Yes, Hollywood messes with our myths

We shouldn't get excited about US film-makers reinterpreting Europe's legends. After all, we've done a bit of that ourselves

Joe Queenan argued in the Guardian recently that Hollywood had taken 10 years to destroy the legends of European history and that film-makers had completely lost sight of what made these ancient myths so beloved.

I don't agree with him. Sure, these movies play with the historical truth a bit. Sure, they simplify the complexities and problems posed by these ancient legends. Sure, they sometimes make bad choices in casting. But just because we may not like them, does that make them worthless – or worse, a destructive force? I don't think so.

Take Queenan's objection to film-makers changing the storyline. Modern moviemakers aren't the first to do it. Epics such as the Iliad weren't written down in the ancient world for an awfully long time – they existed initially as oral poetry. and their storyline changed over the generations. There was no one "true" script: it was constantly in flux.

Equally, when the story of the Iliad was more or less fixed, another genre of art – Greek tragedy – took up the reins to play with our reaction to the great epics by focusing on the before and after. What do we think of Agamemnon in the Iliad when we see that he will be killed by his wife on his return home, or the hero Odysseus when we see him having to trick a fellow Greek into coming to Troy after Odysseus had abandoned the same man on a deserted island some years before?

There is a different problem with the story of Alexander the Great. There are several ancient sources that survive for us about Alexander, each of which offers a slightly different take on him. The point is that there is not one obviously correct story, but competing interpretations, and we each have to decide how to weigh the evidence and decide how we see Alexander. The film-makers could be said to be carrying on in the best traditions of the past by offering different versions of the story, and playing with our reaction to them.

Or take Joe's disgust at how 300 turned valiant Spartans into "blustery show-offs" and their stand at Thermopylae into a thinly veiled reference to America v Iran. Its not the first time Hollywood has used the Spartan legend to put forward a west versus east agenda (see the 1961 film The 300 Spartans). But more important, the film's portrayal forces us to think about what the Spartans were really like, and what their stand did and should mean. That questioning of traditional characterisation can be a good thing if it leads to a considered re-evaluation of the ancient evidence.

With the Spartans that's particularly important, because books about them have recently been sent to US military forces serving in Iraq and Afghanistan – the idea being that our forces should take inspiration from the ancient Spartan way of doing things. In that light, it becomes even more important that we think, and argue, about what the Spartans were really like.

That's the key point. If these Hollywood adaptations can spawn debate and discussion about these stories, places and peoples of our past, then, whatever their cinematic quality, they have done us a great service.

A book will soon be published which focuses on responses to the characterisation of Alexander the Great in Oliver Stone's movie Alexander. The film, whether you liked it or not, seems to have got people thinking – and that can't be a bad thing.