To anybody that still wants to make a true "Iliad" movie

Rating: 6/10 (1 August 2009)

In an episode of an Italian comic book series "Alan Ford" (a franchise largely unknown outside Italy and former Yugoslavia), a character tells a "real story" behind Trojan War. In that rendition Helen was a wasteful woman who led her husband, king Menelaus, to a brink of bankruptcy. When a naive Paris came to an embassy and began flirting with her, Menelaus saw it as a salvation for his treasury and even provided a ladder and the boat for the couple on the night of their "escape" to Troy. Paris happily introduced Helen to Trojan court, but once they realized there's no amount that woman can't spend they set to send her back to Sparta. Upon that news Menelaus raised an army and besieged Troy in order to prevent them doing so.
This is a humorous example of what happens when you take a mythological story and try to explain it through the means of common human behavior. Similar process occurred with the movie "Troy". The screenwriters chose to omit gods and supernatural influence that is the driving force of Iliad and went for an attempt to explain everything through ancient geopolitics and fight for power between protagonists.
That is perfectly valid thing to do, from a historian point of view, because the legend of Trojan War did have its base on some historical war that took place there. But in that case it's hard to incorporate heroes (portrayed in myths as demigods) and their extraordinary deeds in the story, and heroes and their deeds are crucial part of Iliad and plethora of other Greek myths. Achilles couldn't be the greatest warrior without the help of invisible shield of river Styx around his body, Paris wouldn't have seduced Helen without the help of Aphrodite and Troy wouldn't seem so doomed without Zeus, Athena and Hera determined to bring it down.
Of course, I have put things the other way around here. The Iliad and other stories did come after the actual war and gods were included as a sort of justification for the deed done. And great heroes of the war were immortalized and whatever they actually achieved in it was blown literally to mythical proportions. But, today, to translate Iliad verbatim to a big screen would make an interesting movie and certainly something people would want to see. There already were a pseudo- historical interpretation of the war filmed (or several of them), but never the actual poem and its surrounding apocryphal literature.
As far as the real-life interpretations go, "Troy" was quite good and fair. One might say that the screenwriters actually pulled it off. Everything from Helen's kidnapping through characterizations of various protagonists to eventual resolution was quite convincing, even without the presence of divine. Two characters stand out and are given a large chunk of screen time - Agamemnon and Achilles. Agamemnon was rightfully portrayed as a greedy warmongering tyrant (whoever is willing to sacrifice his own daughter for a mere safe passage of his navy to Troy cannot be otherwise). Achilles was also quite on par as a reluctant hero tired of life of constant fighting. His weakness here doesn't come from legendary heel but from his death wish. All in all I felt satisfied with how the script dealt with the motivations throughout.
The movie is largely well executed, the battles and fights spectacular and occasionally surprising, the dialog is often intelligent and poignant. Some things are not so good though. The music concept borrows heavily from "Gladiator" - how many times can we hear soothing female voice over a battle scene before it becomes corny? Also towards the end direction falls apart and the epilogue looks both rushed and cheap (as if the production ran out of both time and money). Overall "Troy" could have benefited from at least another extra hour and in the end it shows. Nevertheless, what we have here is a good piece of cinema, highly recommendable, better than many would acknowledge and certainly better than many recent movies of the sword and sandal genre. Yes, it's better than "Gladiator", so kill me. If anybody makes a new version with gods and powers, it will become sword and magic genre and I will be able to say it's better than "Lords of the Rings" in which case someone will kill me for sure.