[lord of tragedy]

troy was far superior to alexander though. your right about the illiad and ditto the gods. erikson's work is reall homeric. the textual ancestor of the malazan book of the fallen.

[Tuberski]

I don't get the love for the Matrix, horrible story, horrible acting, special effects that were done 3 years earlier in Hong Kong. "Black Mask"

[HoosierDaddy]

I'm amazed that no one has mentioned Legolas the Pirate yet for a bad thing about Troy.

Edit: And, Alexander was fucking horrific.

This post has been edited by HoosierDaddy: 20 May 2009 - 05:15 AM

[Assail]

Obdigore, on May 19 2009, 01:21 PM, said:

1) Hancock - watch the extended version, he brings a chick home, throws her off him as he gets off, and shoots a couple holes in his trailer ceiling - hilarious.

2) Troy - was great, but it could have been better. I agree with the Pitt thing... a different actor would have made the movie better.

3) 300 - GIVE THEM ARMOR GODDAMNIT. ahem.

4) Kingdom of Heaven - Saladin was amazing. Liam was amazing. Bloom was not. He tried his best but he isn't a good actor. Good thing he was living in france! (zing!)

5) If the ending of the matrix series

Spoiler

WASN'T NEO LYING SPREAD EAGLE LIKE HE HAD BEEN NAILED ON A CROSS

it would have been better.

6) LOTR... yea thats right. Frodo and Sams psuedo homosexual relationship was crap. They either need to get down and dirty, or they need to remove the whole homosexual overtones. I also disliked the fact they took out the real shire ending.

7) Wolverine - OH LOOK I WEIGHT 1/4th OF THIS HUMMER BUT I CAN MAGICALLY CUT THROUGH THE WHOLE THING WITHOUT SLOWING DOWN OR ANYTHING!

Ahem.

The best movie ever made is still the 13th Warrior.

Dude, The 13th Warrior comes in a CLOSE second for me. Gladiator out does it for me. I mean they're my 2 favourite movies, but Gladiator has something special.

Traveller, on May 19 2009, 02:09 PM, said:

Troy was a HUGE waste - the Iliad is simply an awesome book; I love the scenes where the gods intervene directly with the fighting, directing warriors, and even appearing on the battlefield.
And we got... brad pitt? Gah.

The Matrix was brilliant - the sequels are utter crap. I nearly walked out of the second one during that awful 'bacardi advert' scene.

(I watched the 13th warrior last week, 1st time since it was on at the cinema - really enjoyed it too).

Seriously. I was so disappointed with what happened with Troy, as the Iliad is a book I've read and 'studied' so to speak for a long time. We have to cut them some slack though, from a movie perspective, The Iliad is almost impossible to produce. They could either go with the God/Magic storyline, or the massive war and the flaws of mortal men storyline. I liked Troy, but it could have been done better.

Yeah Alexander was disgustingly bad, I personally thought that Orlando Bloom always played a good Paris. I mean, I hated Paris (RAWR GO MENELAUS!) and Orlando fit that 'bitch ass trick' persona real nice lol.

[stone monkey]

Troy
Do not get me started on fucking Troy!

Achilles does not live to see the conquest of Troy....

That's the fucking point of his entire fucking story you fucking film producing philistines!

I think I may need to sit in a darkened room to calm down for a while....

[bwgan]

@Stone Monkey ~ you are clearly a person of great intellect and taste...I have noticed this .

Seriously, I can understand that with certain stories (such as the Illiad) it isn't possible to retell every part...but, why oh why change the story when it is already epic...and awesome (in the traditional rather than modern sense of the word)?

If you want to mess with a legend...well don't, but if you must then call it something else and make it something different. 13th Warrior is basically Beowulf with bits added on, and imho that's okay, more than okay...especially as it is way better than any of the actual Beowulf films. (I'm getting deja vu...I am sure I have said something like this before .)

[Aptorian]

They should have filmed the book Ilium instead of Troy. That would have been cool. I love Dan Simmons.

[stone monkey]

One of my friends lent me a copy of the DVD of Troy for the sole purpose of annoying me. Needless to say, it worked very well indeed.

He actually told me that he had spent the entire week looking forward to the rant I'd go off on once I brought it back to him. I was sorely tempted to burn the bloody thing...

I have yet to see the last Beowulf movie... I think it would be more than I could take. I can see the headlines in my local newspaper; "Manchester Man Explodes With Rage. Fire Crews Take 12 Hours To Put Him Out.""

[Aptorian]

With what little I know of the Beowulf story, the animated film was relatively faithfull to it. It's not much of an action film really. It was how ever very cool. Grendel was disgusting.

My favorite Beowulf story is still the weird steampunk fantasy version with Christopher Lambert. The beginning is so very awesome.

