Troy

B

BlackJack2064

Spaceman
I went and watched it, what did everyone think.

I thought it was pretty good, I liked how you got the feeling of Achilles invincibilty by the old credo "don't get hit", his speed. It was a little long, and you get plenty of near naked shots of Brad if you are into that kind of thing, but all in all a pretty good movie. Eric Bana was pretty cool too, just a little to much drama.

I hope they make more, dealing with Homer's (I think that is it, been awhile), it would be great to see a flick with oddyseus (don't complain if I spelled it wrong lol), Sean Bean was a good choice, I think he is badass, he was even a Bond Villian.

Pitch in your two cents anyone. (I know that is what you are good at)

Oh and for all you WC fans, Saffron Burrows was in it, she played Hector's wife.
 
Troy..... Somehow that name will always bring me right back in the cockpit of the Tarsus :)

Speaking of Hollywood though, am I missing something here or did John Woo pinch the names Castor and Palloux Troy in Face Off from Privateer?

Sorry, I desgress. No I haven't seen it yet, but I sure will.
 
I was supposed to go watch it on opening day (as seen in this few days old thread of the same name ;) ), but other things came up. I heard that Bana was great as Hector and the often under-rated Sean Bean was wonderful in his limited role as Odysseus. Other than that, I haven't heard very good things. I'll still go see it, but not for a long while.

C-ya
 
Speaking of Hollywood though, am I missing something here or did John Woo pinch the names Castor and Palloux Troy in Face Off from Privateer?
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Yes. Detroit, Michigan is also named after New Detroit from Privateer.
 
Troy... ugh.

Okay, I suppose it was an okay film, but a horrible adaptation of Greek mythology/legend. I could make a big list about everything that was wrong, but I've already done that (link in my sig), so I won't bother.
 
Very rarely does hollywood get it right, even with LOTR, it was changed for whatever reasons.

Bana did do a good job, and Bean, well he is just cool.
 
Very rarely does hollywood get it right, even with LOTR, it was changed for whatever reasons.

It's one thing to change minor details in a 50 year old novel, quite another to completey destroy a 3000 year old epic, part of which is considered one of the first great pieces of literature ever (the stuff covered by The Iliad, of course).
 
In a few thousand years LOTR might be considered one of the greatest pieces of literature ever writtten, only time will tell.

Troy was kind of weird that there was no mystiscm in it, the gods were only there for faith, none of the awe and magic that were in the Illiad. Not to say it was necessarily bad.

I read something today that hinted towards the Oddessey.
 
Dralthi5 said:
It's one thing to change minor details in a 50 year old novel, quite another to completey destroy a 3000 year old epic, part of which is considered one of the first great pieces of literature ever (the stuff covered by The Iliad, of course).
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You forget that The Iliad, having been transmitted orally for hundreds of years, was already mangled beyond recognition long before you ever read it. Every time somebody retold The Iliad, he would make whatever changes he felt would make it more entertaining. Therefore, if Wolfgang Petersen made changes to The Iliad in order to make it more entertaining, he's not destroying The Iliad - he's making it better.
You may not agree (and, not yet having seen it, I might not either), and that of course is your right - but don't forget, there's a very high chance that Homer, or whoever it was that really created the original, would absolutely hate the work that today is called The Iliad. The original author might feel that his work had been completely destroyed. What you consider one of the first great pieces of literature ever, is just a really distorted photocopy of an original, which may have been a thousand times better, or a piece of shit that wouldn't have been even remembered had somebody not decided to alter it. For all you know, Troy may be closer to the original work than the written version of The Iliad is - not likely, but possible :p.

Finally, I would also like to point out that it is absolutely moronic to argue, as you seem to, that a work's age is an important factor in assessing its worth. No, the fact that The Lord of the Rings is a mere fifty years old does not make it inherently worse than The Iliad, in the same way that ancient cave art is not inherently better than Salvador Dali's paintings (though it certainly is better than most of today's so-called modern "art" ;)).
 
Art is only as good as the critics deem it to be.The biggest problem ( and perhaps therein lies the true value of art ) is getting the critics to agree.
 
