when aristotle said humans like to hear the same story told over and over again for catharsis he was talking about the texas chainsaw massacre remakes not any of those gay little greek tragedies
My thoughts on Nolans Odyssey no one asked for lol.
Technicals:
The coloring and costuming weren't as bad as the trailers made it out to be, but still way more drab and hollywood than I would've liked. The horse looked too polished, the ship didnt have character, the city of troy felt small (and square columns??), Troy (2004) and The Return (2024) both did this much better (not saying 100% historically accurate but at least more colorful and interesting)
The pacing was off in the first half, none of the scenes really evoked a lot of emotion bc you didnt spend enough time in them, the cuts were fast and often and less impactful than they couldve been. The movie doesnt let you sit with the feelings its trying to evoke in you. This changed around the time they visited circe, and the second half definitely got better.
The American accents and modern dialogue didnt fit at all, it was jarring and took you out of the scene to hear telemachus say dad, and one of the suitors say “fuck off.” (Not getting into the whole big name american actors in a Greek story in a Mediterranean setting bc i feel like thats been talked about already by people more succinct than me).
Things i liked:
Scyla's design was very cool! The way the necks were bent, and the way she grabbed people was terrifying. Plus im a sucker for practical effects, and Nolans sets were all real and the creatures were all practical which is cool to see in the age of cgi and marvel green screens.
I liked the way the shades crawled out of the dirt in the underworld scene, and the way they poured blood into the shield for them to drink was cool.
Circe just had Medea in a cage as a bird??? “We get on better this way” lmao i was dying
I kind of liked that he gave Penelope some anger as well, it rang pretty true and anne hathaway delivered it well.
Things i disliked:
To start off on a minor gripe with the movie itself - right off the bat i want to point out that the bard that Nolan bragged about “rapping” wasnt rapping or really singing at all, which was disappointing as someone lucky enough to see Dr. Brandon Bourgeois perform part of his Iliad when he visited my undergrad university
Also the first word the bard said was “face” not man, not andra. One of the most well known things about epic poetry is the first word tells you what the story is going to be about, and in the Odyssey its “man” bc the poem is a character study of a man returning home after being away at war. This wouldve been a good way for nolan to show that he did his research and that he has respect for the genre and i think it was kind of telling that he chose to change it.
Tbf ig, Nolans Odyssey isnt really about Odysseus’ internal struggles (I talk more about his overarching narrative at the end of my rant), and this ends up removing a lot of Odysseus’ depth as a character. Hes meant to be a little morally gray, youre meant to watch him fuck up bc it makes his internal struggle more impactful after you watch him violate xenia in the cyclops cave and be hubristic in shouting his name after escaping etc. Nolans Odysseus is a very straightforward stoic hero, and youre very obviously meant to root for him unambiguously.
He also doesnt feel very clever. He's depicted as smart for sure, but you dont get the same trickiness, the polytropos, the man of many turns. He doesnt tell the cyclops his name is nobody, or have a back and forth banter with him. Which ties into another thing the movie lacks which is whimsy.
The Odyssey as a poem balances humor and lightheartedness with serious themes in the same way LOTR does, and i think making the movie very serious and grim the whole time is a little emotionally tiring and the serious beats dont hit as hard without any contrasting lightness (Oppenheimer also had this problem).
Moving onto other parts, this might be an unpopular opinion but I kinda liked Circe having to use her hands to change the men into pigs, even though Nolan's Circe is a much more ancient Roman take on witches than a Greek one, i might give him the rule of cool on it bc it reminds me of Erictho ripping bodies with her teeth in Lucan or the witches in Apuleius shoving a sponge down a guys throat.
That being said Mary Beard had a good point in her instant reaction podcast video that a lot of the women lack the sexiness from the poem and Circe is for sure one of them, her and Odysseus dont sleep together and theres no sexual tension, and therefore no temptation. Part of the Odyssey is Odysseus being genuinely tempted to abandon the home journey and stay on these islands and there was none of that in this movie. He says, very defeatedly, that maybe he doesnt want to go home before they sail into Charybdis and Scylla, but you never see a desire to stay somewhere else, not even with Calypso who is supposed to be feeding him happy drugs in the movie.
Which, i do think was an okay choice on Nolans part. Not a great one, but in turning the Odyssey into a movie you cant include everything and the lotus flowers being used as a drug to alleviate (essentially) PTSD i thought was a cool way to still include them without dedicating a whole island to the lotus eaters. I do think a better way to have done that though wouldve been to give them to Hellen and included the scene where she adds a drug to the wine when telemachus is visiting sparta to relieve the melancholy of the party goers after her and menelaus tell war stories.
