Hello again everyone. Dropping back in as is my usual habit during my breaks from law school at the University of Alabama.
I wanted to share a few thoughts and a bit of my excitement over the trailer I saw during exams for the upcoming movie based (closely, I hope) on The Iliad. I�m going to keep this post restricted to the casting choices because we don�t have enough information about the plot yet to say anything meaningful about the screeenwriters� choices. I also don�t want to get into the plot intricities of the events leading to the war against Troy. I�m happy though to clarify to anyone who requests. Just to let you know now, THERE ARE SOME SPOILERS REGARDING THE OUTCOME OF THE WAR AGAINST TROY. (Not sure the outcome of a 3 millenia-old war necessitates a $, but just covering my bases.)
The main character of The Iliad is �Swift Footed� Achilles, the child of the sea nymph Thetis and the aging Argonaught Peleus. They chose Brad Pitt for the part. I think this was generally a good call, with some exceptions that only a classicist would have. When I looked at who was playing Thetis, I found her on the Internet Movie Database and pulled up a picture of her when she was a few decades younger. The profile shot from that particular movie looked pretty striking to me. Like a dough-ier version of Pitt. (Don�t get me wrong, nothing bad about women with some meat on them; you just get used to seeing size 0 women on the screen long enough and size 12 Marilyn Monroe will look fat to you.) Achilles, if I remember my Iliad correctly, was a fairly willowy looking guy: he is, after all, a sprinter. In fact he was so good at running that when he was being raised by the centaur Chiron he would accompany his teacher hunting and simply outrun the dear and strangle them to death. No need for the 4 year old to use weapons. This brings me to quibble of mine: Achilles is really supposed to be at most 25 years old at the time of his death. Remember that it�s his parents� wedding where the goddess Eris throws the golden apple on the table that the goddesses all want, and who somewhere ten years later get a judgment from Paris as to who is the fairest. Add ten years of war and you get approximately 20 years. Pitt�s a tad old for the part. That said though, they could have done much worse than Pitt and I think he could definitely pull off the spoiled child routine well for the film�s Book 6 stage where the Greeks almost get their ships burned to the sand when Achilles won�t fight.
Paris, played by Orlando Bloom, I think is a masterful choice, though not for the reasons others have been saying (usually consisting of He�s such a hunk!). Paris was really thought of poorly by the ancient Greeks. This guy had the opportunity to be the greatest king in Troy�s history or conquer all his home�s enemies. And what did he chose? His libido. A bit selfish if you ask me. It�s the equivalent to asking someone today if they had the choice between being the greatest president the United States ever had and leading the nation to social justice, winning the war against Islamofascism, or getting to marry Catherine Zeta Jones, which would they choose? Paris was described as a pretty boy, very girly, and a poor warrior (I think he was an archer, not the honored up-close-and-personal soldier his brother Hector was). I especially like his peach fuzz mustache. Goes great with what the character is supposed to be like, compared to his heroic brother, who has enough hair on him to qualify as a werewolf. Granted, Bloom has the Lord of the Rings under his belt so he�s going to get some cool fight scenes for sure that I think would not be in keeping with the ancients� conception of him, but overall I think they made the right choice. My problem is that they are almost going to try to make his character more admirable than it really is supposed to be. I sense a tad disappointment on the horizon regarding this one, but I am keeping my fingers crossed.
Hector, played by Eric Bana, seems to me to be one of the better choices. He�s kind of the Robert E. Lee of the city of Troy: thought the war was stupid, they should just give her back, but would not dare turn on his brethren by sitting out. Looking at the one good shot of him in the trailer, I think he was the right choice to play Bloom�s brother. And he�s got the physique and chivalrous look to match. Though I�ve always rooted for the Greeks whenever I read The Iliad (sorry, I think what Paris and Helen did was just wrong, wrong, wrong, and he deserved to get his butt kicked, and his family should never have intervened in the struggle after he broke the sacred social norm of hospitality when he snuck into Sparta to steal Helen, sorry, enough political opinions of mine), I�m going to be really sorry to see Eric Bana dragged around the walls of Troy three times by a bit-perturbed Brad Pitt. I suppose my only problem with him is his mild voice: I heard him for the first time really talk in The Hulk. Not much of an orator. He�s much more the silent sullen warrior type. You can see it in Blackhawk Down too when he�s playing a Delta Force operative. But I think this was still a great choice. I�m going to stop complaining about Bana.
