, misogyny, superstition and daily acts of incredible brutality, the ancients were in many ways more enlightened about so many things.
No, obviously, they should be speaking Greek with an English accent. Duh!
As for the cock-in-mouth reference, it was a common and highly sponsered fact that the Greeks were homosexual. The men believed that being gay with other men would “bond” them. In fact, the Spartans would have retreats for new and young members of the army to well… “meat” more “members” of the army.
Sorry for the “gay” quotation marks, too.
I wonder why the sudden fascination with the ancient world? In addition to Troy and at least two Alexander the Great biopics, I just read that Peter O’Toole (who plays Priam in Troy) and his LAWRENCE co-star Omar Sharif are teaming again for a new version of Gilgamesh . (I think that Billy Bob Thornton as Carl would be a great Enkidu.)
Maybe someday, if I clap hard enough, we’ll have a hades and persephone movie.
“Homosexual Greeks” has been brought to you by Nike. Nike-Just do it! It’ll bring you luck."
Wouldn’t that be a horribly depressing movie that ends with everyone unhappy except Hades?
I’m actually looking forward to it, but the lack of the gods does kind of throw me off, as they’re my favorite part of the story. Granted, they’re all self-centered, infantile pricks of the highest order, so it might make it hard for modern audiences to see them and not just get angry at and hate them without changing the story around. Of course, I guess that applies to just about everyone in the Iliad.
As a shout-out to everyone who’s read the thing, I demand a 6 hour long scene that focuses on each one of the ships separately with a narrator telling us the names and hometowns of each one of the soldiers.
I know the common belief that Greeks were really into man on man love. I just don’t know where people get the reference to that in the Iliad. I’m no Greek scholar and it’s possible something went over my head in the translation.
Incidentally the Greeks were a little more complex then just being open supporters of homosexuality. For one thing all Greeks weren’t alike and the people of Sparta, Athens, and Delphi didn’t all following the same exact traditions. There are plenty of surviving literature that indicates insults to men who like to take it in the rear such as saying someone “Plucks the hair from their anus among the tombs.”
Marc
About mansex in the Iliad: It’s pretty clear from the text that Achilles and Patroclus were probably lovers, despite how many translators dance around the issue. Even in the most circumspect translations, I keep hearing “oh they’re just ROOMMATES! You know: two young guys “baching” it together. There’s a double bed in one room? Oh maybe he just likes to, y’know, spread out a bit.”
Depends which version of Hades and Persephone you believe. It’s the original beauty and the beast story. Beautiful virgin Persephone swept away by a brooding old meanie (not satan remember, just a guardian of the dead), who ravishes her, holds her captive and in some versions, she falls in love with him eventually.
RWWOWRRR. Good sex in that movie.
The version I read was translated sometime in the mid to late 90’s. I missed any references to double beds and any others that were out there. I ended up having to look up a lot of things while I read the book. “Pallas who? When the hell did Athena get a first name?” It’s entirely possible that I just missed those references though I didn’t miss that they were very close.
Marc
I’ve heard the ending is a chariot riding off a cliff.
“I wonder why the sudden fascination with the ancient world?”
One word: Gladiator.
Yes, but the point is that in The Iliad there is no “hot man-on-man action”. Homer states as a matter of fact that Patroclos is Achileos’ lover, and later shows that the former’s death leaves the latter devastated, and that’s that. There’s no dwelling upon sex scenes because, well, it would be irrelevant to the story.
I wonder how they’ll treat Hephaistion in the Alexander flicks.
Heh. I’d be tempted to blame “Hercules: the Legendary Journeys” and “Xena: Warrior Princess” for an entire generation of audiences who won’t be able to take the Greek Gods seriously (and for turning the Bronze Age into the Leather and Silicone Age, but that’s another story), but that has been going on from even before that.
But of course, part of the problem is that producers of this type of movie have to decide whether they want to produce a mythological fantasy (a-la LOTR) or a historical epic (a-la Spartacus)… and for the former, the Greek theme is burdenned with an association burned in people’s minds by cheezy Hercules movies and Ray Harrihausen stop-motion monster flicks. So they try to go for the latter. However since a truly accurate description of what did happen in the Mycaenean period would be… likely unimpressive, you end up with a hybrid of the Iliad, Oddyssey, Orestiad and Eneid plus whatever else the screenwriters can throw in.
Oh yeah, forgot to add…
After all, Homer, Aeschylus and Virgil were themselves all embellishing and pumping up the action after-the-fact (in the latter case over one thousand years after the fact) for literary effect.
That reminded me of a silly act of repackaging: after Gladiator became a hit, many sword and sandal epics were re-released on video. The funny thing was the case of “The Robe” sequel called “Demetrius and the gladiators” (1954), it was released with the same title, but with the words like this:
DEMETRIUS AND THE
GLADIATORS!