Great movie that mixes ancient story line with modern touches

Rating: Null/10 (31 August 2011)

The movie Troy, directed by Wolfgang Peterson, presents the history of the Trojan War in a unique way that it captured a modern audience and still remained true to many facts laid out in Homer's tale of The Iliad. The vast majority of the characters were the same and they held the same characterization depicted by Homer: Achilles was is arrogant, Agamemnon is a cruel leader, Helen is passive, Hector is a great warrior, etc. The movie follows the same ancient time lime of events. It began with Paris and Helen falling in love and sneaking Helen off to Troy. The Greek army, led by Agamemnon, went to war with Troy in order to over throw the city and claim Helen. There were many hand to hand combat battles on the outsides of Troy's walls similar to The Iliad. Agamemnon and Achilles fought over a captured woman, resulting in Achilles refusing to fight in these battles and Patroclaus taking his place, leading to Patroclaus' death at the hands of Hector. It ended with the Greek army building a Trojan horse, tricking the Trojans, and over throwing their entire civilization and burning it to the ground.
Despite all of these similarities to the framework of the story, the film also took many liberties with the story in order to relate modern viewers. In ancient times, gods and goddesses were a huge part of society and believed to be very real and very influencing. The Iliad is full of godly intervention, action, dialogue, and purpose. However, Troy almost completely ignores this aspect of the story. These ancient gods and goddesses are not relevant in our time period; most viewers cannot relate to them or even know much about them. The only real mention of any gods in Troy is with Apollo. The city of Troy is shown as worshipping Apollo in a significant way with temples, statues, priests and priestesses. Breisis is captured from Apollo's temple after it was damaged by the Greek soldiers and speaks of how the wrath of Apollo with surely soon be upon them and that they gods are something to be feared and not mocked. This is the only significant portion of the film that deals with the gods. There are other vague references to "the wrath of the gods", fear of them, or about Achilles' mother being a goddess; however, these portions of the film are given no importance. The film makers also added extra scenes for dramatic effect. For instance, the very beginning of the movie is a scene where Achilles is to fight the biggest warrior of all, Boagrius, and he wins. This scene is mostly for dramatic effect to initially capture the attention of the audience. It also helps with Achilles' characterization of an amazing and skilled warrior. This scene is similar to the scene where Hector slays Menelaus after Paris refuses to fight him. This isn't the correct version relating to The Iliad, but it was also done for dramatic effect and characterization of Hector as a loyal and loving man to his family, as well as a great warrior for Troy. Overall, the movie Troy did a great job at keeping to a correct framework for the events of the Trojan War. Most of the changes in the story were done for ideal purposes that helped further along Homer's view of the characters or to capitalize on modern viewers' need for dramatic action.