The choices for the brothers Agamemnon and Menelaus are a little troubling to me. I was going to scream bloody murder if they didn�t choose someone for the latter role who didn�t have red hair (Menelaus is described clearly in The Iliad as being red haired), but they got that right. My problem with them is the age: they�re both played by fairly old men. It kind of makes them look like pedophiles when you see how young looking the actress playing Helen is. Also, in Book 3 (I think) of The Iliad, Menelaus and Hector go one-on-one for a title bout that Menelaus only loses because Aphrodite plucks Hector out when he�s about to lose. The guy playing Menelaus is the same one who played John C. McCloy on MI-2. I just find it difficult to see the guy who got really intimidated by the thought of losing money would be able to take on someone looking like Eric Bana. Then again, that�s an episode in the epic easily taken out to make space for other events. All that said, the one shot we see of Agamemnon is exactly the kind of look I would expect for the character: haughty, overconfident, deferred to, a guy perfectly willing to sacrifice his daughter to get his war started, but ultimately in over his head.
Odysseus is being played by Sean Bean. I�m kind of torn on this one. He�s got the smoldering dissatisfaction necessary to play the part (Odysseus had to be dragged kicking and screaming, figuratively, into the war), but the guy just doesn�t look Greek! Granted, this cast is as Anglo looking as you can get, but I think with his looks as they stand, they�re pushing it a little. That said, Odysseus only has bit parts to play in The Iliad until he thinks up the Trojan Horse, which technically comes after The Iliad, coming from sources ancillary to the epic. And from the IMDb entry on the movie, they are really trying to fit in every hero they can into this, so he really might be a peripheral character. We�ll just have to see. (On a side note, I did not see one of my favorite characters with a credit in IMDb: Diomedes, generally considered the #3 warrior among the Greeks, after Achilles and Ajax the Greater; he�s also a frequent collaborator with Odysseus; he was good enough to have his own epic, The Diomeid, which we�ve lost; maybe they�re consolidating the roles. I hope not.) I think Russell Crowe would have been a better choice for this, but he would have stolen the show, and this movie is supposed to be an ensemble cast. I respect their decision even if I would have done differently. Bean�s still a good actor. Better than he gets credit for sometimes.
The women of Troy we don�t see much of. I didn�t see much of a Hecuba-looking character in there anywhere. Helen is played by a young model. People are complaining she might not be a good actress, but to me it�s not so important: the point of The Iliad was not Helen, it was a story of wrath, of the norm or hospitality, of the change from a primitive legal system to something more akin to our own, and of an explanation of why the Gods withdrew from the lives of the Greeks. The only way I could see it becoming a problem if they give her lots of lines. Andomache is played by Saffron Burrows. Haven�t personally seen her in anything before, but it will be interesting to see how she is played: she�s supposed to be an embodiment of the perfect wife tending the home fire while her husband attends to the defense of the household. But her character is one that could easily get swept under the rug in the task of fitting what ought to be a 12 hour movie into 2 and a half. There�s also a shot in the trailer of a woman in a blue dress looking upwards at some point. I can�t tell if this is supposed to be Andromache or not. Could be Chryseis about to get taken by Agamemnon (Bryseis is credited; I assume they would have to have her counterpart to make the beginning of the film conform to the epic�s beginning). I also thought it might be Cassandra looking at the Trojan Horse knowing what was about to happen (she had the power of prophesy as a gift from Apollo, but was doomed by him to never be listened to when she refused his advances).
Watch the trailer, if for nothing else the sheer epic scene in the first half. (Hint: The face that launched�) I�d love to hear what everyone else thinks of it.
Sol System: feel free to move this to the Flameboard if this topic gets too contentious.
Posted by The359 (Member # 37) on :
Oy, I got to the first paragraph, realized how long that was, and gave up.
All I know is that I more then likely wont be seeing that one in theaters. The quality of it seemed almost on par with all those recent TV movies about the same kind of stuff.
