Helen of Troy (2003) reaction paper PDF

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This is a Movie Reaction paper for Helen Of Troy Movie Series (2003)...

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Helen of Troy A Movie Reaction Paper | Chrystal Rose G. Ladonga

“The face that launched a thousand ships.” Helen of Troy showcases a different perspective of the events from the leading lady's viewpoint and how Helen's beauty significantly impacts this film. The story begins with Princess Cassandra's prophecy of how her brother Alexandrous's (Paris) birth could lead to Troy's destruction, so she wanted to kill him. King Priam, who was afraid of the prophecy, ordered to leave Paris to Mount Ida, where Agelaus found him and raised him as his own. As Paris chased his goat that got away, he stumbled upon the three goddesses, Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite, in a cave where he was asked who among them is the most beautiful. He then chose the latter, who promised her to give him the love of the most beautiful woman in the world, Helen. On the other hand, Helen saw this in the waters and accepted it. She later met the two brothers, Agamemnon, her sister's groom, and Menelaus, Agamemnon's brother, who then became her husband. Two Athenians abducted Helen. Paris decided to join competing in the Trojan tribute games despite his father's protests in hopes that he could get his favorite bull back. Cassandra recognized his supposedly dead brother and wanted to kill him again, but he failed as Paris was welcomed by King Priam and her mom. Paris was sent to Sparta for a diplomatic mission. Paris saw Helen, King Menelaus' wide, and he instantly fell in love with her and brought her to Troy when he went back. Menelaus, who was full of rage after he knew Helen went to Troy with Paris, approached his brother Agamemnon, king of Mycenae who conquered and got a hold of every army of Greece and is in charge and is in authority over those armies. Agamemnon has always wanted to invade Troy since ages ago because he wants to have control of the Aegean Sea, uses his brother's favor as a justification to invade Troy, and that started the ten-year warfare between the trojans and the Greeks, where a lot of lives were lost, including Paris', Hector, and more. The almost-three-hour movie tells a classic story of greed, power, and corruption of the passions and desires of the people. This was seen when Agamemnon, even with an oath that all of Helen's suitors should vow to defend the chosen husband (Menelaus) against whoever should quarrel with the chosen one and if anyone disrespect Helen's husband's claims to her, they should unite and wage war against him but, even with this oath, Agamemnon still tried to get his hands on Helen, even the destruction and invasion of Troy to suffice and satisfy all of his greed in the end. After Helen ran away with Paris, prince of Troy, the Greek armies fought a ten-year-long war against Troy to win her back, a prophecy that Princess Cassandra had years ago has been fulfilled. The movie, I think, was not entirely based on Homer’s Iliad, and I was kind of disappointed with the film because there were many inaccuracies if we were really to base it with Homer's Iliad. According to a source, the film changed several aspects from the original legend of Helen. The gods play almost no role in the characters' lives, Helen is not shown to have any children, and it's not explained how Cassandra supposedly got her powers. Instead, the series plays the story like a brutal historical event with few supernatural elements. There was almost no intervention of the gods, unlike in the book. One intervention that I think is in the movie was when Agamemnon had to sacrifice his daughter to gain favor from the gods to give them no harsh winds when they sailed to Troy. Some of the characters are different from the book and in the film, but I found out that this adaptation was not a hundred percent based on the book, but the 1956 film.

"Loving me kills people, destroys families, causes such grief you cannot imagine!” - Helen. The movie did emphasize how Helen's beauty could destroy a nation, and even with that, men were still fighting about her so that they could have her. Even with what Helen told Paris about the consequences of loving her, he still held on to Helen to prove his love for her even if it meant his death and the destruction of his nation. This is somewhat similar to dramas and love stories that I am currently watching, where love conquers everything - even death. "War is waged by nations, but it is humans who pay the price." -Menelaus. Because the two nations waged wars, countless of the commoners' lives and even the ones from the royal blood were lost. I still find King Priam's decision to allow the gigantic horse to go into Troy's gates a foolish decision. From what I have understood in the movie, he let it go into the walls of Troy because his ego was hurt when the greek man told him that the reason why the horse was built so that The Trojan's could not let the horse come into the walls of Troy and if that happens, they will not get goddess Athena's favor. So what the king did was break some of Troy's walls to make room for the horse to pass the walls; the king did not even mind Princess Cassandra's warnings, so in return, the prophecy of the destruction of Troy was finally fulfilled. The technical aspects of the movie, for me, were a fail. I could hardly hear the conversations of the characters, mainly because of their accents too. I couldn't grasp what they were saying in the movie, but the movie was good, given the time it was produced. I still find the film engrossing to watch even when I could not catch on everything that the characters said but even without it, I was still able to understand the wholeness of the film, so that's a plus. Allow me to end this reaction paper with a dialogue between Theseus' (the first who abducted Helen) and Helen because this gave me hope and made my heart melt. “- Theseus: Someday, someplace, you'll find someone better, someone, worthy. When you do, neither the gods' will nor the Earth's turning will keep you from him. - Helen: That's how I feel about you. - Theseus: Well, Helen, this is only a kind of practice. Someday you'll know the difference. ”...