Quarto said:
You forget that The Iliad, having been transmitted orally for hundreds of years, was already mangled beyond recognition long before you ever read it. Every time somebody retold The Iliad, he would make whatever changes he felt would make it more entertaining. Therefore, if Wolfgang Petersen made changes to The Iliad in order to make it more entertaining, he's not destroying The Iliad - he's making it better.
You may not agree (and, not yet having seen it, I might not either), and that of course is your right - but don't forget, there's a very high chance that Homer, or whoever it was that really created the original, would absolutely hate the work that today is called The Iliad. The original author might feel that his work had been completely destroyed. What you consider one of the first great pieces of literature ever, is just a really distorted photocopy of an original, which may have been a thousand times better, or a piece of shit that wouldn't have been even remembered had somebody not decided to alter it. For all you know, Troy may be closer to the original work than the written version of The Iliad is - not likely, but possible :p.

Finally, I would also like to point out that it is absolutely moronic to argue, as you seem to, that a work's age is an important factor in assessing its worth. No, the fact that The Lord of the Rings is a mere fifty years old does not make it inherently worse than The Iliad, in the same way that ancient cave art is not inherently better than Salvador Dali's paintings (though it certainly is better than most of today's so-called modern "art" ;)).
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Meh, you're reading too much into it. All's I'm saying is that the story of the Trojan War, no matter if Homer changed it or whatever, has been set in stone for a LONG time, and for a screenwriter to change it for entertainment purposes just seems unncessary.

And, no, I wasn't arguing that a work's age is important to its worth. The Lord of the Rings is awesome, and no worse than the Iliad, and to be called a moron for something I didn't say doesn't seem fair.

Anyway, I was more stressing the "minor details" part. If Troy had changed minor details of the story, I'd have been fine with that. But merging characters, killing them, and changing their personalities is just insulting to people who read and study classic literature. Oh, well. What's the difference to me besides six bucks (thank God for student discounts, or it'd be $8.50!)?
 
Dralthi5 said:
And, no, I wasn't arguing that a work's age is important to its worth. The Lord of the Rings is awesome, and no worse than the Iliad, and to be called a moron for something I didn't say doesn't seem fair.
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Well, you did say "it's one thing to change minor details in a 50 year old novel, quite another to completey destroy a 3000 year old epic". So, if a work's age is irrelevant, why did you mention it?

Anyway, I was more stressing the "minor details" part. If Troy had changed minor details of the story, I'd have been fine with that. But merging characters, killing them, and changing their personalities is just insulting to people who read and study classic literature. Oh, well. What's the difference to me besides six bucks (thank God for student discounts, or it'd be $8.50!)?
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Eh, adaptations are never exact. It's just not possible, and especially for film adaptations. Homer was working with words - he could describe long events in a few sentences. With film, you don't have that luxury - unless you want half of the film to consist of weird montage sequences, you gotta cut things out. What's more, cutting things out also means having to add things in - for example, if you remove five hours' worth of backstory, you gotta invent an alternative backstory that can be told in five minutes. Same thing with removing characters - if you don't have enough screen time to establish fifty different characters or whatever, you're certainly going to have to merge some of them with others. To judge the film as bad because it changes things is just not fair. You can criticise the film for changing things that could have worked unchanged (heck, I dislike the LoTR movies for precisely such reasons), you can even criticise the film for changing things one way instead of another, but you cannot criticise the film simply for changing things. Such changes are simply necessary.

In any case, I saw Troy today, and as shocking as it might sound, I think it's a good adaptation of The Iliad (though it could have been much better had the script not been so wooden). Why do I think so? Because it got the main themes across - pride, arrogance, revenge, blasphemy, et cetera. In particular, I liked the way it got across the implacability of the gods (without even a singly corny thunderbolt! Yay!), which after all is one of the more significant things in Greek mythology.
 
Achilles was a prideful bastard wasn't he lol. I didn't really feel sorry for him when he died, not after what he did to Hector in the film.
 
Quarto said:
Well, you did say "it's one thing to change minor details in a 50 year old novel, quite another to completey destroy a 3000 year old epic". So, if a work's age is irrelevant, why did you mention it?


Eh, adaptations are never exact. It's just not possible, and especially for film adaptations. Homer was working with words - he could describe long events in a few sentences. With film, you don't have that luxury - unless you want half of the film to consist of weird montage sequences, you gotta cut things out. What's more, cutting things out also means having to add things in - for example, if you remove five hours' worth of backstory, you gotta invent an alternative backstory that can be told in five minutes. Same thing with removing characters - if you don't have enough screen time to establish fifty different characters or whatever, you're certainly going to have to merge some of them with others. To judge the film as bad because it changes things is just not fair. You can criticise the film for changing things that could have worked unchanged (heck, I dislike the LoTR movies for precisely such reasons), you can even criticise the film for changing things one way instead of another, but you cannot criticise the film simply for changing things. Such changes are simply necessary.

