Reviews

The first thing to say is this is the first Turkish film (to my information) with this amount of budget. And guest what, they screwed a topic of high potential in this very first high-budget film. They should have screwed a trivial piece of historical event instead, or rather a simple romantic film. Hopefully, much experience is gained, which could result in a far better high-budget movie next time. Though, this most significant point in medieval Turkish (and the world, as well) history is all screwed already. I have to mention that Turkish film industry is highly Hollywood-dominated in recent decades. To the extent unfortunately,that in cinemas, it is quite rare when a non-Hollywood foreign movie appears, except for some very special endangered theaters. Consequently, the producers of this movie insisted on creating something that feels Hollywood intensely. Following points are remarkable aspects giving this Hollywood flavor: * Everybody speaks English (Turkish, in this case), despite the existence of plenty of people who can profess on old Greek and Latin, no big deal to hire them to produce relevant texts. Fortunately, there were no aliens running wild around this movie, I hate them speaking English. * There is always (no exception at all!) at least one love affair (preferably between the main characters, heroes etc.) in American movies. They did not forget to include one in this very American-influenced movie * The Emperor and his soldiers are evils that must be eliminated, as it was with Japanese or German in American WII movies, Persians in 300Spartans, etc. * The computer-aided scenes are exaggerated generously (as it was in Troya, 300spartan, etc.) such that millions of soldiers can pray before attacking the city walls. Indeed, there must be no more than 100 millions of people back then in the whole world

Last, but not the least, history is seriously twisted. Sultan Mehmet II is not a religious freak leading thousands into war for no reason but eliminate "infidels". There were tens of political, economical, safety etc. reasons for the Turks to take Constantinople. In fact, Ottoman ruling only cared much about religion -as a last resort to save the descending empire- towards the fall in 19th-20th century with the intent of keeping millions of people of various origins under unity, which failed apparently. In conclusion, the producers created what they thought that would be "favoured" by the audience. Instead, they should have created something more original, ie. what they would find more reasonable. Simply, the resulting movie is nothing better than a screwed-up all-the-same American movie.