Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey: an honest in-depth review
When you have to promise in advance that your review is going to be honest, it suggests that there might be a lot of dishonesty enveloping the topic in question. True indeed, I believe there is a lot of dishonesty in the way this movie has been relentlessly promoted, celebrated, hated or rejected by critics and audiences alike. I will attempt to cover as many thematic and technical aspects I can think of, as well as discuss a bit its promotional campaign, the cast and people's reactions to all of this. This is a detailed and lengthy post, so I have written separate segments for the aspects I am about to examine, in case you want to read only certain parts.
Table of Contents
The Casting
Greek Representation
The Acting
(Mis)characterisation
Script and Theme
Pace and Editing
Music and Sound Design
Costumes and Art Direction
Ranking Odysseus' Challenges
The Ending
Promotion, Marketing, Reception - Some Final Thoughts
As a side note, I am saying pretty much everything I have to say about the movie here. After this I am eager to stop discussing or answering stuff about Nolan's Odyssey and go back to exploring and showcasing other Greek matters, unless there is something significant about it that has truly escaped my notice.
This is NOT a spoiler-free review. There will be spoilers left and right. The movie is discussed in its entirety here.
The Casting
Let's deal with the elephant in the room first. I don't know what anyone of you expect to read here, but the truth is simple: the casting is bad and wildly inaccurate if we assume it presents Bronze Age Mycenaean Greeks. This is not however the only reason it's bad: for a lot of characters, it seems Nolan did not care at all to match the actor with their respective role. It feels like he made some blind calls and just hired all the big names that are trending right now or that he has already worked with. For example, it is impossible to look at Tom Holland and Charlize Theron and see the role beyond the actors. I am afraid this also applies to Matt Damon for most of the movie, but I will expand on this later, because the reason a lot of the performances were underwhelming was not only the celebrity overexposure but also the mischaracterisation of a LOT of the characters. I would say the absolutely most miscast actor was Jon Bernthal as Menelaus and the best casting choice by far was Anne Hathaway. Hathaway looks and is Penelope and she more or less carries this movie.
As for the diverse casting, I was proven right in my instict that Nolan pretends rather than truly acts "woke". The actors belonging to minorities get small roles or short screentime and there is almost always some subversion of their value, I felt. Elliot Page's character is killed in the first seconds of the movie and for the rest of his screentime he is dead and covered in mud. He does have a semi-interesting Nolan-made-up backstory and a monologue there and he is respected by Odysseus but it still does not change the fact that he is killed literally in the first seconds of the whole thing. Lupita Nyong'o appears for a few very short scenes, half her face is deeply scarred and it is almost implied that she might not in fact be the prettiest woman of the Greeks, as Menelaus ponders on it with irony and she defensively emphasizes that the war was never about her beauty but for wealth instead. There is a clever plot twist in the movie which explains why Zendaya as Athena looks like a dull, impoverished, plain next door girl throughout, but clever as it may be, it still removes Zendaya's chance to shine as a goddess. Himesh Patel plays Eurylochus and while he has a lot of screentime, he plays the crew member that is contrarian to Odysseus and even if at times he seems to be right to oppose Odysseus, in the end he always falls flat on his face, especially the one, final time. So, I just think that almost none of the actors picked for diversity were given truly much room to shine and it felt to me that Nolan was just ticking boxes off to be eligible for awards. This for me is a foul - either stay true to the indigenous people / looks or go all the way. Don't just tick off boxes...
