There will be more when I get around to it. Cleopatra, Spartacus, Ben Hur, Quo Vadis: each and every one at least as good as Plan Nine from Outer Space.
Overall an enjoyable movie. I came with the attitude of "I’d better see it, since it is in my area" but was pleasantly surprised. I generally don’t much like historical movies set in the eras I teach, especially ancient history. But then again, this is ancient mythology, not ancient history. First off, I need to say a few things. The movie is not a great psychological drama, nor does it probe the psyche for the ultimate meaning of life and death. This is an action movie with lots of battle scenes, killing, blood, and gore. If you really don’t like these things, you really won’t like this movie. Another thing, despite a comment in the credits that the movie was inspired by "Homer’s Iliad" this movie is not a filmed version of the Iliad. The Iliad takes place during a few weeks in the ninth year of the Trojan War. Troy does the entire war.
The movie in general avoided the mythology, making Achilles simply a very good warrior and leaving the divinity issues ambiguous. In an early scene, Achilles’ mother is in shallow waters collecting shells for a shell necklace like the one Achilles was wearing. Is she a goddess? Another scene has someone suggesting that Achilles cannot be killed because he is a semi-divinity. All that is left very vague. There are no gods and goddesses coming down and participating in the war, hurling thunderbolts or any such. The various scenes (Paris the ladies’ man, Hector the warrior, Achilles the quintessential warrior, the huge, impenetrable walls of Troy, the haughtiness of Agamemnon, mistaken identity of Patroclus for Achilles, the role of Briseis, the cleverness of Odysseus, Achilles getting first wounded by Paris’ arrow in the heel, are all presented as material that could lead ultimately to legends and mythology. Agamemnon is called "King of Kings" a fair equivalence of "anax andron" (King of Men), Homer's epithet for him. There was no reference to Achilles being fleet-footed, however. I was a bit disappointed, but one did see him doing a lot of running into battle, particularly in the opening scene, which was delightfully short. The movie also stayed reasonably true to the general sequence of events from the Iliad and other Trojan stories with some exceptions as noted below.
A number of things in the movie were done well.
First thing I noticed: no stirrups! That is great, as stirrups don’t appear until the 8th century AD. There were no saddles, either, which helped. There were a few light chariots, which fits nicely with Mycenaean depictions.
Other weapons looked good, including the spears and the swords. Spears with large blades are shown on Mycenaean pottery, the swords are almost daggers and follow the shapes shown on incised jewelry and examples found in graves.
The oval shields with the concave bottoms used by the cavalrymen, slung over their shoulders and clearing the rumps of the horses–nice justification! The shield with the notches aren’t quite right but are a fair adaptation of the Mycenaean "figure eight" shields. The way the notches were used in battle was very good, I thought.
The main battle scenes were very well done. I especially liked the Greeks running into battle and pushing into the lines of the defenders. That is precisely how later Greek armies worked. At one point I thought things looked too disorderly, but then leaders are shouting "reform your lines." That was good.
The "champion" battles were nicely done–follows the Homeric tradition of aristocratic honor.
The "champion" battles didn’t go on and on the way that Hollywood tends to drag out individual fight scenes. In fact, even the Achilles vs. Hector fight isn’t as long as Homer makes it in the Iliad
The cups being used are based on items found in archaeological digs. There were also a number of Mycenaean items shown in the backgrounds.
The jewelry worn by the Trojan women was based on the "Trojan gold" found by Heinrich Schliemann and now on display in Russia. Although it actually dates from Troy II (a millennium earlier) it is still a nice linkage.
The ships plowing into the sand was nice, but I am not sure on this. Looked good, anyway!
The walls of Troy, lower parts, anyway, look a lot like the surviving bits of Troy VI.
My wife liked the Minoan-style touches in the architecture. I didn’t, especially the red-painted reverse tapered columns. They don’t fit what I know of Troy but would have been fine in Sparta or Mycenae (where they WERE used). I have noticed that in "reconstruction" drawings of Troy from that era, that the artists use the Minoan-style columns, so the movie using them is ok, I guess.
I was pleased that they didn’t try to go for the easy movie bit of the bare-breasted Minoan priestess costumes.
