Pretend Gods and Ordinary Men

The film, Troy, ignores the existence of the Greek Gods and portrays it’s heroes as action movie clichés. Not only are the gods ignored, they are mocked. The very beginning of the Iliad, where Chryses is supplementing Agamemnon for Chriseis’ return, is ignored in the film. This means that Apollo doesn’t exact his revenge on the Achaeans, nor do any of the gods for that matter. It is as if Petersen wishes us to view the Trojan War without understanding their beliefs and values, instead he means to create relatable characters.

We see Petersen treating Achilles and the other heroes as humans, rather than ‘larger than life’ demi-gods of Greek myth. In the Iliad, the heroes are much more than humans and are far from relatable. They display huge extremes of emotion and do not question the will of the gods or even Mortality itself. In the film, however, we can see Achilles doing just that, “I'll tell you a secret. Something they don't teach you in your temple. The Gods envy us. They envy us because we're mortal, because any moment might be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we're doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.” This humanisation of an otherwise god-like Achilles is unseen in The Iliad and I will discuss it in my next post.