biggest move let down!!

Rating: 2/10 (15 May 2010)

When i heard they were making a movie about Troy i was exited. It has always been one of my favourite stories, because unlike Lord of the Rings (which is one of my favourite book) its not about fighting the bad guys to save your freedom - instead it a story about the futility of fighting a war simply for glory and neither side is purely good or bad. However when i finally saw it, i could not be more disappointed - the movie contained none of the themes of the original plot. Now don't get me wrong i am not a purist at all, taking the LOTR movies as an example, i love every change peter jackson made. Nor do i believe that there needs some sort of historical accuracy to the story considering that there is no proof that most of these characters ever existed or that such an epic battle ever took place. The fact that the battle is one of the series of events begun because the goddesses wanted to know which one was prettiest, is proof enough that this isn't history. I've read many adaptations of the illiad where new themes, stories and characters are introduced that I loved. But despite these new factors, they all keep the essence of the themes of the illiad. The movie totally failed to do that for several reasons.
The first one, is that there is no background to these characters. the battle is only an element of the story with many significant events taking place before and after that help you understand the characters and what drives them . for example the reason that achilles is so arrogant and why he is so needed for the war, is that he can't die. He is immortal, except for a the spot on his heel which is how Paris kills him. It also helps you understand why Helen was "the face that launched one thousand ships" - it wasn't that all those greeks where there because they thought this was a terrible thing for the Trojans to do, they had sworn an oath to help menelaus should anything happen to Helen many years ago. This demonstrates how stupid the war is - all those soldiers die because many years ago, their leader made a stupid promise that they never expected to have to fulfill. Many of them don't want to be there such as Oddyseus who tried to get out of it by pretending to be crazy. Moreover, at birth Paris' mother was given an omen that Paris would cause the death of the city. To make a long story short, Priam does everything in his power to make sure this doesn't happen and by doing that, insures that it comes to pass. This is a very important and recurring theme in Greek legends
The second is that many of the characters die in the wrong place. Achilles, the great hero never made it inside of Troy. Just as Hector who is the great leader and hero of the Trojans is killed, Achilles is pierced by an Arrow not to long after, making both side lose the two great leaders, showing once again how stupid it is to enter a war for the sake of glory when you both sides lose the people they are most proud of.
On top of that neither Agamemnon or Menelaus die. Though little attention is payed to them in the movie this is very important for the story. Menelaus forgives Helen and takes her back - if the Trojans had given helen back in the first place, none of this would have happened, Menelaus would happily have gone home and since the rest of the army were only there because of the oath they would have packed their bags (except for Agammenon who was a warmonger but this would have made it a relatively small army for the Trojans to defeat). Agammenon returns home to his kingdom where his wife Klytemenstra kills him, showing that 10 yrs of war for a victory that u can enjoy for a few week before you're dead is just hopeless.
And lastly the fact that the movie distorts the story so that it seems that the Trojans are the good guys and in the end they win because Paris is still alive and gets to stay with Helen where as most of the Greek main characters are dead also completely shatters the point of the story. Hardly anyone wins - most are dead (including Paris, only one Trojan survives which is aenas) and the greeks that survive don't get much out of it - oddyseus has another ten years ahead of him before he can get back to his wife. And helen just ends up right where she started. Changing all that is the equivalent of having Frodo drop the ring into mount doom without any problems and not departing into the west - despite everything he accomplished and that good triumphed, a part of him was forever damaged and he can't find peace on middle earth.
There are one or two good things about the movies. The battles are quite well filmed and the scene where Achilles kills Hector does a good job portraying the inhumanity that war sometimes brings out in soldiers and the atrocities that they commit. Hector's character is traditionally portrayed as him being one of the few purely noble and heroic characters - a fat load of good that does him.
So yes i though the movie was overall extremely bad. They didn't just take a lot of creative liberties, they completely failed to understand what the story was about