Lord of the Rings: I think similarities here are largely coincidental (unlike, say, in King Arthur). The production designers can't have seen Return of the King, and probably hadn't seen Two Towers before starting work.
Homoeroticism: I have come to the conclusion that Petersen and Benioff are very clever, and have produced a movie with a homoerotic subtext, but about which they can easily say "it's not a gay movie!" This is a film clearly in love with the male body (more so than any Hollywood blockbuster I've seen since Batman Returns) - but notice how all the male nudity happens when there's a female present, and is therefore in a heterosexual context.
Menelaus: Menelaus dies because there's nothing for him to do once the script decision gets taken that Helen won't return to Sparta. This is a consequence of having a basically-nice Helen and a boorish Menelaus, so if she goes back to him, then the film is sending a message out that "battered wives should go back to their husbands". Clearly this isn't acceptable. Menelaus only fulfills a role at the beginning and end of the Trojan story - in the middle he just says "yes, Agammemnon," a lot. Take away his role at the end, and you might as well get rid of him halfway through. Agamemnon gets off because a modern audience will not necessarily known that he gets his comeuppance as soon as he returns home.
Odysseus: Though I liked Sean Bean, I didn't think he was the perfect Odysseus. He has that down-to-earth quality that the Ithacan possesses, but lacks the mercurial element. The first thing Odysseus says to anyone is usually a lie, even to his closest family, and I didn't quite get that with Bean.
Paris: Paris' survival annoyed me not because it breaks with canonical tradition, but because it breaks with the film's own structure. He's given a scene with Helen where he's plainly never going to see her again, and they both know he's going off to die. And then he doesn't.
Priam's Treasure: This didn't disappear after discovery. It was sneaked out of Turkey to Athens (in contravention of Schliemann's excavation permit), and from there to Berlin, where it remained until the Second World War. It then disappeared in the confusion of the capture of Berlin by Russian forces, but in the early 1990s re-appeared in the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad, where it remains.
Further thoughts on Troy are here (http://www.livejournal.com/users/swisstone/144691.html), though they've been subsequently revised for other fora.
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Lord of the Rings: I think similarities here are largely coincidental (unlike, say, in King Arthur). The production designers can't have seen Return of the King, and probably hadn't seen Two Towers before starting work.
Homoeroticism: I have come to the conclusion that Petersen and Benioff are very clever, and have produced a movie with a homoerotic subtext, but about which they can easily say "it's not a gay movie!" This is a film clearly in love with the male body (more so than any Hollywood blockbuster I've seen since Batman Returns) - but notice how all the male nudity happens when there's a female present, and is therefore in a heterosexual context.
Menelaus: Menelaus dies because there's nothing for him to do once the script decision gets taken that Helen won't return to Sparta. This is a consequence of having a basically-nice Helen and a boorish Menelaus, so if she goes back to him, then the film is sending a message out that "battered wives should go back to their husbands". Clearly this isn't acceptable. Menelaus only fulfills a role at the beginning and end of the Trojan story - in the middle he just says "yes, Agammemnon," a lot. Take away his role at the end, and you might as well get rid of him halfway through. Agamemnon gets off because a modern audience will not necessarily known that he gets his comeuppance as soon as he returns home.
Odysseus: Though I liked Sean Bean, I didn't think he was the perfect Odysseus. He has that down-to-earth quality that the Ithacan possesses, but lacks the mercurial element. The first thing Odysseus says to anyone is usually a lie, even to his closest family, and I didn't quite get that with Bean.
Paris: Paris' survival annoyed me not because it breaks with canonical tradition, but because it breaks with the film's own structure. He's given a scene with Helen where he's plainly never going to see her again, and they both know he's going off to die. And then he doesn't.
Priam's Treasure: This didn't disappear after discovery. It was sneaked out of Turkey to Athens (in contravention of Schliemann's excavation permit), and from there to Berlin, where it remained until the Second World War. It then disappeared in the confusion of the capture of Berlin by Russian forces, but in the early 1990s re-appeared in the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad, where it remains.
Further thoughts on Troy are here (http://www.livejournal.com/users/swisstone/144691.html), though they've been subsequently revised for other fora.