Parts that made me tweak in a dim-lit movie theater:
1. Every time we meet a woman or enslaved individual that, yāknow, had some semblance of agency in the text, Nolan has justā¦ removed that? Circeās commanding presence & how she genuinely overpowers Odysseus? Gone. Helen actually stealing the show in Book 4 where she walks down into the room and controls the conversation re: Odysseus & Troy? Gone. Utterly Gone. Lupita Nyongāo gets 0 chance to speak on her own terms and its actually so depressing. Also Iām genuinely unsure here but it seemed like Circe & Calypsoās divine status wasā¦ nonexistent?? Theyāre both goddesses but apparently not to Christopher Nolan š«¤
And this treatment extends to Odysseusā slaves, specifically Eumaeus & Eurycleia (eurynome & philoetius not appearing in this goddamn film ifg). Almost every action taken by Eurycleia in the Odyssey is attributed to someone else in Nolanās adaptation, she gets 0.2 seconds of screentime, its actually absurd. I think she has two lines in the whole movie. Eurycleia. Odysseus and Telemachusā nurse. The woman who canonically organizes the doors to be locked during the suitorās slaughter? Who canonically helps secure Telemachusā provisions for Pylos? fuckin. Not There. And Eumaeus (who literally perfectly models xenia to a disguised Odysseys while living in extreme poverty) notably Does Not Get To Do That in Nolanās odyssey, instead heās like. injured I guess? Iām so fuckin confused as to why that happened, it just made the plot more convoluted. Medon is also just not there at all. Medon who is actually the fuckin best?? My underestimated king??? Where Is He.
2. oh my god everything abt the scene with Polyphemus makes me want to claw my eyes out (except maybe his eye? that looked kinda cool idfk). yknow how polyphemus appears, speaks to the crew, and they let their guard down? how the polyphemus episode represents the world outside of greek customs like xenia? how he fucking talks to them? he talks to them and his neighbors? yeah. in Nolanās odyssey, there are no neighbors. there is no existential mirror/cyclopean foil to ithacan society. there are no other cyclopes. He doesnt even fucking talk šš <- i mean he gets one line but the audios so distorted that without captions i had no idea what he said
3. Anticleia reunion scene? Nonexistent. Laertes? Nonexistent. Allegedly still around. Sir Not-Appearing In-This-Film. Book 15 reunion between Telemachus and Odysseus? Nonexistent. Reunion between Odysseus, Eumaeus, and Philoetius? Not there. The fucking marriage bed scene? The goddamn marriage bed? NOT THERE. screams into a bag
4. ODYSSEUS āDIDNT WANT TO RETURN HOMEā š they keep fucking saying this over and over again too and. No he very much did. No home means no guaranteed kleos guys. his sons life is in jeopardy but Ok christopher shitlan do whatever the fuck you want, i guess
5. every time i heard them say āour civilization is collapsingā or āthey say the peoples from the sea are attackingā or āour age of bronze is endingā not only did i feel my soul die a little more inside but i also kept thinking āman, this sounds a lot like the white supremacist belief in āwestern civilizationā just superimposed onto a falsified image of the late bronze ageā and thats because It Is.
1. boar scar apparently occurred when odysseus was an adult???
2. elliot pageās sinon gets one helluva backstory which i guess was kinda cool if you ignore elliot page getting brutally slaughtered in the first 30 seconds of the movie? not sure how to feel about that
3. travis scott kept showing up randomly which was like. fine i guess? genuinely im not sure what the difference between him & phemius was supposed to be. i didnt even see phemius. tbf i was taking notes this whole time so maybe i missed him? but travis scott shouldve just been phemius idfk why he wasnt
4. The Phaecians are just not there guys and i have no idea why. odysseusā wanderings are being narrated to calypso?
5. the crew mutinies at scylla instead? odysseus tries to sail towards charybdis??? this was a bizarre sequence
6. no nestor or peisistratus. somehow telemachus sails to the 100% inland palace of menelaus. who needs a chariot when youāve got a Boat i guess
7. half of my notes just say āwhat happened to show, donāt tellā because the amount of exposition made me want to slam my head into the wall
1. anne hathaway and tom holland had a very good dynamic, i feel like they really captured some of the tension between penelope & telemachus, ie penelope running the house for 20 years and still assuming some of that authority vs. telemachus trying to grow up/assume control of the household/establish his own kleos. loved that dynamic tbh. one of the better parts of the telemachy sections
2. lupita nyongāo was great in the uh. 30 seconds she had on screen. im so serious helen was fucking robbed in this movie
3. himesh patel fucking carried every scene he was in on his Back
4. rare cicones appearance
maybe the real sea peoples was the troy we sacked along the way
