Interesting... agree on many points, not at all on others
Legolas Send a noteboard - 30/07/2026 08:52:13 PM
View original postThere are several specifically suspect casting choices, particularly WRT minority women. Nolan is bending the knee to the woke crowd and wokifying the Odyssey
View original postMy view on the issue: Trans women are men, Lupita Nyongo is a long way from having a face that can launch a thousand ships, and can't hold a candle to Diane Kruger as well as being an overrated actress, and Zendaya plays a character with the exact same personality in every damn movie I've ever seen her in. I liked Ellen Page.
Hard disagree on Nyong'o's beauty. The first time I heard about her getting cast in the role, I remember thinking 'okay, unorthodox choice, but she certainly has a face to launch a thousand ships', which in the end is the most important requirement for Helen. Can't think of many leading actresses in Hollywood today that can compete with her in terms of sheer beauty. Diane Kruger is pretty enough but not remotely in the same category. As for acting skills, check Nyong'o out in 'US' and Zendaya in Euphoria (though, uh, suffice to say you'd find a LOT to rant about if you'd ever review Euphoria) - both can absolutely act, even if their respective roles in the MCU don't always require all that much from them on that front.
View original postVerdict: The current iteration of Page is actually well-cast for the role of Sinon. I had some concerns that the intent of the character was going to be stolen valor, that they were casting a, shall we say, less-masculine, person in a role that would strip Odysseus of the credit for the Trojan Horse. But Sinon is in two scenes, and looks hilariously like a boy dressing up in his dad's clothes, which fits the character & role. It's fine and I'm happy Page has this opportunity, given the self-inflicted mutilations that look like future casting is going to be difficult.
Whatever you may think on the subject, which I won't bother going into, I don't really think it follows that future casting is going to be difficult. Plenty of roles out there for someone with sort of androgynous looks like Page's, if he wants them - not the leading roles in big blockbusters but then that was never his style or his interest, not when he was still Ellen either.
View original postNyongo's shortcomings in the beauty department kind of work, given how her beauty is addressed in the script. BTW, the screencap that has been making the rounds, of her wearing blue and screaming, is not her playing Helen, but Clytemnestra, watching her husband carry off Iphegenia. She has a rather small role and it isn't very important. Most of her scenes are dominated by her spouse, the faceless Agamemnon in the Clytemnestra flashbacks and Jon Bernthal as Menelaus.
She wasn't given much to do indeed, though I suppose that makes sense as her character is barely (or not at all?) in the Odyssey anyway.
View original postZendaya doesn't so much play Athena as Odysseus' vision of Athena. We don't have her pleading his case in the hall of Olympus or guiding Nausica (a causalty of adaptation) or Telemachus in aid of Odysseus, just appearing to Odysseus for some theological debates. Why, exactly, she looks more like a girl with resting cry-face than a warrior goddess actually has a functional diegetic answer. Basically, Odysseus isn't much a god-worshipper, possessing sensibilities that are relatable to a Hollywood screenwriter rather than a Homeric hero, much like Achilles in "Troy" and so when he envisions Athena, as the voice of one side of his personal mental conflicts, he sees her as a person he encountered in his past (in a flashback near the end of the movie). He is not devoted to Athena, because she is also a goddess of wisdom and Odysseus is one of the smartest characters in Greek mythology, it's more than she represents positive ideals to him. So Zendaya is acceptable for the role.
Interesting take, hadn't thought about it that way, but definitely Athena is very underwhelming. I almost got the impression that Nolan gave Zendaya a half-assed unimportant role just so she could join her new husband Tom Holland on his set.
View original postWhat does happen, is that by toning down on the god crap, the women have been largely excised. Penelope might get to whine in a way that makes contemporary feminist termagants feel seen, but Circe (Samantha Morton, the very un-Circe-looking precog from "Minority Report" ) & Calliope (Charlize Theron) have greatly reduced roles, Athena is absolutely a version of the opposite of the Bechdel test, largely existing as a figment of a man's imagination and not interacting with anyone but Odysseus, and Nausicaa is omitted entirely. The Ithacan female servants have their bit parts, with the maid who sides with the suitors and Euryclea doing her thing.
Indeed. Although I did like the Circe scene, as short as it was.
View original postThis version character-assassinates Odysseus
View original postMy view on the issue: Odysseus is one of my favorite mythological protagonists, with a lot less to apologize for than most. His voyage home was the result of being caught between dumbass minions and resentful gods, and he survived to make it home by being smarter or more tenacious than anyone else (also Athena's patronage, but see above wrt the goddess of wisdom & craftsmanship, whose favor those traits would earn). I am not going to be forgiving of violations in this regard.
