Homer VS Hollywood

Beats Alien VS Predator, anyway.

Chances are if it’s been written, it’s been filmed, and if it’s not been filmed, then it’s been re-adapted/re-interpreted, and then filmed. Romeo & Juliet, Hamlet, Othello, Lord of the Rings, The Trial, Lolita, Dracula, Frankenstein, Sunset Song, the Sherlock Holmes and James Bond series, all brought to the screen, big or small. Some writing, such as those of Shakespeare, were intended to be watched, not read, and have suffered only minor 'damage' in being adapted to the screen, [Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet adaption is considered to be the most faithful, even though it transposes the story to a few centuries later]. Other literary works are not as fortunate.

The Writing Studio’s article on adaptations describes the art of bringing page to screen as thus:

To adapt means to transpose from one medium to another. It is the ability to make fit or suitable by changing, or adjusting. Modifying something to create a change in structure, function, and form, which produces a better adjustment. Adapting a novel, book, play, or article into a screenplay is the same as writing an original screenplay. It only starts from the source material: the novel, book, play, article or song. The screenplay must provide visualisation of the action that can be captured on film. When the screenwriters adapts from another medium it must be a visual experience. That is the primary job of the screenwriters who must remain true only to the integrity of the source material. Adapting another form of writing to the screen means finding cinematic equivalents in the original piece. The screenwriter only has 120 pages to tell the story and has to choose story events carefully so they highlight and illustrate the screenplay with good visual and dramatic components.

The article clarifies with an example:

Francis Coppola's Oscar-winning Apocalypse Now is loosely based on a novel by 19th century author Joseph Conrad, 'Heart of Darkness', set in colonial Africa, where Mr. Kurtz, a white man, has gone upriver and set himself up as a mad god to African tribes people. Marlow, the hero, is sent to bring him back. Kurtz, dying, tries to communicate to Marlow the horror of what he's seen and done, so that he can explain it to Kurtz's fiancée. In Apocalypse Now, Colonel Kurtz, a promising career soldier, has gone upriver and set himself up as a mad god to Cambodian tribes people. Captain Willard, an army assassin, is sent to kill him. Kurtz, dying, tries to communicate to Willard the horror of what he's seen and done, so that Willard can explain to Kurtz' son why Kurtz did what he did. The updating is in setting the movie in the insanity of the Vietnam war. The scenes and characters are replaced, but the through line and the driving question are the same.

So, if a film adaptation manages to convey the themes and driving questions of the source material, then it's a faithful and worthy adaptation. The article goes on to compare the inherent difference between novels and film, and why film cannot mimic their literary sources, mainly because novels can deal with inner thoughts and feelings to further their stories, whereas film is almost purely visual, [Jane Smiley apparently said something along the lines of, "Drama is good for action, but nothing beats the novel for interiorisation"]. However, The Iliad is a tale driven largely by action, not the internalised thought processes of its main characters, and any potential adaptation will differ from the typical novel-to-film formula. In his introduction to the Penguins Classics edition of The Iliad, Peter Jones says of Homer’s narrative technique:

Homer is as subjective as any camera since he carefully selects the scenes he wishes to survey and the angle from which he views them ... It is in the speeches especially that moral positions are taken and evaluative language deployed ... Homer himself does not obviously impose his views on us by using his privileged position as third-person narrator to push us into one response or another. He lets the characters speak for themselves and keeps himself in the background [Homer can be seen as akin to the camera itself – V.] He rarely puts thoughts into people’s minds or interprets mental states ... The modern novelist, too, can rarely resist the temptation to tell us how to interpret a character or scene.

So, if The Iliad is largely visual, with little narrative introspection and focalisation [there is some, but again very little], and is largely driven by action, then it is prime material for a very close, faithful adaptation. In fact, you would think there wouldn't be much work to do at all. Troy differs so much from Homer and yet is so obviously derived from him that in his review of the film, Roger Ebert quipped, "Troy is based on the epic poem The Iliad by Homer, according to the credits. Homer's estate should sue." Further consideration should be given to the fact that The Iliad was never meant to be read at all, but was a form of oral poetry. Like Beowulf and Shakespeare plays, it was meant to be heard, to be seen, to be sung.