Greek representation
Speaking of ticking boxes off, two Greeks play minor roles in the movie. The first one is the villager whose village Odysseus and his men PILLAGE. We're off to a great start. The villager speaks in Greek and one of Odysseus' men, who proclaims they are "Greeks from Ithaca" to the villager, fails to communicate with him so there is ANOTHER Greek soldier translating Greek into English to the first soldier. So the Greeks of Ithaca either don't understand Greek or understand Greek as a second language. But, wait, it gets worse. The Greek actor, Yannis Kokiasmenos, revealed in an interview that he was approached by Nolan's team without any scripted scene or plot point in mind! Instead, Nolan asked him to come up with something, whatever, improvise a little dialogue, in which he could speak a bit of Greek and interact with the other actors. They landed on this "genius" idea: the whole concept is that Greek here is essentially a FOREIGN LANGUAGE and English is the proper Greek. Wow! What representation, guys! I am really touched. Greek is treated as a foreign language in its own poem, in its own story. If this is the representation they can come up with, maybe they shouldn't attempt to represent us at all then. You see what happened though. Nolan had not written any scene featuring Greeks or the Greek language but he knew some people would complain about it so he hired a Greek randomly and told him "just say whatever for a couple of minutes so I can show I have Greek participation in my movie". Wow... Wow. There's another parts Greek person playing a treacherous priest for a few seconds until Odysseus slits his throat but I don't think he was there to represent anything. The rest of the movie is void of any Greek element and Nolan seems blatantly disinterested in paying any sort of tribute to the culture that birthed this poem he supposedly loves so much.
The Acting
Like I said earlier, Anne Hathaway is acting alone somewhere in the stratosphere compared to everyone else. Thankfully, Nolan did not mess up Penelope's character and Hathaway understood the assignment completely. The seriousness and gentleness with which she approaches her embodiment of Penelope is evident and moving. She surprised me very positively, I literally saw Penelope whenever Hathaway was on screen. Not only she looks the part, but she nailed all those qualities we associate with Odysseus' wife; unwavering, loyal, dignified, serious, frustrated, strong-minded, intelligent, modest, every little nuance was there. My favourite moment of hers is when she has started suspecting the beggar is Odysseus but he momentarily fails to pass the bow challenge. The way her hope transforms to disappointment and contained, dignified despair and then her reaction when Odysseus finally manages to shoot the arrow is just wonderful acting. She has not won an Oscar for nothing.
I wish I could be as enthusiastic for Matt Damon. The problem mostly lies on the fact that Nolan gives us his own take on Odysseus, which has very little in common with the original one. As a result, Matt Damon does not actually play Odysseus, he plays "Generic Guilt Ridden Guy Who Is Having A REALLY Bad Time". There is only one scene where Damon's acting is memorable; the Sirens scene. It was the only scene in which I saw Odysseus in him; the curiosity, the gleam in the eye, the hardly contained excitement as he is about to hear the song and then of course the blend of indescribable pleasure and unspeakable torment. He nailed this extremely challenging scene, I give him perfect marks. If only he was given a better script, closer to original Odysseus. He could have done better. Funnily enough, Damon revealed Nolan left him alone in a boat at dawn for an hour before shooting the Sirens scene. Well, it definitely worked!
John Leguizamo is the only one of Nolan's diversity picks that was given space and shone in his role as Eumeus, Odysseus' elderly servant. I saw people cheer Himesh Patel based on the fact that he has a lot of screentime as well, but it's not like he did anything special with all this time. He was just okay, nothing to write home about.
In the same wavelength were Tom Holland, Robert Pattinson, Elliot Page, Zendaya and Charlize Theron. Their performances lack in depth and they are merely okay. Maybe, to be fair, Holland is slightly above the others but he's unfortunately overshadowed by Hathaway. Pattinson is just playing a modern brat. Charlize Theron both looks and acts too modern inside her fishing net.
Nyong'o proves again she is a good actress in those three minutes she has but it's such a short moment that it makes no impact at all.
Jon Bernthal is easily the worst presence in this movie. I have no idea who he's playing. Maybe some American gangsta- certainly not Menelaus.
As for Samantha Morton, surely she was very good, but I am not certain I get what earned the standing ovation and why some people say hers was the peak acting in these five minutes she shows up. Again, she is very good at the Madeline Miller type of Circe she plays (she has NOTHING in common with the original Circe) but there's nothing mindblowing or Oscar-worthy in her performance, like I hear many people' say. I wonder if she is so praised because of this small anti-men manifesto speech she gives (after turning Odysseus' men into pigs in a gruesome way, despite them not threatening her in any way at all and being totally respectful!). Was that a girlpower speech or maybe a demented woman's? However you take it, she is indeed very good but Hathaway still blows her out of the window like she does with every other actor in this movie.
