Just going to ramble a bit to officially get my thoughts on the Odyssey “out there” so it can stop spinning around in my head.
I saw an advanced screening of it the Monday before it premiered and I pretty much knew it’d be a hit film but that people like me who immerse themselves in Greek myth would be just a little let down. To be clear I don’t believe everything has to be included in an adaptation, but what he did cut was significant.
For a story that has a central theme of Odysseus being remorseful of his actions and what war has made him become, the cutting/changing of these big things kinda puzzled me. How much more remorseful/shamed/afraid to face his people back home would he be if we’d seen:
1. Him proposing the oath of Tyndareus at the start. There are several reasons why the Trojan war was fought I’m not denying any of that, but to see his cunning be the justification for such a huge undertaking, to see the beginning of his part in this would have been impactful. Every life lost in the war could have been a conflict for him, every decision could have been on his conscious and it was a wasted opportunity to show that this is Odysseus’ war as much as it is Agamemnon’s or Menelaus’ or Achilles’.
2. Odysseus’ own part in convincing Clytemnestra (his wife’s cousin!!!!) to send her daughter to Agamemnon to be killed. (2a.) The erasure of all the familial connections at all was pretty jarring to me. Penelope being clytemnestra’s cousin affects him, his decision to help a man kill his daughter who is Odysseus’ own family at this point affects him, the resentment that Penelope’s other cousin is the reason he has to leave in the first place is impactful. Reducing the ways in which this was a familial conflict for gods and mortals left out a lot of that messiness and complicated nature of relationships to me. It also would have played more into the why of Odysseus wanting to forget (since that’s the reason in film he stayed with calypso so long).
3. Odysseus’ part in the death of Astyanax. For a man that constantly reflects on the sacking of Troy through the film, not showing this point of no return was odd.
4. The REAL reason he got blown off course to begin with. He was NOT fed up with following Agamemnon so just decided to take a different path. For a man who reveres Zeus so much throughout the film, it would have a been a bigger gut punch to see him in a moment of IGNORING the gods’ laws and not staying behind with the fleet for the purification/ sacrifices they needed to make for what they did to the temples in Troy.
5. A lot’s been said about cutting the “nobody” scene and it really should have been in there. I see a lot of people saying it wouldn’t have added anything but it absolutely would have shown him still being mostly focused with his own cleverness over the lives of others. And it would have had Poseidon actually cursing him and us seeing him detained and punished even more by the gods.
6. Hermes and the moly on Circes island/the bag of winds. They reduced Circe to a woman witch instead of a goddess witch. He reasoned with her in the movie but truthfully she saw men as animals so that’s what they became. This was another great time to show that war had made them into beasts and they were in fact breaking Zeus’ law that gets talked about so much in the film.
7. The trip to Hades and not seeing his mother, speaking with Achilles, or seeing any of the women he speaks with in the myth. These women are a stark reminder of what life at the hands of the system of rulership that he currently upholds is like for them. This is another tragic reminder that his wife is vulnerable without him, that life is going on without him, that in the end the glory he can’t seem to let go of is nothing compared to the eternity of hades that awaits him if he doesn’t straighten up, that when you take matters best left to the gods in your own hands things are worse, that the gods can and will punish you even if it feels like favor at first, and that women at the hands of men are ultimately not safe (like all those women from Troy he took hostage and divided up amongst the Greek fighters).
8. Circling back but staying a full year with Circe, then learning everything in Hades, and then leaving her island almost immediately is a CHOICE and a turning point for him.
9. The lotus eaters/calypso. We’d have seen his determination to get home and truly seen the way in which his men held him back time and time again. In the film we do get this with Helios’ cows though so I honestly was ok with them combining these, but more explanation on what it means to eat that flower would have been nice. And we needed to see him wanting to go home so much that he asked the gods for it, to see calypso try and fail to keep him there. It would have been a good balance of seeing him as devoted (notice I didn’t say loyal) to Penelope as we get to see her being to him.
10. The gods being shown through thunder, waves, etc and not being physically present. Also a lot of debates going about this one and my real complaint is that in adaptations of this scale, the fantastical is understated oftentimes. The gods aren’t in Troy (2004) explicitly either, GoT removes a lot of magic until it’s mostly political maneuvering, The Shining takes a lot of the supernatural out of the hotel. It’s just a trend I don’t like because especially in this story and especially with a key theme being Zeus’ law, it’d be a beautiful way to to have fantastical elements on screen (I think Troy Fall of A City does this beautifully).
There were a plenty of things I loved about the film too though! Zendaya was a gut punch, I actually need a mini statue of that Trojan horse for myself, Circe’s island was fantastic in the way it depicted the transformation, the cyclops was a work of pure artistry, the Laestrygonians were a beautiful and terrifying element in the like 2-3 minutes they were on screen, the portrayal of Agamemnon was truly masterful (so much so that people actually Stan him now 😔), and the descent to hades was as chilling as it needed to be. And every single performance was correct for their character. It was honestly brilliant casting and people who complained about too many A-listers may have to eat their words. Robert Pattinson and John Leguizamo in particular shined to me.
The movie was truly an experience and visually stunning, but really my frustration is that Nolan would have done so much justice to the things that were left out. He is actually one of the few that understands the scale and the impact of a story like this. I think including more of the above would have added a layer to the story because he was already sad and shamed from the start and really continued on that way the whole film. I’d have liked to see cunning and prideful Odysseus transform into the humble and weary Odysseus who finally comes home and still has to fight one more time.
