Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy is grand, star-studded and visually impressive, but it never quite lives up to the epic that inspired it.
Key Points
- ‘That’s not how Achilles died! Hey, how come Paris is still alive after creating this entire mess and being the coward that he is? And why is the film treating him like some romantic hero?’
- ‘And Diane Kruger looks gorgeous as Helen, but why the need to turn her husband Menelaus into such a boor that you instinctively root against him?’
- ‘How many of you know that the original Iliad actually ends with Hector’s death and doesn’t feature Achilles’ fall, the ransacking of Troy, including the famous Trojan Horse, or Helen reuniting with Menelaus?’
Fun Fact: Christopher Nolan was once in the running to direct Troy, and while that never happened, the loss gave us The Dark Knight trilogy. So no complaints there.
Anyway, we had to wait 22 years to get a small idea of what Nolan’s Troy might have looked like, as he is now coming out with its sort-of sequel, The Odyssey. The thing is, if Troy annoyed purists after its release, then The Odyssey is doing the same with the suddenly ‘history’-loving incels even before its release.
Some have issues with Lupita Nyong’o’s and Elliot Page’s casting as Helen and Achilles respectively, while others are upset over Robert Pattinson’s Antinous using ‘daddy’ to taunt Tom Holland’s Telemachus over his father’s absence.
While it is funny to see so many suddenly become ‘history’ experts when analysing these films, first things first, mythology ain’t history. And how many of the complainers have actually bothered to read Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey?
Look, I haven’t read them in their proper editions, though I do remember reading the stories in a compiled volume back in college. Like the Mahabharata, I was quite taken with this Greek tale of gods and warriors, of a war fought for years over a woman, and of an adventure across the seas that spanned dangers and decades just to return home.
But like many others, I was under a huge misconception then. I’ll get to that in a moment.
Revisiting Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy
It was in 2004 when Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy came to theatres. The film had generated quite a buzz then.
One, because it starred Brad Pitt, who was hugely popular among the then-young crowd.
Secondly, because it was reported that Aishwarya Rai, who was trying her luck in Hollywood then, had been approached for a role but turned it down as she was uncomfortable with the love scenes involving Brad Pitt. The character was Briseis, a role eventually played by Rose Byrne.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t watch Troy on the big screen at the time. When I finally caught Troy, I think on television, my first thought after it ended was, ‘This ain’t what I read!’ Which was exactly what most reviews of the film were saying.
The movie took major liberties with the story people were familiar with, including the characters and their fates.
So I was like, ‘That’s not how Achilles died! Hey, how come Paris is still alive after creating this entire mess and being the coward that he is? And why is the film treating him like some romantic hero? And my, Diane Kruger looks gorgeous as Helen, but why the need to turn her husband Menelaus into such a boor that you instinctively root against him?’
I think the only characters who came close to their literary counterparts were Agamemnon and Hector. The rest were major deviations.
Then, 20 years later, it wasn’t much of a surprise when I realised who had written the screenplay: David Benioff. Benioff is best known as one of the showrunners of Game of Thrones, and he is also known for deviating from the source material and earning criticism for it. Just see the show’s final season.
At least Benioff had a reason there. George R R Martin hadn’t completed his A Song of Ice and Fire saga, and still hasn’t. But that’s no excuse for Troy.
The Grounded Treatment
Here’s where I wanted to talk about an oversight that not many people may know. How many of you know that the original Iliad actually ends with Hector’s death and doesn’t feature Achilles’ fall, the ransacking of Troy, including the famous Trojan Horse, or Helen reuniting with Menelaus?
In fact, what we know of the conclusion of the Trojan War comes from a different source, Quintus Smyrnaeus’ Posthomerica, which fills the gap with the events between Hector’s funeral and Odysseus’ long journey back to Ithaca.
There is even a widely discussed theory nowadays that, much like Chanakya, Homer’s identity may not belong to a single individual. Well, now you can’t exactly blame Petersen and Benioff for deviating from Homer, can you?
Armed with this new perspective, I revisited Troy in anticipation of The Odyssey, and my feelings hadn’t really changed. Look, I didn’t mind the grounded treatment given to Troy, stripping away the gods and goddesses and and dissolve their involvement in influencing the saga. Troy thus turns into just a story about men waging war over their prickly egos, and, of course, blaming the woman. Not a bad idea.
But in the process, the film also strips many of these characters of what made them interesting in the first place, even reducing their importance to the plot.
