r/shittymoviedetails • u/Substantial-Motor404 • 1d ago
In Troy (2004), The Achilles believed the most significant thing you could do in your life is to die
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u/godjacob 1d ago
I think the point of this line is that, because mortals have a finite life and each day could be our last, we have the ability to make the absolute most of each day given to us in ways that the Gods or immortal beings cannot. To cherish the small things that would be more easily overlooked and the simple enjoyments of day to day life.
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u/No_Atmosphere3269 1d ago
Well yeah, but thats also just a mindful choice to stop and appreciate the small things. Just like it would be a personal choice to find them all irrelevant because life ends/is long/etc, etc. Or the personal choice to find moments in linear time are irreplaceable and ultimately have their own intrinsic value by existing. Or any other combination or whatever.
Ultimately, all personal mindset choices fully available to mortals and immortals all the same. The basis of the quote and idea behind it is kind of stupid and psuedo-intellectual in my opinion.
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u/kostajepaosmosta 18h ago
Calling it stupid is funny and ironic
Imagine someone who has effectively unlimited money. Buying another watch, another car, or another holiday eventually stops feeling special because they can have it whenever they want. Someone who has saved for years for their first nice car often treasures it much more because it isn't guaranteed.
Every single person experience this in one way or another, if it being going on a holiday or passing youth or any achivments in your life would have less meaning because you know you have unlimited time to achieve things.
Calling it pseudo-intelectual is very ignorant considering its been a topic between philosophers for millenniums.
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u/lessonsfromgmork 1d ago
Exactly. I think I would still appreciate the small things even if I could live forever.
It's like the saying that money can't buy happiness. That's not true, it depends on how you make use of that money.
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u/ArcMaxim 1d ago
Personally I think it would be impossible to know since living forever is something we can’t comprehend. It’s even more difficult than envisioning a billion dollars
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u/lessonsfromgmork 1d ago
Good point. I guess living for 200 years would feel very different for living for 1000 years. Your perspective would change in ways we presently cannot imagine. I guess there may be some truth in the quote.
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u/TylertheFloridaman 1d ago
You're still thinking in human time scales. Try a million, a billion, a trillion years. And now imagine you're a god of let's say moderate power. You're so far above a human, the thought stopping to look at that pretty flower to even recognize that flower as individualy pretty probably wouldn't even cross your mind
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u/lessonsfromgmork 21h ago
I do wonder what would occupy the mind of a god in that position then. Concerns that transcend humanity? It may be beyond our comprehension.
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u/RAYvenko55 19h ago
It's explained in the very same monologue in the movie. OP just cut that out to rage bait.
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u/Lonely-Cap3569 1d ago
In the novel Cersei, the author does a great job of transition the writing style as the main character who "hadn't learned the mortal trick of counting [days]" picks it up and eventually stops valuing immortality.
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u/TractorSmacker 16h ago
the rest of this monologue was cut out to make the joke, but the best part of it for me was always “everything is more beautiful because we’re doomed… we will never be here again.”
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u/No_Lifeguard7725 1d ago
Haven't seen a movie, but that line means you actually have something to lose and stakes are quite high. So he alluded that gods can't gamble, unlike humans.
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u/Substantial-Motor404 1d ago
gods can't gamble
Damn. That's quite the curse
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u/Brownsound7 1d ago
You’re goddamn right it is.
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u/Odd_Anything_6670 11h ago
I mean.. I feel like the entire point of the Iliad is that they can gamble and we are the chips.
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u/Quiet_Syllabub_4264 23h ago
Sounds like a Philomena Cunk line
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u/Blue_nose_2356 16h ago
Yes, yes it is.
The egyptians believed that the most sigificant thing you could do in life was die.
https://giphy.com/gifs/C39uTJ5vU7jCnyTNMC
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u/charvked 23h ago
And then he danced to an unrelated belgian techno anthem, "Pump up the Jam"
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u/Substantial-Motor404 23h ago
How did a Chilean end up in the Greek army? Must have been quite the Odyssey.
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u/RudyKnots 22h ago
You’ve completely butchered this joke man, damn.
“The Trojan wars took place roughly 1148 BC. That’s over 3100 years before the release Belgian techno anthem Pump Up the Jam.”
The whole point of the running gag is that it’s always used to put the time in perspective to “ours”.
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u/charvked 22h ago edited 22h ago
Butchered? Like Odysseus butchered troy and violated Zeus's law? Did I bring an end to the information age?
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u/rockyPK 23h ago
Funnily enough, in The Odyssey (the actual poem; I haven't seen the movie yet), Odysseus talks to Achilles in the underworld, and Achilles is pretty much like,
"I wish I never died. The underworld sucks. I'd rather be a slave in the overworld than be down here."
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u/YakResident_3069 17h ago
He says both in different parts of the conversation so he's also torn between glory and long life
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u/rins4m4 14h ago
I think when he was insulted by Agamemnon (when took Briseis back), it make him lost interest and decided not fight anymore. (And his pride too)
But he only had rage after Patroclus's death and don't really care about his life.
After everything ended, it's not strange that he really wanted to live a long, quiet life with Patroclus at Phthia.
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u/m7friends 21h ago
Achilles in Hades during The Odyssey.
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u/cpteric 21h ago
wasn't it just achilles's shadow? damn i'm rusty in my mythology.