In an interview with Screenwriter's Utopia, Troy writer David Benioff [The 25th Hour, Wolverine] says of the adaptation:

Of course there are more source texts than just The Iliad. I mean The Iliad was the pivotal one in the telling of the Trojan War, but it starts from the ninth year of the war and ends in the ninth year of the war. We wanted to tell the entire story from before the beginning when Paris seduces Helen and triggers the entire war through to the fall of Troy, and you don’t get all of that in The Iliad, so some of it comes from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and some of it comes from The Odyssey, actually. There are little bits from Eneid [sic, Virgil's Aeneid - V.] There are bits of things from Bulfinch’s Mythology, and some of it was just imagined.

It should be pointed out that a great deal of the character and plot changes in Troy have no basis in the other parts of the Epic Cycle. Benioff adds that, despite what the ad posters say, Troy was never meant to reproduce The Iliad faithfully anyway:

I didn’t pitch a faithful retelling. I pitched kind of a ruthless retelling where I really wanted to concentrate on the human story. For me, what I’ve always loved about The Iliad is the story of Hector, Achilles, Paris and Helen but particularly Hector and Achilles. These are the two great heroes on either side, and inevitably, they are going to fight, but it’s not a good-guys-and-bad-guys story. It’s not the epic battle of good versus evil. It’s not humans versus orcs. It’s humans fighting humans, and that’s why I think it’s the great tragic war story. Every time you see a soldier fall, it’s not some villain falling. It’s a human. It’s some mother’s son, and that’s what’s brilliant about Homer’s telling of the story. Each time, he always gives you one moment with that character, even very minor characters you’ve never met before, at the moment of their death. It’s a very humanistic way of telling a war story.

Concentrating on the human story would mean the excision of the fundamental cause of the war and the principal puppet masters, the Greek Gods. Concentrating on the humans as players rather than pawns is an admirable task, but it sidesteps not only the importance of the Greek Gods in the Homeric mythology, but misinterprets them as deus ex machina devices rather than the flawed, imperfect, warring, and very human characters that they are. [Merriam-Webster defines a deus ex machina as, "a person or thing (as in fiction or drama) that appears or is introduced suddenly and unexpectedly and provides a contrived solution to an apparently insoluble difficulty." In the Greek myths, the Gods never seem to intervene unexpectedly -we are always aware of their machinations- nor do they solve problems. In fact, they seem to introduce new ones or simply aggravate the human characters or other Gods].

It [excising the Greek Gods] was part of the pitch from the get go. I really wanted to concentrate on the human aspect of the story. When Paris fights Menelaus in the book, it’s fairly similar to the way it is in the movie except at the end, when Paris is about to get killed, Aphrodite magically teleports him from the battlefield to Helen’s chamber in the palace. I just didn’t want it that way. I didn’t want to see the gods coming in and using magic to change the course of events. I really didn’t want to see an actor in a toga throwing CGI thunderbolts from the top of a CGI Mount Olympus because it becomes a much different movie. It really becomes much more about the effects and a magic kind of fantasy. I think the truly tragic, truly human element to this story is without the gods.David Beinoff, Troy screenwriter, Screenwriter's Utopia, 2004.

In The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins opens his second chapter with a string of adjectives describing the God of the Old Testament: “jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sado-masochistic, capriciously violent bully.” Thomas Jefferson also identified Yahweh as being cruel and unjust, but He isn’t the first God to display such human error and flaw. The only difference between the Greek Gods of Homer and the Yahweh of the Old Testament is that Yahweh, the monotheist, didn’t have any other Gods to butt heads with. The lord of Olympus, Zeus, is famous for his infidelities and numerous children, some spawned from outright trickery and rape. Zeus’ wife, Hera, in contrast to Disney’s 1997 cartoon iteration, was a spiteful, jealous torturer who drove Herakles/Heracles into madness. In Ancient Greece, the Gods were not kind.

