Achilles (Brad Pitt)Troy the Movie
Achilles was the son of the mortal Peleus and the Nereid Thetis. He was the
mightiest of the Greeks who fought in the Trojan War, and was the hero of
Homer's Iliad.
Thetis attempted unsuccessfully to make her son immortal. There are two versions of the story. In the earlier version, Thetis anointed the infant with ambrosia and then placed him upon a fire to burn away his mortal portions; she was interrupted by Peleus, whereupon she abandoned both father and son in a rage. Peleus placed the child in the care of the Centaur Chiron, who raised and educated the boy. In the later version, she held the young Achilles by the heel and dipped him in the river Styx; everything the sacred waters touched became invulnerable, but the heel remained dry and therefore unprotected.
More about the mythology behind Achilles and Troy the Movie story
When Achilles was a boy, the seer Calchas prophesied that the city of Troy could not be taken without his help. Thetis knew that, if her son went to Troy, he would die an early death, so she sent him to the court of Lycomedes, in Scyros; there he was hidden, disguised as a young girl. During his stay he had an affair with Lycomedes' daughter, Deidameia, and she had a son, Pyrrhus (or Neoptolemus), by him. Achilles' disguise was finally penetrated by Odysseus, who placed arms and armor amidst a display of women's finery and seized upon Achilles when he was the only "maiden" to be fascinated by the swords and shields. Achilles then went willingly with Odysseus to Troy, leading a host of his father's Myrmidons and accompanied by his tutor Phoenix and his close friend Patroclus. At Troy, Achilles distinguished himself as an undefeatable warrior. Among his other exploits, he captured twenty-three towns in Trojan territory, including the town of Lyrnessos, where he took the woman Briseis as a war-prize. Later on Agamemnon, the leader of the Greeks, was forced by an oracle of Apollo to give up his own war-prize, the woman Chryseis, and took Briseis away from Achilles as compensation for his loss. This action sparked the central plot of the Iliad, for Achilles became enraged and refused to fight for the Greeks any further. The war went badly, and the Greeks offered handsome reparations to their greatest warrior; Achilles still refused to fight in person, but he agreed to allow his friend Patroclus to fight in his place, wearing his armor. The next day Patroclus was killed and stripped of the armor by the Trojan hero Hector, who mistook him for Achilles.
Achilles was overwhelmed with grief for his friend and rage at Hector. His mother obtained magnificent new armor for him from Hephaestus, and he returned to the fighting and killed Hector. He desecrated the body, dragging it behind his chariot before the walls of Troy, and refused to allow it to receive funeral rites. When Priam, the king of Troy and Hector's father, came secretly into the Greek camp to plead for the body, Achilles finally relented; in one of the most moving scenes of the Iliad, he received Priam graciously and allowed him to take the body away.
After the death of Hector, Achilles' days were numbered. He continued fighting heroically, killing many of the Trojans and their allies, including Memnon and the Amazon warrior Penthesilia. Finally Priam's son Paris (or Alexander), aided by Apollo, wounded Achilles in the heel with an arrow; Achilles died of the wound. After his death, it was decided to award Achilles' divinely-wrought armor to the bravest of the Greeks. Odysseus and Ajax competed for the prize, with each man making a speech explaining why he deserved the honor; Odysseus won, and Ajax then went mad and committed suicide.
During his lifetime, Achilles is also said to have had a number
of romantic episodes. He reportedly fell in love with Penthesilia, the Amazon
maiden whom he killed in battle, and it is claimed that he married Medea.
Actor Brad Pitt - filmography
Mr. and Mrs. Smith (2004) (pre-production) .... Brad Pitt is Mr. Smith
Movie
Ocean's Twelve (2004) (pre-production) .... Rusty Ryan
Troy (2004) (post-production) Brad Pitt is . Achilles
Movie
Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas (2003) (voice) Brad Pitt the voice of Sinbad
Movie
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002) .... Bachelor Brad
Full Frontal (2002) .... Brad/Himself
Ultimate Fights from the Movies (2002) (V) (archive footage) .... Mickey O'Neil
(Snatch)
Ocean's Eleven (2001) .... Rusty Ryan
... aka 11 (2001) (USA: poster title)
... aka O11 (2001) (USA: informal short title)
Spy Game (2001) .... Tom Bishop
Mexican, The (2001) .... Jerry Welbach
Snatch. (2000) .... Mickey O'Neil
... aka Snatch: Pigs and Diamonds (2000) (International: English title)
Fight Club (1999) .... Tyler Durden
... aka Fight Club (1999) (Germany)
Meet Joe Black (1998) .... Joe Black
Dark Side of the Sun, The (1997) .... Rick
... aka Mracna strana sunca (1997) (Yugoslavia: Serbian title)
... aka Tamna strana sunca (1997) (Yugoslavia: Serbian title)
Seven Years in Tibet (1997) .... Heinrich Harrer
Devil's Own, The (1997) .... Rory Devaney/Francis 'Frankie' McGuire
Sleepers (1996) .... Michael Sullivan
Twelve Monkeys (1995) .... Jeffrey Goines
Se7en (1995) .... Detective David Mills
Legends of the Fall (1994) .... Tristan Ludlow
Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles (1994) .... Louis de Pointe
du Lac
... aka Interview with the Vampire (1994) (USA: short title)
Favor, The (1994) .... Elliott Fowler
... aka Favour, The (1994) (UK)
... aka Indecent Favour, The (1994) (Australia)
True Romance (1993) .... Floyd
Kalifornia (1993) .... Early Grayce
Contact (1992) .... Cox
River Runs Through It, A (1992) .... Paul Maclean
Cool World (1992) .... Detective Frank Harris
Across the Tracks (1991) .... Joe Maloney
Two-Fisted Tales (1991) (TV) .... Billy (segment "King of the Road")
Johnny Suede (1991) .... Johnny Suede
Thelma & Louise (1991) .... J.D.