Menelaus was a wronged king in the original tale. The betrayal he felt from both his wife and a man he considered an ally was understandable. In the movie, Menelaus (Brendan Gleeson) is boorish and utterly unlikeable, making it easy to root for Helen (Diane Kruger) to elope with the chocolate-boy Paris (Orlando Bloom, fresh off his breakout success in The Lord of the Rings films).
What’s more, Menelaus is written out of the film rather early, and so is Ajax (Tyler Mane), one of the most formidable Greek warriors, just so Hector (Eric Bana) can establish his own reputation.
Briseis is no longer merely a priest’s daughter either. She is made the cousin of Paris and Hector so that her role carries greater emotional weight to Achilles’ arc.
Save for Achilles and, to some extent, Odysseus (Sean Bean), it is hard to root for the Greek army, making the Trojan side feel far more sympathetic. The original text never kept its sides so neatly defined. It showed that there were good eggs and bad eggs on both sides.
Troy, however, becomes more about Achilles, and more interested in serving Brad Pitt’s star power than the larger story. Never mind that Pitt himself was vocally unhappy making the film.
Character Portrayals and Deviations
But does the film do Achilles justice? Not exactly.
In mythology, Achilles is a warrior whose entire life is defined by the prophecy of his early death, a strange irony for someone destined to become the greatest warrior of his age. In the film, that prophecy barely matters. There are vague allusions to him being the son of a goddess, but he dismisses them, and his character arc is instead tied more closely to his romance with Briseis.
He becomes a conventional hero who emerges as the face of the war rather than simply one of its greatest warriors.
Brad Pitt is formidable in the role and brings enough star aura to carry the film, but the richer character arc belongs to Hector. He is instantly likeable, loyal to his wife Andromache (Saffron Burrows), unhappy with his brother’s elopement with his ally’s wife, and yet grudgingly supportive of him, while remaining a great warrior to the very end.
There is one crucial change to his character when he rescues Paris from certain death during his duel with Menelaus. In the original story, it is the goddess Aphrodite who intervenes. While this goes against Hector’s warrior code, his decision to save his brother feels completely in sync with the man the film has built, making him more humane, even if it eventually leads to the destruction of his city. Bana is superb in the role, and the film’s finest moments belong to him.
In fact, Troy works best whenever it stays closer to the original lore. The duel between Hector and Patroclus (Garrett Hedlund), whom Hector mistakes for Achilles, is a terrific sequence.
Even better is the film’s centrepiece, the gruelling duel between Hector and Achilles, with Pitt and Bana performing almost the entire sequence themselves without body doubles.
The scene where Hector’s father Priam (the late Peter O’Toole, who also reportedly disliked the film) visits Achilles’ camp afterwards is another beautifully acted moment.
The finale, however, is disappointing, diverging far too much from the familiar lore while remaining firmly Achilles-centric. It certainly fits what the movie had been trying to achieve, but since that approach wasn’t entirely working in the first place, Troy‘s climax also suffers, ending on a rather melodramatic note.
Why Troy is Still An Entertaining Movie
I’m not saying I hated Troy. Its visual ambition remains genuinely impressive, especially during the battle scenes. With more and more films now being shot inside green-screen studios, you can’t deny the scale and authenticity that come from staging battle scenes in real locations with actual extras. Of course, the production troubles Troy endured to achieve that are also why studios now prefer the safer route.
The film even opens with a quiet anti-war statement, following a dog wandering across a blood-ravaged battlefield littered with the bodies of both men and animals.
I watched the director’s cut, which runs for over three hours, and while there are pacing issues here and there, it never felt excessively stretched. The longer version also improves a few individual moments, like Odysseus’ introduction, and yes, it contains more blood, violence and considerably more skin (gender no bar) than the theatrical cut.
If you aren’t familiar with the original tales, I think there’s enough here to entertain you even in this stripped-down swords-and-sandals version.
It’s just that, considering the talent involved and the epic it was trying to bring to the screen, Troy never quite feels good enough, especially when you realise it arrived sandwiched between Ridley Scott’s Gladiator and Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy, films that set a far higher benchmark for historical and mythological spectacle.
And sure, I also understand why some people are now favouring Troy over The Odyssey, because this presents a totally heterosexual version (Patroclus becomes Achilles’ cousin, instead of his errr.. ‘closest companion’) of the lore, without a single prominent actor of colour in sight. A win for ‘prude’ presentation, indeed!
Photographs curated by Manisha Kotian/Rediff