Their wickedness was not reserved for mortals, but other Gods as well. Aeschylus [525 – 456BC] describes the imprisonment and torture of the Titan Prometheus, who sided with Zeus in the battle against Cronos and the Titans, who ruled the primitive Earth, [though Aeschylus told the story of Prometheus in Prometheus Bound, the tale can be traced back to Hesiod centuries earlier]. Later, after the war is won, Prometheus hears of Zeus’ plan to annihilate early man. Full of pity, he steals the secret of fire to pass along to humankind, who flourish from the gift. Zeus, enraged, orders Prometheus to be tethered to a rock, doomed to be eternally tortured. Prometheus is carried to a remote mountaintop by the physical embodiments of Strength and Violence, with the reluctant blacksmith God, Hephaestus, in tow:

STRENGTH: Here we have reached the remotest region of the earth, the haunt of Scythians, a wilderness without a footprint ... Here is Prometheus, the rebel: nail him to the rock; secure him on this towering summit fast in the unyielding grip of adamantine chains. It was your [Hephaestus’] treasure he stole, the flowery splendour of all-fashioning fire, and gave to men – an offence intolerable to the Gods, for which he must now suffer, till he be taught to accept the sovereignty of Zeus and cease acting as champion of the human race.

Hephaestus, tasked with the job of fastening Prometheus to the rock, is reluctant to do so, but knows full well the wrath of the vengeful Zeus:

HEPHAESTUS: Your kindness to the human race has earned you this ... [you] gave privileges to mortal men. For that you shall keep watch upon this bitter rock, standing upright, unsleeping, never bowed in rest. And many groans and cries of pain shall come from you, all useless; for the heart of Zeus is hard to appease. Power newly won is always harsh.

Aeschylus’ story is but one example of the indiscriminate wrath of the Greek Gods. Homer’s The Iliad and the Epic Cycle present them as not-so-heavenly entities who take sides, battle, bicker, conspire, and who foster hate and strife among men and themselves, all to satisfy their own vanity, [of course, they're more complex than that: like humanity, they wake up, dine, talk, relax, sport, and retire to bed with their wives, as well as battle. They're almost humans who just happen to be divine]. Neither are they free from human pain. When struck by Diomedes, the gods Aphrodite and Ares retreat to Olympas, complaining to Zeus of their agony, [Zeus tells Aphrodite to allay the pain by thinking of the pleasures of bed, and pretty much tells Ares that he detests him, and to stop complaining].

The loss of the Gods in Troy also excises one of the most important themes in Greek mythology: that of fate. Aside from Thetis presenting her son with two wholly different outcomes [go to Troy: die and become a legend. Stay: live long and happily, but be forgotten], the theme of fate is missing from the movie. Achilles lays aside his thirst for glory and immortality to pursue Briseis. In The Iliad, fate pervades every battle and every character. It is the driving force of every action. Even the Gods suffer from the pains of fate, as they are cursed to watch their mortal children die in battle. As Zeus watches his son Sarpedon battle Patroclus, he already knows the outcome. Sarpedon will die. This causes the king of the Gods agony: "My son, Sarpedon, is destined to be killed by Patroclus, son of Menoetius. I wonder now - I am in two minds. Shall I snatch him up alive ... or shall I now let him fall at Patroclus' hands?" It seems that Zeus can alter fate, if he wishes to. However, Hera lets it be known that should Zeus save Sarpedon whilst allowing fate to send the sons of other Gods to the Underworld, then they will not approve. Zeus concedes, and has to watch his son be gruesomely slain. As it rains blood, Patroclus throws his spear, "and the weapon did not leave his hands for nothing. It struck Sarpedon where the lungs enclosed his dense heart, and he crashed down as an oak crashes down ... so Sarpedon lay stretched in front of his chariot and horses, gurgling and clutching at the bloodstained dust ... Patroclus put his foot on his chest and withdrew the spear from his flesh. The innards came with it: he had drawn out the spear-point and the man's life together".

