Slay's Reviews

thanks for the review..excellent as always....i am looking forward to seeing it this weekend

thanks to you though i'll know what to expect and what not to...

thanks again

That's exactly the type of thing that I was afraid of. CGI should only be used in very small doses.

Very nice review Brian there on Troy. I planned on seeing it this weekend but I had second thoughts. Yes, you did say don't not go on your account but you have a great taste in films.......
Well, I already made plans with my friend a long time ago to see thing anyways. I will let you know what I thought of Troy when I get back.

I'm really glad you reviewed this, Brian, but as always, I don't want to read any reviews until after I've seen the film. Hopefully I'll see it this weekend or next (my wife really wants to see it right away [Brad Pitt and Orlando Bloom] )

I see you gave it a C+, which is good because I won't go in with high expectations.

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I liked Bana. He was the character I felt the most emotion towards. I much prefered him to the movie hero/main charcter, Achillies.

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Thanks everybody.

The 'vastness' of the armies are all fake, but it still looks okay.

It's still a decent movie. I may just be too picky.

I agree competely.

I'm sure you will like it. You're not as hard on movies as a lot of us are.

What's she got against that hottie O'Toole? Is she an ageist? Sheesh.

I agree. He is the heart of the film, not Pitt or Bloom.

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I was too deeply scarred by Bana in the Hulk. I was ready to claw my eyes out watching him in that film. Seems he has gained some respect here though....

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See...I liked him in Hulk, I thought he did a good job as Banner, though i didn't think he was amazing. I have yet to see Chopper, which is what a lot of people say is his best role. Pitt was just emotionless in this one, even when he was trying to show emotion.

Okay, I just came from seeing Troy, and a ton of things ran through my head as I read through Slay's review. I hope I can remember and address them all.

I liked Troy. I liked it quite a bit. Not as much as Braveheart, any of TLotR films, and maybe not quite as much as Gladiator, but I liked it quite a bit (I already said that). I can't compare these newer films to the old epics like Spartacus or Ben-Hur. That would be like comparing great baseball players from different eras.

The CGI in this film didn't bother me in the least. In fact, it was much less noticeable to me than in TLotR films, Star Wars: Ep. I & II, or even Spiderman. I actually thought they (the filmmakers) did a great job making the CGI look more realistic than any other film I've seen. In one of Slay's replies, he writes, "The 'vastness' of the armies is all fake," as if that's a bad thing. The making of films has been "fake" since the beginning of filmmaking. Mattes, backdrops, falsefronts, studio sets, sound stages, lens filters, etc. have been aiding the look of "reality" on film since the beginning of filmmaking. I see CGI as just another tool, and in my opinion, they're getting better at it. One thing I don't understand, however, is how everyone is talking about the cost-effectiveness of CGI. If CGI is so cost-effective, why did Troy cost $185 mil to make? Most of the other CGI films are also well above $100 mil. These high budgets make Braveheart's $72 mil budget look low-budget and don't seem very cost-effective to me.

This film was certainly one of Brad Pitt's lesser achievements regarding acting. However, the character Achilles was interesting enough that Pitt's failure to evoke any Oscar-worthy clips more than made up for it.

As mentioned already by Slay, Bana's character, Hector, had the most depth. Hector, I believe, had the audience's sympathy. However, I believe there was a little confusion regarding the natural feeling of "who am I supposed to root for? Who is the hero, who is the villian?" Throughout the film, I didn't know if I was supposed to have been rooting for Achilles and his band of warriors (but that meant rooting for the Greek armies most of the time), or should I have been rooting for Hector and the Trojans? Hector seemed to be the most honorable, wise, and heroic. The fight between Hector and Achilles was terrific! By this point, I had long been rooting for Hector over Achilles.

The other thing that interests me about this film is the original story. As an English major in college and a Language Arts teacher now, it's always nice to see the classic literary works on film. By the way, I'm not trying to point out mistakes in the review, but Homer's Ilyad is an epic poem, not a play Not a big deal.

Anyhoo, that's all I got for now. Not sure if I addressed everything that went through my head, or not.

