Greek Myths to the screen

OHMSS69

We have many movies based on literary works and sometimes they work and sometimes they don't. Two works that never seem to adapt are :
Homer's Odessey
The Iliad

Several times the Odessey has been attempted but it always falls short. Maybe the scope is too grand and there are just too many characters to contend with. It has been tried as a film with Kirk Douglas (sucked) a miniseries in the nineties and that stunk too. A real pity.

You read the book and many a hollywood producer must have said, "There's a great story here". They have tried to cut it down, and that never worked out, they try the mini series route and that just fell flat.

The Iliad has also been poorly treated by Hollywood. Maybe it suffers from being so large in scope with so many characters and subplots. Like the Odessey it makes great reading but movie land seems to really struggle with it.
The film, Troy with Brad Pitt made a serious attempt but it got too carried away. Perhaps if they concentrated on the actual book and left out the death of Achilles, the Trojan horse...maybe it would work. The book covers a 30 day period in the ninth year of the ten year war. No mention of the Horse and ends with the funeral of Hector.

Jason and the Argonauts turned out pretty good
Clash of the Titans (1981) wasn't that bad.
Both stories are simple and not too complex. Troy and Odesseus just never seemed to work out for Hollywood.