5. It's Not Actually Inaccurate
Probably the most frequently encountered criticism of Troy is that it is inaccurate or unfaithful to the source. To such I people I would immediately question: what source? The Iliad? True, the film does reference the Iliad in the closing credits, but at no point did the filmmakers claim that their movie was an adaptation of Homer's poem. Nor do the credits state that film is 'based on' the poem, as is the norm for most adaptations, but rather that it was 'inspired by' Homer, thus in a way echoing the ancient tradition whereby the simple transmission of stories encourages the creative spirits in other individuals to spin their own yarns. And what of the Iliad itself? There's a common misconception nowadays that the Iliad is the single repository of all Trojan War mythology, which is quickly dispelled when you actually read it. The poem is barely about the war in its entirety, rather a single, albeit highly important episode lasting around 50 days in the ninth year of the conflict. Patroclus and Hector are the only major characters to perish. In my experience, many readers exhibit surprise when they realise that the poem covers neither the war's origin nor its end through the trick of the Wooden Horse, that Achilles does not die within its content, that there is no mention of his vulnerable heel (he is in fact completely mortal and is wounded elsewhere on his body), and that Patroclus is actually said to be older than him. Much of the popular knowledge that people have of the Trojan War mythology comes from an accumulation of various other sources or re-tellings. And that's just it. There is no one definitive version of the Trojan War or of all the stories involving its associated characters. The Iliad is just one version of one part of the war from an overall body of stories known now as the Epic Cycle, though a version that over the centuries has amassed special cultural primacy, both on account of and contributing to its continued survival. Myth by its very nature is flexible and malleable, constantly re-told and re-shaped to suit the perceived needs and characteristics of new audiences over time. The film fashions itself as genuine history, but really represents just a conspicuous leaf or branch on the tall tree of Homeric storytelling. This historical focus is underlined by a generally realistic approach as far as the plot is concerned, with the Olympian gods especially having no overt presence, a particular bugbear for many critics. But, irrespective of purely cinematic reasons (the inclusion of the gods would have led to a severely bloated cast for instance), this omission is hardly unprecedented. Gods aside, the Iliad is widely recognised as containing far less supernatural elements than other versions of the story which contributed many of the popular facets of Greek mythology which we readily accept today- Achilles isn't invulnerable as I've already mentioned, Heracles is described as dead, and there are no demigods. In the fifth century BC Greek dramatists would also explore the concept that gods were not powerful external forces but rather manifestations of intense internal emotion. And after them numerous authors such as Dares and Dictys would write similarly rationalised and quasi-historical accounts of the war which increasingly played down the role of the gods in the conflict. One topic that came under particular scrutiny was the issue of Achilles and Patroclus' relationship, in that it was portrayed as completely non-sexual. In this respect the film certainly could lay claim to being an adaptation of the Iliad, since at no point does Homer make any reference to them being lovers; indeed he has them going to be bed with separate women at one point! This is not to deny the competing tradition of the pair as lovers which has held sway over a multitude of authors and readers. But it is clearly going too far to claim that the film is inaccurate simply because it does not follow the tradition that you prefer, when competing ones visibly existed. Some of the choices that Troy does make however, are completely unprecedented- most notably Hector killing Menelaus. But once you accept that the myth has a long history of being re-told and that textual fidelity is something of a myth itself, there's no reason that this should itself represent a problem. In my case I was wholly surprised by the event but pleasantly so, since it completely defeated my expectations and because Menelaus had not been particularly sympathetically portrayed up to that point. Of course, none of this means that you should necessarily like the choices made by the filmmakers from an artistic and cinematic point of view - that's clearly far too subjective. But hopefully it's been made clear that claims of inaccuracy and lack of fidelity are the wrong criteria by which to judge the film. In fact, if you are going to criticise Troy for not being enough like the Iliad your time would be better spent condemning Hollywood's previous big-budget epic on the Trojan War, 1956's Helen of Troy, when the filmmakers deliberately misled audiences into believing their movie was a faithful adaptation of the poem by explicitly stating so in trailers, and produced promotional TV shows in which they claimed the Iliad to be one of the greatest love stories of all time. Anyone who's read Homer will know that by this point in the war Paris and Helen have come to pretty much despise one another... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHi7Kcf42TQ