(Mis)characterisation
One may argue that old stories and their characters need to be revisited, explored anew and presented under a new light as time passes, but I believe this is only worth attempting if you are capable of improving on a character. This is where Christopher Nolan fails completely.
Nolan wants to send an anti-war message with the Odyssey, despite the fact that it's the Iliad, and not the Odyssey, that is about war. Odyssey is about a human's need for home, for the return back to the roots, for reuniting with loved ones, for finding security, warmth and care. Odyssey is homecoming, whatever it takes. Nolan, however, blends the meaning of the Odyssey with this of the Iliad, eventually creating a confused movie that seems uncertain of what exact point it tries to make.
As a result, the protagonist is not a ledgendary witty and resourceful man with an immense instict for survival. He is a war-ridden, guilt-ridden man, clever but nothing out of the ordinary, passive, suffering stoically, almost suffering because he thinks he deserves it. I will repeat the word stoic; this is where Nolan's cold and contained world clashes with the vibrant and emotional Greek temperament. Damon's Odysseus takes all the beatings in silence. Original Odysseus wept openly, he protested, he panicked, he sighed, he boasted. Unfortunately, Nolan gives us a muted, bland version of someone whose soul might have been Odysseus, had it not left his body ages ago.
I said earlier that I liked this little plot twist regarding Athena, according to which apparently Odysseus becomes witness to the murder of a Trojan girl during the Fall of Troy and, ever since, Athena appears to him in the likeness of this girl, to remind him of his responsibility and guilt, to make him repent. The problem is that while it's a cool idea, it's quite silly that the Goddess of strategy and war is here the voice of anti-war sentiment! Original Athena not only was not bothered by the Trojan War but she was actively on the side of the Greeks, on the side of Odysseus! So, cool or not, Nolan's Athena becomes the complete opposite of what Athena truly is.
As mentioned above, Circe is not a seductive witch-goddess in this movie. She is an unstable plain peasant witch with tons of trauma. It is an interesting version but it has nothing in common with the original, and the scene, albeit beautifully done, leaves no impact on anyone really.
Calypso does indeed gaslight Odysseus and keeps him captive, but she is a far saner, calmer, reasonable version than the needy, obsessed and angry original Calypso. The character is mostly utilised so there can be some exposition about Odysseus' past troubles, rather than to have any impact on him in real time. Calypso is given also the storylines of the lotus eaters, Nausicaa and the Phaeacians to some degree, who are otherwise greatly missed.
The "aura farming" Agamemnon is purely ridiculous. I think he never gets rid of this stupid helmet. He does nothing in the entire movie except looking ominous and having Odysseus throw himself at his feet on multiple occasions, which is another huge and very annoying misunderstanding of the royal system in Mycenaean Greece (according to Homer at least). Odysseus would never fall at Agamemnon's feet. And how does this guy prove he is worthy to have people at his feet? Even in the Trojan battle scene, Agamemnon just enters ominously and then proceeds to walk around while everyone else fights. He literally does nothing except to narrate to Odysseus the events of his murder in Hades, with Benny Safdie's amusingly soft voice under this Batman helmet. Nolan may say he wanted to portray Agamemnon as Ares, as an embodiment of war, but I have this theory that after wearing this helmet and armour, helmetless Benny Safdie looked so silly and underwhelming in comparison that Nolan chose to keep him covered the entire time! I am dead serious by the way. Even when Clytemnestra removes his helmet and armour in order to wash him and then bed (kill) him, Nolan refuses emphatically to show Benny's face. I think he knew Safdie would totally mess the weird aura he wanted to achieve for Agamemnon.
Helen of Sparta is turned into a shell of herself, abused, disfigured, miserable, sullen, hateful towards abusive Menelaus. Nothing like Odyssey's Helen, who is witty, confident, talkative, loving to Menelaus and very much assured in her role as hostess and queen of Sparta. Is Nolan's version the feminism Lupita lectured us (and Homer) about?