Oh, yeah! I did want to mention one more thing. People at theaters are so funny. Remember in Mission Impossible when Tom Cruise was suspended above the guy in the room with the heat sensitive floor? As the sweat started rolling down his forehead, the entire theater began whispering to each other, "Sweat," as if they had just figured out something that the person next to them couldn't figure out for themselves. "Sweat" swept through the theater when I was watching Mission Impossible to the point that it was very comical. Well, the same thing happened with the audience in the theater where I watched Troy. This time, instead of "Sweat" sweeping through the whispered voices of my movie-viewing comrades, "Achilles' heel" was on their lips during the appropriate scene. If you haven't seen the movie yet, resist saying it yourself, and pay attention to the people around you. You'll know when to listen for it, and you should get a little chuckle.

I was thinking the same thing when all of the reporters were saying "play" instead of "epic poem."

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They did do a better job with the CGI than most, but my complaint is that when it is used in such magnitude that I fail to be impressed by it. Notice that all the sweeping shots throughout the movie are all just computer screen panning? It isn’t nearly as mesmerizing as the movies of yore when the used smart camera placement, thousands of extras (for one scene) and long distance filming. The grandeur is gone and I just feel the way I do in between levels in a computer game when the cinematic sequences play.

Sure it was expensive to make, but what would the cost have been if they used real ships, all the extras needed to show an army of 50k fighting an army of 20k? The costs would have been too great to make the film unless they worked it like they used to. Braveheart used only extras and it still was able to give us a feeling of vastness when the armies fought. There was also a lot more talent with the gore of the battle because it had to be pure make-up artists and great choreography. I asked a friend I watched it with what the CGI during the very first fight Achilles did for him. Was the old fashioned way of filming, camera trickery and acting, better? Or was the CGI that showed the sword penetrating better? I found that the CGI was distracting. Instead of thinking, “Damn! That had to hurt!” I was thinking, “Damn! That won’t look near as good on a digitally transferred DVD.”

I just copy/pasted IMDb’s writing credits. I have never read Homer, though I have looked for the Iliad at the library.

Listen, I knew I would be in the minority when writing my review, but I’m staying loyal to my original statement. (I know you’re not being argumentative because you always respect other people’s opinions.) The acting, for the most part, was sub-par, the CGI was used too much, the story was convoluted, and it was emotionally empty.

I'll have to take it up with the people at IMDb, then.

It might not be the easiest way to read it, but here's a link to the entire poem on-line (I warn you, it's very long)

Homer's Iliad

By the way, the filmmakers take a lot of liberties with the original story. I guess that's why they call it Troy instead of The Iliad. The film actually combines several Greek myths and legends, not just Homer's. Characters have been combined, who kills whom has changed, how, when, and where has changed, things have been sped up (Helen was gone 9 years before the Greeks came with 1000 ships). The gods are a big part of Homer's Iliad, as well, but they've been left out completely (other than their mention). Aphrodite actually comes down and saves Paris from Menelaus, but in the film it's Hector who saves him.

Okay, enough of the literature lecture That's all for now

Somebody beat me to the punch. They've already changed it to "poem."

Thanks for the link. I never considered looking on the net for the full story.

I knew that there were a lot of liberties, but there were so many that I wasn't sure of that I didn't want to speak of them in my review. There were a couple of deaths that I questioned, but didn't do the research. I was pretty sure that Achilles instead of the dramatic way they showed it. Am I right?

Hey thanks for posting that link to the Iliad, Mark. I had to memorize the entire first paragraph of that in Latin when I took that language in school. It's nice to be able to read the rest now.

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Every account I've seen, the arrow was poisoned and Appollo guided it to the heel, his only vulnerable spot

Here is a couple of famous art pieces depicting the death of Achilles. Sorry about the size. The vase is circa 460 BC. The painting is by Peter Paul Rubens.

The length of the poem is 13,500 words; rounded. We read parts of it in school.

I pasted The Iliad into Word and did a word count. It's more like 152,000 words.

There are nearly 13,000 paragraphs.

Woops my mistake, I meant lines.