The theme of fate and its importance to Achilles is stressed in a speech he gives to Lycaon, a defeated son of Priam. Lycaon begs for mercy, to which Achilles responds that fate is not merciful or escapable, no matter how great the warrior: "I am the son of a great man. A Goddess was my mother. Yet death and inexorable destiny are waiting for me." Honour and fate are sacrificed in Troy for a love story.

The ten year long Trojan War and its tragedies are the direct result of the vanity of the Gods in an event known as the Judgment of Paris.

The Judgment of Paris. The three Goddesses to the left, Hermes, and a seated, judging Paris of Troy.

It began with vanity, was followed by vanity, and ended in war. The sea nymph, Thetis, who has once helped Zeus in the battle against the Titans where the other Gods declined, was lusted after by the Gods as a potential mate. However, Zeus received the prophecy that Thetis’ child would surpass the greatness of its father, and being no stranger to powerful sons overthrowing their fathers [as was the trend with his father and grandfather, Cronos and Uranus, as well as Zeus and Cronos himself], Zeus and Poseidon instead arranged for Thetis to marry a mortal, a companion of Heracles known as Peleus. One God not invited to the wedding was Eris, snubbed for being a troublemaker, [Eris being the God of Discord]. She took her revenge by spoiling the party and launched a golden apple into the fray, the words “for the fairest” inscribed upon it. Each taking themselves to be the fairest, Athena, Hera, and Aphrodite quarrelled with one another over who would take the prize. Zeus, reluctant to judge, instead bestowed the responsibility to the son of King Priam of Troy, Alexandros, better known by his other name, Paris, [historically, the Paris figure is believed to have derived from Alaksandu of Wilusa – the Hittite name for Troy]. With Hermes leading them to Paris on Mount Ida, the Goddesses instruct him to judge who is the most beautiful. Each Goddess attempted to bribe the prince: Hera offered lordship of known Europe and Asia; Athena offered wisdom, and Aphrodite offered the most beautiful woman alive – Helen of Sparta, the wife of King Menelaus. Paris proclaims that Aphrodite is the most beautiful of the Gods, and Helen is his.

Menelaus and Helen in Troy.

In Troy, Paris, Hector, and a band of Trojans are introduced as emissaries of peace representing Troy and their father, King Priam. As they dine with the Spartans and King Menelaus [played by Brendan Gleeson, who has a knack for appearing in historical epics that don't bother too much with the historical, case in point: Braveheart] Paris spots the wife of Menelaus, Helen, and the two abscond the celebration to sleep together. Paris convinces Helen to depart with him to Troy, and Helen, unhappy in her marriage to Menelaus, agrees to leave with him.

Paris' claim to Helen is a little more insidious in the Epic Cylce than it is in Troy, where it appears simply foolish, [it is summed up very well by Hector, "You talk of dying for love, you who know nothing of death and nothing of love."] There is no real peace mission in the Greek mythos, instead, Paris arrives in Sparta on a feigned mission, and abducts Helen. On the way to Troy, they consumnate their love, often referred to as the Rape of Helen, [one source, the Cypria, maintains that this occured in Sparta, not on the way to Troy]. Along with the Gods, this is nixed in Troy. Though the Paris-Helen relationship in Troy is still complicated in that it has dire repurcussions, it abandons any real questionable motives on the part of Paris and instead relegates them to a Troy-thirsty Agamemnon, and further presents Paris' "abduction" as, essentially, morally right. True love, and all that.

Hector and Paris in Troy, leaving Sparta. Hector is angered by Paris' elopement with Helen.

