Big historical epics are my kind of films, and I’ll always go and see them. We went through a long phase of not really getting the sword and sandals epics of old, until Ridley Scott made Gladiator a few years ago. I remember when we used to get massive TV movies set in Roman times, like Masada – real event television.
Anyway, it all disappeared, with maybe the odd Hallmark production showing up now and again for better, or more likely, for worse despite the all star casts.
Now we’re in a CGI age, and along comes Troy. So straight down to catch an early preview (ie. a showing which will count towards next weekend’s box office take, in one of those strange movie accountancy ways).
The trailer really didn’t do it for me in this instance, but I went along with it anyway, because Wolfgang Peterson has done some pretty good stuff in the past, like Das Boot.
The dialogue at times is more than a little clunky, particularly at the beginning. And of course we’ve got the usual question of what accent did the ancient Greeks use when they spoke English? Well obviously, we’ve all been brought up to expect received pronunciation. So it’s a little unsettling to hear Brad Pitt speak with an American accent, while the largely British remaining cast all speak with regional British accents to one extent or another. Brian Cox as Agamemnon has a Scottish lilt, and Sean Pertwee has his god-given Yorkshire accent. Eric Bana doesn’t speak in an Australian accent, and Diane Kruger as Helen, certainly doesn’t have a German accent. But European accents are fine, while American accents aren’t for this fare I’m afraid!
I suppose the biggest problem with a film like this, is that you don’t especially like any of the characters that much. Orlando Bloom’s Paris has taken Menelaus’ wife Helen back to Troy. Menelaus seems to be something of a dirty oold man since he’s old enough to be her father. But Paris is a spoilt child. Achilles isn’t interested in anyone but himself. Agamemnon is an empire builder. Priam is a misguided individual. Helen is helpless. Only Hector is really likeable, and well, you probably know what happens to him…
The tale is well told, even if events have been somewhat tightened up timewise. And the story runs along nicely, although the wooden horse sequence seems a little tacked-on, with minimal build-up or tention derived from it. Yes we all know what happens, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t keep us on the edge of our seats.
The special effects are fairly well used – sparingly even – since Troy would have been quite small, we don’t need to see a city the size of Gladiator’s Rome. My main issue with the effects is that someone has watched the Lord of the Rings trilogy and tried to ape it. Except the numbers are now over the top. We’re told that a 1000 ships sail to Troy, and this seems to be about right when we see them. But they equate to around 50,000 troops, and the campsite seems pretty small all things considered. Then we see the massed ranks of the Greek and Trojan soldiers facing off for the various battle scenes, and we run into real trouble. 50,000 is a lot of people, but I was at Highbury yesterday to see Arsenal complete their historic unbeaten season, and there were 38,000 people in the stadium. While we might have all been fairly tightly packed in, even spread out, we wouldn’t have taken up that much room. The Stop The War march last year had nearly a million people marching – 20 times as many as the 50,000 here – and again, they took up comparatively little floor space. I guess that it all just looks good.
Anyway, I feel that I need to get back to Homer, for a slightly more enlightened viewpoint of the story. And complete sucker that I am, I’ll probably catch Sky Movies’ showing of Helen of Troy later this week.