As for Menelaus, he takes the cake. As stated above, he is some gangster, some mafia guy. He is not the forgiving husband of Helen and the decent king of Sparta, Menelaus. He's some dangerous lowlife you don't want to approach in a hundred meters distance. He was an atrocious casting choice for an atrocious mischaracterisation of the original character, who keeps being unfairly shat on by all reinterpretations of this story.
Script and Theme - Raging Nolanism
It felt to me that the dialogues in this three hour long movie are somewhat scarce and certainly short. They sound too modern and casual and they are pretty uninspired, not allowing most characters to shine (excluding Hathaway's Penelope and maybe Leguizamo's Eumeus). Like mentioned before, Nolan has intervened in Odyssey's plot, he has removed the direct involvement of the gods and a few of Odysseus' challenges, in order to add parts of the Iliad in their stead. It is not an entirely bad choice as the Trojan War does provide significant context for those who are not knowledgeable in these stories.
Nolan's biggest and worse intervention is his exaggeration of the Greek philoxenia (hospitality), whose patron god was Zeus, by turning it into the absolute "Zeus' Law", something you will hear about at least a dozen times in this movie. Even worse, he connects it with whatever little he read about the Sea Peoples and, in pure Nolan convoluted fashion, he interprets the collapse of Bronze Age civilisations as the consequence of the Greeks breaking Zeus' Law (by conquering Troy after they entered it deceptively). The Greeks are cursed as they try to return back home, bringing mayhem and instability in their and other societies. Meanwhile, the news of the activity and impact of the Sea Peoples reaches slowly the various Greek kingdoms. Penelope is deeply concerned about the Sea Peoples and how she and Telemachus would be able to defend Ithaca from them, if they ever attacked the island. Towards the end of the movie, Odysseus explains to her that the Sea People were none other than them, the Greeks returning from a war victory that was cursed by the gods. In short, Odysseus and the Greeks in general are to blame for Bronze Age civilisation collapse and they are the mysterious "bad" Sea Peoples. Wonderful.
It's quite ridiculous that all this is stated in the movie like the Mycenaean Greek characters are modern "historians" who time travelled back in the twilight of the Bronze Age. The Greeks seem to be aware of the collapse of their culture in real time. There are extremely hilarious lines spoken seriously in the movie like Tom Holland saying something like "Why should we worry? We're the most powerful culture in the world!" and Odysseus (I think) saying stuff like "Our Bronze Age civilisation is collapsing". For real, apparently Odysseus was a fortune teller and knew iron use is about to be discovered! Telemachus had made thorough studies comparing the Bronze Age civilisations for his master thesis!
Pace and Editing
Nolan's Odyssey is a very uneven movie. The first hour is downright bad. Perhaps you've heard of some people leaving the cinema after the first hour. It's not due to the casting. This is why; the first hour feels like an extremely long introductory exposition, in which literally nothing happens. The only scene of any substance and suspense during the first hour is that with the Cyclops. Otherwise it is a gloomy, dull borefest with very little spectacle or emotion for you to hold on to. The characters feel paper thin and you simply cannot engage with anything that is happening on screen. Nolan has considerable trouble handling Odyssey's non-linear narration, especially because he also tries to interject with scenes from the Iliad.
The second hour improves, the narrative becomes more coherent and acquires some rhythm. The second hour is packed with most of the challenges and tasks Odysseus goes through at the open sea, however this also doesn't feel quite right because it seems as if Nolan has given up on how to handle time and just throws the challenges onto Odysseus one after the other like it is some sort of videogame level he has to complete. It takes only a few seconds after he has left Circe's island to reach Hades, because it's apparently that easy to reach the world of the Dead. The rest of his challenges also follow rapidly one after the other (it's almost as soon as one challenge is over you can see the next at the distance) and it takes a massive suspension of disbelief for it to be swallowed (yes, the magic is easier to swallow).
It should be noted that during the first two parts of the movie the editing is quite jarring, with scenes changing abruptly, as Nolan was having apparently enough trouble that he was just randomly throwing scenes one after the other.
