Let's rip apart the Iliad and try to imitate Lord of the Rings

Rating: 3/10 (29 December 2004)

I have read the Iliad. Several times. I have been at two different plays where the Iliad was performed. It is a magnificent story. This story has inspired and awed millions of people in thousands of years.
The filmmakers of the film Troy decided that they didn't care about the respect Homer deserves with his magnificent story. The filmmakers didn't care at all.
They ripped apart the story. They made a pile of papers on each paper one of the many characters in the story. And a pile of papers with events. And a pile with dates on which those events took place. And of course a pile with places where the events took place. OK, shuffle each pile, independently. Now, take the top paper of each pile and combine those. At the end, some piles will still contain some papers (I guess a lot of characters will be left over), but of course those can be thrown away. Put these combinations in chronological order. Then, shuffle a bit to create the idea of flashbacks. Write a film script around this mess. Make sure it does not resemble the age-old story Iliad.
Now you have something that probably resembles the story in the film Troy.
Create stunning sets and perform even more stunning camera work, really spectacular stunts and special effects and sounds. Add a lot of handsome actors, whose characters really have to be different from how Homer described them. Of course, nobody speaks Greek.
If you don't know anything about Homer's texts, you have no idea that the story in this movie is something completely different than the real stuff. If you do know just a bit about the real story, watching this film is really embarrassing. You are thinking all the time... hey, this is from that chapter... no no, from that other one... oh no, that's not possible... eh eh eh... I'm not sure anymore.
Who do the film makers think they can fool? Me, I guess, because I paid money to see the film in cinema. Darn. I shouldn't have done that. These people don't reserver respect for their work. Raping the Iliad, it's a shame.
It's definitely not about the Iliad. It's eye candy. It's a bad movie.