Revisiting Wolfgang Petersen’s TROY alongside THE ODYSSEY reveals how Hollywood reshapes ancient myths to reflect the audiences and values of its time.
While too much has been made of the content and casting of Christopher Nolan’s more inclusive take on The Odyssey, there’s a much more interesting way to understand these competing interpretations: as windows into the eras in which they were made. Look no further than Arrow’s recent 4K UHD restoration of Wolfgang Petersen’s 2004 sword-and-sandals epic Troy, itself a very loose adaptation of Homer’s Iliad, the companion poem to The Odyssey. Pairing the two makes for a fascinating double feature, illustrating just how dramatically centuries-old texts can be adapted, repurposed, and recontextualized depending on the auteur behind the camera—and, perhaps more importantly, what that filmmaker believes a modern audience wants to see.
The 2004 blockbuster feels far more concerned with delivering a conventional Hollywood action epic, built around two of the era’s biggest heartthrobs: Legends of the Fall, Brad Pitt as Achilles and Lord of the Rings, Orlando Bloom as Paris. Everything is bigger, shinier, and more overtly commercial. The battles are larger than life, the romance?!?! is dialed up and it is a romance here, as opposed to the non-consensual kidnapping in the original text, and the film is almost comically committed to the idea that sex sells. The Director’s Cut doubles down on that philosophy, offering its female cast plenty of semi-nudity while somehow managing to give the men plenty of shirtless screen time without ever quite showing anything below the belt.
My favorite example of this mentality in the “Director’s Cut” is a shot involving Diane Kruger as Helen. What was presumably a more tasteful composition in the theatrical offering is reframed, lowering the same frame by a few inches just so that when she removes her top, her nipples are now visible on screen. It’s definitely a choice, not really a directorial one, but one that perfectly encapsulates the movie’s understanding of what a 2004 Hollywood blockbuster was supposed to be selling.
That, coupled with the film’s overwhelmingly white cast, also illustrates the razor-thin worldview of the era—not simply in terms of what Hollywood believed audiences would accept, but in its limited understanding of the cultural complexity and colonizing nature of the Greek world. The irony is that this very idea is baked into the narrative itself. Agamemnon isn’t simply trying to retrieve Helen; he sees the conflict as an opportunity to expand Greek power and absorb Troy into his empire.
But Troy is ultimately a product of its time, crafted around the almighty U.S. box office and the prevailing Hollywood thinking of the early 2000s. And it worked in every sense of the word. The film grossed roughly $450 million worldwide against a reported $150 million budget and generated enough interest the director’s cut was also released on home video to triple dip. Compare that with the apocalyptic “go woke, go broke” predictions surrounding Nolan’s $250 million Odyssey, which many right-wing commentators insisted was doomed because of its more diverse casting and contemporary themes the film was going to explore. Three weeks into its theatrical run, Nolan’s film has already crossed the $1 billion mark, putting it in the same commercial conversation as his Batman films.
All of which makes Arrow’s Troy an especially fascinating companion piece for anyone coming to The Odyssey with a newfound appreciation for Homer. It’s an opportunity to see firsthand how much freedom filmmakers can take with these stories while still retaining the basic DNA of the source material.
There are some pretty substantial liberties taken here to make the narrative more conventional and digestible. Most notably, the ten-year Trojan War is compressed into what feels like a matter of weeks, with the conflict effectively ignited when Helen (Diane Kruger) WILLINGLY leaves her much older, adulterous husband Menelaus—played here not by Jon Bernthal, but Brendan Gleeson—for Legolas, I mean – Paris (Orlando Bloom), the prince of Troy. Women are largely stripped of agency and reduced to political and sexual property (basically same at the text), while Menelaus and his brother Agamemnon (Brian Cox) use Helen’s departure as justification to invade Troy and expand the Greek empire.
The core drama, like the poem, revolves around the conflict between Achilles and Agamemnon. Brad Pitt’s Achilles is the Greeks’ seemingly unbeatable warrior, but Petersen’s film is far less interested in the gods than Homer’s original text. Much like Nolan’s approach to The Odyssey, the gods exist more as deep lore than active participants in the narrative.
Achilles’ divine lineage is treated almost like a rumor, while the gods themselves are largely relegated to the margins. One of my favorite examples is the way the film handles Achilles’ eventual fate, satisfying the myth while adding some context to allow this belief to come to fruition. This isn’t a spoiler though, early on, he’s essentially told that if he goes to war, he will die—but his name and legend will live on for centuries, which to the Greek warriors was the way to go. It’s a also a very Hollywood way of translating Homer’s obsession with mortality, legacy, and the price of becoming immortal through storytelling.
I mean Brad Pitt did play him in a movie.
The relationship between Achilles and Agamemnon becomes even more volatile when Agamemnon takes Briseis, a Troy priestess whom Achilles had intended to spare. In this version, Briseis is also the cousin of Hector and Paris, adding another layer of personal stakes to an already combustible conflict. Achilles consequently withdraws from the fighting, and as his absence begins to affect the Greek army, the war starts turning against them.
Pitt is pure movie star throughout, filling Achilles with swagger, arrogance, physicality, and barely contained fury. He practically walks through the movie radiating big bronze energy and the confidence of someone who knows exactly why you bought a ticket. Bloom, meanwhile, plays Paris as the idealistic counterpoint—a man who genuinely believes love can overcome everything.
Spoiler: it can’t.
As a retelling, Troy essentially reconstructs the Iliad into a more conventional Hollywood character arc. The original poem doesn’t offer the kind of neatly packaged beginning-middle-end structure audiences had come to expect from a $150 million studio epic, so the film reshapes the mythology accordingly. The ten-year war becomes a conflict that appears to unfold over a few weeks, characters are given clearer motivations, and the complicated mythology is streamlined in favor of emotional and narrative immediacy.
The Director’s Cut doesn’t just add more skin; it also restores some of the brutality that makes the war itself feel consequential. The expanded battle sequences are impressively staged and, even more than two decades later, still hold up remarkably well. There’s a physicality to the combat that gives the film a real sense of scale, particularly when armies collide and the movie temporarily stops worrying about romance and lets Petersen indulge in the spectacle.
The performances are a mixed bag, with Pitt easily emerging as the film’s strongest screen presence. The biggest barrier to entry is arguably the first act, particularly the sequence in which Paris’ brother discovers Helen aboard their ship and allows her to escape despite knowing exactly what her presence will ultimately cost Troy. It’s a decision that makes the ensuing bloodshed feel both inevitable and frustratingly avoidable.
And that may be the most interesting thing about revisiting Troy now, particularly alongside Nolan’s The Odyssey. Neither film is Homer. Both are interpretations of Homer filtered through the sensibilities of their respective eras. Petersen’s film reflects the blockbuster culture of the early 2000s, where star power, sex appeal, spectacle, and a largely Westernized understanding of mythology were the currency. Nolan’s approach reflects a very different cinematic landscape, one far more comfortable with reexamining who gets to inhabit these myths and what they can mean to a contemporary audience.
That’s the real fun of revisiting these stories and what this pairing highlighted. Homer’s poems have survived for thousands of years precisely because they can be continually reshaped and reinterpreted depending on the reader. The movies don’t replace these texts; they become artifacts of their own time—each one telling us something about Homer, something about the filmmaker, and perhaps even more about the audience watching it. Troy, now two decades old feels like it, and because of that is a fascinating artifact with its choices made to appease the box office gods and entertain audiences. Definitely worth a watch and thanks to Arrow it can be appreciated for years to come.
