i saw the matinee today and while there was this old lady behind me who kept asking questions throughout the movie, i thought it was very easy to follow. while the names are hard to remember and spell, their faces are not, so it's quite easy to follow who is who and how each of them are related.

overall, i thought it was an awesome movie... great, great fight sequences. the first battle scene had me worried because the camerawork was a little shaky, but after that everything is very smooth and fluid.

if you like either braveheart or gladiator (or seeing brad pitt shirtless and sweaty... there's plenty of that), then you should definately see this movie.

oh, and seretogis... he is technically naked a few times, but you don't see much, maybe an asscheek or two... i don't know, i was looking at the hot chicks he was laying with. ;)

Has anyone else seen it yet?? I see that dirtyrascal7 liked it. Most of the reviews I've seen so far aren't being too kind. Roger Ebert wrote:

I'm going back and forth on whether to go see it or not this weekend.

I heard it was mediocre from the reviews ive read... but everyone ive talked to who has seen it has said "OMG GO SEE IT!"

so I shall go see it

I saw the movie and it is absolutely one of the best war movies Ive ever seen. Unbelievable... The war scenes are incredible, the scenery is fantastic... even though I read about this is my history books, I was on the edge of my seat waiting to see what would happen!

Outstanding! :thumbsup:

mediocre describes it for me. if you've read the actual story before, you'll have your usual complaints. for me, the movie just kinda fell apart with death after death. too many characters fell flat (paris and helen come to mind). the battle scenes were good, but it's nothing incredibly new. however, the fight between hector and achilles was pretty cool.

so yeah, sean bean and eric bana were probably my favorite characters in the movie. king priam was decent too.

I never read the books. With that said;

I thought they did a very weak job developing the char's in the movie. For the first hour and a half or so of the movie, I was truly unsure who was the "good guy" and who was the "Bad guy".

There were some very crude and harsh cuts from scene to scene.

The feeling i got from braveheart was a far better one, and i like it much better. Troy does still please my huge epic war movie needs.

Worth seeing to be sure.

That's what makes the movie so good. You can side with the Greeks, or the Trojans, and during the whole movie I was mixed on who I wanted to win (I of course knew the Greeks would,) but my heart went out to both Troy and Greece. The only real bad guy IMO was the King of Greece, who was an asshole.

Spoiler: I liked the way that they showed the existence of the gods as ambiguous. Did they exist? Or were they merely part of their culture. There were no direct scenes with the gods, but they always mentioned them.

It was a good movie, I thought that it ran a little long. Great fight scenes and wonderful visuals. 7.5 out of 10

this movie was the biggest doodie ever

i agree with you about paris, but not about helen. i thought they provided plenty of insight into what she was going through and how she was feeling considering she was depicted as only a supporting character in the movie.

paris, however, was grossly underdeveloped. i think that was mainly orlando bloom's fault, though... he really stunk it up. there were scenes with him where i thought he was going to sprout elf ears because he uses the same attitude, mannerisms, and accent that he used in LOTR (and pirates of the caribbean, too).

Orlando bloom was horrible in the movie, come to think of it.

yeah... worth seeing i suppose, especially considering what else is out right now. but, not an enduring classic by any stretch of the imagination.

i thought the trojan side of it was way underdeveloped. the greeks are underhanded enough to keep the viewer from liking them, but not enought time is spent on the trojans to like them either.

i don't really need a hero/villain story... but characterization was so one-dimensional (w/exception of hector) it was hard to care about anybody that much. the fighting was well choreographed but, again, characterization was too weak for it to mean much.

kudos to eric bana for propping the script up with the only performance capable of inspiring empathy. peterson should've used sean bean's odysseus more... the man has 3% of the greek dialogue but provides half the depth. bean always makes the most of what little he is usually given (boromir!).

doesnt it remind anyone of Scorpion King?

Just saw it, and I have no intention of watching it again. I've never been a fan of ancient Greece and all it's sagas and history so I may be biased, but I walked into this film expecting to walk out enjoying it. I was wrong. First things first, Sean Bean and Eric Bana are brilliant, I have massive amounts of respect for both these actors, it's a pity that everyone else was sub-standard.

The film didn't seem to know where it was going and the beginning of the Trojan War happened far too quickly, Menelaus and Agammenon say they will go to battle together and rally the nations together then the next scene has the ships sailing towards Troy! You do that in comedies.

The score was a shocker too, it tries to be Gladiator then it tries to be Star Wars, honestly, what the fuck? If you miss this movie you're not missing much... well, you do get to see Orlando Bloom get the shit kicked out of him which I guess in a way is worth the price of admission alone. Anyway 2/5.

Strays VERY far from The Iliad (people die that aren't supposed to, no mythological aspects, the war lasts a few days instead of 9+ years) but still a good movie.

Eric Bana as Hector takes the cake as far as acting / fitting the part goes, Sean Bean really fit the part of Odysseus too.

