...enough of this HD DVD Director's Cut worked to keep me interested for the movie's three-and-a-quarter hours duration.
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"Sing, O goddess, of the wrath of Peleus' son Achilles, the deadly wrath that brought upon the Achaeans countless woes and sent many mighty souls of heroes down to the house of Death...." --Homer, "The Iliad"
Maybe I'm in a minority liking director Wolfgang Petersen's 2004 production of "Troy." Still, the one thing I didn't care for in the original theatrical release was its length at 162 minutes. Much too long. So when I heard Petersen was going to make a Director's Cut, I hoped for the best: Maybe he'd shorten it. No such luck. Instead, he added over thirty minutes of "never-before-seen footage."
Here's how Petersen explains his new Director's Cut in a press release: "The raw power of Homer, the sex, the brutality and the uncompromising battles really come to life in this version. We went back to the way I first envisioned the film, when the full energy and impact of each scene had time to play out. Now, with great new visuals and sound design, audiences are going to have a deeper emotional experience of this literary classic. Thanks to Warner Home Video for giving me the opportunity to restore the creative integrity of my original version."
Petersen never mentions in there why Warner Bros. didn't give him the opportunity to exercise his creative integrity in the first place. I suspect they wanted a shorter and more marketable film. So did I. Or they foresaw a double-dip all along. Who knows. With this edition, it brings to seven different versions of Petersen's "Troy" that WB have to offer: SD theatrical versions in widescreen and fullscreen; an HD DVD theatrical version; an SD regular and an SD Collector's Edition of the Director's Cut; and Blu-ray and HD DVD Director's Cuts. Whew! You can't say the studio isn't giving you a choice.
But the question here is whether the Director's Cut is any better or any worse than the original theatrical release. The answer is neither. It is simply another edit of the film, incorporating more material. In a video introduction to the new cut, Petersen says that the pressure's over, so he could be more creative, giving the film more room to breathe. He tells us he expanded the relationship between Helen and Paris, their "desperate love," as he calls it, making it more emotional; and he better developed the tension between Achilles and Agamemnon. He explains that the movie is now closer to what he originally intended.
I'm not going to reveal all the changes he's made, but there are some obvious ones I'll generalize about. The first thing you'll notice is a new opening, a more sobering one involving the casualties of war. I liked it, especially the entrance of a dog in the scene. The second thing you'll find is more violence. The battle sequences are not just more intense, they're more brutal. Expect to be wiping the blood and guts from your screen for days. Petersen's third most obvious change is the addition of more sex and nudity. For instance, we now get a better idea why Helen caused such a ruckus. But for me, the most important modification is the apparent expansion of Odysseus's part. Sean Bean plays the wise and wily Odysseus, and Petersen's next good move would be to make a movie of Homer's sequel, "The Odyssey," with Bean as the lead.
Now, about the film. The trouble with any movie based on literature or history is that filmmakers invariably want to change things. When filmmakers base a movie on both literature and history, the problems only intensify. So it is with this film version of the Trojan Wars.
"Troy" is based in large part on the writings of the early Greek poet Homer in his "Iliad," in smaller part on "The Odyssey," and for the ending on a portion of the Roman poet Virgil's "Aeneid." Screenwriter David Benioff combines these literary elements with some of the historical record and with his own pure imagination. The result is not at all unsatisfactory in either the theatrical edition or this new Director's Cut, but it may frustrate anyone hoping to find in the movie either the beauty of the ancient literature or the revelations of modern archeological evidence.
The History:
According to the "Encyclopedia Britannica," the ancient city-state of Troy "commanded a strategic point at the southern entrance to the Dardanelles (Hellespont), a narrow strait linking the Black Sea with the Aegean Sea. Troy probably used its site astride these two lines of communication to exact tolls from trading vessels and other travelers using them. This practice probably accounted for the wealth of ancient Troy; it may also have been the Greeks' actual motive in waging war against the city, which chronically interfered with their trade through the Dardanelles."
"Britannica" goes on to say that "the location of Troy was well known from references in works by ancient Greek and Latin authors. But the exact site of the city remained unidentified until modern times. In 1822 Charles McLaren suggested the site of Homeric Troy, but for the next fifty years his suggestion received little attention from classical scholars, most of whom regarded the Trojan legend as a mere fictional creation based on myth, not history. The German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann deserves full credit for adopting McLaren's identification and demonstrating to the world that it was correct."
