Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Troy

This is topic Troy in forum Film Handlers' Movie Reviews at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by David Favel (Member # 1125) on 05-13-2004, 03:55 AM:

Horse, wooden.
Diane Kruger, wooden
Pitt, wooden.
Bloom couldn't be any more of a big girls blouse. In fact he came off looking pittiful.
Aggamemnon was on fire. Don't mess with this dude.
O'Toole was O.K. (1-1 sentimental odds for best supporting actor though)
Visually adequate, had me thinking of LOTR in the battle scenes.
Sound quality varied from reel to reel, 1/3 error rate 7, balance 1 or 2.

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 05-13-2004, 06:04 AM:

Not great, not bad. This movie has it's ups and downs. Some of the acting is good, much of it is overdone. Some of the sound mix is good, other parts have bad looping and poor choices for ambience tracks (such as the scene where hundreds of troops are running up a hill to attack, yet we hear the sound of carefully coordinated and synchronized "marching" footsteps). Lots of the dialogue was overly corny. Yet the movie managed to keep my attention for over 2 1/2 hours. Hmmmmmmmmm, not sure how many stars I should give this one.

Posted by Christian Appelt (Member # 1067) on 05-13-2004, 06:39 PM:

Audiences here in Germany get an added alienation effect:
Director Petersen asked to have Brad Pitt dubbed with the German voice usually reserved for Nicolas Cage - quite disturbing! [Big Grin]

Posted by Michael Schaffer (Member # 1204) on 05-13-2004, 08:26 PM:

Strange decision, the German dubbing voice for Nicholas Cage doesn`t sound anything like Brad Pitt`s voice. Maybe Wolfgang wants to show audiences in Germany how absurd it is to watch dubbed movies in the first place! I always hated that so much, and I could never watch a lot of movies in the cinema unless they happened to play in the original version somewhere.

Posted by Richard Greco (Member # 2032) on 05-14-2004, 07:09 AM:

Not too bad.

Too many shirtless guys for me.

We had fun screening it MST3K style. I thought it was a little long but it was watchable for 3 hrs. It really held my interest. I liked it.

3/5

They needed to show more womens butts and boobs [Smile]

Posted by Chris Hipp (Member # 1788) on 05-15-2004, 12:21 AM:

I found it rather BLAH. Could have been good, better, something...

Posted by Michael Schaffer (Member # 1204) on 05-17-2004, 03:41 AM:

I like long epic movies (except for "Postman") and I rather enjoyed this too. The fight scenes were done very well. These warriors must have had an elegant fighting style like East Asian martial arts experts, and they did a very good job at inventing this style based on poses depicted on vases and in scultptures. They also took a lot of care with the costumes. The purist might find that they look too modern - for the Greeks of the classical period the tale of Troy was already centuries old legends. The warriors` armor wouldn`t have looked like this. But this is a romanticized idea of the era anyway.
In the legend, Agamemnon returns home to be killed by his wife and her lover. Apart from that, the script did a very nice job at compressing many elements of the story into the movie.

I waited for the moment (though in vain) when Orlando Bloom and Sean Bean run into each other: "Boromir? - Legolas? - What are you doing here? - I thought you were dead."

What sucked enormously though was the music. It lies in the nature of film music that composers borrow from, quote and modify various sources. The lame imitation of Prokofiev`s "Alexander Nevsky" can be excused - after all Petersen also quotes Eisenstein image of the masses of enemies slowly appearing at the horizon. But I have rarely heard a soundtrack which steals so much music unashamedly note for note from uncredited sources. Horner helps himself to huge chunks of Vaughan Williams and Shostakovich. While a lot of film fans may not necessarily be familiar with the latter, I find his stealing from VW all the more bold since many heard his music recently in "Master and Commander". Both composers are still protected by copyright. I hope somone sues Horner.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 05-17-2004, 04:33 AM:

It was OK. I agree that the music wasn't so hot and the dialogue was cheesy, but the battle scenes were mostly decent. This could have been much, much better.

There was a really bad timing error between, I think, R4 and R5, at least in the print that I saw.

Worth seeing, but probably won't be remembered in twenty years.

Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 05-18-2004, 04:11 AM:

Although I still prefer Robert Wise's 1956 film, "HELEN OF TROY", the current "TROY" is a rather good film and I enjoyed it very much. I do not know why David and others reported people laughing at some scenes in the movie because no one at the almost sold out showing in one of the large auditoriums at the Dole Cannery thought any of the scenes were funny at all when I saw it yesterday afternoon. Although Roger Ebert panned the film, I think Newsweek magazine gave it a favorable review as well as USA Today. Most of USA reviews for mainstream films are very negative but the paper gave "TROY" three stars and that is saying a lot . Because I enjoyed the film, I am already looking forward to the DVD that will feature the movie and how it was made. By the way, I also enjoyed the music when I saw the film as well the film's soundtrack CD which I listened in my car all day today.

