I went to see Troy this evening, and thought it was rather good. It's a ripping good story for a start, but it was backed up by some fine performances, particularly Eric Bana as Hector, though Brad Pitt (Achilles) and Peter O'Toole (Priam) were also very good.
I was very interested to see that one of the main themes of the movie was that of people making a name for themselves, for generations yet to be born to remember them. The ironic thing is, the world will remember Achilles, Hector, Odysseus, Paris and Priam long after Brad Pitt, Eric Bana, Sean Bean, Orlando Bloom yes, and even Peter O'Toole have passed from memory. But then again, we should never forget that the men who built the tower of Babel wanted to make a name for themselves as well.
The much-discussed anachronisms (such as the prevalence of coins 500 years before their invention) didn't really bother me all that much, though there we a couple of things that annoyed me a bit: the makers of the film didn't seem to fully understand what the story was all about. First, they didn't realise that there was a battle going on between the gods (or maybe they just didn't like the idea!) - Paris' arrow wasn't just a good (or lucky!) shot, it was guided by the god Apollo. Secondly, the greatly compressed the time factor, whereas 'in fact' the war took ten years - I think C. S. Lewis wrote a short story about what Helen would have been like after all that time. Plus, the horse only makes sense as a last resort.
A few other things I reckon that Paris Hilton might finally work out after this movie that she has a boy's name. And it was interesting to see another occurrence of the so-called Stockholm syndrome when a kidnapped girl falls for her captor.
Lastly, I have no idea why the Pope said it is as it was when he saw the movie
