this ended up turning into a 2k word long essay, so bear with me. discussion welcome!
disclaimers: i did not see this movie in an IMAX theatre. my background with the odyssey is that i have read both of homer’s epics several times, in several different translations, because the greek classics (homer, euripides/sophocles/aeschylus, etc) have been a personal passion for me for many years. but i do not claim to be an expert at all!
table of contents
comments on the technical aspects of the movie
what was zendaya doing?: divinity, fate, and the power of the gods
the “man of twists and turns”?: odysseus’s portrayal as a hollywood hero
the slave girls: the cycle of violence that…ended?
acting, pacing, additional changes and comments
part 1: technical aspects
i realize, after typing out the table of contents for what i want to talk about, that most of my review is quite critical. so i want to start off by saying that the odyssey is an epic. for thousands of years, the purpose of an epic has been to tell insanely long stories about extraordinary heroes who do extraordinary things. it’s supposedly to feel close to the gods, it’s supposed to be grand, and i think the technical aspects of this movie were able to do this better than any adaptation has so far. i truly think it was worth it to use IMAX cameras throughout, even though i have some issues with how pretentious it feels (the gods were pretentious!). i think it was worth it for the movie to be this long. the “epic” aspect of the poem was therefore captured quite well in my opinion, from a technical perspective. i know the movie stills tell a different picture, but it didn’t feel like a cheap medieval fantasy, and i think that’s something i appreciate a lot about the movie.
i will say though…i do not like the horse. you can look up pictures of the horse. it barely looks like wood, it doesn’t look like its time period at all, i wish the horse didn’t look so manufactured and shiny. not a huge deal though, it’s fine.
part 2: what was zendaya doing?
okay, now i’m going to start getting a bit more critical. and i want to say this as an objective fact, a HUGE part of the odyssey is about the gods. and how the gods have the control in the end, how much wiser they are, because human mortality is NOTHING to the gods. odysseus’s life is but a blip. the gods’ morning show. athena’s entertainment. so where is their power in the movie? what exactly do they do?
there were no scenes with the gods conferring in the movie. it’s fine i guess. but what i REALLY wanted to see was athena, and how she (and hermes) help odysseus in his journey. odysseus doesn’t know how to survive circe on his own. he doesn’t know how to fight the suitors on his own. there are SO MANY instances of athena telling odysseus exactly what to do in the poem. and the movie removed ALL of it.
zendaya (as athena) stood there for several scenes and did nothing, genuinely nothing. (it’s implied that she was mentor and was on the ship with telemachus to sparta, but that is ONE scene out of countless that she’s supposed to be in.) odysseus came up with every single one of his ideas by himself. and this movie decision is something that i really, really dislike.
the epic was passed down orally, then in writing, for thousands of years. humanity has put in substantial effort to keep it alive, and one of the biggest reasons is that it reminds us of the power of the gods, the inevitability of fate, the futility of mortals to stand up to the lifeless gods. this—the weakness of humanity—is the main lesson of the epic. instead, the movie went the opposite direction. it made odysseus more capable, and is fundamentally a movie about the strength of humanity.
part 3: the man of twists and turns?
i want to talk about odysseus next, and the definition of a hero. the epic hero, in classical literature, is a person who is admired for certain“heroic” traits, who is famous for their epic-worthy accomplishments, who has the support of the gods, and who has some kind of character flaw. this differs from our modern understanding of a hero, which is someone who is a role model for society. i think this movie tried to modernize what a hero is, and the character of odysseus we get as a result is very different.
first, odysseus’s wit is…overplayed. i talked about this in part 2, how he comes up with all his ideas by himself, with no input from the gods. this is NOT an accurate characterization of odysseus!
secondly, odysseus is kind of a hypocrite in the epic. he weeps for penelope every day on calypso’s island, and then at night goes and has sex with calypso. i’ve always disliked him a little bit for playing up his misery this way. in the movie, odysseus eats these lotus flowers that make him forget about his wife and son. which to me just reads like they’re removing yet another “negative” aspect of his character. same with circe: odysseus happily and willingly chose to stay with circe for a months. in the movie, he doesn’t stay on her island at all??
third: odysseus’s cruelty towards the slave girls is 100% SO completely important to understanding his character. it’s a major part of who he is, someone capable of this brutality. we can have many discussions about whether the slave girls “had it coming”, but the fact is that odysseus’s decision to murder them all IS brutal and violent and shocking. and in yet another effort to cleanse odysseus’s character of faults, in another effort to make him fit the modern hero, this scene is…REMOVED. YES THAT’S RIGHT, ENTIRELY REMOVED FROM THE MOVIE. the girls are spared. the end.