-Claude

Posted by Paul Linfesty (Member # 214) on 05-18-2004, 10:16 AM:

quote: Claude S. Ayakawa
I do not know why David and others reported people laughing at some scenes in the movie

Maybe because David and others actually talked to or witnessed audience members who laughed at some scenes in the movie?

Posted by Ian Price (Member # 14) on 05-18-2004, 02:56 PM:

Disliked:

Dialogue
Script
Lack of Historical accuracy
Acress's voice who played Helen
Scottish accent for the general who led Troy's army
Paris' "California" accent

Liked:

Set design Troy looked amazing
action sequences
fight scenes
sailing scenes although they were moving a bit fast.
Portrayals of relationships
Brad's new muscles

Fun Facts:

Achilles
- son of a mortal man Peleus and Thetis. Son Neoptolemus to Deidamia. Son Neoptolemus to Scyros.
- Achilles actually had a gay lover called Patroclus. Fell in love with a Queen of the Amazons, Penthesilea, after seeing her face when he killed her at Troy.
-and considered the greatest warrior of them all. His mother dipped him in the River Styx to make him invulnerable, the only part not touched by the water were his ankles. Paris shot him in the ankle with a poisoned arrow during the Trojan war.

Helen
- hatched from an egg from mother Leda and father Zeus.
- because of Aphrodite she was kidnapped by Paris and taken to Troy which started the Trojan War. She was rescued 10 years later by her husband Menelaus, before the war they had a daughter Hermione. Hermione marries Neoptolemus and then later Orestes.
- During the war she marries Paris and when Paris is killed she marries his brother Deiphobus.

Neoptolemus
- son of Achilles and Scyros. Killed Priam on the altar of Zeus during the Trojan War.

Paris
- a Trojan prince that kidnapped Helen, took her to Troy and started the war. He was killed by Philoctetes.
- he was the oldest of 19 children and his parents were Hecuba and Priam.

Philoctetes
- one of the Greek leaders in the Trojan War who killed Paris but had to be left behind on the island of Lemnos suffering from a snake bite. Ulysses heard that Troy could not be taken without him went to fetch him with Diomedes and the divine intervention of Hercules.

Troy
- Founded by its first king Teucer. The Trojan War between the Greeks and the people of Troy lasted 10 years. In the movie it looked like the war lasted 2-weeks.
- the war began when the Trojan prince Paris accepted Aphrodite's offer to give him the most beautiful woman in the world. The woman Aphrodite chose was Helen, the daughter of Zeus and the Spartan princess Leda. Paris then kidnapped Helen and took her to Troy which was how the war started. Ulysses, Achilles, Hera and Athena supported the Greeks, who situated themselves just outside the walls of Troy. Apollo and Aphrodite were on the side of the Trojans (as was Xena, who was a friend of Helen's). After years of fighting Ulysses built the Trojan horse which got the Greeks into Troy, Helen was then rescued by Menelaus and taken back to Sparta.

Ulysses/Odysseus
- parents Anticlea and Sisyphius, step father Laertes. He was a lover to Calypso.
- after the Trojan War he tried to make his way home to the island Ithaca but Poseidon kept intervening because Ulysses blinded his son Polyphemus. He made many stops on his way home but eventually got there with the help of Athena.
- he went back to his wife Penelope, whose father is Icarius, and their son Telemachus. He proved he was Ulysses to Penelope by bending his great bow. He also had another son Telegonus to lover Circe.

Posted by Michael Schaffer (Member # 1204) on 05-18-2004, 03:29 PM:

quote:
- he was the oldest of 19 children and his parents were Hecuba and Priam.

19 children! She should have been called Incuba instead of Hecuba.

Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 05-18-2004, 03:33 PM:

Don't tell me only the GUYS were topless back then...? Where were all the topless women? Come on! [Razz]

Posted by Nicole Halper (Member # 2299) on 05-18-2004, 06:25 PM:

I think the movie needs a girl's opinion----
Though - I do mainly agree with what was stated previously.
The movie was well, mediocre. The story was missing quite a bit from the actual tale.
My two biggest complaints:
So the movie took place over like...15 days...and not 10 yrs.
And did anyone else notice the prevailing British accents--in Greece??!?
It was very well done however-- great technical job, and overall entertaining. Not the best - but good.

Posted by Michael Schaffer (Member # 1204) on 05-18-2004, 06:34 PM:

Would you have preferred to watch this movie in ancient Greek (following Gibson`s example)?