The last fifty minutes are the best part of the movie, the Mnesterophonia, which involves Odysseus' return to Ithaca and his vengeance against Penelope's suitors. Things are looking decidedly better here because the storytelling becomes linear therefore less challenging, Nolan does not depart much from Homer's narrative, the characters become more fleshed-out and emotional and Anne Hathaway does a heroic heavy lifting.
Music and Sound Design
The Mnesterophonia and in general the second half of the movie is when the score starts to make some little sense. If we're being honest, Nolan's Odyssey has no music score. It has ambience. Some scenes have no sounds at all. Some others have this ambience which is often far too loud and at times disconnected with the theme of the scene. In the first hour of the movie the use of the ambience is in my opinion catastrophic, as you even get calm dialogue scenes which you can hardly hear because there is a random aulos going wild in the background. I had trouble hearing quite a few dialogues in fact. I 've heard people say this is a common flaw in Nolan's movies - his sound design is weak. In any case, as the movie starts having some rhythm in the second half, this vague ambience which progressively also becomes more rhythmic becomes somewhat more movie-appropriate. It is not music though, let's be clear. There are not music pieces with a clear beginning, middle or end. I can't imagine someone say "I want to listen to some nice movie soundtrack" and elect to listen to the Odyssey's completely incohesive sound blend.
Costumes and Art Direction
There is however nothing more incohesive in this movie than the decisions made by the costume department. This is a movie which costed 250 million dollars. Well, I don't dare imagine what amount of that went to the costumes and even the art direction. If you told me Nolan gave a 1000 dollars max for ALL the costumes in this movie, I would be tempted to believe it. Even if he gave a lot more, for a movie of such a budget, of such a marketing campaign and claimed status, I can safely say it has the worst costumes I have seen in my life. This is not just about the wild inaccuracy (at some point Odysseus and his men wear capri pants) where literally not even by accident they did not get a single thing right. It's also how incredibly ugly and cheap they look. They look exactly like Nolan broke into some thrift store one rainy night and stole everything he laid eyes on. Then he broke into an abandoned 80s theater and took everything that was forgotten in the vestiary there. Then he got massive volumes of hard paper and cut some Corinthian helmets (for the Trojans, not the Greeks!) on his own, sitting on the floor of his house with some big scissors. That's how the costumes of Nolan's Odyssey were crafted. I refuse to believe a professional costume designer was involved.
There is a scene in the end where Tom Holland appears in what must be Ancient Greek Nolanian regalia and I am still laughing whenever it comes back to mind.
The set designs are also extremely bare, minimal, boring and uninspired. Most of the movie is dim lit so you can't see the decorative details and the expert art direction that is greatly MISSING. The art direction clearly only cared about the Trojan Horse and went for sleep after being done with that. Nolan is really obsessed with the Trojan Horse.
Ranking Odysseus' Challenges
This emphasis Nolan places on referencing the Iliad takes its toll on the challenges Odysseus goes through. Most are rushed, while others are skipped entirely.
Surprising as it may seem because it's not making enough noise in social media (the real things almost never do), Nolan nails the Sirens scene more than anything else. This scene works so well because it stays loyal to Homer's story and Matt Damon achieves his finest acting in it. Furthermore, Nolan decides wisely to leave a lot to the viewer's imagination. We observe the scene through the perspective of the crew, as if we have wax in our ears and can't hear the song. We also can not see the Sirens well as they are quite far in the shore, enveloped in a dreamy haze. Their impact and power can be felt through Damon's exceptional portrayal of utter agony and pleasure, and through the choice to show one of the crewmates remove his wax, despair and immediately throw himself to the sea and swim towards the Sirens. This is for me the only scene in which Nolan proves why he is supposed to be considered one of the best directors of his generation. This is filmmaking at its best.