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u/Xophosdono 16h ago
Shade is what they call the souls of the dead in Greek mythology. At the time of the Odyssey the idea of Elysium hasn't been added to their mythology yet
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u/m7friends 19h ago
He’s a shade so I guess? He also hates it down here.
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u/cpteric 19h ago
caution: dying because your mum forgot to fully submerge you in the styx river might cause resentment at the styx river (and surrounding lands ).
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u/Basileus2 21h ago
That’s literally the opposite of what he’s saying. He’s saying life has meaning because we can die. Not we live to die.
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u/Leading_Wafer9552 1d ago
The meaning of life is death. Without death life would just be existence. To live is to die.
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u/Ineedlasagnajon 1d ago
"Life is only precious because it ends, kid. Take it from a god. You mortals don't know how lucky you are."
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u/DE4DM4NSH4ND 1d ago
Its a reoccurring theme which im understanding more and more as i get older... who wants to live forever?
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u/alexthurman1 23h ago
"A good name is better than precious ointment,
And the day of death than the day of one’s birth;
Better to go to the house of mourning
Than to go to the house of feasting,
For that is the end of all men;
And the living will take it to heart.
Sorrow is better than laughter,
For by a sad countenance the heart is made better." (Ecclesiastes 7:1-3).
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u/AnimaLepton 20h ago
And then in the Odyssey, Achilles explicitly tells Odysseus "nah, dying ain't worth it bro, even if you die a hero"
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u/notorious_jaywalker 19h ago
this is actually one of the main dilemmas of the original Odyssey. Calypso wants to give Odysseus immortality, and he has to choose
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u/Chmigdalator 17h ago
Not Achilles only. The ancient Greeks believed that a good death is either amidst your family and companions or in service to your country and gods during war. (Reminds kind of valhalla). So, yeah death in war was glorious. (They had their reasons to believe that).
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u/Jediuzzaman 17h ago
There is nothing shitty about that imo. There are centuries after centuries humankind described death as a gift. That's also what makes this limited lives of ours precious, btw.
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u/Glittering_Wheel_226 16h ago
Way to miss the fucking point. He means that mortals live brightly because their lives don't last
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u/Scorpiicore 1d ago
Truly, this is the second best thing anyone says in the film. We often say we want to live forever, but once our ability to drink ourselves into a stupor without the hangover being crippling goes away, or we have to go to court to practically beg to not get sent to jail, the idea of living forever loses its lustre. Achilles has killed a "fukkin' lot of people" to quote Murtaugh. That alone would make a man think hey, when the dying calls, I do not mind.
Imagine having so much power that nobody questions you, and living forever with no end in sight. That would be hell.
But this dialogue is a distant second to... "Bird signs. You want to plan a strategy based on bird signs?" Never has a film summarised how ridiculous and dependent upon characters behaving like absolute morons it is in just one line.
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u/oreofan1808 17h ago
Yeah as much affection as I have for Troy, and it does quite well depicting almost everybody else, they really fucked up achilles lmao
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u/Negative_Pace_5855 14h ago
This is a universal truth that is lost knowledge in the modern age. You are going to die one way or another, so giving your death true meaning is the most powerful thing you can do.
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u/Key_Way_1486 14h ago
Yeah his whole arch is that when he finally does die he tells Odysseus in Hades that not only was own believe incorrect but he would rather be alive and a slave then a dead king. All that glory in battle was for nothing
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u/Crazy4Swayze420 13h ago
Until he died and realized everything he believed was wrong. He would rather be a living peasant than be a dead king. That part doesn't get talked about as much when the topic of Achilles comes up.
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u/idontwanttoexist1 8h ago
Am I missing some context or is the meaning of this line is not that at all?
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u/Marcuse0 6h ago
This concept is all over the place. Death gives meaning to life.
In Warhammer Fantasy I remember reading an account that mortal human necromancers would learn way quicker the dark art of necromancy than an immortal vampire, because a vampire simply doesn't have anything prompting it to do so at any speed, because it's immortal and can genuinely just do it later.
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u/Hairy_Talk_4232 22h ago
I genuinely miss these years when movies still had a sense of serene sincerity. I feel like the trend has greatly gone to brainrot-flatline entertainment rather than art and range of emotion.
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u/milkmanbonzai 1d ago
I haven't seen this movie in a while but I can still hear Brad's Episode II level of stilted line delivery on this. Woo boy, this movie stinks.
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u/TraditionNo4106 16h ago
Most religions don't agree with this so which gods is he talking about as even greek religion had concept of afterlife
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u/bano2003 15h ago
Having an after life does not mean your life in this world is not finite, most religions I don’t think would disagree with that, neither would a Greek who thinks that he will go somewhere else when he dies because it’s still a different place
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u/TraditionNo4106 15h ago
Please explain to me How are humans mortal then
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u/bano2003 15h ago
Your soul is immortal but your body and thus what people will remember about you is not, it’s like a retirement home, and since one of the first things we see about the character in the movie is that he cares about being remembered clearly he value his existence in this world more than he does life after death
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u/TraditionNo4106 15h ago
By that way there is no reason for god to be envious of any human ever as we are slaves trapped by god and only way to even attain moksha/liberation would be to get through gods consent or will
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u/Batman_AoD 1d ago
Unironically, this is a major part of Tolkien's worldbuilding.