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Well I am in the in the latter stages of my first fan-edit.
Let me say this right now: Troy sucked. Big time. The acting was wooden, the script a horrible, clichéd mess that was only mildly faithful to the superior source material, the photography was boring, the production design incredibly amateurish, the score worthless (synthesizers??!), the characters unlikeable and it just went on and on. Only the sometimes-impressive visual effects and the magnetic screen-presence of Brad Pitt saved the film from utter ruin. In my opinion of course.
But underneath all of that trash, I could see that there was a movie salvageable. Not a great one, but a watchable one at least, something people could enjoy.
What was the problem? Two things. One, the film was attempting to be a moving, tragic historical epic 50% of the time. It is far too cliched, boring and poorly directed to be such a thing. Two, the film was attempting to be an action-packed comic-book like adventure film the other 50% of the time, with epic scenery, larger-than-life heroes and an enjoyably cheesy ambiance. This works for the most part, but the first 50% offsets this second half and both fall apart.
Well, I have salvaged that second aspect into its own movie. This is not a moving and emotional historical epic like Gladiator or Kingdom of Heaven—it’s a comic book adventure film in the vein of Ray Harryhausen. Think Jason and the Argonauts, 7th Voyage of Sinbad, Clash of the Titans.
This is my version of the movie formerly known as Troy. I have yet to give it a new name—suggestions are welcome. I was thinking of merely Achilles to reflect the change in story focus from the whole Trojan war to just Achilles but that strikes me as a somewhat dull title.
Challenges:
-Achilles is presented as an Dirty Harry-like anti-hero; well, the rogue aspect of him works, but he comes off as a murderous, bloodthirsty sociopath in the film.
The original cut has no protagonist; the film is split between Achilles (Brad Pitt), Hector (Eric Bana) and Paris (Orlando Bloom). Achilles’ story is the most interesting one but his character is very uneven; Hector is interesting to a degree but we never really get a feel for him and he dies halfway; Paris is just annoying and the whole “doomed romance” plot totally fails and drags the movie down with it. This begs the question: who’s story is this? In trying to answer it with “everybody’s story” the filmmakers inevitably gave us “nobody’s story.”
-Bad pacing. There’s too many pointless battle shots of random soldiers fighting, the film seems to stop a million times for funerals, the overuse of a the “tragic” wailing first made trendy by Gladiator is very annoying and theres far too many scenes where characters sit and provide exposition and talk irrelevant politics. And it goes on far too long.
Well, I’ve solved those problems, for the most part. Achilles is now the clear protagonist of the film, a rogue-ish hero with a bad streak of attitude in him but generally likeable. Paris and Hector are there as adversaries for him but they are developed to a degree as people with their own issues; Hector and King Priam come across as more devious and antagonistic now, and Paris much more sneaky, though I think the audience identifies with his struggle more now that all the crappy dialog is cut down.
Complete list of changes:
I am still working on little tweaks and cuts. There probably a few things i forgot to mention too.
Final running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes.
original run time: 2 hours, 42 minutes.
The final product is a fast-paced, comic-book-like adventure epic which follows Achilles, the greatest hero who ever lived, as he battles the greedy and nasty King Agamemnon, wrestles with the morality of war, battles the Trojans and romances Briseis. It is very watchable but still imperfect due to the actual source—nevertheless, this is all the good that lay in the film known as Troy.
Should have this done by wednesday or so. Anyone interested?