Also, isn't Brad Pitt in it? I can't remember anymore (I saw the Trailer back with either Kill Bill or the Matrix, can't remember which)
Posted by David Sands (Member # 132) on :
359: Sorry about the length. Just had a lot to say. Yeah, Brad Pitt's in it, subject of first big paragraph. I also share your fear this will turn into another horribly mangled version, like every movie made from Wuthering Heights or the Scarlett Letter. We shall see.
Posted by Malnurtured Snay (Member # 411) on :
Oh no. Oh, PLEASE no! Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
The thing is, Odysseus is supposed to be the original originator of cunning plans, as cunning as a fox who's just been appointed Professor of Cunning at Oxford University. I donm't really see Sean Bean as being all that cunning. . .
Ultimately, there's so little real character development and physical description in the Iliad, you can have pretty much anyone you want in the roles. Ten years ago Paris would have been Leonardo DiCaprio, Achilles Tom Cruise, Hector Alec Baldwin, Helen Michelle Pfeiffer. It doesn't matter whether Brad Pitt is miscast as Achilles, because he's the star and the film will be built around the fact that he's playing the main part.
The trailer is impressive, in its way. . . but then, we know that all those ships are just done by CGI, or multiplied by it anyway. Where's the wow factor in that? I really agree with Tarantino, who complained recently that the big problem these days is that CGI is used for things that used to be done with live action. Top Gun didn't need CGI. Indiana Jones didn't need CGI. Now they can't even have SpiderHYPHENman taking off his mask without it.
So, yeah. As a one-time classical scholar, I'll probably still go see Troy. And the various Alexander the Great films when they appear. I doubt I'll learn anything new form them, or anyone else will. It'll all come down to whether they're good films, and whether they're successful films.
Posted by David Sands (Member # 132) on :
Lee: since you know so much about the epics and you have a background in this, who would you pick for Odysseus? I'm curious because this was a big debate among my friends in college.
Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lee: The trailer is impressive, in its way. . . but then, we know that all those ships are just done by CGI, or multiplied by it anyway. Where's the wow factor in that?
I do sort of agree, but I think the challenge now is the direction. Take, say, "Severed Dreams" from B5. Obviously it's really old CGI now, but I still find it exciting, purely because of the direction. The ending of "Call To Arms", a mixture of CGI, is better than the ships in formation shot from "Favour the Bold", which was all CGI, not because of the model work in the former, but because of the direction.
And the beginning of the Troy did look cool.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
Brad Pitt should be Achilles in much the same way Danny Devito should be Malcom X. Hollywood continues it's long tradition of placing caucassians in epics of the aincent world, as if everybody was white in the aincent medeteranian area.
GO WHITEY!
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
quote:Originally posted by Malnurtured Snay: Oh no. Oh, PLEASE no!
At least three good moviies wll never be made to bring you that....
Posted by Wraith (Member # 779) on :
quote: The thing is, Odysseus is supposed to be the original originator of cunning plans, as cunning as a fox who's just been appointed Professor of Cunning at Oxford University. I donm't really see Sean Bean as being all that cunning. . .
Yes, but I can't see Rowen Atkinson as Odysseus...
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
Who would I have? Not Armand Assante (who was in that Hallmark miniseries notable mainly for bringing us Jolene Blalock - or was that the Argonauts miniseries?) at any rate. Strangely enough, Kevin Pollak came to mind. But give me more time and I could come up with a dozen more suggestions.
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
"Sol System: feel free to move this to the Flameboard if this topic gets too contentious."
The day people at Flare get into a frantic argument over the politics of the Illiad is the day something else highly improbable occurs.
Posted by Ultra Magnus (Member # 239) on :
Okay, three things have happened in the world that have resulted in my absence, due to being dead.
1) Sean Bean cast as Odysseus. 2) Christian Bale cast as Batman the Wayne. 3) I am in love with a girl. Unrequitedly, but almost not.
So, Sean Bean yay.
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
Aw, UM, that's so sweet. Tell us more. 8)
Posted by Cartman (Member # 256) on :
"...the day something else highly improbable occurs."