Murder has just been committed, here...

Rating: 1/10 (17 May 2004)

Did you people see the same movie...? I wish that I could post my entire review which was originally four pages, but I condensed it and also included full out excerpts. Sorry, I tried.
What Wolfgang Peterson has done has taken a magical tale and taken the magic right out of it. No gods, no beauty that launched a thousand ships, no prophecies. In fact, when the gods were mentioned it was extremely sacrilegious. It reminded me too much of how people act in modern days, and had the movie been set then it would have been okay. But back then, there was no science to disprove the gods, and in the book everyone, even the cocky Achilles, fears the gods. When he beheaded that statue of Apollo my expression matched that of the guy who saw him do it. No Greek, or Trojan, would dare to defile the Gods. Atheism did not really exist back then.
Another one of my complaints was the glorification of the Trojans. First off, because there were no gods to start the war or keep it going they placed that burden on Agamemnon, who may have been a jerk but was no imperialist. The movie absolutely made you HATE Achilles, like you do in the book, but unlike the books they don't show enough of the other Greeks to redeem the entire side.
And yes, the "romance." I do not understand how anyone who did not know the true reasons for the war could honestly sit through and think that the romance was nothing more than two spoiled brats condemning more than an entire kingdom for their selfishness. Even if the actor and actress involved in it, Diane Kruger and Orlando Bloom, had any chemistry-which they did not-I do not see how any romance could be justified. The problem was the movie kept attempting to make you like it. Even Hector, who in the real version is constantly admonishing Paris for his selfishness, seems to support the two. The movie, of course, says otherwise, but Paris loved Helen no more than a farmer loves his prize pig. She was a bribe, an object.
But because we're supposed to like Paris, and the romance, the movie continues to go out of its way to tell us how unhappy Helen was with Menelaus. And certainly, one cannot disagree, as Menelaus is shown as old, unfaithful, bulky, and brutish when in the book Homer constantly goes out of his way to tell us how handsome, young, and honorable Menelaus is. The movie makes him say that he only wants Helen back so he can kill her himself, when in the book he says nothing of the sort. But no, we're supposed to hate him; Helen continually says things like "Everytime I was with him I felt like walking into the sea and drowning myself," and "Sparta was never my home. My parents sent me there when I was sixteen to marry Menelaus." Never mind the fact that Helen was actually from Sparta, and Menelaus from Mycenae, who inherited the throne when he married her. And never mentioned is the Oath of Tyndareus, in which all of Helen's suitors pledged to protect her marriage, which Agamemnon and Menelaus invoked after Helen left for Troy. My guess would be this is because it would reveal the fact that Helen herself actually chose to marry Menelaus, and we simply cannot have that.
Paris himself is glorified in a way that he certainly does not deserve. In the movie he is the one to suggest fighting Menelaus one-on-one, and rather than going home to have a nooner with Helen like in the book and being yelled at by Hector, in the movie he cowers behind his brother's legs and Hector says nothing. Such a scene epitomizes how the movie treats Paris, like this naïve but well-intentioned hero. Rather than being hated by the city for instigating a war against them like in the book, Paris is loved by Troy. Which makes no sense.
The movie omits, or worse gets wrong, simple details that would have enriched it. For example, they constantly show the ancient Greek burial rituals-and get it wrong every time! I knew this because the fact was explained in a Greek mythology book that I'd read in grade school-grade school, for crying out loud. Speaking of grade school, the knowledge of mythology itself appears to be at that level. The only gods mentioned are Apollo, Artemis, Zeus, etc-mainstream ones. They constantly refer to Charon, calling him the 'Boat Man.' I really was just waiting for someone to ask, 'You mean CHARON?'
Other things constantly screwed up are character backgrounds. I already mentioned Helen, and how I wish that would have been the only mistake. But, oh no, it was not. The most glaring to me was when Hector tells Paris an anecdote from when he was ten. In actuality, because he'd been predicted to be the downfall of Troy, Paris was raised as a shepherd until one day in his early adulthood, Cassandra recognized him as her brother and he was realized to be a prince of Troy. Okay, so maybe they were trying to be realistic, but it was these kinds of eccentric backgrounds that make Greek tales so magical.
SPOILER AHEAD
Far from beyond bastardizing Homer the movie goes on to kill off other stories. Let me just tell you that the movie kind of gets who lives and who dies totally opposite. The people who die live and the people who live die.
I can only think of a few that they got right.
Even if I hadn't known mythology I would have hated it. I like nudity and violence as much as the next person, but they overloaded it on you. And what was WITH that dialogue? Classical movies need classical dialogue... and don't even get me started on the music...