Why does Troy (2004) have such a bad reputation?

Troy has only a 53% rating on RT, and for some reason it's often considered a mediocre-to-bad movie.

I don't get it. For me, it's an awesome film. Probably the last truly entertaining "sword and sandals" epic that Hollywood put out.

Brad Pitt and Eric Bana both delivered brilliant performances as the chief characters. The legendary Peter O'Toole provided a great performance.

The always great Brian Cox played an excellent villain. Orlando Bloom served his purpose well in being a really dislikable, immature punk. Brendan Gleeson, and Sean Bean all gave very good performances.

Superb fight scenes. Memorable lines, and moments.

Why is it considered so weak?

I would watch Troy any day of the week over Gladiator, even though I know Gladiator is considered a much better film. Troy is just a lot more fun to watch. Gladiator is honestly painfully boring outside of Phoenix's great performance.

Troy is an 8/10 movie IMO. 53% is selling it short.

 

Think it's because it wasn't a box office juggernaut like they expected. It's a decent movie with good replay value.

 

The 53% is the Critics rating - the audience score is 73%, which is on a par with IMDB. The critics on Rotten Tomatoes are a joke. The recent series The Terminal List they rate as 39% but the audience score is 95% - that's a 56% disparity which shows you how far from the public pulse they can be. And their "Top Critics" average score is only 26% which widens the gap to 69%. Same with Venom - Critics 29% Audience 80% and The Boondock Saints 27% vs 91%

Conversely, Star Wars - The last Jedi, skews the other way with Critics rating at 91% compared to the audience's 42%.

Their ratings are often so off-base as to be meaningless IMO.

 

Probably because Achilles is not gay with his cousin/nephew....Also prefer Kingdom of Heaven over Gladiator, 300...


Centurion w/ Michael Fassbender is also good...

I love the Spartacus series on Starz..

 

I agree with all of this. I believe when Troy first came out a lot of the posters on whatever site we were on at the time also were talking down on it. I believe that was the major reason I skipped it at the theater. The first time I saw Troy was at a movie tent while on my first of three deployments in Iraq. Although I thought it was very good I did end up walking out on it early, but that had a lot more to do with the fact me and this Army chick I was sitting next to had gotten a little… friendly.

 

RT became a joke since The Last Jedi and lost all credibility with Captain Marvel's blatant audience rating manipulation. The recent "Super Mario Bros" disparity between critics score and audience score is again another example of this. The ongoing audience rating manipulation, like in The Little Mermaid were rating was initially very low and magically it went up in a matter of hours, serves as a reminder that RT ratings are meaningless.