|
Good Lord and butter, that movie sucked.
my thoughts: spoilers below.
character screw ups:
Paris: womanizer.
Cassandra: who's she?
Agammemnon: think of a very short mix of Brian Blessed and Ted Kennedy (with deep apologies to the good Mr. Blessed) who's trying to act like Alexander the Great.
Achilles: oy. remember the argument over Briseis? that's now about half the movie.
don't even get me started on the timeline or the way the myths (The Iliad, especially) were disregarded.
during the "main" fight between Achilles and Hector, which looked obviously staged, it appeared that Achilles was doing snake and crane forms of kung fu (albeit with weaponry), while Hector tried tai chi chuan. also, Aeneas. showed up for mebbe 10 seconds near the end of the film, as a boy, dragging Anchises along behind him. Paris then gave him "the sword of the Trojans", and made some sappy speech.
which brings me to the next point: the music. never since star wars episode 1 have I heard such a blatant ... misuse/dishonoring of music, in order to achieve effect.
now you may be asking: with all this crap, is there any reason at all to go see this movie?
and the answer, suprisingly, is yes. yes, the movie sucked, and sucked hard, from artistic, aesthetic, cinematic, and however many other points of view you want to name.
but. the fire effects were decent. also, the filmmakers actually thought about the roman culture enough to include the custom of placing coins on the eyes of the dead to pay Charon.
Overall, though, that's not enough to go see the movie for. unless you're going for free, or have nothing, and I do mean nothing, better to do. In closing, it seemed as if the filmmaker handed a copy of the Iliad to Britney Spears and said "here. paraphrase this." Then, after looking at that paraphrase, they said "no, it's too good. it'll never sell to mass audiences." So they gave that paraphrase to Jessica Simpson, and said "here, you paraphrase this."
Other than that, I expected more from the guy who produced "Das Boot" (if memory serves, it's the same guy)...
__________________
Being intelligent is not a felony. But most societies evaluate it as at least a misdemeanor.
-- Robert Heinlein
|