Reason for Differences between The Iliad and the Movie Troy

In this post we will look at some of the reason Wolfgang Peterson changed some key facts and events in his 2004 movie Troy.

In earlier post I have mentioned some of these differences involving the plot and how certain characters are portrayed. Key ideas about Hector, Achilles, Paris and also aspects of the plot all have reason for being altered for the modern audience.

Ancient Greek society is vastly different to our modern society.  Peterson had to shorten a 30 hour plus long epic poem in to a feature length movie, so of course there are going to be large differences.

Hector in the film differs from the hector in the Iliad. I have mentioned the specific difference in a earlier post. The reasons for these would because Hector is portrayed as a “good guy” in the film.

I’m sure the modern audience wouldn't want to watch one of the main characters flee around the castle of troy, trying to get away from Achilles and then killed anyway. He is also a more well-rounded character because Homer was a Greek him-self so he was very biased toward the Greek side of the story and that includes making some characters seem different in the film and Iliad.

In both the Iliad and the film Achilles is a very passionate character.  Achilles love affair with slave girl, Briseis. I believe Wolfgang Peterson uses this to help the audience to relate better to Achilles and make him a romantic character. In the Poem who is far less relatable to a modern audience.

Another large difference between the texts and film is that fact that Peterson never really goes into the god’s part in the story. The Iliad goes into in-depth and uses the gods as main characters and cause many events to happen in the epic poem. I think this is due to the different cultures that Homer/Peterson have in their target audience. Greek culture at the time where heavily religious and Homer’s use of gods is entirely believable while in modern culture this far harder to convince the viewers that all this about the gods could or would happen also it’s a lot harder to show in the movie with all the back story and also how do you depict a god in a modern movie.