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forsythI just watched Troy. Despite what some friends had said, it didn't suck.
I'm a geek though, so D&D comparisons for armor and stuff kept running through my head.
But aside from that, obviously, they deviated from the Illiad a number of places, they had to, it's too friggin long. Mostly, it was done well, I thought, though I need to find a prose copy of the Illiad and re-read it to spot all the differences. The biggest, I think, was the way they portrayed Achilles. And a bit of temporal editing, of course. But was it worth seeing? I think so, on the whole the settings were very well done, and the battle scenes felt realistic. They left out a lot, like, well, everything that had to do with the gods. No golden apple, nothing. Which I suppose has its good points, but it just makes Achilles out to be an uber fighter, not invulnerable like he was.
The other thing that stood out, and stood out in the original to me, was just "If guys like Hector and Odysseus were in charge, the war wouldn't be so stupid. And probably wouldn't have happened, either." But that's the thing about tragedy, especially Greek tragedy, once it starts, it's unstoppable like an avelanche, and everybody's doing what they think is the best, right thing to do by what they know, they're all just missing important bits of information, and so keep screwing up worse.
I'll reflect on it more when it's not 2AM, maybe.
Tags: Movies
I'm a geek though, so D&D comparisons for armor and stuff kept running through my head.
But aside from that, obviously, they deviated from the Illiad a number of places, they had to, it's too friggin long. Mostly, it was done well, I thought, though I need to find a prose copy of the Illiad and re-read it to spot all the differences. The biggest, I think, was the way they portrayed Achilles. And a bit of temporal editing, of course. But was it worth seeing? I think so, on the whole the settings were very well done, and the battle scenes felt realistic. They left out a lot, like, well, everything that had to do with the gods. No golden apple, nothing. Which I suppose has its good points, but it just makes Achilles out to be an uber fighter, not invulnerable like he was.
The other thing that stood out, and stood out in the original to me, was just "If guys like Hector and Odysseus were in charge, the war wouldn't be so stupid. And probably wouldn't have happened, either." But that's the thing about tragedy, especially Greek tragedy, once it starts, it's unstoppable like an avelanche, and everybody's doing what they think is the best, right thing to do by what they know, they're all just missing important bits of information, and so keep screwing up worse.
I'll reflect on it more when it's not 2AM, maybe.
Tags: Movies
