a rotten bad movie

Rating: Null/10 (6 July 2004)

My two cents' worth: First, this has nothing whatsoever to do with Homer, because the Iliad especially is not understandable without the Gods, who are - this is pretty much consensus by now among Classics experts - not support characters, but absolutely essential. The entire story makes no sense without them; the humans only act with them. To add them out is like Moby Dick without a whale, Snow White without the Stepmother, etc.
So, was this a successful movie otherwise? I don't think so. The battle scenes were all the same (compare good movies with such scenes: people actually fight differently!), the mass scenes seemed like Mummy II or other trash movies, the characters indeed did not develop and moved like puppets... I really thought these were some wasted hours.
I should like to add that the Iliad really supplies key insights into how we (as humans today in the glovbalized culture in which most of us IMDb readers live) became what we are, and also in what we are now - and especially so because of such problematic characters like Achilleus, who is a whiny boy and a hero at the same time. It is thus really really sad to have a movie like that invariably blocking access to this great work, because - as can be seen already now - people do mistake this thing for somehow representing at least "the story". Too bad.