Homer's bones will be rattling in his grave!!!SPOILER

Rating: Null/10 (8 June 2004)

We(my friend Tania and I) were very disappointed to see that such a literary masterpiece was altered to an unrecognisable extent! At Cannes Brad Pitt mentioned that he felt he was in the middle of the Iraq crisis. This in fact is not a wrong assumption to make, considering how much Agagmemnon was portrayed as a power mad dictator such as Saddam. Even if someone tried really hard they couldn t have distorted the story as much as they did. In fact it is not that they wanted to convey a negative Greek identity but you would think that a multi million budget like that would be supported by thorough research. Essentially apart from key plots being omitted, the nature of the characters was depicted in a very shallow manner. Yes Achilles was the strongest of the Greeks and yes he was arrogant, but that was because he was a king and a semi-god, not a spoiled bratt! What is really peculiar is that they could have made twice their budget in box office taking, had they tried to be as faithful as possible to the book. Obviously with this screenplay it is natural to think in terms of the aggressive Greeks and the honourable life saving Trojans( just to make clear that the war was between Greek kingdoms thus sharing the same language,faith in the 12 gods of Olympus and especially fear of their wrath) yet this is an unspeakable abuse of Homer's ideals. The iliad is about honour, civil war, love, ambition, the power of the 12 gods over humans and the importance of their interference, but not in the brutal and sacrilegious way it was portrayed. There are far from a few inaccuracies and most of all the viewer is not informed of the power of Helen's beauty. She was not a scorned wife, far from it. Menelaus was terribly in love with her and the reason all the Greek Kings decided to follow Agamemnon was not to fullfil his alleged empire building tendencies, but because they had made an oath. What this entailed is that because Helen was so beautiful and most of the Greek kings had been her suitors, they had pledged allegiance to her and Menelaus and had vowed to protect this marriage. This is one of the few misinterpretations which could have been avoided, had the screenwriter had been more interested in Greek mythology. Our question is why Tolkien's and J.K Rowling's work deserves to be carefully adapted and respected and Homer's legacy is not.