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Although most of us may not be very familiar with Homer’s Iliad, we have all heard of the name Troy, Achilles, and the infamous trick of the hollow Trojan horse. “Wow, what a great story to bring to the big screen!” I thought to myself when I heard that this movie was coming out. However, as with any adaptation or remake there is the risk of missing the point of the story - and that is exactly what happened to this movie. Director Wolfgang Petersen’s major mistake was his decision to exclude the existence of Greek Gods from the story. Instead, the motivation for the plot comes from the individual characters: who are at conflict with themselves as well as each other. Although this may sound like a great idea on paper, it simply does not work with for this Greek drama since the involvement of the Gods is what makes the story so interesting and momentous.

Brad Pitt is a good actor and from what I’m told “a very sexy man,” however he does not exactly fit the role of Achilles, or perhaps the character of Achilles created by Petersen does not fit the story. Although Achilles is a fearless warrior who cannot be killed, he is constantly having second thoughts and is always in conflict with himself in the movie. This type of complexity is simply not needed for an action film or an action hero. The other main characters in this movie are equally confused and are constantly wavering at what they are going to do next to the point where it gets annoying.

There is no doubt this is a high budget movie. The costumes, sets, and effects are all impressive in size and scale however for some reason they fail to make an impact on the viewer. When the movie The Mummy came out back in 1999, it was truly remarkable to see large armies of CGI created characters fighting with each other. However since then, this concept has been overused in action films to the point that it is no longer exciting. There is no argument that Troy is a beautiful film on screen, nevertheless it does not bring forth anything new or impressive in terms of cinematography or effects to the screen.

As the weather gets warm we begin to think of summer blockbusters that roll in along with the heat, unfortunately Troy is not it. Despite the first-rate looking costumes and stirring battles, especially the duel between Achilles and Hector, the movie fails to deliver. Hopefully Hollywood can learn from this mistake and spend as much time on developing the screenplay for its movies as much as it does on CGI and effects.