[leydraw]

He only did that the whole movie XD

[arretoskore]

Ok this is it, I have to get something of my chest. Because of this goddamned Odyssey film I keep reading everywhere that Emily Wilson is the first woman to translate the Odyssey and because of this she has a unique take on the text.... NO NO NO THIS IS NOT TRUE she's the first ENGLISH woman to translate the Odyssey but women have been translating and publishing their translation since the 1700s !!!! In French and Italian and I'm sure other languages too!!

I'm so mad because students in Italy have been studying on Rosa Calzecchi Onesti's translation for decades!! Her translation is so well regarded it keeps being used in academia to this day and it's from the 60s!!! There have been dozens of other translations since then but we keep using that one !!!

(and also many other women published their translations both before and after her)

The irresistible urge of english/american ppl to make universal statements out of their experience

[notgaybuckybarnes]

THE ODYSSEY (2026) dir. Christopher Nolan

[hylialeia]

listen it's not that I think epic the musical is a perfect adaption of the odyssey but it was an impressive passion project that knew what it wanted to be and knew what people gravitated to in the original work and it put significant effort into conveying this through its unique medium and tone to the point that hundreds of other people felt compelled to put effort into their own artistic interpretations of that version of the story. and that's really cool! and yes I would be more critical if it was a 100 million dollar project made by a professional because what the fuck do you mean you're a world-famous director and you cut the my name is nobody scene are you goddamn serious

[wondering-heart]

gang i'm utterly ruined.

i'm sure other people have said it before but i've never heard other people say it before so i'm saying it now ...

guys. you cannot tell a story about odysseus son of laertes without athena. it's impossible. you just can't.

what did odysseus meet penelope beside? an olive tree.

where did he build their home? around that tree.

what makes up one of the posts of their bed? that same tree.

what are olive trees a symbol of? athena.

wisdom, healing, light, and peace.

who told zeus to please just let odysseus go home already? athena.

who appeared to telemachus and told him not just to go find his father, but also what telemachus wanted to know most -- which was that his father was in fact still alive? athena.

who comes down and says "no more killing" when odysseus and co. are ready to go toe-to-toe again with the relatives of those suitors? athena.

she has been there the entire time. odysseus and penelope literally built their home with her as the foundation. you can't separate her from this family. she was there from the beginning.

motherless, virgin goddess of wisdom and the tactics of war, immortal and undying, actually was part of a family the whole time and perhaps never even thought about it. she has always literally been part of the house, the home, and their lives from the very first "hello" to the longest "goodbye" until the bow was strung again.

if there was ever an extra seat at the table in the house of odysseus, it was for her.

[darthraven213]

Nobody could possibly make this trip longer than necessary, right?

[nateconnolly]

Like the Christian Gospels, American shooting and crying stories are fundamentally about sin, redemption, and forgiveness. Stop-Loss does not condone Brandon killing a family in their own home (the sin), but it suggests that crying makes up for the shooting (the redemption). You are expected to forgive Brandon by the end of the film. Brandon doesn’t reach out of their surviving relatives and apologize, or do much of anything to support refugees in the Middle East, but he does suffer, and you are expected to agree that his suffering makes up for the murder, that his tears exonerate him.

Odysseus is repeatedly described as a “veteran” by both himself and others in Christopher Nolan’s 2026 adaptation of The Odyssey. No such word exists in Attic Greek. There is a word for men who are absent or else too sick to fight (ἀπόμαχος); there is a word for old men (γέρων), who would not have been expected to fight anymore (see, for examples in the art of the time, Nestor in The Iliad). But there is no one-to-one translation for the English word “veteran” for the simple reason that the Ancient Greeks had no such concept. City-states went to war every couple of years, meaning no one could ever fully move beyond it. War was not something you sign up for, leave, go do Over There, and hopefully come back from. Virtually all men fought in wars, which meant soldiers were not a minority — they were not special.

...The Odyssey (2026) brings the American tradition of shooting and crying to Troy. Odysseus the veteran cannot fully come back home from the war until he has made peace with the crime he committed overseas. Smuggling soldiers into enemy territory via wooden horse might not constitute a war crime by today’s standards, but Nolan frames this strategy as a violation of “Zeus’ law”.

...Anne Carson calls the Odyssey a “postwar epic”. Crying after shooting is simply what a postwar epic looks like in America. In that way, Nolan truly has adapted Homer; Nolan has imported his own cultural situation into the myth.

Just as The Aeneid used Homeric archetypes to express Roman national identity, The Odyssey (2026) shows Americans how we view ourselves: we love our home; we love our family; we come from multiple races, but most of us are white; we are world-weary; we did something wrong far away, but our memories are foggy, and it’s best not to dwell too much on our victims; our hands are perpetually innocent, and stained with fresh blood.

Odysseus at the VA: How Christopher Nolan Americanized The Odyssey

[kimikaami]

I totally sympathize with being angry about an adaptation of something you care a lot about but the way people on here criticize the odyssey movie for not being historically accurate is so fucking obnoxious lmfao. Sometimes the point is not accuracy. Sometimes an artist has ideas they want to explore so they choose a pre-established story as a conduit to express those ideas through. Sometimes the anachronisms are the point, and trying to understand why certain choices were made is 10x more interesting than going “thing wrong so thing bad >:[“

Like you can absolutely disagree with what themes do come through, but holy fuck you guys. You are not the perfect bastions of media literacy you think you are just because you can cinema sins point out every little flaw.

