Brad Pitt’s hit 2004 historical epic Troy gets high marks from a historian, who praises the movie for capturing the spirit of The Illiad.

Brad Pitt’s 2004 historical epic Troy gets high marks from a historian, who praises the movie for capturing the spirit of The Illiad. Released in the wake of Gladiator’s Oscar-winning run, Pitt’s turn as the legendary hero Achilles jumped on the suddenly-speeding sword-and-sandals bandwagon, riding it to a healthy $497 million worldwide box office gross. Critics were unfortunately not too impressed by Troy, as reflected in the film’s 53% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Troy may have performed better with audiences than with critics, but there’s one expert who thinks the movie did a good job capturing The Illiad, even if it sometimes sacrificed historical accuracy in the process. Historian Dr. Roel Konijnendijk recently looked at the Wolfgang Petersen-directed epic, breaking down its at times inaccurate depiction of military tactics, but praising it for its Homeric elements and overall giving it a positive rating. Check out his remarks below (around 12:19 of the video clip via Invicta):

So I think Troy is actually trying to do something here, where on the one side the Trojan army, which is clearly well organized in forming this impenetrable shield wall. And on the other side you have the Greek army which is obviously led by this impetuous, angry general Agamemnon. Which therefore behaves much more like an armed mob. And in some ways, this obviously works for the story, but it’s not very realistic.

So you can see these waves of arrows coming in which, obviously, looks really spectacular, and you even have this scene where Agamemnon’s in his chariot and his charioteer is killed, and he has to take the reins himself, which is a very Homeric scene. It happens a few times in the poem, and of course it builds on the idea that if you’re under a city wall, your troops are covered by the men on the wall and this is something that a lot of Greeks historically preferred to do. They would fight near a city wall so that if something went wrong, they had to retreat to their city or fortified position, you would then be under cover of the men on the wall, so they would be able to protect you with their missiles against the people who are pursuing you.

This is obviously a scene where Troy gets the most Homeric. In The Iliad you have all these scenes where two heroes meet each other on the battlefield, and they have a big fight, and this is what gives them their glory. This is what they want. And so for the story this obviously makes a lot of sense but the way that battle is depicted in this movie, with these huge formations of heavy infantry slamming into each other, it’s basically impossible for this to happen. There is simply no room.

It’s actually really hard to judge this one. There’s so much about this movie that I really like, and I think they’ve done a lot of interesting things with it in terms of the way they use the source material. It’s not necessarily historically accurate of course, but at least it has something of the spirit of it, and it has the great merit of creating some of the most exciting ,both mass combat scenes and individual duels that have ever been put on film as far as I know. … So to that degree, what should we say, six or seven out of ten.

Where Troy’s Box Office Ranks In Pitt’s Career

Troy and its epic battle scenes may not have done it for critics, but the movie garnered enough of an audience to rank as the third-biggest hit of Pitt’s career (leaving out Deadpool 2, in which Pitt’s role is nothing more than a joke cameo). Since Troy’s 2004 release, Pitt has put out two movies that surpassed it in his personal career box office top ten: 2013’s zombie film World War Z and 2005’s romantic action-drama Mr. and Mrs. Smith.

The 2000s were indeed Pitt’s box office peak, with six of his top ten movies coming out in that decade. Pitt’s two collaborations with Quentin Tarantino – Inglourious Basterds and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood – both make the top ten, a good sign for Tarantino’s upcoming final film The Movie Critic, which reportedly has cast Pitt. Two of Pitt’s collaborations with David Fincher – Se7en and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button – also make the list, as do two of his team-ups with Steven Soderbergh, Ocean’s Eleven and Ocean’s Twelve.

Pitt’s personal top ten is heavy on action and thriller films, and includes only one animated movie, 2010’s Megamind. Troy’s placement near the top of that list may be surprising given its critical reception, but at least one expert thinks the movie has plenty of strong elements, and perhaps warrants consideration as a legitimately stirring historical action epic.