Homer as Hollywood ...

[saavedra77]

Funny thing: I find that I really appreciated some of the ways that Troy recycles the Iliad as a typical Hollywood blockbuster.  Not all, but some: Cheesier moves include turning Homer's berserk Uber-warrior Akhilleus into a Bronze Age James Dean (pandering, but forgivable) & Akhilleus' boytoy Patroklos into his "cousin" (lame, but predictable); cooler moves include dispensing with Homer's severely knuckle-dragging attitude toward women. 
 
Let's face it, gender relations are pretty brutal in Homer: women are portrayed as a kind of property that men fight over; their opinions are rarely considered.  Helen's desertion of Menelaos disrupts this customary arrangement, & no one but Paris seems to be especially pleased with the results.  Homer is much more sympathetic to manly-man Menelaos' demand to have his booty back than to Paris' "I'm a lover/Not a fighter" attitude.  In the Iliad, Briseis is little more than a trophy that Akhilleus & Agamemnon fight over.  Akhilleus feels more entitled to her because Agamemnon already got one sex slave out of the preceding battle--why should he  get all the booty?!  On the other hand, Agamemnon wants to put Akhilleus in his place.
 
Troy doesn't exactly shy away from showing us this kind of patriarchal brutality: the film's script makes it clear that Helen was given to Menelaos against her will, and Brendan Gleeson's Menelaos comes across as an absolute ogre. 
 
On the other hand, Troy renders Akhilleus as a kind of romantic hero, nobly defending Briseis from real knuckle-draggers like Agamemnon.  That Akhilleus is light-years from Homer's: the character at the center of the Iliad is a berserker, proud, intense, possessive, volatile, cruel.  We should feel terrified when he's screaming for Hektor's blood, & nobody should weep when he's finally brought down--least of all Briseis, who got no better treatment from him than she got from Agamemnon. 
 
The film also rewrites Akhilleus' relationship with Patroklos to paper over any suggestion of homoeroticism, referring to the young man as Akhilleus' "cousin."  The paper's pretty thin, though: Patroklos' death still elicits a noticeably more passionate response from Akhilleus than the fight over Briseis, sending him on a collision course with Hektor.  So I guess that I won't complain about that too much either.
 
Overall, I can live with the tragically hip Akhilleus--because it enables Briseis to be (slightly) more than a trophy.  & I appreciated the decision to downgrade Menelaos from wronged husband to misogynist thug, because it means that Helen's choice of Paris (although tragic in its consequences) isn't portrayed as a violation of every macho asshole's inviolable right to his sex slaves.