Best greek-themed movie

[Kyriakos]

You know, I'd like to see a Greek historic film made about Alkibiades. Should have pretty much everything.

Or of the entire Peloponnesian war

I still remember how interested i was in early elementary school, when we were being taught the Peloponnesian war for the first time. I think that i supported Sparta back then.

 

[Lillefix]

I would like to see the battle of Salamis on screen.

 

[Plotinus]

Personally i liked both Alexander and 300, but not Troy which was a ludicrous amalgam of false plots, and had little to do with the original Iliad.

I haven't seen Alexander, but would like to. 300 is totally stupid but fun as long as you get yourself into that mindset ready for it.

I liked Troy very much. I thought it was excellently done and the characters were surprisingly well portrayed, including the moral ambiguity of Achilles. I don't understand people who criticise it for not being close enough to "the original Iliad". It wasn't based on the Iliad. The Iliad itself is not the original story. It is just a version of the story - and of only part of the story. The original hearers or readers of the Iliad were expected to know the story of the Trojan war, since the poem begins in the middle of it and finishes well before the end - before the horse, even. No doubt when the Iliad appeared there were people complaining that it couldn't be any good because it didn't stick to the original story closely enough. The film Troy is a retelling of the myth as a whole, in its own way, not just sticking slavishly to a single version of it. I assume it was based more closely on the Aeneid, if on anything, given that Aeneas appears in it, and also given that the Aeneid does actually tell the whole story of the Trojan War (or a version of that story), which the Iliad does not.

So if we're to criticise Troy, let's do it on the basis of whether it's actually a good film or not, not just on the basis of how closely it matches one particular version of the myth it's retelling.

 

[Smellincoffee]

I like Troy for the large shots of the triremes sailing toward Troy, Peter O'Toole, the character of Hector (good guy in the movie: I remember disliking him when I read the Illiad in freshman world lit), the shout-out to the Aenid, and Achilles' lines about the benefits of mortality and the impotence of the gods.

 

[Kyriakos]

I like this sequence:


Link to video.

 

[classical_hero]

If anyone is trying to view 300 with a a view to it being an historical work is sorely mistaken. It is clearly a mythological retelling of the story.

 

[Chukchi Husky]

I never seen Alexander, but from what I heard the film is terrible. I seen 300 and two cuts of Troy, the theatrical and director's cut. 300 and Troy are two different kinds of film, with 300 being a popcorn movie where you can watch without any thought, while Troy is the drawn out epic.

The director's cut of Troy is over three hours long. I think the added content does improve the film but it could just be made because the theatrical cut was considered a failure. One thing I liked in Troy was the city itself and the Trojans. I think one problem is that when people think of the Trojan War, they probably assume that Troy was the villains, and I think if it was trying to be a simpler film it might have done that, but instead the Trojans are portrayed as simply trying to defend their homeland, with Hector ending up being probably the most heroic character in the film. I also like how some of the Greeks, like Odysseus, may not agree with the war or Agamemnon, but the come along anyway as an act of duty to their lord. One thing I didn't like was the armours the people wore. They didn't seem distinctive enough, but I don't know anything about bronze age Greece.

I think one problem with the film that some people had was some of the casting choices. Having Brad Pitt as Achilles people will watch it and think it's just Brad Pitt and not Achilles, although the way he played the role does suggest a character that is only there just for his own glory, which in a way I guess makes sense to have a big name actor since that would probably be the closest equivalent to a renowned hero that everyone knows. Another problem is Orlando Bloom, who seems to act the same in every film, even in more grown up roles.

I never read any of the epics that the film takes it's inspiration from, so I don't know how it compares to them. I know the director said that Iliad may have been what started the idea for the film, many of the elements were taken from Virgil.

