the odyssey (2026): a rant by someone who watched the movie and got their feelings hurt (and still enjoyed it)
disclaimer: i’m neither a movie critic nor a historian. i’m a chronically sleep-deprived person who works at a library and likes to watch stuff on the big screen. these are my personal thoughts. that's it.
apparently some people are immortal and have been around for 3000 years
okay. the movie is the movie and the poem is the poem. it should go without saying that it’s impossible to make an adaptation of the odyssey that is completely faithful to the text. same goes for literally any other work of art, be it a stage play, an opera, a musical or a (graphic) novel. they’re all different types of media and they’ll never align perfectly. i’d argue they’re not supposed to. does that mean you shouldn’t adapt anything? no! it means that maybe we should all keep our expectations at a somewhat normal level. also: congrats to half of the internet for having read "the original". i had no idea that so many people are highly proficient in ancient greek and/or were actually present when the story was told for the first time thousands of years ago 👍👍👍
thanks for reminding me that the world is on fire
passive aggressive half-jokes aside, i went to see the odyssey last saturday and i thought it was great, but i didn’t expect to leave the cinema feeling exhausted. sure, three hours is one hell of a runtime, but that wasn’t the problem. it didn’t feel that long to me because the pacing is actually decent imo. i wasn’t bothered by nolan’s alleged disdain for our eardrums either because i think the at times overwhelming mix of sound effects and the (beautiful) score actually makes sense and adds to the chaos of some of the scenes, e.g. the burning of troy or the encounter with the laestrygonians.
i felt emotionally exhausted and that surprised me because in the past, nolan movies have left me feeling either entertained or “meh“. so, this was new to me except that it wasn’t. in fact, this wasn’t the first time a movie had made feel tired and drained and also inexplicably sad because it hit too close to home. for example: the road had made me feel a similar way. 28 days later and (most of) its sequels had made me feel a similar way. snowpiercer had made me feel a similar way, at least to a certain degree. but those are post-apocalyptic movies, not blockbusters based on ancient epics. i think that maybe those movies and nolan’s odyssey share a similar core, though: the sense that the world we’re used to is coming (or already has come) to an end right before our eyes. that this end is of our own making. and that we can’t or don’t want to do something about it. i didn’t get to escape from the real world while i was in the cinema and i’m somehow not mad about it.
christopher nolan can’t write women! - yes, but …
another thing that surprised me was that even though the women in this movie have little to no screentime, most of their scenes stood out to me. the rage shaking through penelope when she speaks about burning her suitors alive. the grief and hatred taking over clytemnestra’s face when she stabs her husband to death for having sacrificed their daughter (and maybe also using her sister as a scapegoat for starting a war). the quiet fury radiating from helena during the feast. the anger and despair in circe’s voice when she explains why she turned odysseus’ men into pigs before allowing them to “go back into their disguise“. those were the scenes that i kept thinking and talking about besides the brilliant hades and sirens sequences. and of course, there’s a particularly devastating scene towards the end of the movie that culminates in a moment between odysseus and athena that honestly broke me to the point where i’m still speechless. now, does that mean that nolan knows how to write women all of a sudden? absolutely not, as proven by the calypso scenes, which felt rather flat imo. but it doesn’t change the fact that a majority of the women in this movie impacted me the most.
the cast isn’t the problem, it’s hollywood (and braindead bigots)
there’s also stuff in this movie that i didn’t enjoy. i didn’t love the polyphemus sequence and the animation of scylla actually took me out of the movie for a second. i wasn’t exactly blown away by the final fight (with the exception of the bow string moment) and the ending scene felt a bit too “disney“ to me. while most of the cast did an exceptional job, others like robert pattinson or jon bernthal seemed to play the types of roles they’re already known for, which i didn’t mind but also wasn’t really impressed with. tom holland is a special case because there were scenes where he was great and scenes where he was just okay imo. it would have been really cool to include some greek actors but i also understand that this is a hollywood movie and there’s money to be made, so of course you’d cast big names like matt damon or anne hathaway. as for the “criticism“ regarding some of the other casting choices, most notably the casting of lupita nyong’o, elliot page, himesh patel and zendaya: this isn’t criticism, it’s poorly concealed racism and transphobia, and to argue that TROY of all movies had the more accurate casting is laughable but also to be expected when you look at the people who came up with this absolute nonsense argument in the first place. so, if your only gripe with this movie is that a trans man and people of colour are part of the cast: STFU.
what the hell are we even arguing about
finally, the discourse around this movie (if you can even call it a discourse) has me worried about how we are going to talk about works of art in the future - or rather: if talking about works of art will still be a thing at all because it feels like everyone is just yelling these days. there are some valid criticisms on how the movie was made, e.g. shooting the entire thing in imax (i know Nolan has some sort of fetish for this but in some countries the infrastructure is just not there. for example: there are roughly 15 cinemas in germany that show the movie in imax. do i have the time and money to travel to one of those cities and watch the movie there? hahaha nope!), shooting parts of the movie in dakhla without taking the sahrawi population into consideration (i hope that this actually gets addressed at some point but i doubt it will happen any time soon), or that apparently some of the props where just dumped into the ocean after filming, which caused well-deserved backlash (wdym you went to a foreign country, shot a movie there and didn’t bother to clean up afterwards???). these are all valid points but they get drowned out by the noise.
i get that people are passionate about different things and i love that we all have different opinions on art, but to tear a movie down without having seen it is just wild to me. same goes for some of the other arguments i have seen popping up, e.g. people complaining that the characters are speaking american english and using words like “dad“ whilst claiming that having them speak british english would have been more accurate. like, huh??????? they didn’t speak british english back then either and i’m sure they had ancient greek dialects and spoke informally to and about each other. and again: it’s a poem! it was written in dactylic hexameter. i have yet to meet a person who casually speaks like that. sure, nolan could’ve incorporated the rhythmic structure and direct quotes from the text into the movie (something similar was done in at least one of the more recent macbeth adaptations and it worked well imo) but he didn’t and that’s fine. (i think that the complaints about the sets and costumes are way more valid but at the same time creative freedom does exist and i personally am very grateful for that.)
if you say "zeus' law" one more time
the movie is an interpretation of an interpretation of an interpretation of an interpretation. some things have to be explained to the audience because not everyone has read the text or a deep knowledge of ancient greece (e.g. xenia). some things have to be explained to the audience multiple times throughout the movie because unfortunately, our attention spans are non-existent these days. some other things are simply up to interpretation: odysseus can be cunning and full of hubris and suffer from ptsd without showing both explicitly or in equal measure. athena can be a goddess and a personification of odysseus’ guilt without dismissing either question about who she is or greek mythology as a whole. the movie can have flaws and stay with you for days due to the emotional impact it had on you.
TL;DR: it’s a movie. some people hate it, some people love it. everyone is yelling about it (including myself) and for the most part that’s okay. what is not okay is being racist and transphobic. i hope we can at least agree on that.