Everything else is more or less in underwhelming territory. However, the second best is clearly the Cyclops scene. If I allow some bias in, I am glad the scene shot in Greece is one of the highlights of the movie. The acoustics inside the cave are beautiful. It is maybe the first time we see a beautiful dark azure sea and Greece's trademark rough terrain, which are greatly missed in the rest of the movie with those endless muddy grey flat shores. The Cyclops design is achieved with practical effects and it is indeed successful. The introduction of the creature is quite thrilling and at times somewhat spooky. There is a huge problem though; both Odysseus and Polyphemus are lobotomized by Nolan compared to their original versions. There is no masterful deception, there is no "Nobody", there is no survival tactic and plan, there is not a debate between the two at all. In fact, for most of the scene Odysseus and his crewmates mistake Polyphemus for a dumb creature and they are stunned when the already blinded Cyclops starts to mutter a prayer to Poseidon. Of course, Damon's Odysseus is very far from the original one, therefore we also do not see him commit the hubris of boasting for his victory against the Cyclops. The scene starts promisingly but in my opinion its ending is underwhelming.
I see people rave about the Circe scene in social media. It is the third best scene all right, but I am not sure it deserves all the fuss. Once again, the setting of the scene is more thrilling than its closure. The way Circe transforms the soldiers to pigs is novel and a little gross / disturbing but not anywhere close to all those perplexing exaggerations you will see in social media, like the "scariest scene I have ever seen in my life" and whatnot. Samantha Morton delivers a satisfying performance, inspired by Miller and not Homer, but it's not something to lose your mind over. Finally, even though the build-up is imposing and thrilling, Circe's scene devolves in a few minutes and without any lasting impact at all on Odysseus or his men.
Scylla was made with CGI and it is not worth writing anything more about it. People who say they were terrified by Scylla (yes, I saw such posts too) need to go to a doctor because their Nolanism needs to be treated at this point. Charybdis is a joke. It's this tiny cheap whirlpool you see in the trailer, while there is a massive open and calm sea next to it that Odysseus could have sailed through, instead of having to go through either of the two monsters. Nolan's explanation must be that Teiresias told Odysseus he "must" go through either of the two beasts and not that this was simply a route he could not escape in his way home. Therefore Damon must make the moral choice to sail through Scylla, despite the giant ass open perfectly safe sea that spreads right next to the two monsters! Nolan did not even try to create a naval passage for this scene. He really was like "he must go this way, trust me".
The descend to Hades, which is nothing but a shore that is a little darker than the other dark shores, at which Odysseus arrives seconds after he has left Circe's island, does not meet our expectations either. Odysseus converses with Agamemnon and his funnily soft and casual voice under that Batman helmet and then he also talks to Sinon (Elliot Page) who replaces Achilles as a character who was sent to Troy because Antinous (Robert Pattinson) cheated and avoided the conscription. Then all the dead attack Odysseus and his men, as they are apparently those who died because of their wrongdoings, and the crew rushes back to their ship. These are the fantasies Nolan came up with in order to replace Achilles and everything that he concluded once he knew what it meant to be dead, even as the most glorious of men.
Charlize Theron serves as Calypso, a Lotus eater (or, rather, feeder) and Nausicaa. She makes a lukewarm job throughout. There is nothing noteworthy in those scenes. They are mostly used in order to show Nolan's Odysseus' PTSD. When Odysseus learned Calypso is keeping him amnesiac and captive for seven years, he's calm like "Oh come on Calypso, you gotta let me go". Calypso also calmly "It's not like we didn't have some good time together". Honestly, it was all extremely stupid.
I save the last place with absolute honour marks for peak stupidity for the Laestrygonians. Nolan throws into the trashcan Homer's entire storyline that made perfect sense and has Odysseus and the crew explore some northern woods near a new shore. There they see an adult-sized child clad in a semi-medieval semi-futuristic armour who mocks them. They try to talk to the child calmly and the child immediately starts screaming instead. Then !poof! in an instant, an army of dozens of giants in massive space medieval armours appear inside the previously empty forest and try very hard to kill them just because. Odysseus and whoever survives from his crew run back to their Viking ship. Amazing cinema /s. Nolan is the best director ohmeeghad.