View original postVerdict: Flawed adaptation, not through malice or ideology, IMO, but due to Nolan imposing his own narrative on the story. Odysseus is superficially similar to a typical Nolan hero, being smart, flawed and among the best at what he does, and whose unorthodox approach to problems might draw a side-eye from his team. I can imagine that's what drew Nolan to this work. But Odysseus is a king, and he is on a mission and his sins are generally in the eyes of later ages, not the morality of his own time, so all the whining and whatnot of a Nolan hero are not in him.
Yeah - judged by itself, the writing of his character is consistent enough throughout the movie and works for the story Nolan wants to tell, but it's quite far from the original character.
View original postThat dialogue is very modern-sounding. Why are they saying "Dad" and "Daddy" in the Mycenaean era?
View original postMy view on the issue: As above, I don't necessarily have a problem with them going a little modern, especially if they don't have the skill to do properly epic or fantastic dialogue (see, for example, Amazon's Rings of Power). I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt on this issue.
View original postVerdict: Not this time. In fact, this was a really bad movie to do it in. The major theme and moral of the work is very much an ancient times issue that does not jibe with modern society at all, and making the diction and vernacular modern does not support those themes at all.
It was a bit off-putting, yes.
View original postIt's interesting to me, when thinking about this film in my first reaction, that the comparison that sprung up was to the early, "good" seasons of "Game of Thrones" - an entertaining motion picture, possibly competently made (I'm just not into things like cinematography and pacing and visuals and lighting and whatnot - I might or might not like it, but I probably won't be able to tell you why), but a huge swing and miss when judged as an adaptation of the work on-page. And I realized that one of the strong themes in both works is the concept of hospitality, I think the Greeks called it xenia. It's a big deal in A Song of Ice and Fire, and the TV show very obviously did not understand it, or the significance, despite going so far as to invent a ritual of partaking of food & drink to signify that bond. In aSoI&F, the characters believe that violating the bonds between host and guest is one of the greatest transgressions in the eyes of the gods, and those who do so, will face punishment for it in their lives. The narrative itself is ambiguous about the role of the gods in punishing violations of xenia, but the sinners definitely suffer. And the idea behind this is that this rule is one of the things that binds society together, and allows people to deal fairly with each other, and restrains all-out violence. The transgressions break this aspect of society and lead to a general collapse of civility and amity, because no one can really be trusted, now that certain guarantees of safety can no longer be taken for granted.
Another interesting point. Certainly not a comparison I was thinking of. Like many people, I think fondly of the early GoT seasons because while there are no doubt weaker points, I think they got most big things right. But then on top of that, perhaps inevitably for a TV show which is unable to follow aSoIaF's writing structure of PoV chapters seen through the eyes of a limited number of characters, they made some key characters more nuanced and in certain scenes were honestly even better than the books. The first thing coming to mind when I think of GoT is how good those Arya-Tywin and Sansa-Cersei scenes were, due to a combination of great writing plus Dance and Headey's acting skills, so they're less one-sided villains.
But anyway, I guess I can see the parallels on that point of society breaking down and hospitality / other shared values being under threat - with further parallels to our own contemporary society where polarization and social media algorithms also push people further apart and weaken the bonds tying society together.
View original postAnd that's the underlying idea in Nolan's Odyssey. That breaking guest-right and abusing social trust undermines civilization and places it in peril. A recurring element in the story is references to the (possibly) historic Sea People, hovering over the Achaean civilization, which is about to enter its historical collapse. It would seem in this version, the Sea People invaded and brought down the Mycenaean civilization in the near future of the characters of this story, and Odysseus sees this as a punishment for the sins of the Achaeans in sacking Troy. Interestingly, this version has one of the more plausible depictions of the Trojan horse and explanations of just why it worked, I have seen in popular fiction. The ostensible reason why the Greeks built it, was as an offering to Athena, and a gesture of peace before sailing off. Although some Trojans looked askance, the prevailing view was that the Horse should be treated with respect, representing the common religion of the two sides. It was brought into the temple of Athena inside the walls of Troy, rendering the employment of it as a tactic of infiltration into a violation of that trust and goodwill.
I liked the Sea Peoples references, thought it was clever, but according to Emily Wilson (see more below), that whole thing is 'a now debunked 19th century theory'. But I'm not too clear on what precisely is debunked and what current historians do think happened instead, then...
As for the horse, the explanation is the usual one, as far as I'm aware? But I wasn't too convinced by the logistics of it - how that many men could fit inside, with weapons, get thrown up against each other while the horse was being moved, without making enough noise to alert the Trojans handling it.