 

[Plotinus]

I thought that in its characterisation of both Achilles and Hector it was close to the Iliad. In the Iliad, Hector is indeed presented as the most admirable and noble hero, and Achilles is pretty morally dubious. But in the Homeric world, being a hero is about martial greatness rather than what we might think of as virtue. The problems facing heroes stem from what that martial greatness means in relation to the rest of their lives and other people. Hector and Achilles opt for different answers to that problem, and it is not obvious which answer is better - if either. This sort of thing is what makes the Iliad interesting - although if you actually read it you find that a surprisingly large proportion of it consists of people disembowelling each other in graphic detail.

 

[Traitorfish]

One thing I didn't like was the armours the people wore. They didn't seem distinctive enough, but I don't know anything about bronze age Greece.

I actually really appreciated the way they depicted the arms and armour, because it was all based on artefacts from the Mycenaean period, rather than the inappropriate Classical armour you usually see in depictions of the Trojan War. It sometimes looked a bit goofy, but that's only because it really did look like that, and whatever opinions we have of it our entirely our own. The one downfall, I felt, was the case in which they actually did try and make the armour more "distinctive", giving Achilles and the Myrmidons an anachronistically pseudo-Hellenic aesthetic, presumably to make it seem more "heroic". Fine for most people, I suppose, but I found it a bit jarring, especially given the care they'd put into the rest of the setting.

This sort of thing is what makes the Iliad interesting - although if you actually read it you find that a surprisingly large proportion of it consists of people disembowelling each other in graphic detail.

Could be worth pointing that out to people who complain that 300 was all guts and glory- the Ancient Greeks loved that sort of thing, so it's hardly inconsistent with their culture.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I've seen Hercules (with Lou Ferrigno), the Hercules TV-movies, Clash of the Titans, Jason and the Argonauts, and some others I've temporarily forgotten the names of... and I wish I could forget seeing Troy, because I thought it was crap. I saw it because I figured, "well, I like Greek stuff, and people say Brad Pitt is a good actor..."

He isn't.

 

[Huayna Capac357]

I hated 300. I don't see what everyone liked except it looked pretty. It was so poorly written and acted and unbelievable imo.

 

[Lord Baal]

Or of the entire Peloponnesian war

I still remember how interested i was in early elementary school, when we were being taught the Peloponnesian war for the first time. I think that i supported Sparta back then.

This. God yes this. I've been wanting to see the Peloponnesian War on film since I was about 6.

 

[cav scout]

300 was pure garbage in every way. I wish they would make the novel "Gates of Fire" by Pressfield into a movie.

 

[Kyriakos]

I really hope that they will make a Byzantine Empire movie sometime in the future as well.

 

[Chukchi Husky]

I actually really appreciated the way they depicted the arms and armour, because it was all based on artefacts from the Mycenaean period, rather than the inappropriate Classical armour you usually see in depictions of the Trojan War. It sometimes looked a bit goofy, but that's only because it really did look like that, and whatever opinions we have of it our entirely our own.

The problem that I had with the armour was it seemed like they tried to put too much detail and patterns that looked like it came from stonework into the armour, which ended up looking all the same. I suppose back in the bronze age there wasn't the technology to make the armour look more unique apart from putting patterns onto it.

Achilles' armour did look out of place in the film.

 

[Plotinus]

Achilles has to have very distinctive armour - otherwise the Trojans wouldn't assume that anyone wearing it is him.

I thought they did rather well to have Patroclus played by an actor who looked rather like Brad Pitt, and had the same hair, though. It made the mistaken identity thing a little bit more believable - more so than in the post-Homeric tradition that Patroclus was a lot older than Achilles.

 

[Heretic_Cata]

 

[azzaman333]

The Wog Boy.

 

[LightSpectra]

This. God yes this. I've been wanting to see the Peloponnesian War on film since I was about 6.

The majority of the war was naval skirmishes against the Peloponnese peninsula. It wouldn't make a good movie. The one moment of critical action was the Sicilian expedition, which had an anti-climactic conclusion.

If anything, it would be a TV show, and it would be something like Deep Space Nine, I think.

 

[azzaman333]

Keep in mind Kings Of Mykonos is Wog Boy 2: Kings of Mykonos, not any sort of historical representation of Greece.