In any case, I saw Troy today, and as shocking as it might sound, I think it's a good adaptation of The Iliad (though it could have been much better had the script not been so wooden). Why do I think so? Because it got the main themes across - pride, arrogance, revenge, blasphemy, et cetera. In particular, I liked the way it got across the implacability of the gods (without even a singly corny thunderbolt! Yay!), which after all is one of the more significant things in Greek mythology.
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Well, good for you if you thought it was a good adaptation. I didn't. And so what if I said "50 year old" novel? Who gives a shit, move on. Stop reading too much into things and arguing for the fucking sake of arguing. You don't need to write this big long post about adaptations being different than the source like I'm some sort of fucking child. I KNOW adaptations are different. And the changes in LOTR weren't drastic, and probably enhanced the story. Killing Menelaus and turning Briseis into Cassandra for no reason does not. And these are just EXAMPLES. So don't analyze it. Yeesh...

And, no, it wasn't a BAD movie because it changed the story. Gladiator completely fucked with history and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The changes were irritating and unnecessary, though. I thought it was BAD because Orlando Bloom and Brad Pitt gave unconvincing performances, in my opinion, Brian Cox as Agamemnon was WAY over the top, etc., etc. Now, enough, let's move on.
 
Dralthi5 said:
Well, good for you if you thought it was a good adaptation. I didn't. And so what if I said "50 year old" novel? Who gives a shit, move on. Stop reading too much into things and arguing for the fucking sake of arguing. You don't need to write this big long post about adaptations being different than the source like I'm some sort of fucking child. I
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You having a bad day or something? You stated an opinion. I explained why I disagree. You replied, I didn't agree with what you said, so I explained why I don't agree. I'm certainly not treating you like a child - but if I was, clearly I would be entirely justified, since that's how you're acting. What, did you expect that everybody would automatically agree with your opinion, and anybody that doesn't is "arguing for sake of arguing"? Why the hell are you even bothering to post here, if you don't want people to reply to you?

Now, keep talking about the film, or stop talking about the film, I don't care - but whatever you do, you better get yourself together and stop acting like a jerk.
 
I'd like to chime in and say that although Homer's Illiad was trasmited through oral tradition, it does NOT mean it was mangled. It was composed as an epic poem, and this form of expression was usually very efficient in avoiding noise in the communication. People would memorize the whole thing perfectly (human memory is wonderful when you have no written records) and teach to the new generations. The specific legends concerning the mythlogy would be changed through time and space (each region had different details for the same gods), but Epic poems were kept in pretty good shape. Of course we cannot affirm that what we came to know is EXACTLY what Homer (or whoever really created it) composed, but we know it is quite well preserved.

Mankind's mind worked differently from our back before we started writting stuff down, in how we deal with memory and information. Marshall McLuhan wrote a lot of very interesting stuff on that.

And please, as much as I like LotR, it is far from being one of the best LITERARY works ever. It might be a great and fascinating work of myth creation, but it is leaves somthing to be desired in several important literary aspects. Literary arts were far advanced in the time Tolkien did his work.

The Illiad and the Odissey are some of the very special stories that simply shaped our ways of thinking and being. So is Shakespeare, among a few others. Its value and importance will be imaculated as long as mankind exists and has any form of memory.

PS: I have not watched the movie, but I've read someone I respect saying that it is stripped from several qualities found in Homer's book. Perhaps if Ridley Scott had done it...
 
I saw it yesterday (in the most beautiful movie theater I have been to yet) and it thought it ok. I thought it'd be more epic but it's not bad that it wasn't. I like Brad Pitt's performance in the first half: he really was the arrogant super warrior who gets easily insulted and is just seeking glory, just like I learned about him in school. But starting from the point when he turned "soft" I didn't like it too much.

Bandit LOAF said:
Is Troy an adaptation of The Iliad, or just the war in general? (Haven't seen it yet).
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It's pretty much only the war. You get a brief introduction of how Agammenon conquers the whole of Greece before you get into the Helena/Paris story.
 
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