posted
I should think the objection would be to my saying she died. But was it just that she didn't like men?
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posted
Am I the only one who thought Troy was incredibly boring? There were plenty of pretty people to ogle at, but not much else. The only character I really bought was Odysseus, and he was barely there. I liked Hector, except he was made to be too perfect.
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posted
I agree with BrianM. If there is an excellent and beloved story, why take it and macerate it into something entirely different? Why not call your movie "The Siege" and have it be about the Bronze Age city of Remlap, with great heroes Rortak and Dweezle fighting on either side? Then you have a free hand to do anything you like without desecrating something classic and beloved. Why make it ALMOST the Iliad but then change it in ways that make it fundamentally different? This drives me nuts about Disney, too. It's just heinous, what they do to my beloved childhood stories.
The gods are an integral part of that story. It sucks that they uprooted them from it. Like trying to do the Silmarillion with no Valar.
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quote:The only character I really bought was Odysseus, and he was barely there. I liked Hector, except he was made to be too perfect.
Agreed. Also, I thought that Achilles was too smart. I think he should've just been a really good soldier, in the movie he sounded more like a philospher, which he clearly wasn't, he was a spoiled man who happened to be very very good at what he did.
Odysseus is by far the most intersting chareceter that Homer ever wrote about, strong, intelligent, and all he really ever wanted was to get home to his wife whom he loved.
posted
The theme of the Iliad was supposedly the ruinous wrath of Achilles. Does anyone besides me think he was perfectly justified? I never thought his wrath was so overweening. If I were he, I would have slain Agamemnon out of hand and been done with it. It would have saved lots of bother later on as well. The whole sad story of Clytemnestra and so on. If anyone needed a sword in the gullet it was Agamemnon.
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posted
I suppose so, though I don't really remember the specifics of the conflict beyond what is in the movie, with Briseis and all.
A couple humorous things I remembered about the movie, very minor SPOILERS, if anyone's concerned. . . . . . . . When Paris starts into the battle with his bow and arrows, all I could think of was Legolas. And in Achille's death scene, with him being stuck with so many arrows and still taking so long to die, I kept on thinking of Boromir's death scene.
posted
No, Appollo drove the thing, I think he took over from Hyperion or Helios. The reason for this is that is the myth of Phaethon, Phaethon finds out his dad is Appollo and gets to have one request, so he asks his dad if he can ride his chariot accross the sky, then dies.
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I am ashamed to admit that I cried when Paris gave the sword to Aeneas. I'm pathetic. I don't even like Aeneas.
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posted
In that case, Anne Kate, I'm curious as to what your response to the questions I posed to Brian is. Again, I'm not trying to be snarky--I really want to know.
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What are these questions? Looking back over thr thread I'm probably missing them spread out, if you could condense them into 1,2,3 format for me with simple tag lines in one post I will answer them.
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posted
Sure Brian. Actually, it's funny--I was going back through the thread, reconstructing my questions, when I realized that kat had summed it up much more succinctly that I had in the following exchange:
quote:I have yet to see another piece of literature by a different author than Homer before say, 1000 AD, that talks about Menelaus, Hector, and others
--BrianM
quote:Homer may have been the first, but he wasn't the last to deal with these characters. TROY is part of a long, long tradition of retelling this story. Do you have the same objections to Euripedes?
--kat
That is basically what my questions all boiled down to.
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posted
That long tradition is is by no means any more leigitmate than this movie, though a lot of it is probably more tasteful. When I think of these characters shakespeare nor other modifying authors comes to mind.
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posted
Having read the Iliad, I for one enjoyed the movie Troy and would encourage all to go see it. But when you watch it do not try and see Homer's story in it because you'll only be dissapointed. Look at this movie as it's own work of art, whose characters and idea were borrowed from Homer's epic. Brad Pitt, an actor whom I used to dislike before Fight Club, did an excellent job portraying Achilles as the arrogant hero he was. Hector's character, though not fully accurate to the story (remember this is the movie) was still brilliantly portrayed. The whole movie was excellent and if all thats stopping you from seeing it is the prospect of being dissapointed because it's not true to Homer's Epic, then I believe you are foolish. I only hope when Peterson creates Ender's Game it is not given such a terrible welcome as Troy has been recieving.
