what else could they do? Just not make a movie about it at all? Is there any ending that you would have found satisfying? Or would they all have fallen flat because of the disparity in medium?

I don't know. I've been mulling it over, and I've realized that unfaithful adaptations have a better chance of being liked (by me, certainly not the general public) if they don't lay claim to the source text. I am a lot less resentful of an unfaithful adaptation if it is shamelessly unfaithful than if it claims resonance by false association. Or, if it can justify its unfaithfulness on a basis other than filmic need for brevity. ("It looked really cool" can, under certain circumstances, qualify.)

I think to do a successful take on an extremely long, intricate story, one has to make an extremely long, intricate movie/series, or else tell only part. Trying to tell the main thrust of an epic in 2 hours, merely by shaving it naked of all its context and weight, makes for an extremely top-heavy storyline, full of characters who get one or two iconic lines/images, and (in this case) a fair amount of illogic.

I think a smaller story set in the overall Troy context would have been something possible to do well. One main character, one plotline, one viewpoint. For one thing, it would result in a hell of a lot less irrelevant backstory to cram in.

they don't lay claim to the source text

Does it help that Troy didn't?

Or is "inspired by" still counting as claiming?

Or is "inspired by" still counting as claiming?

At least it wasn't "re-envisioned".

Troy was a talkie?

Hm, learn something new every day.

I was going to say, change all the names and pretend it's original, because that worked for Gladiator, but then I remembered all the history wonks who drove themselves batty over that movie.

And if they'd pretended it was original, people would have slammed them for copying without attributing.

Since the story's public domain, I thought putting "Inspired by (or based on, or whatever it was) Homer's Iliad" in the credits was an idiotic thing to do. Really, all it accomplished was to piss off classics majors in the audience. (And it's not like a movie starring Brad Pitt in a really short leather skirt really needed Homer's name attached to the project to pull people into the theatre.)

Really, all it accomplished was to piss of classics majors in the audience.

And that's a demographic you don't want anger. Or both of them will show up at your house and taunt you with ecphrasis.

The funny part is, it's not even a fair attribution, since the fall of Troy doesn't happen in the Iliad. It happens in the early chapters of the Aeneid (Roman) and in oblique fashion in the Odyssey (some vague flashbacks). It's a given; the listeners to the Iliad knew the eventual outcome; but it doesn't happen in the pages of the Iliad as we have it now.

And then and then and then and then and then and then and then?

Oh yeah. That was pretty funny. So there were three funny things in that movie, including the "mysterious and powerful object" and the pudding.

See, the first time I saw it, I don't think I laughed at all, and I saw The Emperor's New Groove directly afterward, which made it look even less funny by comparison. But then I caught part of it one day and decided to look at it as a surreal adventure with emus, and it's not such a bad movie.