Well, considering how persnickety this new blogger beta has been, let's go ahead and make blog participation not absolutely required (unless I explicitly say otherwise), and instead give extra-credit points for it. What do you say??
Remember also that I offered extra-credit for viewing the movie "Troy," and posting in a comment here one thing particularly historically-accurate about it, and one thing that's not... (Remember to mix it up, so if somebody also posts what you were going to say, be sure to come up with another one!)
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Join Dorothy on a journey through Oz. Based on the timeless tale, this version has you matching gems and saving your friends. With the Wicked Witch gone, it's up to you to free the munchkins and make your way to the Wizard. Along the way, you'll have to help the Scarecrow, the Tinman and the Cowardly Lion find everything they need, too! Revisit the Wonderful Wizard of Oz today!
7 comments:
After watching the movie Troy, I noticed that the main storyline of the movie stayed close to that of the Iliad. Mainly I noticed the story of Meneleus asking his brother Agamemnon to help him fight the Trojans to get his wife back. Agamemnon only agreed to help as long as he received all of the gold and other valuables they win from Troy. Agamemnon only wanted to take on the Trojans for his own benefit and not to help his brother.
Likewise, the movie had a few basic facts wrong with it too. The one I found most amusing was when Paris tells Helen that they should ride to the east and just keep going. The sun is seen rising over the ocean throughout the movie, and the sun is supposed to rise in the east. Knowing this, Paris must not mean to ride off into the east but rather the west where there is actual land to ride on.
~Christina~
I watched the movie as well, and one thing that I noticed was inaccurate was the apparent length of time the Greeks were in Troy before it was destroyed. In the movie it only takes a couple weeks or months at the most, while in Homer's account it takes years. The death of Ajax is also different, in the movie he is killed by Hector, but in the Illiad he commits suicide out of shame.
It is accurate however when depicting the soldies going to fight. They are arranged in tightly packed rows and keep on walking even when the soldier in front of them goes down, just as it is recorded historically.
The major error that i had seen in the movie was the fighting style of Achillies (Brad Pitt). A soldier is trained in the art of war and killing. A greek Hopplit is also trained in group battles, using your brothers in arms to aid you in battle, not so much the one on one kind of fighting. Achilles also fights with a sort of finnes that is unheard of in battle. When it is a fight to the end, one does not fly through the air and stab at the neck... one goes for a quick clean kill.
Although it was much easier to find differences than similarities between Troy and the Iliad there were some basic consistancies such as the number of ships that sailed to Troy("the face that launched 1,000 ships) and the theme of love overpowering patriotism. Bloom did a good job of portraying Paris as a whiny, love-struck brat willing to sacrifice his country for a pretty face. One annoyingly obvious difference is the lack of gods in the movie. The divine intervention of the gods was so key in the Iliad...after all it was Aphrodite that tricked Helen into Paris's arms to begin with. And the gods also intervene throughout the entire war in the Iliad.
I thought the movie Troy portrayed the story of the Iliad quite well. The movie showed Achilles refusing to fight the Trojans because of his defiance toward King Agamemnon. However, he does return to fight Hector after he finds out that he killed his friend Patroclus. One difference from the Iliad that doesn't appear in the movie is when Achilles asks his mother to order him new armor. This scene never appeared in Troy; he just uses his old armor off of Patroclus.
Although Troy is a pretty fun movie to watch, there are some very strong innacuracies. For example, I noticed that Agamemnon's time of death was wrong. Agamemnon was not killed at Troy; he survived the war and returned home only to be murdered by his wife (Clytaemnestra) and her lover. Something that was accurate, however, was the tradition/ritual of burning the dead on huge funeral pires. This was done especially after battle in order to clear the battle field of carnage and also to ensure that the fallen soldiers would be able to enter the afterlife.
i wanted to wait before i added these other bloopers... Troy was first founded on a huge platou overlooking the ocean... not on the flats shown in the movie, The Soothsayer Layocoone who is quoted, "Beware the Greeks, even when they bare gifts." was not present, and when the horse was brought into the city of Troy the gates had to be broken so that the horse would fit through, allowing the walls to be breached by the outside Greeks, the Greek navy was supposed to be hidden behind an island off of the coast of troy... those are just some other ones.
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