[duplicitus]

studies from The Odyssey

[kenyatta]

Alice Wu’s ‘Saving Face’ listed in Yahoo’s “The most romantic movies you haven’t seen”

btw, Lynn’s Tumblr is here. Michelle blogs over here.

[bodhrancomedy]

Look, it’s a weird hill to die on, especially when I don’t really explain, but children deserve to experience fear, disgust, and discomfort in safe scenarios where they can process those sensations.

Media for children used to be scary and that’s important.

[the-davest-of-uncles]

“Since it is so likely that (children) will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise you are making their destiny not brighter but darker.” ― C.S. Lewis

[grace-in-the-wilderness]

"Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed."

-- G. K. Chesterton

[jinglebellrockstars]

‘The Odyssey’: What Academics Are Saying About Christopher Nolan’s Epic

Christopher Nolan's adaptation of 'The Odyssey' has created a lot of controversy online, but academics are having a different conversation.

[echo-of-the-eye]

I was not expecting to find myself defending Nolan’s The Odyssey but the hate has been so overwhelming and a lot of it is kinda ridiculous so I’m somehow finding myself here. Like I didn’t even like it that much. I thought it was fine. And I have plenty of complaints (if you read my first post you’ll know that’s most of what I did). But a lot of people are just being petty and had clearly made up their mind already before seeing it (and I’ve seen people that admit they haven’t even seen it). People going after stuff like the modern language just seem ridiculous to me. Like Telemachus calling Odysseus “dad” is FINE. And look, I don’t need to defend Nolan (and I’m not, if I’m defending anything it’s the movie, not Nolan) he can take it. Criticize the movie by all means, I agree with a lot of it, but everything has been so negative in a way that seems a bit much. Like just complaining for the sake of complaining and not engaging with what the movie actually did and why you didn’t like it beyond “it’s different”. Like I’m not saying you can’t be a hater. If that’s how you have fun go off, but I can’t imagine you’re actually having fun. Maybe just admit the movie wasn’t for you, it wasn’t for me either, and stop rage baiting yourself.

So here I am, somehow defending a movie I thought was just fine. The movie has its flaws and there was plenty of stuff I didn’t think it did well. Mainly the emotional aspects fell flat for me. And I don’t agree with a lot of the changes made and would have preferred a different take on it. But that’s exactly it. I would have preferred it. It wasn’t for me and that’s okay. It’s not my style. I would have loved a version more accurate to the original story. I would have loved a movie with a lot more color and aspects of Greek culture. I would have loved a more fantastical version that had more of the gods in it and didn’t just rush past some of the monsters. But that was never what this was gonna be. It’s Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey. What did you expect. Obviously it will be dark and colorless and gritty with generic armor designs and an all star cast. It doesn’t even look bad. It’s not my personal taste but for the most part I thought it looked good! I even liked Agamemnon’s armor design. The movie is… fine. It’s flawed, but fine. Nolan made something with a clear vision and it wasn’t for me. I don’t really think Nolan made this movie with the Greek mythology nerds in mind. Which is sad and I’d love one that was but that’s not what this was. Did I hate a lot of the changes made? Yes! The Polyphemus scene pissed me off and I miss Odysseus actually being Odysseus! But it doesn’t need to be a perfectly faithful adaptation. Would I have enjoyed one? Yes! Do I understand wanting to put your own spin on it (even if that spin is rather boring) and reinterpreting it in a way you find interesting? Also yes. That’s what’s fun with adaptations. It doesn’t need to be the exact same story. There have been plenty of versions over the years that have brought different things to the story. Nolan reinterpreted the story in a way he felt said something that mattered in today’s age and I didn’t even dislike the main message he was trying to deliver. I think it’s an interesting interpretation. But I also think it could have been executed better.

I understand being disappointed that the big budget adaptation that’s gonna shape the way the general public understands the story wasn’t how you hoped it would be. I am too. I wish it was more accurate to the characters and story I know. (And that it had some emotional punch, better character arcs, well written female characters, cooler costumes and fights I can actually follow). But I wasn’t really expecting more from Nolan.

[abelle25125]

Went to see The Odyssey and it was fine. y'know, whatever. But i've never been so disappointing about the lack of blood in a film. People getting eaten by monsters and sliced up and there's just like,, a smear on the nearest surface. Make a movie about the horrors of war and then show no horrors, such why not.

The most upsetting part is that it would have gone so hard to have had Antonius spit up blood when he died, because A) haha yes!! fuck that guy!! and also B) it would've directly paralleled earlier in the film where he was dribbling wine while talking - literally too busy indulging himself in someone else's goods to stop for even a second AND it would visually mirror how Sinon appears in the underworld , with blood smeared down his mouth having drank from the sacrifice - visually tying Antonius to the dead soldiers from Troy who he tricked his way into not joining - but found himself sharing their fate through the course of his own actions. I think that would've been awesome, and I'm frankly pissed that the lack of gore in this film wouldn't even allow that to happen accidentally!!!!!

[bonyuterus]

how did that tall, bald bitch even milk those sheep to begin with, like, purely proportionately?

[mysharona1987]

[vera-sama]

choosing to believe will yun lee's character in the odyssey died drowning in ungodly amounts of siren pussy and maybe christopher nolan really is the wokest hollywood director after all