Fractionals

Wait a second, here. Firstly, contrary to what you might have heard elsewhere, my second post on here wasn't in response to his comment elsewhere, it was in response to his much earlier post on his own blog. Also, "Missed point" was meant first as a bad pun on some of the turns of phrase the translation of the Iliad I first read had (they mention the points of spears several hundred times or thereabouts, and that's also why my initial post was called "Bite The Dust") and secondly because I know there has been and will be tons of discussion about the lack of fidelity to its source material. And I think many people are going to cavalierly wave off very valid concerns with "ahh, it's a fun movie". Which, yes, does annoy me. But the title wasn't particularly directed at Jacklin.

As far as historical accuracy - hell, the Iliad itself isn't! I would have gladly settled for some aesthetic accuracy. I'm honestly not the sort to care about the small stuff (I didn't at, for example, Spiderman) but this was big, big stuff. This was the feel of the entire thing.

Might as well just quote Aaron here a few times:

"If your point was that a movie like Troy causes irreparable damage to its source material, you didn't make it. You said the problem with the movie is that most people would be left thinking that's what Homer is like. And you might be right. But, they do say 'inspired by.' Anyone who reads that in the credits and then assumes it's a faithful interpretation does not understand what the terms mean."

Well, jeeze, that's like saying people should know that whoever writes the editorial for the Ontarion doesn't necessary represent the rest of us. Of course they should have - the rest of us still took steps. I'm not faulting Aaron for believing the above, but I will say he has a lot more faith in human nature than I do.

"And anyone who is interested enough in the story after seeing the movie to go back and read the Illiad will quickly find that Homer's work is something else altogether. I don't see the damage."

Of course, those people I'm not worried about. But, think of it this way: Of the (admittedly possibly fairly sizable) minority who go pick up the Iliad, how far do you think most of them will get? Again, maybe I just don't have that much faith in people when it comes to this. I would love to be wrong.

"They didn't call it the same story. First, they called it Troy, not the Illiad. Second, they didn't claim the movie was based on it, they claimed it was inspired by it. While they used other sources, the Illiad was the primary one and credited it with an 'inspired by' tag. If that wasn't enough, what would have been?"

How many people before reading about Troy do you think had ever even heard of the Iliad? I was more referring to the fact that, for example, the characters of Paris & Briseis in the movie and the poem are so different that they really should have had different names. So, for that matter, was Achilles. My bad for not being more clear.

And yes, I know market forces means they never in a hundred years would have changed the names: I don't care. If they'd done that and said "inspired by" that would be one thing.

I do apologize for the offence; God knows I'm not worried about Aaron reacting to the movie in a damaging way. And I think I should point out that I feel the same way about Life Is Beautiful, although that movie was a far worse travesty than Troy. In any case, those posts weren't particularly directed at him, although they were spurred on by comments he'd made.

I should also note I've only read his blog, so off I go to see what kind of trouble I've caused elsewhere...