I’ve been thinking on it a bit further and I think that the reason that Nolan’s odyssey has the problems that it does is that it’s afraid to be seen as unserious for even one second.
Like they could’ve and in my opinion should’ve had Zendaya as Athena descend from the heavens in full battle armor but they didn’t. It would’ve been accurate to the original text.
We can’t have anything look rediculous in this movie though I guess. Can’t have a cyclops thinking that a guy is named Nobody. Can’t have a drugged up island of silly lotus eaters that Odysseus has to physically drag his men away from.
Anyways I did mostly enjoy this movie I swear but I wish they’d gotten silly with it even just once.
Not only is it never allowed to be silly, it's never allowed to be glorious, to be powerful, to be beautiful.
Circe does not have a magnificent palace filled with nymphs and golden furniture. Calypso does not weave on a golden loom, her cave full of mighty trees dripping with grape vines. There is no Nausicaa and Arete in their palace of Orichalcum and magic boats which pilot themselves. Penelope does not have a wedding bed carved from a mighty olive tree, rooted to the rock of Ithaca.
Because Nolans movie is about the collapse of a cultural empire because people didn't respect God's laws enough. It's about a civilization degrading and fading, so he has no use for any of the majesty and wonder and humor of the homeric text. Everything needs to be grimy and decaying, collapsing in on itself.
And Adaptations are allowed to be different and it's broadly a good thing to have a strong directorial vision.
But it does remind me of Nolans Batman, which had no time for boy wonders and found family and silly puzzles because it needed to be about the righteous necessity of the post 9/11 surveillance state.