In Troy, Hector at first scolds Paris for stealing the wife of the king of Sparta, but decides that he will honour and respect this. Though Helen, upon arriving at Troy, seems a little reserved, she is welcomed into Troy by a foolish Priam and never really questions why she is there throughout the movie. A stark contrast to Homer, where Helen, watching as the Greeks and Trojans gather to watch Menelaus and Paris duel, feels "longing for her former husband, her parents and the town she had left." [It should also be added that in Greek myth, but not Troy, Helen has a nine-year old daughter, left behind in Sparta]. Futhermore, Helen is detested by the people of Troy for bringing war to them, and a group of Trojan elders remark as she appraoches, "lovely as she is, let her sail home and not stay here, a scourge  to us and our children after us". Priam is more understanding, though unwilling to blame Paris for Troy's woes, telling Helen, "I don't hold you responsible for all this, but the Gods. It is they who brought on me this war against the Greeks, with all its tears". Helen answers: "I wish I had chosen to die in misery before I came here with your son, deserting my bridal bed, my relatives, my darling daughter and the dear friends with whom I had grown up. But things did not fall out like that, and so I spend my life in tears." Contrast with the simpler love affair of Troy, and Helen becomes less of a complex, elegiac figure and more of a fleeing wife with no attachment to the life she has easily left behind. In a further display of Helen's personal crisis in The Iliad, when pointing out Agamemnon to Priam, Helen says: "He was my brother-in-law once, slut that I am."

Differences abound, from plot to character. First, I will detail how the characters of The Iliad differ from their Troy counterparts, and then in the next section, cover the plot differences.

Character Differences

Brad Pitt as Achilles.

Achilles is portrayed a little more faithfully than the other characters in Troy. Seeking honour over all, Achilles enters the war in order to win everlasting glory and immortality, rather than choosing a quiet and long life. In both Troy and The Iliad, Achilles falls out with Agamemnon, and refuses to continue to battle in the king's favour. In Troy however, Achilles' obsession with honour is put aside for a love interest, the priestess Briseis, [a slave-girl in The Iliad], who appears only briefly at the begininng of Homer's story, and is briefly mentioned here and there afterwards. In The Iliad, Agamemnon claims Briseis as he is forced to give up his own prize, Chryseis, in order to appease the God Apollo, who is wreaking a plague among the Greeks for her abduction. Briseis however, is the prize of Achillles, and feeling dishonoured, Achilles quarrels with Agamemnon before making the vow to never serve him in battle, and even goes as far to ask his mother, Thetis, to ask Zeus to turn the tide against the Greeks in battle so that they will comprehend how important he is to the war effort, [Zeus agrees, and bans the other Olympians, who all have stakes in the war, from intervening on any side, which allows the Trojans to over-run the Greeks without the powerful Achilles at their side].

In Troy, Agamemnon just doesn't like Achilles, a fact made clear from the start of the movie, and made unquestionable by Agamemnon's complaints about Achilles being rewarded the respect and glory of the Greek army. After successfully repelling the Trojans from a temple of Apollo on the shores of the Trojan beach, Agamemnon takes Briseis to spite the victorious Achilles, which starts the quarell. In The Iliad, we deduce that Agamemnon claims her because he is simply flawed and acting surly, not because he detests Achilles, [Agamemnon is probably the character who suffers the greatest changes in Troy. More on that later]. The Achilles of The Iliad is more stubborn and steadfast in his decisons than the Achilles of Troy. Where Brad Pitt spends his time off the battlefield fostering a relationship with Briseis, Homer's Achilles spends his time rebuffing pleading Greeks. Even Odysseus and a crawling, apologetic Agamemnon cannot sway him. Honour is all to the Homeric Achilles.

