Troy (2004)

Troy (2004) is a very expensive American film epic about the Trojan War, based on Homer's 'Iliad' and 'Odyssey'. The film follows the assault on Troy by the united Greek forces and chronicles the fates of the men involved. The Trojan War took place around 1200 BC on the west coast of present-day Turkey. Troy was directed by Wolfgang Petersen and produced by Warner Bros. The film received a nomination for best costumes at the Academy Awards.


Italian postcard by EdiBas S.r.l., Torino, no. Pc 1.338. Photo: Grazia Neri. Brad Pitt in Troy (Wolfgang Petersen, 2004).


British postcard. Photo: Warner Bros. Diane Kruger as Helen of Troy in Troy (Wolfgang Petersen, 2004).


British postcard in the Cinemascope Collections, no. 617. Orlando Bloom in Troy (Wolfgang Petersen, 2004).

The decade-long Trojan War condensed in a few weeks

The script for Troy (Wolfgang Petersen, 2004) was written by David Benioff. It is loosely based on Homer's 'Iliad' in its narration of the entire story of the decade-long Trojan War — condensed into little more than a couple of weeks.

In the year 1193 BC, Agamemnon, king of Mycenae (Brian Cox), dominates most of the Greek world. Then, during a peace mission, the Trojan prince Paris (Orlando Bloom) lures Helena (Diane Kruger), the most beautiful woman in Greece, away from her husband, King Menelaus (Brendan Gleeson) of Sparta.

Menelaus is compromised in his honour and convinces his brother Agamemnon to take part in an attack on Troy. Agamemnon sees in the attack his chance to expand his power even further. Backed by thousands of Greek kings and warriors, they set off with 1,000 ships holding 50,000 Greeks to Troy.

The warriors include Ajax (Tyler Mane), Odysseus (Sean Bean) and Achilles (Brad Pitt) with his Myrmidons. For a long time, the battle between the Greeks and Trojans dragged on, with many deaths on both sides. It is only with the construction of the Trojan Horse that an end is forced to the bloody war.

The film's total production costs came to $175,000,000, making Troy one of the most expensive films ever if not adjusted for inflation. Worldwide, the film brought in a total of $497,409,852. Troy was received with mixed reactions by viewers and critics. Roger Ebert gave the film 2 stars, expressing disappointment in the film since it deviates so much from the original mythology.


Serbian promotion card. Photo: Warner Bros. Brad Pitt as Achilles in Troy (Wolfgang Petersen, 2004).


Serbian promotion card. Photo: Warner Bros. Eric Bana as Hector in Troy (Wolfgang Petersen, 2004).

The role of the gods is greatly reduced

The large sets for Troy were built at Fort Ricasoli in Malta. Shooting took place here from April to June 2003. Other major filming locations were Mellieħa and Comino. Scenes at the outer walls of Troy were shot in Cabo San Lucas.

To keep the story of Troy from becoming too complex, the film narrative deviates from Homer's works on the Trojan War in certain ways. First, in the film, the Trojan War lasts much shorter than Homer's: a few weeks instead of ten years. In addition, some important characters, including Diomedes, Calchas, Laocoön, Palamedes and Cassandra, are missing from the film. Furthermore, certain characters meet their end differently in the film than in Homer's stories.

The role of the gods is also greatly reduced in the film. In Homer's works, especially Zeus, Hera, Pallas Athene, Ares and Apollo take an active part in the war, unlike in the film. In the film, Agamemnon is the commander of all the Greek armies and was convinced by his brother to go to war. In Homer's works, almost all the kings of Greece were suitors of Helen of Sparta. When she chose her husband, Odysseus made all these men take an oath to protect her chosen marriage. When Helena was taken away from Menelaus, he made all the former suitors honour their oaths by travelling with him to Troy.

Since Agamemnon had the largest army, he was the commander-in-chief. In the film, the duel between Paris and Menelaus is not decisive, or in other words, the outcome of the battle did not mean the decision of the war. In the 'Iliad', the duel takes place in the tenth year of the war, when everyone is longing for the end. The duel was to bring the decision. Paris lost the duel to Menelaus, but was saved just in time by the goddess Aphrodite and thus managed to escape death. Apollo, however, had a Trojan throw a spear at the Greeks, breaking the treaty and allowing the war to resume in full force. In the film, Menelaus also wins the duel, but Hektor intervenes to protect his brother, killing Menelaus in the process.