Posted by Nicole Halper (Member # 2299) on 05-18-2004, 07:06 PM:

Haha- no - but I just thought it was an interesting issue. It seems to be that if a movie is to be set in Europe in an ancient time period- the actor's usually have British accents. (That is of course unless it is German, French, Italian, Spanish- or any other more common dialects)

Posted by Aaron Garman (Member # 1653) on 05-19-2004, 02:23 AM:

Jack Hawkins in Ben Hur didn't have a Roman or Latin accent, but his native accent. Charlton Heston also wasn't speaking any Aramaic. In these huge epics, you just have to take liberties like this. In the case of the Passion, the use of the orginal tounges worked, but it'd be hard to pull off in another film, especially one on the scale or Troy or even Ben Hur for that matter. It'd be interesting to see however.

AJG

Posted by Michael Schaffer (Member # 1204) on 05-19-2004, 03:57 AM:

I guess they do it that way so that it`s more like classic theater. How do people play stuff like Shakespeare in America? Do they try to euroize their native accent to make it sound more "like Shakespeare"?

Posted by Evans A Criswell (Member # 381) on 05-19-2004, 10:13 AM:

I saw this opening night at the Carmike 10 in Huntsville. I liked the movie. There was lots of good eye candy. I just wished they'd filmed it anamorphically. I loved the style of dress in the movie. About half an hour into the movie where Achilles and his cousin are practicing or whatever, I loved those long dress-like outfits they had on. I want one of those.

The movie presentation itself was excellent. There was one trailer spliced one perf out of frame in the previews, but that was the only defect I saw.

Posted by Todd Cornwall (Member # 2205) on 05-19-2004, 09:44 PM:

This movie was overacted and the fight scenes ESPECIALLY Brad Pitts, were WAY WAY over-choreographed.

I expected more.

Posted by William Hooper (Member # 71) on 05-20-2004, 02:54 AM:

quote: Michael Schaffer
I guess they do it that way so that it`s more like classic theater. How do people play stuff like Shakespeare in America? Do they try to euroize their native accent to make it sound more "like Shakespeare"?

All over the map. A lot depends on the concept of the entire production, whether "traditional", traditional with no accents, re-cast in another time & place, whatever. Fake weird pastiche English-y accents, sometimes with archaic pronunciation components, sometimes attemptedly consistent English accents, sometimes re-set in a different time & place not the place of the production (like a New England production of Romeo & Juliet in the antebellum south with weird pseudo-southern US-esque accents), sometimes just trying to sound like reglar people tawkin in Hoboken or New Orleans.

(The famous "mid-Atlantic" accent which you still sometimes hear onstage & immortalized by early talkie actors like William Powell who came originally from stage work & education was a construction that was not just passed in trade but actually later taught in schools which devolved from the problems which arrived in early theater in the US which mostly utilized English plays until the USA started pulling together enough works written by natives in the native vernacular.)

It's a tough row to hoe anyway, since the Shakespeare stuff is written in verse & perms utilize constructions around not just what the words mean but the way not the words sound, & originally pronunciations were way different from current London accents. A lot of things which used to rhyme don't anymore or have the same number of syllables no matter wherever they're said. It's all mostly an imposition of another accent on top of language that wants to do something else no matter where it's done. But easily I've heard US 'accent-free' versions working very well in areas that have softer vowel sounds than bangy Appalachian, Texas, or midwestern accents.

Like every job, the result usually depends on how good the guy is who you give it to ta fabricate to the design. I always thought Edmond O'Brien was did a really good job as Casca & was one of the best things in the '53 Julius Caesar movie - he decided to use no accent, found a way to solve the problems & screw it together, came off a lot better than many others lost in the frame & verse of a production that sort of flumps.

Posted by Christian Appelt (Member # 1067) on 05-27-2004, 05:14 PM:

I found the film to be quite entertaining.
Dialogue scenes are photographed unimaginative, like a tv series. Most CGI long shots looked fake and lack any detail, especially the 1000 ship fleet; no more convincing than the model ships in 1961 CLEOPATRA... [Smile]

There must be a target audience that just wants to see Brad Pitt's body, and they will be satisfied. Oh, and it's always great to see Peter O'Toole, but on the other hand, his presence brings up memories of so much better movies... [Wink]

Posted by Michael Schaffer (Member # 1204) on 05-27-2004, 05:21 PM:

quote: Christian Appelt
There must be a target audience that just wants to see Brad Pitt's body, and they will be satisfied.

That target audience contains such diverse individuals as Phil and Rachel for instance.

Posted by Emma Tomiak (Member # 1862) on 05-27-2004, 11:04 PM:

And me! Don't forget me! [Big Grin]