The Odyssey - discussion thread

I saw it on 70mm last night and loved it.

The cinematography, effects, acting and sound design were excellent.

I particularly liked Leguizamo's performance.

Nolan's decision to have Odysseus feel guilty over the Trojan Horse and to frame that break of the social contract lead to the fall of civilization gave a surprisingly fresh and timely take on the story.

My only complaint is that the movie is mean to dogs, from throwing puppies off a cliff to kicking an old dog, they deserve better.

Honestly, not my famous Nolan work. The cinematography is good, and I understand that this is not intended to be an adaption of the Odyssey, as much as reintreptation of the story.

Historical accuracy aside, my biggest complaint is that there is a lack of setup in the first half of the movie. They spend a lot of time on Telemachus, but it's really important to the original story of the Odyssey that you get that the Greeks are like, seriously cursed by the gods for what they did in Troy. Without that backdrop, the first like 5-6 scenes of the movie just seem like random events occurring. It's like random set pieces from the odyssey occurring in sequence.

Now, I think Nolan went more for cycle of violence, rather than explicit gods, but in that case you need to put the scenes of Troy's destruction in front.

On history, I think they really missed the vibe of the movie. Maybe that's intentional, but it does make some parts of the story look pretty silly. Odysseus talking about how Agamemnon just wants access to trade routes, Penelope talking about her "years of experience on the throne" (does she have a linkedin too?), and oh god all the sea peoples references. I'm pretty sure descendants of Mycenaen greeks were part of the sea peoples based on evidence from Ramses. Mycenae fell much earlier than the sea peoples, most likely due to famine, extended drought, and earthquakes. Also, sea peoples is really how, like, Egyptians would talk about them.

I don't think Matt Damon did a great job as Odysseus either. He just, as the kids would say, doesn't have the aura. Honestly, if you didn't know the myths, you'd probably think Odysseus is kind of a dumbass from this movie. He just seems kinda wooden. Oddyseus either needs to have the majesty of a homeric hero or the wilyness of a trickster (preferably both!), and Matt Damon is just kinda Matt Damon.

Not a problem of the movie, but I found Tom Holland really distracting. Just looked like Spiderman in every scene. Robert Pattinson also felt like he was a character from Gladiator that got portaled to the wrong era.

Because of how generally grounded and sort of modern the movie was, some of the scenes definitely felt a bit silly. The Trojan Horse story in general is kind of silly if you're not in Homeric magic realism mode. That they made the cyclops just a monster and not someone that yaps with the greeks both eliminated one of Odysseus great tricks, and really just made him look like an idiot that whole set piece.

Also, were the random medieval European knights supposed to be Laestrygonians? Why do they have such advance metallurgy lmao?

I briefly considered not entering this thread because spoilers, but then I remembered it's the fucking Odyssey and I know the story beats since childhood. Not just having seen older Odyssey interpretations (I want to say the 1997 film but maybe older too?), also having seen films like O Brother Where Art Thou more than a few times and I think I have a decent grip on the plot.

Point is: I think I'm here to see what others thought. The story will be the story, but the interpretation, cinematography, and acting is what makes it worthwhile or not.

I saw it last night and left the cinema feeling a little keyed up. What a movie, holy hell. Some parts of it were objectively terrifying. I love how the Cyclops was so much more abominable than in other media; its proportions were reminiscent of the titans from Attack on Titan. It was a genuinely creepy monster. And then the body horror with Circe's transformations. That'll stay with me for a while. And the scene where they're on the boat in a storm, and it's basically impossible to see, except for almost painful flashes of lightning. It really gave me the sense of what it might be like to be on a boat during a night-time storm in that era. Like, it's obviously not a horror film, but parts of it really play to the horror genre's strengths. Even the bit where they're in the horse, and the soundtrack just turns into the overwhelming boom of a thumping heart.

Thematically, it was really interesting as well. There was all this glorification of Odysseus from everyone that knows or knew him, and the scenes from the sacking of Troy get replayed over and over as it's retold. But when it's recounted from Odysseus' perspective right at the end, it takes on a whole different tone and recontextualises the movie. He's traumatised, and experiencing complex PTSD. He still sees the face of and talks to a girl that was murdered in front of his eyes. He still sees the head of the statue falling to the ground. It's a masterstroke. Different from the source work, to be sure. But I think it was a brilliant twist.

Finally, I think it's interesting that Nolan's previous movie centres around a man who feels enormous guilt about his central role in fundamentally altering the world, and so does The Odyssey. I wonder if Nolan is moving on from time as his central motif?

