Ten Things (okay, five) I Hate About Troy

Hate is a strong word, but I really, really, really, don't like them.

I seem to spend a fair amount of my time on Substack talking about movies towards which I have mixed feelings.¹ One of the first that I can remember causing me such consternation was Troy. I was a starry-eyed nineteen-year-old when it first released in the olden days of 2004, and I was already more or less intimately familiar with the details of the story, having read The Iliad in my youth (among other various and sundry iterations of the epic tale).

I’ve always viewed it as a mostly good movie, with some rather glaring flaws. After having recently watched the movie with Mrs. Has Thoughts (

Kate

, whom I love most ardently) for the first time since we’ve been married, I wanted to highlight some of the more prominent nitpicks I have.

So, without further ado, and in no particular order:

1. The diminishment of Menelaus.

   My impression of Menelaus has always been that he was a noble man, and a good husband. In the movie, he is bizarrely neglectful of Helen, while being portrayed as essentially a clone of his callous and power hungry older brother, Agamemnon. Obviously, he would have been mad about his wife running off with another man. However, his desire to reclaim her had nothing to do with wanting to “kill her with my own two hands,” but rather because he genuinely loved Helen, her affront to his honor notwithstanding.

2. Hector, the Mope Master.

   Similar to Gandalf (among others) in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings film trilogy, the filmmakers decided to subvert a powerful and noble hero by transforming him into a nihilistic defeatist. Hector would rightly have been wary of the might of Achilles and the Greeks, but he absolutely should not have treated Troy’s (or his own) defeat as an inevitability. Sure, Achilles is a legendary warrior, but so is Hector: The two of them should have been more equally matched. It makes no sense whatsoever that Hector would go into his duel with Achilles expecting to die.

3. Achilles v Hector.

   A lot of people seem to love this fight sequence. I am not one of them. To me, it comes across as obviously fake and rehearsed, as well as being overly choreographed (a recurring issue with many of the battle scenes in this film). Achilles is way too dominant in this fight. Like I said before, Hector was a renowned warrior in his own right, and he should have been able to better hold his own. Yes, we all know he is fated to die, but a good storyteller can still create moments of uncertainty, even when the outcome is foreknown. There is none of that here: Hector barely puts up a fight, there is no nail-biting tension, and Achilles easily wins because that’s just what he’s supposed to do.

4. On second thought, let’s not use basic tactical prowess. ‘Tis is a silly idea.
   Even with Achilles at the helm, the Greeks conquer the beach of Troy far too easily. The Trojans halfheartedly shoot a few arrows, and then are slaughtered wholesale as they run away without putting up much of a fight. For their part, the Greeks march on the city without a single battering ram or siege engine, so I’m not entirely sure how Agamemnon was planning to breach the walls. And, speaking of walls, it makes no tactical sense whatsoever for the Trojans to array their forces outside the city, especially when they made such a big deal earlier on in the movie about how mighty and impregnable their walls are.

5. Every man dies. Not every man really lives.

   This one is more personal preference than anything else, but I strongly dislike how certain characters who should have lived are unceremoniously killed off (Menelaus and Agamemnon), while others who should have died are allowed to survive and thrive (Paris). Also, R.I.P. to mighty Ajax, who I’ve always thought should have been allowed to live past the first flippin’ battle, though I am somewhat mollified by the fact it took everything Hector had to fell the hulking hero.

These few quibbles aside, I have generally always enjoyed this movie. The roles are cast nearly to perfection (seriously, in the early 2000’s there was nobody better suited to play Paris than Orlando Bloom, and no better Achilles than Brad Pitt), James Horner’s score verges on the iconic, and the cinematography and visual storytelling is sumptuous, to say the least. In short, it’s always worth the occasional re-watch.

For anyone who’s never seen Troy - or if it’s been a spell - the Director’s Cut is the definitive version of the film, in my not-so-humble opinion.

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1. To wit: my Thoughts™ on Napoleon and The Electric State.