Just saw The Odyssey movie last night. Don't fucking watch it that was a solid 4/10
As a movie, it was alright, but as an adaptation of The Odyssey? Miss me with that shit
Here's some of my biggest issues with it:
They took away everything about Athena that made her Athena. Not once did they show her in moments of wisdom or strategy, they just made her a symbol of Odysseus's trauma from the war, which would be cool if it was someone else, but THAT'S NOT ATHENA.
Where the fuck were the gods?? The epic is about a man whose story is heavily influenced by the gods as they help and harm him. You can't have The Odyssey without the gods. And yet, there was no Hermes, no Poseidon, no Zeus, no Aeolus, only Athena. And she pretty much only shows up as a HALLUCINATION. THEY TOOK THE MYTHOLOGY OUT OF A MYTH. If you wanted to make a movie set in ancient Greece that leaves the existence of the gods up to audience interpretation, make an original movie, don't put that onto The Odyssey!
They just???? Added an island after Polyphemus and before Circe where a bunch of figures in armor sink two of the ships???? Genuinely what was that even for??????? Did Christopher Nolan not think there were enough fights or something????
EDIT ON THAT LAST POINT: @canarycurses and @greatspacedustbin pointed out that these were the Laestrygonians, who were in the original Odyssey. Still weird that they decided to keep that part though
WHERE WAS ODYSSEUS'S TRICKERY? The whole thing with Odysseus tricking Polyphemus and using the name "Nobody" just didn't show up. They wanted to make a movie about a man's mistakes and their consequences, but didn't include the biggest one????
Just the way all the women were portrayed irks me. More on that:
When Menelaus is introducing Helen, he says "The face that launched a thousand ships", but then he gestures to a scar on her face and says "Or maybe now, just five hundred"???????? HEY SO WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT FOR.
Circe was done SO DIRTY. She lived alone, in some sort of little shack, and they made it LOOK LIKE they'd explore her trauma more, but instead of fleshing her out they just spent way too long on the scene with her turning the men into pigs. They also made it some weird body horror scene where she was stretching their skin and tearing out their hair as part of it? Maybe that's some people's thing, but I think it went on way too long. They gave SINON more development and screen time than Circe.
See all my complaints about Athena. What was that.
Calypso was just a plot device for Odysseus to tell his story. They also added in some bullshit about her getting him addicted to lotuses to keep him on Ogygia and cloud his mind so he'd forget the 13 years before he arrived? What was up with that??
I can't speak much on Penelope. I'm pretty neutral on her.
There was a whole thing with Odysseus and Penelope wanting to sail off into the distance and leave behind Ithaca. I have no fucking idea what that was for, or why they went through with it in the end.
They also tried to intertwine it with history by saying that the seafaring peoples that raided the Mediterranean and may have caused the end of the Bronze Age were actually Odysseus and his crew????? What????
Lots of talk about "Zeus's Law", or the idea of xenia, but it becomes clearer and clearer throughout the film that they're just using "Zeus's Law" as a buzzword that they explain too many times and don't even capture the real meaning of.
Overall I feel like they movie-ified it too much, if that makes sense. Don't watch it.