Roger Ebert gave a thumbs up in his review but also wrote: "By treating Achilles and the other characters as if they were human, instead of the larger-than-life creations of Greek myth, director Wolfgang Petersen miscalculates. What happens in Greek myth cannot happen between psychologically plausible characters. That's the whole point of myth."


Serbian promotion card. Photo: Warner Bros. Orlando Bloom as Paris in Troy (Wolfgang Petersen, 2004).


Serbian promotion card. Photo: Warner Bros. Diane Kruger as Helen of Troy in Troy (Wolfgang Petersen, 2004).


French collectors card. French film poster by Warner Bros. Brad Pitt, Diane Kruger, Orlando Bloom and Eric Bana in Troy (Wolfgang Petersen, 2004).

Sources: Roger Ebert (Roger Ebert.com), Wikipedia (Dutch) and IMDb.

Orlando Bloom

English actor Orlando Bloom (1977) made his breakthrough as Legolas in The Lord of the Rings film series and rose to fame as Will Turner in the Pirates of the Caribbean film series. He established himself as a leading man in Hollywood with roles such as Paris in Troy (2004) and Balian de Ibelin in Kingdom of Heaven (2005). He later reprised his role as Legolas in The Hobbit film series and currently stars in the series Carnival Row (2019–2023).


British postcard in the Cinemascope Collections, no. 617. Orlando Bloom in Troy (Wolfgang Petersen, 2004).


German postcard by Salz und Silber Verlag. Photo: Simon Annand. Caption: Orlando Bloom, Duke of York's Theatre, Celebration, 2007.

Legolas

Orlando Jonathan Blanchard Bloom was born in 1977 in Canterbury, Kent, and was named after the 16th-century English composer Orlando Gibbons. He has an older sister, Samantha Bloom. Orlando initially believed that his biological father was his mother's husband, Harry Bloom, a novelist and political activist who fought for civil rights in South Africa, and who died when Bloom was four years old.

When Orlando was 13, his mother Sonia (Copeland) revealed to him that Colin Stone is actually the biological father of Orlando and his sister; the two were conceived after an agreement by his parents, since Harry, who suffered a stroke in 1975, was unable to have children. Stone, the principal of the Concorde International language school became Orlando's legal guardian after Harry Bloom's death.

Orlando attended St Peter's Methodist Primary School, then the junior school of the King's School before proceeding to St Edmund's School in Canterbury. Bloom was discovered to be dyslexic and was encouraged by his mother to take art and drama classes. In 1993, the 16-year-old Orlando moved to London to follow a two-year A-Level course in Drama, Photography and Sculpture at Fine Arts College, Hampstead.

He then joined the National Youth Theatre, spending two seasons there and earning a scholarship to train at the British American Drama Academy. Bloom began acting professionally with television roles in episodes of Casualty (1997) and Midsomer Murders (1997), and subsequently made his film debut in a small role, as a rent boy, in the critically acclaimed drama Wilde (Brian Gilbert, 1997), opposite Stephen Fry as Oscar Wilde.

Then he entered the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, where he studied acting. It was there, in 1998, that Orlando fell three stories from a rooftop terrace and broke his back. Despite fears that he would be permanently paralysed, he quickly recovered and returned to the stage.

Seated in the audience one night in 1999 was a director named Peter Jackson. Two days after graduating from Guildhall in 1999, Bloom was cast as Legolas in The Lord of the Rings film trilogy (Peter Jackson, 2001–2003). He had originally auditioned for the part of Faramir, who does not appear until the second film, but director Peter Jackson cast him as Legolas instead. Legolas made him a household name. At the same time, Bloom also played a brief role in Ridley Scott's war film Black Hawk Down (Ridley Scott, 2001) as PFC Todd Blackburn.


French postcard by Sonis, no. C. 1378. Photo: New Line Productions, Inc. Orlando Bloom in Lord of the Rings - The Two Towers (Peter Jackson, 2002).


French postcard by Sonis, no. C. 1554. Photo: New Line Productions, Inc. Orlando Bloom in Lord of the Rings - The Return of the King (Peter Jackson, 2003).


British postcard by Memory Card, no. 744. Photo: Orlando Bloom in Lord of the Rings (Peter Jackson, 2001-2003).

Will Turner

Orlando Bloom next starred opposite Keira Knightley and Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (Gore Verbinski, 2003), which was a blockbuster hit during the summer of 2003.

