Troy - Will The Real Achilles Please Stand Up…

A good enough performance...but what Brad Pitt's Achilles was missing from the film Troy were the myth and wonder of his mystical origins...

I do like the film Troy, but I must admit, when it comes to Greek mythology, its biggest selling points to me have always been the elements concerning the mystical and the magical. So I have to ask: what would Troy the movie have been like if all the fantasy elements were included? Well, in just taking a look at Brad Pitt’s character Achilles; we would have a backstory that would have delivered an explanation as to why he was such a good fighter, why he didn’t fear death and why that arrow in the ankle was enough to do him in.

The Achilles From Greek Mythology

• Before Achilles was born, a prophecy concerning him was given that espoused he would grow up to be greater than his father, but die young. At first Zeus (King of the Gods) and Poseidon (God of the Sea) were both chasing the beautiful Thetis (Achilles' mother to be) but after Prometheus warned the brothers of the prophecy, the brother Gods orchestrated circumstances so that Achilles’s father would be a mortal. In the end King Peleus became Achilles’s father, even though Thetis, his mother was a sea-nymph.  

• In total Thetis had 7 children, but grew frustrated with their mortal shells. The children kept dying in infancy when she would test them against the elements that a god or at least a demi-god could withstand. Thetis, in being a sea-nymph could breathe underwater, but her children couldn't and so as she tested their marine suitability she sent each of them to their watery deaths. One day she took Achilles to the River Styx (the river of the dead) and dipped Achilles into it as it was supposed to grant immortality. Finally getting her wish for some sort of ability in one of her children, she made his body invulnerable to harm…except for the heel part of his foot that she had to hold him with. In some accounts it is said that she also rubbed him each day with ambrosia (food of the gods) and each night she laid him upon a hearth fire, that is until her husband caught and scolded her for the treatment of his son. 

"One day she took Achilles to the River Styx (the river of the dead) and she dipped Achilles into it, as it was supposed to grant immortality."

• After Thetis abandoned her husband and son, Achilles was sent away to learn and study from a great warrior, a centaur called Chiron. Chiron was a very skilled warrior, healer, astrologer and had also trained many other famous warriors including Jason of the Argonauts. Chiron fed Achilles on the innards of lions, wild swine, and the marrow of she-wolves, all of which was to make him tougher and more aggressive - this is the supposed reason for his ferociousness as a warrior.

• Another prophecy that concerned Achilles centred on his involvement in the battle of Troy. It was discerned that if he fought in it, he would die. His mother in trying to avoid this outcome began disguising Achilles as a girl when he was still very young and hid him amongst the women of the palace where King Lycomedes ruled. 

• Years later, the ever clever Odysseus (Sean Bean) in looking for Achilles, traced him to the palace, presented the king and court with jewellery...but also with a few weapons mixed within the offering. Only Achilles was drawn to the weapons whilst the real women were drawn to the jewellery - ousted! 
  

• After Achilles kills Hector (Eric Bana) he mistreats Hector's dead body (due to him killing his cousin) for a whole 12 days. But the body never receives harm as the gods Apollo and Aphrodite protect it.
  

• The poison-dipped arrow of Paris (Orlando Bloom) guided by Apollo (the God of Prophecy) struck Achilles’s heel in The Battle of Troy, the one place he wasn’t invulnerable and that led to his death.