Troy
Wolfgang Petersen's big-budget take on Homer's Iliad, with Brad Pitt as the near-invincible warrior Achilles and Eric Bana as the doomed Trojan prince Hector. Gods and all, the myth was stripped down to human politics and combat — a sword-and-sandal epic that was a modest performer at home but a giant hit overseas.
Released May 14, 2004 and directed by Wolfgang Petersen, Troy adapted Homer's Iliad (with material from Quintus Smyrnaeus's Posthomerica) into a $175–185 million spectacle. Brad Pitt starred as Achilles, Eric Bana as Hector, and Orlando Bloom as Paris, whose abduction of Helen (Diane Kruger) ignites the war; Brian Cox, Sean Bean, and Peter O'Toole rounded out the cast as Agamemnon, Odysseus, and Priam.
The film's defining creative choice was to remove the gods who drive Homer's poem, recasting the Trojan War as a purely human story of ego, politics, and combat. Reviews were mixed — 53% on Rotten Tomatoes — with critics praising the spectacle and the Pitt and Bana performances (Bana's Hector was a particular favorite) while faulting the loose adaptation.
Where Troy truly delivered was overseas: it made about $133.4 million domestically but $364 million internationally, for roughly $497.4 million worldwide — its international take nearly tripling the domestic one. Part of the early-2000s revival of the big historical epic, it remains a defining example of the era's return to the sword-and-sandal blockbuster.
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