The funeral pyres were good, although where they kept getting all the wood in this area filled with nothing but sand, I don’t understand.
The horse was done up as a roughly slapped together construction and was brought into the city on log rollers. Makes a lot more sense than wheels!
I’d wondered about the huge size of the city gates (way larger than would have been, but this allowed the horse to be brought into the city without the ancient stories’ idiocy of tearing down part of the wall to bring it in.
Some errors or other things that don’t fit well:
Most egregious error: coins on the eyes of the dead for funeral pyres. Nice trick, since coinage was invented in the 8th century BC, a good 4 centuries after the Trojan War (about 1200).
The sense of timing wasn’t done well. There would have been weeks at least between Helen arriving at Troy and the Greeks showing up. There is too much of a sense that Paris says to Priam, "meet Helen" and "Ohmigod the Greeks are here."
There were clear implications that Mycenae was virtually on the shore: it is considerably inland.
Same with Sparta, though that wasn’t quite so clear.
Missed opportunity: when Menelaus went to Agamemnon, it would have been good to show the huge walls and the Lion Gate entrance to the fortress.
The audience hall at Mycenae (Agamemnon’s palace) should have been a megaron (squarish room with a central hearth), not the narrow room as depicted. There was one megaron shown, but I think it was in Troy, which isn’t accurate.
There is too much sand. Troy appears to be in the Sahara. Ancient armies foraged: what did the Greeks eat? Where did the Trojans get any food?
The landing of the Greeks looked like Normandy. Too much like Normandy. The ships looked awfully much like later Greek ships with rams. At least they weren't triremes, but the only depiction of Bronze Age ships that I know (from the Thera frescoes) don't have rams. The whole landing bit was overdone and again, too much sand.
Greeks doing homage to Agamemnon included someone offering a very nice red figure or black figure vase (I can’t remember which). Very nice touch, except that black figure pottery was invented in Athens in the early 6th century and red in the late 6th century B.C.
As long as the movie is following the general form of the myths, there were too many errors in who lived and died.
- Menelaus survived the war and went back to Sparta after adventures in Egypt.
- Agamemnon came home to a homecoming murder at the hands of his wife.
- Helen seems to have survived, but went back to Menelaus.
- Paris didn’t survive: there is implication that he did.
- Andromache (Hector’s wife–she wasn’t named in the movie) didn’t escape, nor did her son (Astyanax, also not named): he was tossed from the walls.
- Aeneas correctly does escape, together with father and son, but not with the made up "sword of Troy." At least according to the Roman stories, he goes on to be the progenitor of the Romans, so I guess that is OK.
All in all, despite the picky analysis, I did enjoy the movie. There are some spectacular scenes, clever touches (tents over the ships and a very roughly made horse), and very subtle use of special effects (I’m assuming a lot of the soldiers were computer generated). Motivation is nicely handled to rationalize the myths. It helps to know the stories, but even without, I think the movie would be enjoyable. Finally, there is a lot of eye candy here: Brad Pitt and whatever actresses who played Helen and Achilles’ girl Briseis.
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The initial battle scene on the northern frontier (this would be Aurelius’ last campaign vs. the Marcomani) was probably the best part of the picture. The military costuming and equipment were especially accurate, the fighting was intensely gruesome and bloody, as it should have been. The quibbles include a hard to determine Roman strategy (the cavalry, led by Maximus flanked the Germans and came in to slaughter them from behind as the main body of Roman infantry launched a frontal assault). All in all this was excellent, except that no horses seemed to get killed (very unlikely) and the dog survived unscathed (not a chance).
Once we get to Rome, the Colosseum recreation was well done. The other Roman bits seem to be well done, although the overviews seem to indicate exaggerated buildings. The overview, used in the intro and again in the movie was absolutely terrible. The view is overlooking the Colosseum toward the Capitoline Hill and the Tiber River, with mountains in the distance. Uh, the view West from the Colosseum would end in the Apennines, but the view East as this one is, should be showing water: the Mediterranean Sea!
