How is Troy different from The Iliad?
This section pretty much contains a lot of the movie’s shortcomings. The story is the generally the same, but it is condensed. The Iliad is an account of the last year of the 10 year siege of the city and focuses on the feud between Achilles and Agamemnon. The movie gives the impression that the war lasted only 2 weeks or so because of the exposition needed to explain why the war began. Aside from that, the other most noticeable difference is the complete and conscientious removal of the gods. According to Homer, the war began as a squabble among the goddesses Aphrodite, Athena and Hera. Troy is a strictly human imagining of the events of The Iliad – Athena doesn’t come out of the sky to help the Greeks, nor does Ares appear to slash them down despite the fact that the gods and mythology are often referenced in the movie. Even Achilles’ lineage with the gods (his mother was a sea goddess named Thetis) is only flirted with. Troy also makes an assumption that we know certain things about