odysseus is described as a man of twists and turns. as a complicated man. i believe the movie’s attempt to turn him into a hollywood hero has removed his complexity.
part 4: the slave girls
let me elaborate on the slaves. the truth is that they are barely in the movie. not only is one of the most vividly brutal scenes in the poem (their hanging) flat out removed, i would say that other than melantho (the one who “betrays” penelope), their whole characters are absent from the film. i blame odysseus for this actually; in an effort to keep the focus on our brave hollywood hero odysseus, the “unimportant” women are brushed aside. of course.
but most importantly, the hanging of the girls has a wider message in the poem, which is that the cycle of violence never ends.
in the movie, there is a long speech between odysseus (in disguise) and penelope about the futility and brutality of war. i actually found it the most memorable and emotional moment in the film. but. is war the only thing that terrorizes us? is war humanity’s only crime? is war the only time we face violence?
NO!!! it is not!!! the cycle of violence never ends, odysseus’s mind will never be at rest, do you really think 20 years of fighting for his life will have no effect on him?? of course the hanging of the girls makes sense in that context. but instead (spoilers for the plot twist ending)…odysseus and penelope QUITE LITERALLY SAIL OFF INTO THE SUNSET TOGETHER. i’m not just saying this metaphorically. no slave girls killed. no more blood. no more violence. odysseus and penelope are in love as ever, and sail off into the sunset and live happily ever after.
absolutely not i say!! there are so many possible end scene ideas better than this one!!
part 5: acting, pacing, additional changes and comments
this review is horribly long already, so i’m going to give some rapid-fire miscellaneous comments.
i do recognize that it’s extremely difficult to turn the odyssey into one (1) singular movie. i understand the cuts, i wouldn’t want it to be any longer. by the time we got to the sun cattle scene i remember thinking, oh my god, i’m so ready for him to go home, i can’t sit through 10+ minutes of nausicaa and every other little detail of odysseus’s journey. so thank GOD they cut out nausicaa and her entire island. thank GOD they cut out the bags of wind. thank GOD they cut out returning to circe and going through scylla/charybdis again. i know not everyone will be happy with these cuts…but let me tell you, if i had to sit in that theatre for 2 hours and odysseus still had not landed in ithaca, my experience of the movie would be 10 times worse. i KNOW people will complain about the cuts, but i was so infinitely thankful for them, i truly was.
however. cutting out “nobody is my name”?? colossal crime. unforgivable. such a memorable part of the epic, a great display of odysseus’s wit, gone. gone gone gone. THE OLIVE TREE BED???? they could have stuck that in idc idc they could have. and even if it was just for a second, i really wanted to see cassandra in the trojan horse scene.
circe. ughhhhh. i like what they did with her character, i like the witchcraft, but i wish they didn’t cut the visit to her island to, like, a day. i love circe too much for them move on from her so soon!
i wasn’t initially opposed to helen’s casting at all, and i think the actor is gorgeous and did a fantastic job. my issue is that with the way she was treated by the spartans, and the way she was the only black person in the room…it kinda felt like her race was actively being used to make her look…exotic, almost? like i think it actually did affect the interpretation of her character, which i did not really like.
telemachus reminds me of percy jackson. i’m sorry but his acting took me out of it at times.
one of the things i liked about the odyssey is how odysseus was CRYING all the time. where is the weeping in this film? let my man cry!!
anne hathaway is gorgeous. i have no issues with her penelope. i also liked the scenes with eumaeus, as well as argos (the dog).
conclusion
i know i spent most of this review criticizing aspects of the movie, and i stand by those criticisms. however, i do like the rest of it, and i do think it’s worth seeing. for a movie of that length, though, i think seeing it once is enough for me.
the fact that either as a hallucination-type manifestation of his guilt or athena herself, the goddess of wisdom and strategy, chose to wear the face of a young girl who was needlessly killed due to a winning strategy is one of the best choices in the adaptation imo
Every time the monthly "discourse" roles around as to whether consuming audio books counts as reading, I cannot help but think of the Odyssey, of the Iliad, of the Shakespearean plays. Works of art that have become solidified within Western Canon as some of the greatest pieces of literature we have. And all of them were mean to be heard, to be watched. Were crafted for it.
The Iliad and the Odyssey were meant to be listened to from the mouth of a bard, a lyre in his hand and a song on his tongue, as the smoke from the fires drowned out the rest of the world, the honey words transporting the audience into the story.
Shakespeare was meant to be watched. The actors bent over themselves, emotion pouring down their faces as the audience bumped shoulders with each other, breath held for the next act.