On the historical side, Marcus Aurelius intended to leave the empire to his son, and even made excuses for him. Commodus didn't kill papa (the ancient smothering charge goes to Caligula for dispatching the ailing Tiberius on Capri). Commodus shouldn’t have been so interested in an incestuous relationship with Sis: he had a 300 boy/300 girl harem to keep him happy. This wasn’t even alluded to. This movie actually makes Commodus look good by comparison to his actual historical image! There is something seriously wrong about a movie about Commodus that got its "R" for violence instead of sex!
Commodus himself was bearded during his reign and had curly hair (as did Aurelius, btw, who looks like Obi-Wan Kenobi in the movie); he often fought in the arena as Hercules; and was well muscled, not a wimpy kind of guy as portrayed. He was killed by his wrestling partner in the baths, not by a gladiator in the arena.
The games themselves were interesting, even exciting at times. But they were just too far into fantasy land to be good in a historical sense.
There was, of course, no Maximus or anyone like him. There was a "Magnus Maximus" in the later 4th century, but that is another story altogether).
The time sequencing was really bad: Maximus rode like hell to get to Spain and his family, but the soldiers sent by Commodus beat him there. Give me a break. There were 12 years separating Commodus' ascension and his assassination, yet the movie doesn’t imply much more than a few months or a year or so from beginning to end.
And last but not least, a terrible bit of casting for Commodus. The man has a surgically repaired harelip. A triumph of modern medicine but not at all possible in the Roman era. At the very least with all the computer work on that movie, they could have taken out the scar frame by frame!
Spartacus is Stanley Kubrick's overdone adaptation of the gladiator/slave revolt of the late 60's BC Roman Republic. The movie does follow the gist of the revolt starting in the southern Italian gladiatorial schools and spreading to the slave and peasant population of southern Italy. Yes, Virginia, there was a Spartacus who led a massive revolt that frightened the Romans and led to a significant victory for Marcus Crassus. Kirk Douglas does a fine job of not acting while wearing a not very believable flattop haircut. An obligatory love story of Spartacus and a slave woman is featured, of course, to lure the romantic audience to the theaters. Lame dialog and a waste of some fine actors round out this large turkey. We are told at the end that Crassus is returning to Rome to become dictator (!) after defeating the gladiators. He also remarks that the young Caesar is one to watch.
Ben Hur is Charlton Heston's turn to prove he can't act. I really enjoyed this mega-picture when I was in the eighth grade. I've seen parts of it since (that was a big mistake). The story is Lew Wallace's (Civil War general) fictional account of a Jewish noble (Judah Ben Hur played by Heston) unjustly condemned to slavery who wins his freedom and returns for revenge against the Roman general who betrayed him. Along the way, there is a phony naval battle between the Romans and Macedonians (who haven't been independent for more than a century in A.D. 33, the supposed period of this story). After an improbable chariot race, Ben Hur helps Jesus on his way to crucifixion, finds that mother and sister are lepers, and witnesses their miraculous cure, presumably by Jesus from the cross. The movie has a nice recreation of the Circus Maximus, although it is presumably in Jerusalem (actually, should be Caesarea, but who's keeping score?) and pretty music. You might be able to catch this one near Easter if you are unlucky. Frankly, Heston was better in Bowling for Columbine when he got waylaid by Michael Moore. A better version of Ben Hur was done by SCTV in a half-hour segment with John Candy as Curly from the Three Stooges playing Ben Hur.
Quo Vadis, even earlier than the above, is another pseudo-Roman/Christian epic all about Romans, early Christians, and the reign of Nero. The movie features some of the worst acting outside an Ed Wood film. There are some redeeming features, however. Peter Ustinov is absolutely fabulous as Nero. His scenes are worth suffering through the rest of the movie. The highlight of the film is the fire of 64 in which most of Rome was destroyed, making this a cross (pun intended) between a religious epic and a disaster movie. As a result of this, Nero rounds up Christians and sends them to the lions, though without the true gore that a Sam Peckinpah would portray. It does appear that the Christians wind up in the Colosseum, however (a bit of a stretch, as the Colosseum wasn't built till some years after Nero's death). Again, you may catch this on the telly near Easter, but with a little luck you'll tune in for the Nero scenes only.
There are more pseudo-ancient efforts from Hollywood. It's probably better to rent a Jackie Chan movie instead.