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quote:When I think of these characters shakespeare nor other modifying authors comes to mind.
Hmm...just because you are ignorant of the tradition does not mean its grace doesn't exist. You should give it a try.
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posted
Ignorant? *laugh* I am willing to bet I have a better command of shakespeare and more of what you would probably include in this "long tradition" than most people. There's no need to be rude merely because I disagree. with you and do not share the same connotative connections as you, and certainly no need to call me ignorant of basic, english and other literature. I would call percieving others as ignorant because they don't think of things the same way as you arrogance. Maybe you should give humility a try.
posted
I'm not talking about Shakespeare. I do think that if you think the Iliad is the end all and be all of these characters and the only legitimate source of these stories then you ought to expand the horizons a little bit. I think you'd enjoy it.
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posted
And I think that if you think every little story that a theatrical apple-john whips up by stealing the characters and modifying it how they see fit qualifies as quality entertainment then not only is *that* ignorance, but it hurts the original. Please enlighten me as to what you would consider belongs in this "long tradition."
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posted
We weren't discussing the movie just now persay, try to stay on topic please, I would really like to see this big list of what you consider to be in this "long tradition" besides Shakespeare.
posted
You haven't seen the movie! How can you diss a movie you haven't even seen!
Shakespeare is not on the list of authors who have participated in the Trojan War tradition, as far as I know. Bob was using him as an example of someone who created new art out of old stories. Slavish devotion to the current conception of the source would have eliminated his works.
You want a quick rundown of everything in the tradition of telling of the Trojan War? Hhmmm. There are people here who know much more than I do, and I'd hate to pretend to knowledge I don't have.
Off the top of my head (there's more that I never learned/am not aware of):
The Iliad The Oddysey Aschylus' Agamemnon and Eumenides Sophocles' Ajax Euripedes Andromache, Trojan Women, and Helen Xenophon - except I can't remember the names of his plays Virgil's Aeneid
Modern favorite: Yeats' Leda and the Swan
----
per se. It's Latin for "through/concerning itself."
posted
Given that the first two of your list were the original works themselves, they don't belong in a post-original "tradition."
As for the scant other few you named classics authors don't really qualify in that, especially with the works you mentioned, they relied heavily upon meticulate detail from the original works and modified usually only unimportant temporary and non-unique emotional and social situations. Either that or they expounded details in the lives of the characters that Homer didn't cover at all, the rarely took specific plots from Homer and altered them they way modern media does. Even if I granted you every work in that list, none of which qualify, that would still hardly be anyhting near to qualify what you have tried to argue is a "long tradition." Please, you have to do better than this.
posted
For that matter the Homeric poems changed quite a bit since the time Homer created them. What we have now are the "fixed" versions, stabilized from the oral traditions and written down hundreds of years after his death when book publishing and libraries became more commonplace.
"The first complete version may well have been that established as a standard for rhapsodic competitions at the great quadrennial festival at Athens, the Panathenaea, at some time during the 6th century BC. Even that did not permanently fix the text, and from then on the history of the epics was one of periodical distortion followed by progressively more effective acts of stabilization. The widespread dissemination of the poems consequent upon the growth of the Athenian book trade in the 5th century and the proliferation of libraries after the 4th was followed by the critical work of the Alexandrian scholar Aristarchus of Samothrace in the 2nd century BC, and much later by the propagation of accurate minuscule texts (notably the famous manuscript known as Venetus A of the Iliad), incorporating the best results of Greco-Roman scholarship, in the Byzantine world of the Middle Ages. Rare portions of either poem may have been added after, but not long after, the main act of composition; the night expedition that results in the capture of the Trojan spy Dolon and that fills the 10th book of the Iliad, some of the underworld scenes in the 11th book of the Odyssey, and much of the ending of the Odyssey after line 296 of the 23rd book (regarded by Aristarchus as its original conclusion) are the most probable candidates on the grounds of structure, language, and style."
[ May 18, 2004, 11:25 AM: Message edited by: Chris Bridges ]
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posted
There is a lot of work to go back and re-translate them Chris. This is true especially with Homer, Plato and Aristotle who have suffered the "interpretation" of many christian scholars who erased any trace of what could be considered over-zealous pagan worship or homosexual referances.
posted
Not what I meant. I'm talking about the changes from the time Homer created the poems and the time they were fixed in print. I added more above.