The Legend:
As I've said, the filmmakers base most of "Troy" on the work of Homer, mainly in the "Iliad" and parts of the "Odyssey," with a good part of the movie's ending based on the work of Virgil in the "Aeneid." In these books we learn that the Trojan War, fought between the Greeks and Troy, began in a rather convoluted way. Paris, the son of the wealthy and powerful King Priam of Troy, was asked to judge a kind of heavenly beauty contest among the goddesses Aphrodite, Hera, and Athena. Each of the goddesses tried to bribe Paris to win the prize, but Aphrodite's gift was the most tempting; she promised to give Paris the most beautiful woman in the world. Paris went for it, but unfortunately the prize woman, Helen, was already married to another guy, who just happened to be a King, Menelaus of Sparta. So Paris wins Helen's love, as promised, but to keep her the young couple have to sneak back to Troy, where the Trojans welcome Helen as a queen (a princess, actually).
King Menelaus is incensed and gets his brother, Agamemnon, King of Mycenae, to mount an expedition of a 1,000 ships and 50,000 men to bring her back. The Trojans, however, refuse to give her up. The Greeks lay siege to Troy in a war that would last for ten years. The "Iliad" takes up the story in the tenth and final year of the war but provides details about previous events in flashback. The gods take sides in the war, too, with Hera, Athena, and Poseidon rallying for the Greeks and Aphrodite, Apollo, and Ares for the Trojans. Homer then tells us of a quarrel between Agamemnon and the Greeks' finest warrior, Achilles, favored of the gods; of the death of Achilles' good friend (or cousin in the movie) Patroclus; of the death of the Trojan's finest warrior, Hector; and finally of Achilles' own demise at the hands of Paris, who hits him with an arrow in his only vulnerable spot, his heel.
The war ends when as a parting gift to the gods the Greeks build a huge wooden horse concealing several Greek warriors, while the remainder of the Greek army pretends to sail away. At night, the Greeks hidden in the horse sneak out and open up the city's gates to the Greek army, who pour in and sack the place. According to legend, Priam and his remaining sons were killed and the Trojan women sold into slavery.
The Movie:
It surprises me that I liked "Troy" (in either version) as much as I did, considering there is not much more to it than flashing swords, glistening bodies, and CGI effects. I mean, it isn't the filmmakers fault that Homer chose as petulant, arrogant, and generally unlikable a figure as Achilles for his central character, even if it is the filmmakers' fault for casting Brad Pitt in the role.
"Troy" sticks mainly to the poets' stories, but it leaves out one key ingredient that has always fascinated readers for 2,500 years; namely, the gods. People in the movie talk about the gods, but we never see them. The movie tries to combine literature and history into a believable reality that would explain the influence of the gods without showing their actual presence; but in the process, the movie loses some of its mystery and adventure.
So, instead of the gods, we get Brad Pitt. You're right; it isn't a fair exchange. Pitt is youthful, handsome, muscular, and athletic, but with his long blond locks and Southern California tan he looks more ready to jump on the back of a surfboard than the back of a chariot. And why do actors in historical epics always want to speak in posh British accents, whether or not they are British? Pitt's voice inflections vary between what is presumably his own and a sort of British Shakespearean. Frankly, the less he says, the better. But, I admit, he looks good, and in the Director's Cut we do see more of him, literally.
Hence, the movie "Troy" basically reduces the poets' grand epics to the stuff of Saturday-afternoon matinees for which Ray Harryhausen used to provide the stop-motion animation. But you know what? I loved those old Harryhausen special-effects movies, and maybe that's why I like many of today's similar, big-screen, historical, CGI-filled blockbusters.
Anyway, the story line begins with Paris and Helen running away to Troy, then spends the bulk of its time on the siege, and ends with the big wooden horse, the sacking of the city, and most everyone dying. Petersen's one big concession to traditional filmmaking is reducing what Homer described as a ten-year war into a mere few weeks.
Not unexpectedly, the movie's most-veteran actors, Brian Cox and Peter O'Toole, provide some of the film's most serious dramatic moments. Cox plays the bullying, selfish, power-hungry King Agamemnon, who feels frustrated because he is able to push around everybody except his own best warrior, Achilles. He feels that Achilles would just as soon put an arrow in his back than in the enemy. And he'd be right. Homer made the Agamemnon-Achilles rancor the centerpiece of the "Iliad," and at least Cox makes it an important element in the movie, with Petersen adding a few more words in the Director's Cut to explicate the relationship further.
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