The Ending
The Mnesterophonia is better than most of the movie, as already explained, but the very moment you're about to think "Thankfully Nolan respected the last part of the sto-" BOOM Nolan breaks the door and comes with his own version for Odyssey's end, which culminates to the final consequence of Odysseus' disregard for Zeus' Law. You see, according to Nolanian philosophy, if you try to punish 50 guys who live off of your wealth for who knows how many years, try to take your wife, disregard and plot to kill your son and throw away your dog from your own house, then you must still be punished because you are the bad guy, not them, apparently? Therefore, I'm not joking, seconds after he reunites with Penelope, minutes after he reveals his identity as Odysseus, King of Ithaca, the moment he's truly back home, Damon says that he must go to exile for killing the suitors!!! And takes Penelope with him. He leaves his son to rule, a son who all his life was waiting for his father, he leaves him after meeting him for, what, a few hours, a few days? Matt and Penelope happily embark on their journey and exile to the "unknown west", in Damon's words. Haha of course they are heading west haha Odysseus passed his legacy to West Europe haha of course. Matt and Penelope grace us with some final words of Nolanian wisdom, where Matt predicts that the Bronze Age Greek world will collapse due to the people's wrongdoings but eventually a new glorious era will arise. Then, Matt and Penelope sail towards the "unsetting sun", happy to escape all the shitfest of this major cultural collapse, while they leave their son behind to deal with it on his own! I wish I were joking but this is the ending. This is obviously not Odysseus, right? This is not the resourceful survivor who fought men, gods, monsters and the extreme elements in order to return to his Ithaca, his home, his family (which includes his son). This is Matt, the distant relative of Arya Stark from Game of Thrones, both sailing for the unknown west because fuck you that's why. I cannot believe how nolanists and critics avoid discussing this enormous failure of an ending. This is what is epic in Nolan's Odyssey; the failure in the end. A few said that Nolan does not understand the Odyssey. Personally I don't think he does not understand it. I think he is arrogant enough to believe that he can create an equally good message in order to subvert the passé ancient one. What he perhaps does not realise is that nobody will be talking about Nolan's message 2,000 years from now. And what was Nolan's message after all? War is bad and let them abuse you or else you are the bad guy? Wow.
Promotion, Marketing, Reception - Some Final Thoughts
At this point you may wonder, "well, if everything is so bad then are those people rating it with 9s or 10s liars or crazy?". Eh, well, some of them may be. However, there are quite many groups of people this film caters to and those people are going to be genuinely enthusiastic.
This movie is not addressed to Greeks, purists of the Greek classics or even the earnest aficionados of the Greek civilisation. It is addressed to those who have heard of Odyssey in general, those who know about it but not care much and those who simply want to see a big summer blockbuster regardless what the plot is about. It's for those who will see it as a masterpiece after the millionth Marvel and DC movie they have watched because it is so different. Many critics wrote that the Odyssey is the best movie of the year. Well, maybe, because what else does this year have to present? In a blank year of nothingness Nolan's Odyssey surely stands out.
Moreover, it became painfully evident to me, as well as shocking in its cynicism, that Nolan put on as much effort as he knew it was needed for the audience of 2026 and not a single drop more. Nolan understands the audience of 2026. He knew that he could discard accuracy as long as he brought diversity in, he knew he could avoid sweating over the meaning and the emotions displayed in the story as long as he threw some generic peace and acceptance messages, he knew he could drop the struggle for good costumes, settings, art direction and music, because he knows the bar has been set real low at this point. The vast majority of the viewers will not judge those aspects, glaring as they may be in their weakness. The average viewer of 2026 will think "well I get war, famous celebrities, sea adventure, monsters, aura farming and some family lovey-dovey drama in one go! No other movie gives me as much! What else is there to ask? Masterpiece 10/10!"
