orichalcum

So, let me get my prejudices out of the way first. I love movies. I love Homer's epics. I love movies about the classical world so much that I want to teach courses about them. I enjoyed several sections of Gladiator.

Homer would have gone blind all over again from seeing the movie Troy.



What Wolfang Petersen tried to do, fairly clearly, is make an equivalent to Lord of the Rings: create a modern retelling of Homer's Iliad that strengthens the dramatic elements, cuts most of the chaff, includes lots of stirring battle scenes, and gives actual roles to several female characters.

There are some ways in which he succeeded. Briseis, in this version, is a conglomeration of the Homeric characters of Chryseis, Briseis, and Cassandra, which is to say that she's a single, non-prophetic priestess of Apollo/prisoner-of-war. This largely works, although having Cassandra around (and Hecuba for that matter - couldn't you find a single elderly woman for a bit part?) would have been highly useful, particularly as the Andromache-Helen camaraderie felt awkward.

The characters have been significantly and necessarily reduced. On the Greek side, we have:
Agamemnon: Power-hungry megalomaniac with no redeeming qualities except a nice quilted cloak.
Menelaos: Nice guy with a temper, competent fighter. Apparently fairly oblivious.
Odysseus: (Sean Bean): Oh, well played, sir. He's tricksy, he is, and a Nice Guy trying to keep the Greeks from killing each other. Poor Sean Bean - you get the feeling that there was a really cool scene involving him that was cut for time here too, maybe more than one.
Achilles: (Brad Pitt) The Hero. Badass fighter, yet nice to women. Shows little emotional range.
Patroklos: The Hero's Cousin. Whiny, and 14. Not a badass fighter.
Big Aias: Big Dude. Roars a lot. Barely a character, really.
Eudorus: Achilles' sergeant, more or less. Actually one of those random people from the list in the Iliad, not that you'd know. He looks like a refugee from Captain Barbossa's ship; I kept expecting him to turn into a skeleton.

The Trojan Side:
Priam: Peter O'Toole. with an RSC accent. I am very old, yet dignified, and my battle plans suck. My robes, on the other hand, totally rock, and I have a gorgeous if Assyrian-style palace.
Hector: (Eric Bana) Prince of Troy, battle commander, loving father, husband, brother, and son, peace-lover, and general all-around nice guy. What a pity that you get no less than 8 foreshadowings of what's going to happen to him.
Paris: (Orlando Bloom), furthering his career of playing young archer twits. Those of you who care will be happy to know that you see lots of Orlando Bloom in this movie, in both senses. I'm not sure whether I have less respect for him as an actor after this role, or whether it's just the horrible dialogue.
Helen: Not pretty enough. It's an odd thing to carp about, but darn it, the whole point of the character is "most beautiful woman on earth." Also not a terrific actress, although may have had some of Bloom's problems.
Andromache: Hector's wife, prettier than Helen. Spends most of the movie looking upset. Has a baby, Astyanax, with a Very Big Head.
Briseis: See above.

I won't give away the plot, but I will say that the battle scenes are unfortunately largely horrible, due to a lack of interesting tactics and choreography. They form the Roman tortoise early on, regrettably. On the plus side, there are no stirrups, although on the negative side, this means that people fall off their horses a lot.

There are some good changes in plot, although also some changes that are simply random and confusing. The architecture of Troy is pretty darn cool, if oddly Assyrian. The entire first twenty minutes is not worth seeing, don't worry if you walk in late.

But hey, not a bad soundtrack.