And yes, it was great to see Orlando Bloom grovelling and begging for mercy, however the bit right after

Spoiler: <span style="background-color: #FFF; color: #FFF;">Where hector kills Menelaus, Menelaus is supposed to survive the war and take Helen back</span>

was kinda shitty :(

I think this is why people either loved it or "ehhh" or hated it. While I had only bits and pieces of the original story, my wife has read the Iliad and knows the story well.

She hated it, l thought it was a good movie. She said is deviated to much from the original and ruined a good story line. I told her that to tell the real story would have turned the movie into a 3 part, 12 hour set of movies like LOTR was, and nobody would set to watch that much movie. LOTR yes because of the following it had, but not Troy.

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)...

I finally see the movie, almost wish I hadn't and never did...

I'd rather they make it like LOTR...really wish they would too...but then it'll cost wayyy too much.

You know, I was REALLY looking forward to this movie, and I was so disappointed. I thought the whole effort was very amateur, especially considering the budget this thing had. I was bored half-way through, as were the people I went with.

In my opinion, the script was awful, the camera work was shoddy, and the editing was pitiful. The only thing that made this remotely watchable was the actors who struggled to bring anything out of the hideous adaption.

but thats all just my $0.02

How did the war start anyways. I heard beauty contest and what I saw on the screen.

By the looks of it, im glad I dont read and have forgotten all the knowledge gained about the subject matter in high school =)

I enjoyed the film, the fight scenes had me excited much like in Gladiator. Brad Pitt just pulls off his character. I read the suggestion elsewhere that to do this story, LOTR type scale in a trilogy would be needed.

It seemed like the Disney version of The Iliad or something. They changed way too much and left out practically any references to the god's hands in the war. Plus, the war was a lot longer than 3 days.

Mr A -
Here's the dumbed down version from the mythos.

There was a wedding.
Discord wasn't invited.
Discord doesn't like this, so she throws a golden apple into the building.
The apple has the words "for the fairest" written on it.
Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite all claim the apple.
Zeus won't choose the winner, so Paris does (Aphrodite).
In return, Aphrodite gives Helen (taken from her home) to Paris.
Thus the war starts.
The war lasts 20 years.

Now the movie version.
The Greeks and the Trojans have made peace.
Paris is having an affair with Helen.
Paris takes Helen back home with him when he leaves.
The power-hungry Greeks follow.
Thus the war starts.
The war last 15 days.

takes a bitch to play a bitch

Screw Ebert, the movie was awesome. I think it was up there with movies like Gladiator and Braveheart, it was an awesome movie. Great fight choreography btw, I would have never thought it would take that much skill to fight with those kind of weapons until I saw Brad Pitt do it.

Hi, details on Brad Pitt's nakedness please. Enough of this other history-related nonsense.

I just watched this movie last night and I must say I liked it. I thought it was a good film and I'll probably buy it when itcomes out on dvd. And I for one will go ahead and defend Orlando Bloom and say that is was not he who sucked in the movie, but his character. I mean if he can make people hate his character he must have did something right. But overal I liked it, good film and I recommend that people see it.

He gets naked, no wang though.

Orlando Bloom annoys me, I can readily admit when I see an attractive man and Orlando Bloom is not one of those, he's not ugly but he's certainly not as beautiful as all the young girls think he is, he's bloody 28 years old. I went into the theatre longing to see the scene where he gets the beat down, and it was beautiful.

EDIT: Not saying that he's ugly 'cause he's old, just saying he's not the teen heart-throb people think he is.

Actually I read an article in USA Today that compared the movie to the books and this was debunked as well. This in fact was a custom attributed to their culture but did not originate until later as coins were not introduced till well after this time frame.

I think if you have not read the classics then you will probably stand a better chance of liking the movie than those who have. Just like with any other movie based on history or other media, those who are knowledgeable about the topic will spend most of the time picking it apart. You just have to look to the uprising among LOTR fans at the absence of Tom to see an example. I thought the movie was good, the fight scenes were some of the best I have seen recently.

I didn't like this movie.. the acting by the primary characters was iffy, except for Eric Bana (he's great!).. the action was good, but you can get action sequences in any movie these days.

I liked the movie.. They strayed from myth, but come on.. the myth was based on the reality, therefore you can stray as much as you want.. The effects were realistic, the acting was good (Priam deserves an Oscar)

One word: underwhelming. The whole thing felt like it got caught up in its own grandeur, hoping that merely the scope of the movie would make it good--it didnt. It was entertaining, but not *good* by any means.

But Eric Bana and Sean Bean kicked ass.

Like many have said, it does NOT follow the historical Illiad, so once I just resolved my issues with that and pretended it was an entirely different made up story, I thought it was fine. The no clear-cut villian really put some of the meat into the story, because people weren't just ruled out. The scene with Achilles and the King of Troy, I think, was one of the best in the film.