Nolan went as far as he needed to rise a little above the abysmal level Hollywood has the last 5-10 years. His aim was very different from that of Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings, who strived earnestly for colossal artistry for the ages, and along with him his entire cast and crew did too, with the same purity and passion. The relentless and unethical marketing campaign for the Odyssey compared it to the Lord of the Rings. Let me tell you very honestly, there is nothing in Nolan's Odyssey that is in any way comparable to LOTR. And because the promotion really emphasized the epic scale of the Odyssey, that it is supposedly the biggest thing you've seen on screen, let me tell you; the largest battle in the Odyssey, which is essentially the Trojan battle, is smaller than any of the small-medium sized battles among the numerous battles that take place in LOTR. In fact, Nolan knowingly hides the small size of his battles and adventurous scenes with intentional poor lighting, night filming and narrow shots which only include one or two dozens of soldiers at a time at most. This is another thing that should be stressed; the actual very small scale of the Odyssey can be easily felt by the fact that there are hardly any wide shots. There are only a small number of static wide shots showing the location each time, Ithaca's castle, Circe's island and Calypso's endless muddy beach, oh, and Troy's endless muddy beach. These are the wide shots you get. Everything else is narrow close-ups. Not only it does not have any epic scale whatsoever, but in fact it looks small, tiny even, if you compare it to LOTR but also many older mediocre epic adventure movies. For example, the sea-tempest shots of the Odyssey cannot even hold a candle to the shots in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, which are very popular but not exactly claiming to be masterpieces! Nolan does not show us wide shots of the wild sea, like POTC do on multiple occasions, and the POTC whirlpool is maybe three times larger than Nolan's Charybdis whirlpool, which I could maybe recreate myself if I removed the stopper from my sink very quickly.
I do not need to talk about the special effects, the so praised. Even though they are good indeed, am I supposed to praise them (basically it's just the Cyclops) as a big achievement, when LOTR could produce dozens of those, when Harry Potter had a more convincing mountain troll amongst numerous other creatures in the first movie already, when Jurassic Park (1993) exists? I am sorry but some of us still have a memory, some of us are not entirely brainwashed just yet. Nolan's Odyssey is tiny compared to all these movies and claiming to be something unique and unprecedented is unethical, because it is a great lie. Marketing is often lying but honestly this one took it too far.
This is what scares me. People will come out of the movie theaters calling the film a masterpiece and calling the sceptical ones as racists and bigots, a line first pushed by the press that is affiliated with Hollywood. This is scary. I feel like we are observing in real time one of the most blatant examples of mass manipulation. We are getting conditioned to ask for less and be satisfied with less and it is working. This is my main take-away from watching Christopher Nolan's Odyssey and observing the reactions, the meltdowns and keyboard wars out there.
What rating does Odyssey (2026) deserve? I honestly do not know! It is one of the most uneven movies I have ever watched, it does not deserve the same rating throughout! I know for sure that it is not a 9 or 10, any way you may look at it, it is not a 9 or 10 that so many people are quick to give, because they are being brainwashed for two years that this is a masterpiece and must be treated as such. If I take into consideration that there are people out there who know nothing about the Odyssey and Greek culture, who don't wish to know about them at all either and all they want is to watch a blockbuster that will be a little different from this neverending array of Marvel movies and Disney regurgitations, well for them it might be an 8. For those who know Odyssey and they care a bit or they are not swept by the aggressive marketing manipulation and the unbelievable Nolan glaze, it could be a 7. For those who care a lot, for those to whom faithfulness to the original and the culture that created it matters greatly, it would perhaps be a 6.
Now you may ask "Well, you said so many bad things, how come you don't go lower than 6?". Look, Nolan's Odyssey is a bad Odyssey and it is a bad movie compared to the epic scale movies of 20-30 years ago (BTW it's worse than Troy IMO), it is a clear setback. However, like I said, it is better than what the adventure and fantasy genres have to show in the last years. It is a tiny oasis in the middle of a vast desert. I also don't think it deserves a rate below 6 - 6.5 because despite Nolan's efforts to destroy it, for the most part you can still feel you are watching the Odyssey. A bad take of it, but an Odyssey nonetheless. As I was watching, in spite of my displeasure, I still caught myself pondering "Man, what a COOL story the Odyssey is!". This is good, with all his bad takes, misrepresentations and inaccuracies, Nolan still did not manage to ruin the majesty of the classic. I was still able to marvel at it and I assume this was easier for people who know nothing about the Odyssey and are free to be carried away and be impressed by the story - even Nolan's take of it.
The movie cannot go below a 6 - 6.5 (at its strictest) in my opinion because a butchered Homer and an exemplary Anne Hathaway still carry it. A 9 or 10 is pure clownery. My personal score would be a very angry 7.