View original postThe problem is making this clear to a modern audience. Many fans of aSoI&F, and most of the viewers of GoT, completely missed this concept, and only see the Red Wedding as either a moment of epic stupidity and misplaced trust or reliance of others' honor on the part of the victims, or a masterstroke of tactical brilliance on the part of the perpetrators. The dialogue discussing the event is altered in the screen adaptation to support these perspectives. The primary preternatural consequence of the Red Wedding is elided altogether, and most of the human acts of revenge as well. The Odyssey film understands the issue as well as GRRM did, but the contemporary vernacular creeping into the film undermines the depiction, IMO. Hearing people toss around the phrase "hospitality of Zeus" in modern diction or cadence, in juxtaposition with modern terminology, just makes the concept of xenia seem silly or outdated. Likewise with the reframing of Odysseus' religious perspective as a metaphor for an internal debate, and thus in essence, a kind of de facto agnosticism.
Yeah, I see what you mean. And they definitely made a few too many references to Zeus' laws in dialogue to hammer the point home for the viewers - if it's that big a thing in your society, you probably don't need to explicitly mention it that often in conversation.
View original postLike with Game of Thrones, the mix-and-match of source material and changes in service to an updated story don't really work together well. What's especially baffling with this ambiguous approach to the divine aspects of the story, is the choices of mythological elements and which adventures to be adapted. The Cicones are omitted, as is Odysseus's final stop in Phaeacia, the kingdom ruled by Nausicaa's parents. They also don't see Aeolus, much less get a bag of wind that knocks them back to the last save point, but they do encounter Polyphemus, the Laestrygonians, the Sirens, Circe and Scylla & Charybidis. They go to the underworld and speak with Teresias and Agamemnon. They have the holy cattle, but with no gods in the movie, their subsequent shipwreck is ambiguous. It could have been divine punishment, or just bad luck with the weather. But why bother with the ambiguity, if you're going to have a giant cyclops, and a witch who turns men into pigs, and a giant cliff monster plucking men off the deck of the ship? They also made the Laestrygonians entirely mythic, when that would have been one of the easiest encounters to render as a non-mythical event that would be exaggerated into a tale of fighting giants. There was no discussion or interaction, just giants in full plate armor tromping up and slaughtering the men, and hacking up the ship, rather than hucking rocks at the fleet. Polyphemus' sheep were inexplicably normal size, meaning the ruse by which they sneak past the blinded monster is less plausible, and the most famous aspect of the incident, Odysseus using the alias "Noman" preventing Polyphemus from obtaining aid, with completely omitted. Rather than a parting boast that allows the cyclops to name his tormentor when invoking his divine father's wrath on the perpetrator, Odysseus provokes it to pursue the escaped crew with a Parthian shot. It more or less fits with the characterization of Odysseus, but its part of a pattern of bewildering ambivalence in the approach to the mythology.
Of course there would always have been criticism on some of the adventures' depictions, can never get it right for everyone, but indeed I and other friends I've talked to had very similar objections.
View original postOverall, the movie is not "bad" on its own rights, at least not on first reaction, but I am not sure it would stand up to a deep dive or systematic examination of the script, and people better informed than I about the source material would probably have even more serious issues with the adaptational choices. As I understand it, Emily Wilson, a translator of the poem whose own work has been heavily criticized for its ideological distortion of the story, and was rumored to have been an inspiration for the screenplay, has repudiated the film and criticized its handling of the mythology. When your modern adaptation pisses off a feminist extremist on grounds of fidelity to the source material, you've really gone off the rails.
Wilson's review is absolutely scathing and honestly kind of impressive in just how relentlessly negative it is. See link if you're curious - amusingly, the review has made enough waves that now there are even people reviewing the review and defending Nolan from Wilson.
I haven't read Wilson's translation, but afaik it's just a translation, so there's a limit to how much it can really distort. She made some notable and controversial translation choices, like 'slave' where older translations might've put 'servant girl' or 'concubine', 'rape' where others had more ambiguous words for sex with these women, that sort of thing. Certainly that's a more feminist approach, but you should probably actually read it before concluding she's an extremist...
View original postAlso, it can be really hard to see with the dim, atmospheric lighting and the music and shouting can sometimes combine to make it hard to hear what was just said.
Subtitles ftw. I wouldn't actually need them for English spoken movies if all dialogue were clearly audible, but since it so often isn't, the subtitles still help a lot.
View original postI'm not going to tell anyone not to see it, but book nerds might have a lot of problems with it.
What's the deal with Nolan's "The Odyssey"? My take
- 30/07/2026 05:40:04 AM
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Interesting... agree on many points, not at all on others
- 30/07/2026 08:52:13 PM
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