[ May 18, 2004, 11:26 AM: Message edited by: Chris Bridges ]
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quote: I would imagine there's a simple, two-fold answer:
1) Many Americans, being Christian fundamentalists, would be offended by the presence of non-Christian gods as characters.
There's an interesting dilemma here. I pondered starting a new thread for it, because it opens up a rather different avenue of discussion. When writing stories, does one leave religion out or put it in? Is putting God in your story more disrespectful than leaving him out? What if there are other gods, or "gods", present; how does that change matters?
As a long-time comic-book fan I was always struck by the difference between Marvel's and DC's worlds.
DC has actually had characters who served as known agents of God, like the Spectre (perhaps because DC was the older publisher). They once avoided using the term "God"--the Spectre, for instance, served the "Voice" that spoke to him from the afterlife--but it was clear who was involved. While other gods appeared from time to time, they usually seemed to be subordinate beings existing on sufferance. But by making God a character in their books, they also opened up the possibility of storylines like the one in Supergirl a few years ago, in which a vampire blackmails God into giving up the divine power to him. Worse, he does so by threatening to destroy God's "feminine aspect" by way of the three angels who embody it, which apparently would make God into a destructive, judgemental tyrant.
Marvel, by contrast, has been scrupulously careful never to unequivocally portray God (or the devil, or angels) in its comics. Cosmic figures appear, but it's always made plain somewhere that they aren't interested in worship/look up to something still higher/etc. Demons do exist, and sometimes claim to be THE devil, but again they always turn out to be lying (naturally enough). On the other hand, it's an odd way to defend God's character--by eliminating or hiding him while demons and other deities wield power openly. Often the reader might well suspect he's not there at all...
What, then, is the line between offensive and nonoffensive? How do you portray--or not portray--God in art?
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posted
Could you provide a link for that quaote please?
Mabus, you have it COMPLETELY backwards, Marvel has the most godlike characters I have ever seen of any comic universe. I'm sure Galactis, the Watcher, Warlock and others should be immediately familiar to you, but the list goes on quite extensively.
posted
Haven't read that particular one yet, I kind of stopped collecting when I realized how old I was a few years ago and after they stopped printing Appocalypse.
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quote:Mabus, you have it COMPLETELY backwards, Marvel has the most godlike characters I have ever seen of any comic universe. I'm sure Galactis, the Watcher, Warlock and others should be immediately familiar to you, but the list goes on quite extensively.
Powerful does not equal godlike. Most of Marvel's ultra-powerful beings are NOT supernatural - Galactus epitomizes this.
posted
They *are* supernatural. Galactis himself is the primary force in the universe, if he dies it causes the universe to implode. There is even a figure above him. Warlock is *perfect* and there are others. I am looking for the online marvel encyclopedia.
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posted
*nods* I'm well aware of the vast number of godlike figures in the Marvel Universe. In fact, I recently grabbed up the paperback edition of Paradise X (Captain Mar-vell builds heaven, only it's not all it's cracked up to be).
But that's not what I'm talking about. Marvel makes thinly-veiled allusions, and devises beings with "phenomenal cosmic power", but doesn't actually portray God as such. For instance, from the Official Handbook: "Eternity, and its fellow metaphysical being Death, are said to encompass the universe in its entirety, but are not deities in the religious sense." You can take that with a grain of salt--Eternity has appeared in a number of situations as a "divine stand-in"--but nonetheless it amounts to a disclaimer. "Eternity isn't really God, and nobody worships him." DC does it the other way, so far as I can tell, though I've never been as much of a fan.
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posted
*grin* I just found this online, but I wish I could find that online marvel encylopedia.