After the success of Pirates, Bloom next took to the screen as Paris, the man who effectively started the Trojan War, in the blockbuster Troy (Wolfgang Petersen, 2004) opposite Brad Pitt, Eric Bana and Peter O'Toole.

He subsequently played the lead roles in the epic historical drama Kingdom of Heaven (Ridley Scott, 2005) and in the romantic tragicomedy Elizabethtown (Cameron Crowe, 2005) with Kirsten Dunst. He was listed as a potential nominee on both the 2005 and 2006 Razzie Award nominating ballots. He was suggested in the Worst Supporting Actor category on the 2005 ballot for his performance in Troy (2004). And he was suggested again the next year in the Worst Actor category for his performances in Elizabethtown (2005) and Kingdom of Heaven (2005). He failed to receive either nomination.

In 2006, Bloom starred in the sequel Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (Gore Verbinski, 2006) and he was one of the guest stars in the sitcom Extras, in which he portrayed an exaggeratedly arrogant, narcissistic version of himself who had a great loathing for Johnny Depp, his co-star in Pirates of the Caribbean. Bloom pushed for Extras to go further by making his part unlikable, and contributed to the gag about him admiring Depp out of sheer jealousy, that Depp was far more talented than he was, not to mention rated higher than him on the 'top hottest' charts.

Bloom then again portrayed Will Turner, in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (Gore Verbinski, 2007). Bloom, who had intended to become a stage actor after graduating from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, had stated that he would like to leave films for a time and instead appear in stage roles. During the summer of 2007, he appeared in a London revival of In Celebration, a play by David Storey. His character was one of three brothers returning home for their parents' 40th wedding anniversary. In 2009, he was one of many stars to appear in the anthology film New York, I Love You (Shunji Iwai, a.o., 2009), which contained 12 short films in one.


French postcard by Sonis, no. C. 1697. Photo: Disney. Orlando Bloom in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (Gore Verbinski, 2006).


French postcard by Sonis, no. C. 1698. Photo: Disney. Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (Gore Verbinski, 2007).


German promotion card by Reinders Posters, no. RPC-15338. Photo: Disney. Orlando Bloom in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (Gore Verbinski, 2007).

Romeo

Orlando Bloom then appeared in The Three Musketeers (Paul W. S. Anderson, 2011) opposite Milla Jovovich and Christoph Waltz. He reprised his role as Legolas in parts two and three of The Hobbit (Peter Jackson, 2013-2014), the three-part prequel to The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Bloom made his Broadway stage debut as Romeo in 'Romeo and Juliet' in 2013 at the Richard Rodgers Theatre. The New York Times theatre critic Ben Brantley described Bloom's performance as "a first-rate Broadway debut" in the title role: "For once, we have a Romeo who evolves substantively, from a posturing youth in love with love to a man who discovers the startling revelation of real love, with a last-act descent into bilious, bitter anger that verges on madness."

Bloom reprised his character, Will Turner, in a supporting role in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (Joachim Rønning, Espen Sandberg, 2017). Recently, he starred in the war drama The Outpost (Rod Lurie, 2019), and in the TV show Carnival Row (2019-2023).

In 2004, Orlando Bloom became a full member of SGI-UK (the UK branch of Soka Gakkai International), a lay Buddhist association affiliated with the teachings of Nichiren. Bloom has also been a part of Global Green, an environmental company, since the early 2000s. Bloom has a tattoo of the Elvish word "nine" on his right wrist, written in fictional Tengwar Elvish script, a reference to his involvement in the Lord of the Rings as one of the nine members of the Fellowship of the Ring. In 2009, Bloom was named a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador.

Bloom had a relationship with American actress Kate Bosworth, from 2003 till 2006. In late 2007, Bloom began dating Australian supermodel Miranda Kerr. They married the following month in 2010 and Kerr gave birth to their son Flynn Christopher Blanchard Copeland Bloom (2011). The two were divorced in 2013. He is now in a relationship with pop singer Katy Perry.


French postcard by Bamba Productions, no. ATHQ 128.


Vintage postcard by Idoles. With Keira Knightley.


Trailer Carnival Row (2019-). Source: JoBlo Horror Trailers (YouTube).

Sources: J. W. Braun (IMDb), Wikipedia and IMDb.

This post was last updated on 9 June 2023.