I love the written word, do not get that wrong. But we owe the written word to the oral tradition. To the bards and poets who passed down story after story, who kept them alive to the point where they could be written down and preserved. We owe it to performance. To the energy of the theater that found the plays that sparked electric in the peoples hearts, to the point of ensuring they would be around for generations to come.
Why disparage the performance of a story, when it might just be the most human thing we have? Why act like it is an inferior art form? I adore reading, but I also know that my favorite pieces of literature were meant to be heard.
The “nobody” scene in the odyssey is absolutely not just a clever pun—it’s a character defining moment for Odysseus because he refuses to be nobody. He devised an incredible plan that worked and he could have saved his men and returned home much sooner but he just had to yell to the cyclops that he isn’t nobody—he’s Odysseus, king of Ithaca so now Poseidon knows who to curse which severely fucks up the rest of the journey.
The “nobody” scene highlights both Odysseus’s cleverness but also his arrogance and those two traits define Odysseus throughout the entire story. It’s a foundational aspect of Odysseus’s character and cutting the scene displays a shocking level of ignorance and disregard for the themes in the source material.
While watching the Odyssey, I couldn’t stop thinking about the fact it’s canon to the Riordanverse that the only people to have ever survived the call of the siren’s song are Odysseus, king of Ithaca, surviving commander of the Trojan War, and Annabeth Chase at just 13 years old. I think we really downplay how absolutely insane of an accomplishment that truly is.
She's the pride of Athena for a reason.
Also loved that it actually is Woke Odyssey. Not in a "we cast black and trans actors" way but in a "this is a movie about man's hubris, the disregard for and destruction of social contracts, the disdain with which we treat the living and the dead, the violence we wage against each other, the way we become enraptured with 'great' instead of 'right,' and the way all of that degrades the soul of man" way
Perhaps this is an obnoxious take on my part, but video games should, above all things, prioritize the ability of being paused. At any point. Regardless of whether it's during a cutscene, a special animation, or a time-based puzzle. You never know when you're gonna get a phone call, or someone will need you in another room, or you get a sudden urge to go to the bathroom, or you hear your cat licking plastic, or whatever. Other entertainment mediums like books, movies, and music can be paused whenever you want. Why do some games not give you the same luxury??
Namaygoosisagagun First Nation/Collins has burned to the ground. The entire community is nothing but ashes after being quickly consumed by wildfires. They did not have any support from emergency services, and no one offered aid. The community saved themselves by escaping into boats because no one came.
Mishkeegogamang and Cat Lake have lost power. Families are ending up in shelters with nothing. Armstrong, Lac La Croix, Whitesand, Gull Bay, Lac des Mille Lacs are currently in the fires path and all members are being evacuated.
All this loss, all this devastation, and it was entirely preventable.
After steadily underfunding wildland firefighting and purposefully excluding Indigenous wildland firefighters and Indigenous wildfire organizations from wildfire operations, firefighter training, decisionmaking, and resource exchanges, in 2025, Doug Ford slashed the forest firefighting budget.
It's hard to ignore his decision to cut funding and leave us out of adequate fire training (even though we've lived with forest fires for thousands of years—far longer than settlers have been in Canada—and made sure fires like the ones we're all seeing today were prevented through kinisitotēn) when, despite making up less than 5% of the population, we account for 42% percent of all wildfire evacuations in Canada.
And when we are successfully evacuated, we face discrimination and racism—like Kashechewan—because it's always been easier to blame us than it is to blame the true culprit: denialism, corportate greed, and colonization.
The people of Collins and every other impacted community deserve better.
Right now, the AFN is currently accepting donations to help Collins First Nation. If you're able to, please consider donating.
ONWA (Ontario Native Women's Association) is another great place to donate to. They have outreach vans going to motels and inns and offering food, water, resources, and cultural support to those impacted by the wildfires.
Other places to consider donating to are Mikinakoos Emergency Fund, Red Cross, True North Aid, Indigenous Climate Action. You can also send donations directly to Whitesand First Nation via e-transfer ([email protected]) and they request that you add your full name in the e-transfer comment section to receive a tax receipt.
*Before sending money, verify that the appeal appears on an official First Nation, Tribal Council or registered charity channel.
If you can't offer financial support, please consider donating items of need. Moontime Connections is currently accepting drop-off donations. If you live in the Thunder Bay area, Namaygoosisagagun Health Office is also taking in donations! They can also bemailed to Superior Inn Hotel & Conference Centre at 555 West Arthur Street, Thunder Bay, ON, P7E 5P8.
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