Another seemingly minor, but in fact major change to Achilles is his relationship with Patroclus. In myth, Patroclus was older than Achilles, and the two shared a close relationship, even love, which may or may not have been simply platonic. In Troy, Patroclus is Achilles' ward, his younger, wet-behind-the-ears cousin, effectively destroying any interpretation on the famous relationship. Hollywood has always been more accomodating to violence than to sex, and is especially almost belligerent towards homosexual sex, [not that there was any homosexual relations in The Iliad anyway, but Hollywood wouldn't even allow the subtext]. So the millenia old Achilles-Patroclus platonic-or-more? dynamic is out, familial and "acceptable" love is in.

At the end of The Iliad, Achilles still lives, as the story ends with the funeral of Hector. According to the rest of the Epic Cycle, Achilles' fate runs two ways: he dies chasing the fleeing Trojans, shot down by a cowardly Paris at the Scaean gate. According to another version, Achilles befriends the daughter of Priam, Polyxena, and was so enamoured with her that in a pre-Samson Samson moment, he told her of his only weakness. Polyxena arranged to meet Achilles at a temple of Apollo. Achilles turned up, but was killed by a hiding Paris and treacherous Polyxena, an arrow through the heel. [Unfortunately for Polyxena, at the end of the Trojan war, the ghost of Achilles demands her sacrifice if the Greeks wish to leave the shores of Ilium. Achilles' son Neoptolemus fulfills the deed, slitting her throat over the body of his father].

In Troy, Achilles dies, same as before, by an arrow slung from Paris [and then some]. However, this occurs during the siege of Troy, not before, as the legends tell. Not only is his involvement in the battle an invention of the movie, but so is his attempted rescue of Briseis, who serves as Achilles' only reason for entering the city, having dismissed honour for love.

We are also introduced to Achilles in a different manner than we are in the story, but I will cover this in the altered plot points section after the characters, as it doesn't change his character in any way.

Eric Bana as Hector.

Hector is given good service in Troy, even though it is not entirely true to Homer's version. Both stories make clear that Hector is the champion of the Trojans. Rational, brave, and an honourable soldier, Hector is made all the more humanitarian in Troy. The best example of this is following the death of Patroclus, where Hector can be seen to not only be aghast, but calls an end to the day's battles. In The Iliad, Hector is aware that Patroclus is parading the battlefield in Achilles' armour, and comments that he will willingly kill him, claim the armour of Achilles, and leave Patroclus' corpse to the vultures. Neither is Patroclus killed purely by Hector, as he is in Troy. Homer tells of the Trojan Phoebus stunning Patroclus from behind, with a following blow coming from Euphorbus. As the wounded Patroclus shambles off, Hector makes the killing blow, and "stabbed him with his spear in the lower belly, driving the bronze clean through". Patroclus tells Hector of his inevitable death at the hands of Achilles, and then dies. Hector proceeds to "put his foot on Patroclus to withdraw his bronze spear from the wound, and trod the body off it to lie face upwards on the ground". Quite different from Troy, indeed.

Hector is more noble in Troy than in Homer, or at least, he's more noble according to modern sensibilties. Homer makes it clear time and again that Hector is a great, honourable warrior, even though his actions with Patroclus may say otherwise to modern readers. When Achilles furiously storms the battlefield and lays waste to the Trojans, his key target is the prince of Ilium himself. In a very effective scene in Troy, Hector practically walks the green mile as he leaves the Scaean gate to face the enraged Achilles, with all of Troy watching. In The Iliad, Achilles, fresh from slaughtering Trojans by their dozen, makes a target of Hector and gives chase. Hector's cool escapes him, and he turns to run, with Achilles chasing him around the walls of Troy three times. "Like a chase in a nightmare when no one, pursuer or pursued, can move a limb, so Achilles could not catch up Hector, nor Hector shake off Achilles". The Goddess Athene, determined to drive Hector to his fate, treacherously gives Hector the foolish resolve to stop and fight Achilles. They duel, but Hector's doom is sealed. He cannot best the greatest of the Achaeans. "As Hector charged at him, godlike Achilles drove [at him] with his spear, and the point went though Hector's soft neck". Dying in the dust, Hector manages to ask Achilles to at least allow his family to ransom for his body, to allow him the proper funeral rights. Achilles is indignant, "You dog ... I only wish I could summon up the will to carve and eat you raw myself, for what you have done to me. But this at least is certain: nobody is going to keep the dogs off your head ... the dogs and birds of prey will divide you up, leaving nothing". Several other Greeks crowd around Hector's body, stabbing it curiously with their swords, and Achilles strips Hector of his armour, slashes his ankles, ropes them to his chariot, and drags him back to the Greek camp, the prince Hector disfiguring in the sand.

