I really really really liked the movie Troy. It didn't hurt that Brad Pitt was nekkid in the first scene which started off the movie nicely. The scope of the movie was really powerful, the sheer magnitude of the people and ships amazing.
But one thing I find interesting - and something that clearly illustrates just how phobic our society is of man-on-man sex, is that Achilles (and all the men in the movie) were portrayed as being completely heterosexual when everybody knows that those guys were all over each other in real (mythological) life.
Mythology teaches us that Achilles - like most men back then - had same-sex partners. Achilles was not just "fond" of his cousin but was his lover. If my memory serves me, Achilles was in fact quite the man's man, in one case beheading a soldier he was fighting because the soldier shunned his sexual advances. Although Achilles did have sex with women, too - in fact fathered a child with a very young girl - he really liked man-flesh.
I guess nobody would have gone to see a movie where Brad Pitt was the most ferocious gay warrior who ever lived.
The Trojan horse was pretty cool, and the actress who played Helen was certainly beautiful but I'm not sure she was so pretty her face could have launched a thousand ships.
I had to look up "Achilles heel" on the internet to learn exactly what that reference means. It seems that Achilles' mother - who was a goddess - was told that if she dunked her baby in the River Styx it would make him invulnerable during war. So she held baby Achilles by his foot and dunked him in the river but where her hand held his heel the magic water didn't touch his flesh. So that was the only part of Achilles that was vulnerable. And wouldn't you know that's right where the arrow struck that eventually led to his death.
Good stuff, mythology.
-frolix