Dumbed Down plot

Rating: 5/10 (22 May 2004)

(Some Spoilers) Troy is just another classic Summer Hollywood epic that does not live up to the great story that it is based on. I have read the Iliad and think it is a fantastic story that is really timeless, but this movie does nothing to honor its timelessness. Maybe i should not have expected it too, as most if not all movies fall short of the books they are transcribed from. Some characters that were killed in the movie were never killed in the book. Complex relationships that were explored in the novel were completely disregarded or painted in such an arbitrary black and white way that it left the characters bland and almost robotic in their actions/sayings. Agamemnon v. Achilles (black and white, Good v. Bad)the multi-layered relationship that was the lynchpin of interactions in the novel was represented in such an artificial Hollywood way. Menelaus and Helen(who in the story actually get back together and live on for eternity) I know i should not expect every possible detail to be expressed in detail, but they could have at least been a little truer to the story and not killed off essential characters that did not perish in the book. (Ajax, Agmemeon, Menelaus all lived on in the story) The only character i was impressed with was Priam (Peter O'Toole). The proud caring patriarch of the Trojans was played perfectly by O'Toole and portrayed exactly like the character in the novel. It really does not take many lines of dialogue to correctly style a characters personality, unfortunately the people who made this movie felt that over-complex characterizations would lose their core audience. Just Hollywood underestimating its consumers once again. Finally the fight scenes were actually very good. Some of the best and most epic that i have ever seen on the silver-screen, and future epic battle scenes will be compared to this. Maybe i just went into this movie expecting too much, but if your going to make a 2 hour 45 minute movie, you should at least make the characters a bit more multi-dimensional (besides Achilles) and extend it another 15 minutes if need be.