"Glory Days" (1990) TV Series .... Walker Lovejoy
Too Young to Die? (1990) (TV) .... Billy Canton
Image, The (1990) (TV) .... Steve Black
Cutting Class (1989) .... Dwight Ingalls
Happy Together (1989/I) .... Brian
Stoning in Fulham County, A (1988) (TV) .... Theodore 'Teddy' Johnson
"Another World" (1964) TV Series .... Chris (1987)
... aka "Another World: Bay City" (1964)
Less Than Zero (1987) (uncredited) .... Partygoer
No Man's Land (1987) (uncredited) .... Waiter
The Death of Achilles
This scene in Troy the Movie is going to be heart
wrenchingly sad..
(Roman names i.e. Odyssius = Ulysses)
Achilles himself was not destined to a long life. Having by chance seen
Polyxena, daughter of King Priam, perhaps on occasion of the truce which
was allowed the Trojans for the burial of Hector, he was captivated with
her charms; and to win her in marriage, it is said (but not by Homer) that
he agreed to influence the Greeks to make peace with Troy. While the hero
was in the temple of Apollo negotiating the marriage, Paris discharged at
him a poisoned arrow, which, guided by Apollo, fatally wounded him in the
heel. This was his only vulnerable spot; for Thetis, having dipped him when
an infant in the river Styx, had rendered every part of him invulnerable
except that by which she held him.
The body of Achilles so treacherously slain was rescued by Ajax and Ulysses. Thetis directed the Greeks to bestow her son's armor on that hero who of all survivors should be judged most deserving of it. Ajax and Ulysses were the only claimants. A select number of the other chiefs were appointed to award the prize. By the will of Minerva it was awarded to Ulysses, -- wisdom being thus rated above valor. Ajax, enraged, set forth from his tent to wreak vengeance upon the Atridae and Ulysses. But the goddess robbed him of reason and turned his hand against the flocks and herds of the Argives, which he slaughtered or led captive to his tent, counting them the rivals who had wronged him. then the cruel goddess restored to him his wits. And he, fixing his sword in the ground, prepared to take his own life:
"Coma and look on me,
O Death, O Death, -- and yet in yonder world
I shall dwell with thee, speak enough with thee:
And thee I call, thou light of golden day,
Thou Sun, who drivest on thy glorious car,
Thee, for this last time, -- never more again!
O Light, O sacred land that was my home;
O Salamis where stands my father's hearth.
Thou glorious Athens, with thy kindred race;
Ye streams and rivers here, and Troia's plains,
To you that fed my life I fid farewell;
This last, last word does Ajax speak to you;
All else, I speak in Hades to the dead."
(Sophocles)
Then, falling upon his sword, he died. So, in the words of his magnanimous foe, Ulysses, passed to the god that ruleth in gloom.
"The best and bravest of the Argive host,
Of all that came to Troia, saving one,
Achilles' self"
(Sophocles)
On the spot where his blood sank into the earth a hyacinth sprang up, bearing on its leaves the first two letters of his name, Ai, the Greek interjection of woe.
It was now discovered that Troy could not be taken but by the aid of the arrows of Hercules. They were in possession of Philoctetes, the friend who had been with Hercules at the last and had lighted his funeral pyre. Philoctetes had joined the Grecian expedition against Troy; but he accidentally wounded his foot with one of the poisoned arrows, and the smell from the wound proved so offensive that his companions carried him to the isle of Lemnos and left him there. Diomede and Ulysses, or Ulysses and Neoptolemus (son of Achilles), were now sent to induce him to rejoin the army. They succeeded. Philoctetes was cured of his wound by Machaon, and Paris was the first victim of the fatal arrows.
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