[stone monkey]

The movie Outlander, which is pretty much "Beowulf with Aliens" is not all that bad... for trashy Hollywood crap, that is...

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what you call "Damning with Faint Praise."

[beru]

only thing with the beowulf film:
the king says beowulf was famus in vinland (america) but the movie is in the 900reds, america was discoverd by erik the red in year 1000 (ca)

[Thelomen Toblerone]

I managed to drop a craft knife into my heel (near the achilles) whilst watching Troy the first time, so it has a vaguely "ooh, creepy" link in my head. Bled for fucking hours though, wasnt fun.

As much as I love Highlander, it could've been done so much better. By, say, teaching Lambert how to do a scottish accent. Or Connery how to do any other accent than a scottish one. Also the sequels. Just no. He's the LAST FUCKING ONE. How do you suddenly add enough more for a thousand sequels?! The original was still great though so only a minor complaint I guess.

I am Legend disappointed me IMMENSELY. I mean, you've got a good if somewhat cliched premise of the last man left alive in an area full of zomies. You can go anywhere with it, run, make it awesome! And then they did that. Oh.

[Tiste Simeon]

Beowulf SUCKED!!! We paid a lot of money for the stupid 3D glasses and when it started I was like "SWEET! The graphis are epic!"

*five minutes pass*

OK, I'm over the cool 3D effects show me something good.

*a long time passes*

Wait, was that Angelina Jolie n3kk1d?

*a long time passes*

Will someone please put me out of my misery???

[Thelomen Toblerone]

There's something about Angelina Jolie that makes me feel faintly uneasy. I think it was the blood vial thing. Either way, I just dont trust her. She's the sort of person that goes into a revolving door behind you and comes out first.

This post has been edited by Thelomen Toblerone: 20 May 2009 - 11:16 PM

[Assail]

Thelomen Toblerone, on May 20 2009, 04:16 PM, said:

There's something about Angelina Jolie that makes me feel faintly uneasy. I think it was the blood vial thing. Either way, I just dont trust her. She's the sort of person that goes into a revolving door behind you and comes out first.

Nail on head.

[Mentalist]

RE: Troy: that movie was horrible.

there's a less-known movie "Helen of Troy"

whilst it takes A LOT of liberties with the original story, I still think it's way better than Troy.

can't contribute much else, because I see very few movies.

[Assail]

Personally, from a book viewpoint, it was horrible. It was inaccurate and didn't frame the characters very well. I mean for those who didn't read the Iliad, they made Ajax look like a fucking pussy. However, from the entertainment viewpoint, I think it was good. I thought it was an interesting movie, even if inaccurate, and it was a fun watch.

tl;dr Very entertaining, but extremely inaccuate.

[KeithF]

Movies mentioned already that I particularly agree with the comments on:

300 - Gods yes, why did they have to wear stupid leather underoos like pro wrestlers? The comic book had them nude like classical statues, which made some vague sense as a stylistic/symbolic choice, but that was never going to be done in a movie (because a guy chopping another guy's head off in slow-mo is PG-13/R, but if his wang is hanging out at the time, that's NC-17). So why not just put them in proper Greek hoplite armour, you know, one of the main things that gave the Greeks an overwhelming advantage in 1-on-1 combat?

Kingdom of Heaven - Nearly everything in that movie (especially the director's cut, which fleshes out Sibylla's plotline well) was great EXCEPT for how Balian d'Ibelin was turned into a standard young rags-to-riches action movie hero played by Orlando Bloom, who is far too weedy to be believable as a blacksmith or a knight. They should have just had Liam Neeson play a more historically accurate version of Balian (who was much older than portrayed in the movie). The only thing I really liked about Balian's character was his transition from worrying about the rules imposed by organized religion to saying "screw it, if God's worth worshipping, then he won't care about this crap". This was obviously a bit anachronistic, but the movie as a whole was (according to the director, even) intended to portray the religious/political issues in a way that modern audiences could relate to.

Another disappointing movie was X-Men 3. Why were there so many characters and plotlines?! They tried to do the Dark Phoenix saga from the comics (which is highly respected) AND the plotline about the cure, either of which could have made a movie in itself. As it was, not enough time was spent on either, and I got the distinct impression that the antagonists were basically forming a queue to have their plotlines resolved in the final battle.

[QuickTidal]

The 13th Warrior would have been slightly better had it retained it's original title (and the title of the book) "EATERS OF THE DEAD"...and I shit you not I saw a teaser trailer for it with that title still on it.

[MTS]

Haha my Classics professor has echoed most of what you've said about Alexander, 300 and Troy, and spent an entire lecture telling us about how Hollywood are a bunch of money-making philistines with no respect for real literature. It was hilarious

If you want an accurate representation of a Greek classic then Iphegenia is a really good movie. Very faithful to the original play.