Troy: Fall Of A City
The story of the 10-year siege of Troy by the Greeks is told after Paris, the young prince of Troy, and Helen of Sparta, wife of the Greek king Menelaus, fall in love and leave Sparta together for Troy.
Troy: Fall of a City
The show makes a number of alterations from the original Greek texts, as well as departures from earlier modern adaptations of the legend.[11] For instance, it vilifies Menelaus, proposes a resolution to Briseis' captivity, and omits Aeneas' identity as the son of Aphrodite.[11] The show also omits the final reconciliation between Achilles and Agamemnon from the Iliad, instead replacing this with Agamemnon resorting to "ignoble trickery".[11] It also reimagines the circumstances of the Trojan Horse stratagem by making it filled with grain for the starving city, thus making the Trojans more likely to bring it in.[11] More significantly, it also incorporates myths about the lead-up to the war and about the backgrounds of the major characters that are not found in the Iliad and are not normally included in most modern adaptations.[11]
In an unreservedly positive review for Buffalo News on 26 May 2018, Randy Schiff praised the show for its pace and acting,[23] commenting specifically on Hunter, Dayne, Gyasi, Mawle, O'Connor, and Threlfall's performances.[23] He also lauded the portrayal of Helen as a "stately and intelligent" woman whose "deep desire for independence" is only satisfied once she goes to Troy, where women are valued just as much as men.[23] He also expressed wonderment at the show's portrayal of the Greek deities,[23] writing, "I found myself especially mesmerized by the show's eerie presentation of deities: here, spectacularly partisan goddesses strut across raging battlefields, while a world-weary Zeus (Hakeem Kae-Kazim) remains resolutely neutral amidst the chaos."[23]
In TROY: FALL OF A CITY, 20-year-old Paris (Louis Hunter) is a strapping young herdsman who's discovered to be the king of Troy's son, previously thought to be dead. Welcomed back to the palace as a prince, he's sent on his first diplomatic mission to neighboring Sparta, where he falls instantly in love with Helen (Bella Dayne), the wife of the Spartan king, Menelaus (Jonas Armstrong). When Paris secretly brings Helen back with him to Troy, it is seen as an act of war, and Menelaus enlists the aid of his warrior brother Agamemnon (Johnny Harris) and his armies to get Helen back.
High production values and an epic canvas can't save this slow-moving, empty retelling of the Trojan war. Told in the grounded style of Game of Thrones, Troy: Fall of a City also shares that series' deliberate approach to plotting. What it lacks, though, is even one engaging character at its center that might make the sluggish pace of the show more bearable. Paris, our supposed hero, is portrayed as petulant and impulsive. So little time is devoted to Paris and Helen falling in love that the audience has no time to understand what makes their attraction worthy of war.
The series keeps getting you excited to see the great city that was Troy, but all we get in the end is bland rooms. Despite all the attempts to emphasize how important Troy is as a city, we almost never see it. We never experience it, we mostly just see the palace and the city walls.
The nuance with which the Greek side is handled by the series does not translate well to the Trojan side of the war. The characters of Helen, Hector (Tom Weston-Jones) and Priam (David Threlfall) each act in ways against their individual motivations in ways that may frustrate and confuse audiences.
Conversely, the show is at its strongest when it chooses to portray mortal and divine relationships which are already in the book and surrounding mythos. Arguably the most intense, gut-wrenching scene in the show is when Agamemnon, aided by Odysseus, tricks his wife Clytaemnestra and his daughter Iphigenia into believing the girl is to marry Achilles. Instead, the goddess Artemis has decreed Iphigenia must be sacrificed in order for the Achean fleet to reach the city of Troy.
In the Iliad, when Helen arrives in Troy, Cassandra attacks her for seeing the doom she and Paris would bring, and in her frustration at not being believed - but the people of Troy welcomed Helen into the city.
The real-life city of Troy is said to have been in what's now Anatolia in Turkey where you can still find ancient ruins and remnants of long-gone eras (it's been a UNESCO World Heritage site since 1998), but Cape Town proved to be an ideal filming location thanks to its wide array of varying landscapes.
If you're feeling inspired to book a trip to Cape Town, then look for packages from late January to late April. These are the city's dry summer months but temperatures are tolerable and make for an ideal beach break. 041b061a72