Orlando Bloom as Prince Paris.

To be frank, Paris is a cowardly fool in The Iliad, and he's a cowardly fool in Troy. The key alteration is in his fate. In the Epic Cycle, Paris is slain by Philoctetes, who many may remember as Danny Devito's satyr character in Disney's Hercules, [I feel a Hercules VS Hollywood article coming on...] The historical/mythological Philoctetes however, was a human, though he was associated with Heracles, being the one to step forward and light the demigod's funeral pyre, which earned him the gift of Heracles' bow and arrows, straight from the deifed hero himself. In the Epic Cycle, Philoctetes kills Paris by the same method Paris slays Achilles, though with a little bent. No mere arrows, but arrows tipped with the poisonous blood of the Lernean Hydra, a gift from Heracles. In Troy, just as it is said in the legends, Paris kills Achilles by shooting him through the heel with an arrow when his back is turned.

In Troy, Paris makes good with his escape and stolen bride, and is last seen heading into the wilderness with Ilium, and his family, burning behind him, [somehow Hollywood's moral lesson here seems more disturbing than that of Homer].

Brian Cox as Agamemmnon.

No character in Troy is given a disservice like Agamemnon. A grey character, like most, in The Iliad, the king of the Greeks is a brutish, war-hungry beast in Troy. Here is how Helen describes the king to Priam, early in the tale: "A good ruler and mighty spearman too". As simple as that is, it's certainly not how Brian Cox's Agamemnon is portrayed. When several of the Greeks line up to berate Agamemnon for insulting Achilles and swinging the war in the favour of the Trojans, Agamemnon concedes, saying: "Your account of my blind folly is the truth. Deluded I was - I for one cannot deny it ... I gave in to a lamentable impulse and committed this act of blind folly, I am willing to make amends and give him [Achilles] limitless compensation". Agamemnon's willingness to admit his follies have no analogue in Troy. In the movie, Agamemnon's invasion of Troy is motivated by his desire to conquer all of Greece, which has no basis in the myths. Furthermore, in Greek legend, King Priam is killed by the son of Achilles, Neoptolemus, whereas in Troy, he is struck down from behind by wicked Agamemnon, who refuses mercy on any citizen of Troy. The king of the Greeks then meets his end at the hands of Briseis, an invention of Hollywood. In the myth, Agamemnon makes it home after the fall of Ilium, only to be killed by his adulterous wife, Clytemnestra, [unluckily for her and her lover, Aegisthus, Agamemnon's son Orestes returns to avenge his murdered father]. Agamemnon is not a warrior king in Troy, whereas in The Iliad, he leads the Greeks into several battles, only withdrawing when wounded. His main flaw is his haughtiness, not any wickedness or bloodthirsty greed. Again, it seemed that Hollywood needed a clear-cut villian, rather than presenting the war in a morally unclear and complex light.

Menelaus suffers somewhat in the same way his brother does. He is stripped of any heroism and is depicted as a brute. His fate also differs, in that as he duels Paris, Hector intervenes and kills him. In The Iliad, Menelaus survives the war, reunites with Helen, and the two reconcile. Menelaus is also the Greek who heroically recovers the body of Patroclus. During the siege of Troy, he kils Helen's new husband, Paris and Hector's brother, Deiphobus, and takes back his wife from the Trojans.

