Why did the director of the film "Troy" want to remove the role of Elena Troyanskaya from the script?

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Ah, women! Because of them, for millennia, men started wars, killed and maimed their fellow tribesmen, endured incredible suffering, changed the boundaries of their possessions, and sometimes entire states. The most striking example of this is the beautiful Helena, the queen of Sparta, for whose sake the fire of the Trojan War was kindled, which destroyed more than one thousand human souls and brought grief and suffering to entire nations. Today in our publication there are interesting facts about the creation of a large-scale blockbuster by German director Wolfgang Petersen "Troy" starring Brad Pitt and Eric Ban.

The Trojan War in the minds of the modern viewer is an era of myths and legends filled with bloody battles, heroic deeds and, of course, great love. The memory of those heroic times was passed from mouth to mouth for many centuries until it was written down. The famous blind man Homer sang about the exploits of Odysseus, Achilles, Ajax to the ancient Hellenes, who listened to him with bated breath. So told and repeated many times, overgrown and embellished with speculation, these legends, after thousands of years have not lost their significance - they are studied, quoted, cited as an example … And it goes without saying that filmmakers could not pass them by.

Hundred years of filmography about the Trojan War

So, based on the well-known works of Homer describing the Trojan War, many notable works have been filmed over the past century. It is worth noting that this legendary story of the Trojan War has attracted directors since the days of silent films. And it is absolutely not surprising that most of the films were built around the image of the culprit of the long-term war - the beautiful Queen of Sparta, Elena. According to the chronology, the first film was the film "Elena", filmed in Germany in 1924. This was followed by: "The Private Life of Helen of Troy" (Great Britain, 1927), "The Beloved of Paris" (France-Italy, 1954), "Helena of Trojan" (USA-Italy, 1956), "Trojan Horse. (Helena, Queen of Trojan)" (Italy-France, 1962) and again "Helena Troyanskaya" (Malta-Greece-USA, 2003). The final blockbase in this series was Troy (USA, UK, Malta, 2004) directed by Wolfgang Petersen. The historical drama was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Costume Design.

A few words about the script

The script for the historical drama "Troy" was written by aspiring writer David Benioff, based on whose novel the film "The 25th Hour" was filmed. The basis of his work, David laid the epic poem of the ancient Greek poet Homer "Iliad" and his other works of the Trojan cycle. Despite some discrepancies with the primary sources, the stake, at the insistence of the director, was made on the spectacularity and epic nature of what was happening, and not at all on the reliability of historical facts.

Briefly about the plot of the historical film drama

The events presented in the film drama take us back to the 13th century BC, or to be more precise, at the time when Troy was at the peak of its power and did not expect that it could be in danger. And misfortune and suffering, as you already know, was brought to Troy by a woman.

According to legend, the Trojan prince Paris, having fallen in love with the beautiful queen of Sparta, Helen, secretly takes her to Troy. The enraged husband of Queen Menelaus turns for help to his brother, the powerful Achaean king Mycenae Agamemnon, who has long been waiting for an excuse to conquer Troy once and for all.

Gathering hordes of warlike Greeks, and also calling for help a detachment of soldiers of the legendary and invincible Achilles, Agamemnon with an army on hundreds of ships went to the walls of Troy to avenge his brother's honor and satisfy his ambitions. This is how the great war of peoples began, which has gone down in history forever.

Having received a decisive rebuff, the Greeks, after a long and unsuccessful siege, resorted to cunning: they built a huge wooden horse, left it at the walls of Troy, and themselves pretended to float away from its shores. A detachment of the best warriors was hidden inside the horse. The invention of this trick is credited to Odysseus, the most cunning of the leaders of the Greeks. The Trojans, intoxicated by the end of the war, dragged the horse into the city, considering it their trophy of war. At night, the Greeks climbed out of the hollow horse, killed the guards, and let the returning troops of Agamemnon into the city. Which burned Troy to the ground.

Film budget

Troy (2004) had a budget of $ 175 million. At the same time, the box office receipts from the distribution of the film around the world amounted to $ 497 million.

The epic is number 22 on the list of the most expensive films. And curiously, more than 73% of rental funds were raised outside the United States. The film was ranked 60th in the list of the highest grossing films of all time.

Film sets "Troy"

It was planned that the entire filming process will take place in London, Malta, and large-scale battle scenes in Morocco. According to the planned schedule, filming was to be completed within three months - from April to June 2003. However, the terrorist attacks that stirred up the Moroccan city of Casablanca, as well as the impending war with Iraq, forced the management of the picture to make adjustments. Work on the construction of the scenery of ancient Troy, against the background of which the battles of the opposing sides were supposed to be filmed, were transferred from Morocco to Mexico.

As a result, all the pavilion scenes were filmed in London. In Malta - scenes taking place inside the Trojan Walls. In Fort Ricasoli, the main scenery of the film was built directly for filming - the city, the gate, the royal palace. And in May 2003, the decisive battle scenes of the film were filmed on the American continent. All the battles between Greeks and Trojans were filmed on a deserted beach a few kilometers from the Mexican resort of Cabo San Lucas.

Extras created by a computer program

By the way, Mexicans looking like Mediterranean residents were hired as extra warriors, as well as Bulgarian athletes from the National Sports Academy in Sofia, who were used to shoot close-ups of fighting warriors. When the extras were being filmed, several thousand extras armed and dressed in military attributes were involved in the battles, who were later "multiplied" with the help of a computer program to the required scale. The same was done with the Greek ships.

