Watch this as Wolfgang Petersen's Troy and not as Homer's Iliad to appreciate it

Rating: 8/10 (8 April 2006)

Troy has had no critical acclaim. A lot of critics hated it (& I believe) for all the wrong reasons. They were looking for Homer's Iliad and Wolfgang Petersen's Das Boot, and that too in the same movie!! Critics expected to see a movie spanning 10 years of the war of Troy staying true to the story by Homer, even wanting the interference of the plethora of Greek Gods. Now which was the last movie to show a God, Christian or Greek or Zulu? I've seen exactly zero number of movies featuring a God character in a serious role, even prophet movies are few. Who wants to see Apollo and Zeus in a movie or Jupiter and Mars as TV program characters? The maximum TV/Cinema presence that God has got in western media is probably in The Simpsons of all things. God is acceptable only in comic movies like Bruce almighty. No heroic, or for that matter mischievous and deceiving or scheming Gods are acceptable in Cinema. Troy is not a stage production, it is a movie (Greek stage productions regularly had God magically appear save the day).
Great mythological stories do not translate into great movies. Troy is made more like a fictional account of a mythological story and not a historical event (all historical research on Troy is disputed.) I have never read Homer's Iliad and do not intend to. But I have read abridged versions of the story, even in Hindi (my mother tongue.) I knew about Achilles' heels, about the decision of Paris (not in movie), about Helen of Troy, and about the Wooden Horse. I knew almost enough to know most of the movie. The movie changed the story quite a bit and it must have offended those who wanted to see Homer's Iliad, this on the other hand was Wolfgang Petersen's Troy. If you have the ability to differentiate between the two you will love this movie.
Some complained about the way the movies made everything grandiose. About the lack of tension and the emphasis on heroics. About the lack of a feeling of a war, about computer generated soldiers. In many ways Troy was like Lord of the Rings in those respects. Ebert wanted this movie to be more like "The Alamo" a movie that has a rating of 5.9 on IMDb. If critics understand what fictionalised accounts of a mythological story are supposed to be like they would understand that we are not expected to look for reality in such a movie. Characters of such a movie are not supposed to be afraid of war, they are not realists they are romantics. Romanticism allows for married women to fall in love with a stranger, for Greek heroes to act like action figures, for men to go to war over women, for heroes to not kill princes early in the day. If you want to see a true war movie see Das Boot or Platoon, nothing to see here, move on. Troy is supposed to be about misplaced heroics like every mythological story. We love and accept mythological stories in there own universe due in part to their absurdities. This is a screen version of one such great story, minus (thankfully) the Gods.
So does this mean a mega budget movie like Troy can do no wrong. Yes it can, but this movie did not. Especially by not doing what critics wanted from it - exploration of human psychology inside a war zone. This was just an epic re-telling of beautiful story, and it succeeded in that.