The changes to Hellens character as well were a little jarring, and personally i dont think turning such a nuanced figure into a battered wife trope was a plus to her character. Hellen is very complicated bc while she has very little physical autonomy in myth, shes often shown as having a lot of authority and cleverness. She's the hostess with the mostest (quote i believe mary beard and charlotte higgins) in sparta, and in Troy shes seen berating Paris, and arguing with aphrodite, and shes the only one who recognizes Odysseus dressed as a beggar (in Troy) and almost foils the wooden horse plan by imitating the mens wives voices to lure them out early.
I did like Clytemnestra sharing her face. I think i saw someone comment on how the face of hellen, the one Agamemnon used to justify war, being the last one he sees is very poetic.
I dont think i need to say much about agamemnons darth vader costume and aura farming lol
Throwing it back to calypso, i also think it was a weird choice to pick her and not nausicaa to have Odysseus tell his travels to. I think it wouldve been better and given odysseus more depth of character to show at least a little temptation to settle down somewhere else, with a wife who didnt know him Before and a people who are happy and blessed by the gods and are free from trouble.
Overall Nolan decreased both the impact and the presence of a lot of women in the narrative (though the actresses all knocked it out of the park with the scraps they were given), and the worst one by far was Athena. She has some of the most lines of any character in the poem, shes present throughout, shes a mentor to both Odysseus and his son who is also trying to figure out his place in the world (dont get me started on Nolan making Mentor some random guy to replace Athenas role in telemachus’ journey). She has opinions, and arrogance, and is one of the key figures that moves the plot, and turning her into a figment of odysseus’ imagination that only serves to further his man-pain and guilt is so incredibly misogynistic.
Which brings me to Nolans biggest change: making the message of the movie that if you commit war crimes the gods will punish you and civilization will fall, which is a little too sanctimonious of him imo (and also to quote mary beard again). The Odyssey being a character study and having something to say about the nature of man is enough, it doesnt need a heavy handed “war, and denying each other hospitality is bad” message to make the story impactful. It felt like Nolan wanted to make his mark on the story and he didnt need to, the odyssey already tells you war is bad when you see menalaus’ depression, and penelope being forced to remarry, and telemachus’ struggle of growing up without a father etc etc it already tells you that violating hospitality is bad when the cyclops starts eating them bc odysseus let his men eat a bunch of his wine, cheese, and sheep, and ofc with the suitors etc. (There also are ancient anti war stories like Euripides Trojan Women, but tbh we all know Nolan picked the Odyssey bc he wanted the name recognition, not necessarily the story)
And to be frank one of the most horrifying parts of war imo is that there often are no consequences for the victors. If this is supposed to be a middle finger to the US it falls massively flat, bc the US isnt collapsing into a dark age or suffering godly retribution (also, very christian of him but we dont need to get into that) for its actions. It cheapens the Odyssey into a weak finger wagging lecture aimed at the empire that funded it, while it was filmed on occupied land, the cast was full of Americans, they dumped plastic skeletons into protected waters, and one of its major actors wore stolen antiquities from the very region Nolan is self righteously critiquing the war against.
So yeah, i dont really have a closing statement, but something im realizing as i write this is that I walked out of the theater thinking “wow i liked this movie way more than i thought” but every time i discuss it with someone or write down my feelings i start finding more and more things i didnt like. I think it is very much a Summer Blockbuster in that it is good at being captivating while youre in the seat, but it falls apart once youve had time to think about it.
since the 2004 spongebob squarepants movie can be considered a retelling of the odyssey, this means that the climax, in which spongebob returns to the krusty krab to fight off the mind controlled bikini bottom denizens and sings goofy goober rock, can be considered a retelling of the scene in which odysseus slaughters penelope’s suitors.
me as a kid reading Dune: I appreciate the detailed world-building that justifies why everyone fights with swords and has mental powers, but the idea of a Butlerian Jihad against computers is pretty silly
me in 2025, trying desperately to find the three (3) places you need to go to to disable the latest helpful AI assistant that's inserted itself into my work chat and is advising me to do things that would be a breach of federal law: Oh Now I Get It
when the blind man shows frankenstein’s creature the pleasures of life he shows him cigarette and music. notice how he doesn’t show him linkedin and email
Even more devastating, the scene where pinocchio was made was very violent in looks and almost angry but gepetto grew to love his creation like a son but the scene of making the creature was loving and attentive but victor grew to hate his creation .
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