I didn’t like this as much as Oppenheimer. But it is really good. The scale of everything is insane. There’s so many moments where I have no idea how those things were shot.

An interesting angle this took is how kind of artsy and introspective everything feels. Where there’s an indie sensibility to large scale filmmaking.

This is the closest we’re gonna get to someone materializing what you see in your mind as you read The Odyssey. It is basically that story come to life without any big twist of, it’s The Odyssey but actually it’s high school kids going on a road trip, or whatever.

I enjoyed it, but I find myself not being able to understand everything all the time: there was too much overlapping audio with low frequencies boosted so much the audio was muffled. Maybe it was just my cinema, but man I had to piece some bits together.

Saw it two days ago and enjoyed it. Unlike some of the other comments, my theater's audio was fine. I don't know why this is always an issue with Nolan films.

I agree with some of stu2b50's criticism, especially about the pacing in the first act and how disconnected it felt. I learned to look the other way on historical inaccuracies a long time ago, so that didn't bother me as much as it will bother the classics lovers out there. The dialogue (which has always been Nolan's weakness) seemed really weird at first. It reminded me of an old play or poem, but with modern vocabulary. Very strange.

Things clicked around the 30-40 minute mark and I enjoyed everything after that. John Leguizamo, Himesh Patel, and Elliot Page were all great. Spider Man was fine, and Zendaya is always a welcome addition. There's an argument that this is a superhero movie, but I'll take it over any other superhero/comic book movie 8 days a week.

Now I just need to avoid the impulse to talk shit to a bunch of YouTube losers that deluded themselves into believing this would be a flop because of the casting decisions.

I just got out of it again. It moves faster the second time, like Oppenheimer did. But I think Oppenheimer feels faster than this despite being longer.

Anyways, I have three casting issues and only one of them is a big deal. And I’ll say who I think should have been cast instead.

First: Tom Holland. He really drags the movie down. He’s kind of just being Peter Parker in this, and he just looks so old lol. Like he looks older than Robert Pattinson. This wasn’t a “weird” casting choice, but even when Nolan’s casting is orthodox they sometimes don’t work. Like John David Washington in Tenet.

I would have recast him with Louis Partridge from the Enola Holmes movies. More youthful, fits the visual aesthetic better, would have given a more interesting performance.

Second: Elliot Page. Never cared for Page as an actor. Worst part of Inception. Trade em out for Fionn Whitehead from Dunkirk instead.

Third: Charlize Theron. Nothing specifically wrong with her performance, her face has a lot of plastic surgery that I think doesn’t mesh with the rest of the cast who look extremely natural. It’s kind of like Emily Blunt in Oppenheimer, to the point where it’s a bit distracting.

Replace her with Scarlett Johnasson who worked with Nolan on The Prestige and never did another film with him. She also could have replaced Blunt in Oppenheimer. Johansson just looks way more natural.

I find that Chris’ work without Jonathan is all spectacle and benefits from another edit to trim the fat — much like that Interatellar fan edit.

He’s a talented filmmaker, but he always tries to cram too much into the space instead of letting the scenes breathe.

That’s my view, at least. Many disagree. I also thought Fury Road was terrible, though, so who knows. :)

I loved seeing The Odyssey. A bit of context for my comment: I’m not a big Greek mythology buff. This means that I knew about all of the ideas, characters & events presented in the movie, but not from primary sources. And I never spent time thinking & analysing them.

That being said, there is a great idea that I’m not sure if Nolan recontextualised or it was present in the source material: how big of an offence & destruction of customs and norms the Trojan horse was. This resonates very hard with the destruction of customs & norms we observe in Western society nowadays.

In the context of the world Nolan depicted, where Gods are the ultimate thing to worship & respect, abusing these norms for material gains is possibly the highest offence someone can bring to society at large, and obviously factors into the destruction of the social fabric & eventually downfall of their civilisation.

Since we find out Odysseus’ perspective about this at the very end of the movie, it does help explain the instances of mild “atheism” that he displays during the obstacles he & his men face post-Troy.

I’m not really the most critical movie analyst but I thoroughly enjoyed that, I watched it in 70mm IMAX. I definitely agree the audio mixing was typical Nolan but it was far better than Oppenheimer. Cinematography did not disappoint and the 70mm aspect ratio just added to the sense of scale of various scenes in the movie. The whole cast worked well in my opinion too, I remember seeing a lot of angry comments around that when it was first revealed. Soundtrack was good but a little simple, could’ve been more orchestral or something else to also add to the grand sense of scale of certain scenes.

Apparently the RLM boys liked it, which is high praise for me. They are usually pretty great at looking at the actual quality and laughing at the culture wars from the outside.