Plot Differences

Though Troy encompasses more than just The Iliad, taking in events before and after, it still drastically differs from the source material. As writer David Benioff notes, a film's running time is a major restriction. However, many events are changed irrespective of running time, as Benioff notes, "some of it was just imagined."

Some major things first:

The Trojan War

• The war lasted 10 years, not several weeks.
• Coins were not placed on the eyes of dead warriors, as coins were not invented until centuries later, [can you imagine William Wallace paying his way with £10 Sterling?]
• The style of the ships, helmets and shields are anachronistic by centuries.
• The statues in the city of Troy are either anachronistic, or complete fantasy.
• The columns within the city are Cretan, not Trojan.
• The lower city of Troy was protected by a deep trench, not a fifty-foot high wall, [see here]. Inner Troy was walled, [here].
• The land around the historical Troy was more fertile than the sandy beach in the movie.
• Achilles does not partake in the Trojan horse event, having died beforehand, as has Paris.
• Agamemnon is stated as having unified Greece, something which did not happen until Alexander the Great. A generation or so after Agamemnon, the Mycanaeans almost vanished from the world, and Greece entered a dark age.

Other Character Differences

Some have been touched on already, but here are additional changes.

• Achilles is not recruited at Pthtia [misspelled as Pthia, in the movie], but from Skyros, where his mother Thetis has sent him into hiding, so he can avoid the war. Disguised as a woman named Pyrrha, Achilles fathers Neoptolemus with the daughter of King Lycomedes, a woman named Deidamia. Odysseus reveals Achilles' true identity by placing weapons in front of him, which piques the warrior's interest [in some versions, it piques him a little more biologically too (read: erection)]. Then they set off for Troy.
• Odysseus is more reluctant to enter the war than he is in the film. In the movie, Odysseus remarks, "I'll miss my dog", whereas in the myths, he goes so far as to feign insanity. Sowing his fields with salt in order to appear insane, the infamous trickster is tricked when an envoy of Agamemnon places Odysseus' son in the path of the plow. When Odysseus stops to avoid harming his son, his sanity is revealed, and he is embroiled in the war.
• Diomedes, a key Greek, is excised utterly. Sometimes a foil to Odysseus [such as when they embark to spy on the Trojans] and a player in the siege of Troy, Diomedes plays no part in the Hollywood version.
• Aeneas is reduced to a cameo. Second only to Hector in Ilium, Aeneas even battles Achilles and survives. In myth, Aeneas, a great warrior, survives Troy and serves as the hero of Virgil's Aeneid, which chronicles how Aeneas lays the seeds of the Roman Empire, [it is hinted in The Iliad that Aeneas is destined to survive his battle with Achilles for greater things]. In the movie, Aeneas is a young boy seen escaping Troy, a disservice to the character that equals those handed to Agamemnon and Diomedes.
• Ajax the Lesser, one of two Ajaxes on the Greek side, is also utterly excised. Ajax the Greater survives into the movie, but does not survive the sword of Hector. In the myth, Ajax takes his own life after losing out on Achilles' armour, which goes to Odysseus, who later gives it to Neoptolemus.
• Penthesilea and Memnon, an Amazonian and Aethopian warrior respectively, enter the war to aid Troy after the death of Hector. Achilles kills them both. Penthesilea, notably, is mourned by Achilles upon her death. The Greek Thersites, also excised from the film, jeers at Achilles for his tears. In retaliation, Achilles kills the teasing Greek with a punch.
• Son of Achilles, Neoptolemus, is excised completely. He is responsible for killing King Priam and Polyxena, also cut from the film.
• Philotectes [who in myth trained Heracles] is also excised. He kills Paris with the Heracles' bow in the Epic Cycle.

Related links
http://www.archaeology.org/online/reviews/troy/index.html
http://www.toshistation.com/troy/