Legendary Trojan Horse

The Trojan horse was also a very important attribute of the movie set. It was assembled from steel piles and fiberglass, was 11.4 meters high and weighed 11 tons. To transport the huge structure to its destination, it was taken apart and then reassembled. After filming, this horse traveled a lot around the world: having visited Malta and Mexico, later it was taken to Berlin and installed on Potsdamer Platz. The horse stood there until the film premiere in May 2004. It was then shipped to Japan as an advertising campaign. And finally, the Trojan horse found its refuge in Turkey in the city of Canakkale, which is 30 kilometers from the ruins of historical Troy. It has become a popular attraction for tourists visiting Turkey.

Refusal to shoot in Turkey

There is another curious fact connected with this country, which happened shortly before the start of filming. As soon as it became reliably known about the beginning of the filming of "Troy", the Turkish government immediately showed its interest. Through the Turkish Ministry of Culture, it invited the project leaders to shoot a large-scale historical epic in Canakkale, where the ruins of the real Troy are located. However, Warner Brothers flatly refused. Then the Turks offered to hold at least the premiere of the film in Turkey. However, the premiere of the large-scale blockbuster was held in Berlin, where, by the way, Schliemann's gold, once exported from Troy, is kept.

Unforeseen

The deviation from the original plan for the film was very costly for the filmmakers. In just one month, spent in Mexico, the film crew had to go through two hurricanes. One of which, called Hurricane Marty, literally blew away the walls of Troy, erected the day before on the ocean coast as decorations. As a result, while the facilities were being restored, filming was postponed for three whole months.

Brad Pitt's mystical trauma

But that was not all. Shortly before the natural disaster disrupted the filming schedule, Brad Pitt, who played the role of Achilles, injured the Achilles tendon. Many considered this a mystical sign. After all, it was the hit of an arrow in this part of the foot that caused the death of a brave warrior, according to Homer's primary source. Therefore, the scene in which Hector and Achilles met in the last fight had to be filmed also several months later, when Brad fully recovered from his injury.

No understudies

By the way, the duel between Achilles (Brad Pitt) and Hector (Eric Bana) was the culminating episode of the film, forcing the audience, holding their breath, to follow its progress. Of course, the superiority of Achilles from the very beginning was so obvious that all the sympathy of the public was on the side of Hector, doomed to certain death.

And curiously, during all the clashes, both on the battlefield and in fights, Brad Pitt and Eric Bana did not use understudies. And in order to be in excellent physical shape by the time of filming, both actors began intensive training six months earlier. Among other things, Eric Ban had to learn how to control a horse and hold himself confidently in the saddle.

Historical Drama Cast

And yet, the main thing that attracts in the film is the stellar cast. Here you have Brad Peet (Achilles) and Eric Bana (Hector), Orlando Bloom (Paris) and Brian Cox (Agamemnon), Sean Bean (Odysseus) and, of course, the magnificent Peter O'Toole (Lord of Troy - Priam), as well as charismatic Brendan Gleeson (Menelaus). In addition to them, debutant Garrett Hedlund (Patroclus) and little-known actress Diane Kruger (Elena) also starred in the film after the film was released on wide screens.

Vivid and impressive are also secondary female roles played by Rose Byrne (Briseida) and Saffron Burrows in the modest role of Andromache, which turned out to be the most expressive of the female characters. Therefore, it remains only to wonder how director Wolfgang Peterson managed to find such a great cast of actors for his film.

Role of Elena Troyanskaya

An interesting fact was that the director Petersen, starting to work on the picture, wanted to avoid the hackneyed cliches and decided to do not only without the gods, who, in his opinion, only made the plot heavier, but also without the beautiful Elena. And thus to create a heroic and pathetic film about male valor and honor, courage and brotherhood.

However, the studio's management was categorically against it. Even Petersen's arguments did not help that he would not be able to choose an actress who would meet the expectations of the audience for 100%. The director had to retreat, but at the same time he chose the little-known German-American actress Diane Kruger for this role, who, under the terms of the contract, had to add 7 kilograms in her weight. According to critics, she brilliantly played her role and conquered the audience.

Pros and cons of Wolfgang Petersen's blockbuster

Along with many pluses, critics also noted the minuses of the picture. First of all, many noted poor timing. The viewer gets the impression that the Trojan War lasted no more than a month at best. Although according to sources it is known that the Greeks besieged Troy for ten years.

The composition of the main characters has been simplified to a minimum. Of the many children of the Trojan king Priam, only the sons Hector, Paris and the daughter of Briseis remained. There is not a word here about the clairvoyant Cassandra, who predicted the death of Troy.

Peterson departed from Homer's poem when he was filming the death of Achilles. Also in the plot of the picture, the death of Agamemnon is changed, who, according to myth, should die at the hands of an unfaithful wife and her lover. Contrary to Homer, in the film, Hector kills Menelaus and Ajax. And this list of discrepancies can be listed for quite a long time.

Nevertheless, the mythological epic, which has absorbed many sources, also retained contradictory facts, which makes it possible to reconstruct the history of the Trojan War in any way to some extent.

Finally, I would like to note that Wolfgang Petersen's Troy did not close the theme of the Iliad in cinema. In 2018, UK filmmakers filmed an eight-episode mini-series The Fall of Troy. The film was directed by Owen Harris and Mark Brosel.

A harbinger of the revival of the peplum genre in the 2000s was the blockbuster by American filmmaker Ridley Scott. In our online magazine you will find a fascinating publication: How a Failure Film Received 5 Oscars and Global Popularity: Ridley Scott's Gladiator