Matthew Court

As microcosm of what’s wrong with this show, let’s compare the introduction of Achilles: 2004 movie: before the movie even starts we’ve been told that he’s the greatest warrior ever. Within five minutes, we’ve had that claim substantiated with him defeating a giant with a single blow. He’s told us his motivation, learnt that he despises and openly disrespects Agamemnon, but that he’ll fight to spare the lives of his men, but ultimately answers to no one. Fall of a City: a few guys sit on a beach and see a bloke standing outside his tent. Odysseus asked, ‘is Achilles here then?’ Guy replies, ‘yea, he’s here.’…that’s it! And this doesn’t even happen until episode 3 and he doesn’t really speak until ep 4. The show is rife with this kind of amaturish writing and sloppy character development.

‘Disappointing’ is the word that best describes it. Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones give excellent performances as always and visually the film is beautiful! But much like Jones’ character, the crowd-pleasing showwoman, who recognises the need to provide entertainment to the people paying to watch them briefly take off into the sky, the movie seems aware that it needs to create drama to make the story more exciting than it is. The scientific significance of the real events being more interesting than actually watching it. Another disappointment is that the characters are very caricature-like: the devil-may-care adventure, the nerdy scientist, doubting sister, doubting friend, doubting club of old establishment etc. I was also disappointed to learn that Jones’ character Amelia Wren is actually entirely fictional (composite of several real woman) replacing the real figure of Henry Coxwell. The film also seems to go to some effort to make her the main attraction, while Redmyne’s James Glaisher is reduced to the gaping Watson to her Holmes. It does feel somewhat distasteful to write a real figure out of their own history and credit their achievements to a made up character. It would be like making a film about the moon landings and replacing Buzz Aldrin with a fictionalised character, that gets to save the Apollo 11 from asteroids and other contrived hardships, while Neil Armstrong counts grains of moon-dust.