BIOGRAPHICAL DATA:
Real Name: Galactus (the being he once was, known as Galan) Other current aliases: None known Former aliases: None Dual Identity: None Current occupation: Devourer of Worlds, Third Force of the Universe Former Occupation: None, though Galan was a space explorer Citizenship: None, Galan was a citizen of Taa however Place of Birth: The known universe Martial Status: Single Known Relatives: Eternity (father/brother/son), Death (mother/sister/daughter/wife) Known Confidants: Eternity, Death Known Allies: Nova, Firelord, Terrax, Silver Surfer, the Fantastic Four, other cosmic beings such as Eternity Major Enemies: Rom, (the Space-Knight once tricked The Devourer of Worlds into trying to consume a planet that didn't have the appropriate life energies to sustain Galactus, but "repulsed" and "tricked" are two different things!), the Fantastic Four, Thanos (with Infinity Gauntlet), Tyrant Usual Base of Operations: Mobile throughout the Universe, The Worldship: Taa 2 Former Base of Operations: None Membership: None Extent of Education: Unrevealed
posted
I do know where you can find _an_ online Marvel Encyclopedia, but it's a gaming product and is therefore written mostly in the terms of the old Marvel Supers RPG.
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Intelligence: Immeasurable Strength: Immeasurable (variable) Flight speed: Warp Speed Endurance: Godlike (variable) Durability: Totally Indestructible (variable) Agility: Metahuman Reflexes: Metahuman Fighting skills: Galactus is not known to have ever participated in purely physical combat. Special Skills and Abilities: Omniscient and all powerful world devourer. Superhuman Physical Powers: Besides the above listed attributes, Galactus can tap, transform, and direct vast quantities of cosmic energy for whatever purpose he desires. Galactus can teleport within and between dimensions under personal power. Galactus has shown he can allow his “Hunger” to consume entire mutliverses, plus he has all the abilities of his heralds, to a greater degree, and then some. Superhuman Mental Powers: Galactus has demonstrated psionic abilities, the limits of which are unknown. Source of Superhuman Powers: Galactus simply is, his nature is beyond the comprehension of mortal ken.
The Ultimate Spider-man series was a restarting of the Spider-Man story told in today's terms. Unlike the previous attempt, which retold his story with the same plots but with new references (cellphones, etc) and bombed horribly, this one took the essence of the original stories and retold them in exciting ways. The characters don't all have the same relationships, the timeline is different, the villians are much more complex and unpredictable. In short, the magic of the stories is still there and stronger than ever, but someone convinced that Stan Lee's stories were the only way to ever tell those stories would be sadly disappointed.
Also, they're written (wonderfully) by Brian Michael Bendis. Thought you might have felt a kinship Posts: 7790 | Registered: Aug 2000
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posted
I'm no fan of the Ultimate series so far. It's not that they're badly done; I'm just dismayed by the recent splintering of what used to be a coherent Universe into a dozen or so discontinuous shards.
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posted
They've been having some serious problems with continuity, but I like the Bendis-related ones.
TomD - check out his message board. He comes on there regularly to pass along info and tease unmercifully about future storylines. He's got each one of his comics written about a year in advance. Oy. I don't spend anywhere near the amount there that I do here (I barely spend the amount of time at home that I do here), but I stop in occasionally.
[ May 18, 2004, 12:43 PM: Message edited by: Chris Bridges ]
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posted
I'm liking the supposed continuation of the "old" Spider-man books (Volume 2 Amazing Spider-Man) by J. Michael Straczynski and John, Jr. Romita. I like the Ezekiel angle. Although even these have continuity problems: why is Aunt May still alive?
posted
Because no one can die in the Marvel Universe, silly. No matter how much it screws up continuity or ruins the impact of previous stories.
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posted
I mean, what was their rationale? Was she resurrected for services rendered? Did she lie in the bottom of Jamaica Bay for 6 years in a comsmically-created cocoon? Was the May who died a Life Model Replica? Was she a clone? Did she jump out of the burning car before it went over the cliff? (OK, strike the last one).
Dagonee *Did I miss any of the standard techniques?
P.S., Is there any topic we can't derail to a comic book discussion?
posted
Depends on what difficulty you are referring to.
Age is weird in the Marvel Universe. Although almost 40 years have passed in our time frame, no more than 10 have passed there (at least in relation to age). So if Aunt May was 60 when she first appeared in 1963, she's 70-ish now.
If you're referring to the recent "death" of Aunt May a few years back, it turned out that an actress had been hired by Norman Osborn (back from apparent death due to super-powers) to screw up Peter's life, and it was she who died. The real Aunt May had been kidnapped and was eventually released.
What bugs me is "Why is neither MJ nor Peter still concerned about the disappearance of their infant daughter (also named May)?"
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