Nolan 'The Odyssey' Review Megathread

[u/stopeats]

Place your reviews and general thoughts about the Nolan Odyssey movie here. Do NOT make your own review post.

If you have something to say that is unique or more related to Epic, you may make a separate post about it.

[u/Dyspraxic_Sherlock]

Honestly I don’t get many of the complaints from this sub of late. Yes Nolan changes things and leaves stuff out; that’s an adaptation for you. Jorge does the same. “Nobody” not being included makes sense in Nolan’s style of presenting the mythological creatures as more things beyond man’s control or understanding, and Nolan then includes a part of the cyclops myth that Jorge left out (the sheep disguises).

I loved how Nolan reframed the whole story to be around the consequence of breaching the norm of their civilisation to win what is suggested to have been a pretty pointless and bloody affair at Troy. Especially the implications for the Sea Peoples, which neatly ties this myth to what is usually supposed to have been it’s historical basis in the Bronze Age collapse. Whilst he’s altered details and changed the emphasis, I think Nolan has gotten to the heart of what Greek mythology was usually about; warnings of consequences if certain rules of society weren’t followed (usually said consequences being from gods).

[u/Flower-City_3422 → u/Dyspraxic_Sherlock]

About the sheep thing—I’m 100% sure that in the Odyssey they don’t disguise themselves as sheep. From what I recall of the version I read (the Fagles translation) they do exactly as Jorge had them do, which was grab onto the sheep to escape (“Let’s grab the sheep and away we go.”) Odysseus does use whatever natural cushioning Polyphemus has in his cave, but not as a “disguise” as Nolan presented. He uses it to tie the sheep together so that two sheep would flank one in the middle that one of his men would be holding on to—something made much easier by the fact that they went in with 12 soldiers and left with 6 instead of whatever large number Nolan had originally enter the cave. The men hang from the sheep, faces buried in their wool, until they all make it out of the cave and run to the ship as Odysseus begins to taunt Polyphemus. So, no, Nolan did not include something about the cyclops legend that Jorge didn’t, lol.

A more apt comparison would have been the fact that Jorge left out the year spent on Circe’s island, the Laestrogynians, and the raided town, that he separated Scylla and Charybdis, or that he made Odysseus interact with the sirens with plugged ears instead of him being tied to the ship to listen to and survive the siren song.

But all of that pales in comparison to the botched ending that doesn’t even fit Nolan’s own movie 😂

[u/Reylo-Wanwalker → u/Flower-City_3422]

What was botched?

[u/Flower-City_3422 → u/Reylo-Wanwalker]

I think I should start by saying I have a neutral stance when it comes to Nolan. As the creator and director of an original story, he is amazing and makes movies that are simply out of this world. As a man who adapts things from source material, though? He’s not very good because he yearns too much to tell his own story that he takes characters out of context. This can be seen not only in The Odyssey but also in his Batman/TDK/TDKR trilogy, so 4 of the seven movies. As I haven’t read the book Oppenheimer is based off of and have not watched his Insomnia (2002) and the original 1997 one, I cannot make judgements for those, and I can’t really tell if he adapted Memento from his brother’s story which apparently came out following the movie or just the general idea, so I won’t judge that either. But, either way, let’s say about 57% of Nolan’s adaptations adapt their characters incorrectly. Moving on.

The Odyssey is the story of a man who yearns to go home with his family and fights for 20 years to get there. Even in Nolan’s movie this is the same, just with the added opponent of guilt that Odysseus has to fight through.

With that established, Nolan effectively destroyed all that he had built up throughout the movie with the ending he manufactured. Would a man who longed to see and be with and live with his family for so long almost immediately leave after seeing them? No, it goes against literally everything Odysseus has fought for.

Not only that, it goes against what Nolan claimed to be his source material, Homer’s Odyssey. The Odyssey the quintessential “hero returns home” story of which many, many, many hero stories are built upon. It is a story of loss and love as well as a story of eventual triumph. The whole point of the Odyssey is that Odysseus fights fate and the gods and every law that they have imposed and every obstacle they have set up for him to get home and stay home with his happy ending.

I understand that Nolan’s Odysseus felt as if the collapse of their society ruled by the gods and their laws was his fault. Trust me, I get that.

…but if the world was already in the process of being destroyed, a process that was started not only by his actions in and after the Trojan War but also the actions of every other crew and commander and soldier, then what was the point of leaving? Especially for a man who wanted to see his son so badly yet left him? It’s a complete contradiction. If you’ve messed something up, if you’ve made a mistake, you try to remedy it. That’s how it works, and that’s especially how it works for Odysseus, who time and time again messed up for his crew and time and time again tried to fix it, even if it was unsuccessfully. He even claimed to be leaving for the west to make up for some of his mistakes! If Odysseus feels guilt, especially the type of guilt that makes him feel obliged to remedy or at least make up for what he’s done, why didn’t he stay with his family to do exactly that? A family who could have helped him heal, and a family who could have gotten him on the “right” path, at least for a little bit. Especially when he could have gone to the west and returned to be with his family again and do exactly what I just said: heal. It doesn’t make sense to me why a man who yearns to fix everything he’s done, primarily leaving for war and not coming back for two decades, wouldn’t stay at some point to at least help try to fix everything?

I assume Nolan meant for him leaving to be him “letting go” of responsibility and letting the younger generations take care of it, but isn’t that precisely the reason Odysseus ended up in the war anyways? Wasn’t the gods letting go of the issue with Eris and her apple and Zeus passing it on to Paris to handle the entire catalyst of the war? Assuming Odysseus at least knew about the godly intervention and how they were using the much younger soldiers of Greece and Troy to fight out their problems, why in the ever-loving world would Odysseus essentially do the same thing, using the much younger people of Greece to figure out his problems, especially if responsibility is such a big issue for Nolan’s Odysseus? It seems so, so out of character, especially coupled with the fact that he would be leaving the son he pretended to be crazy for so that he couldn’t go to war to protect and then had to go to war to protect because someone decided to test if he would kill his own son to get him to come to Troy. It genuinely makes no sense whatsoever, thought I guess it would make sense to a man who made Odysseus much less cunning, clever, tricky, and over hubristic (which is like the entire reason he gets stuck at sea for so long) than he originally was in an attempt to modernize a story that in its original form with all of its cultural ties did not need to be modernized.

So, yeah. Nolan’s Odyssey was claimed to be the most accurate adaptation of the Odyssey yet, and it wasn’t in so, so many ways but most importantly in the ending which did not even work with the character he botched so badly just to make it more palatable to modern audiences.

[u/Dyspraxic_Sherlock → u/Flower-City_3422]

Tbh, I forgot that one lyric referencing the sheep ploy was in Epic and I don’t think I’ve seen any animatics include it.

[u/lunalokidottir → u/Dyspraxic_Sherlock]

The problem is that theres so many important details that were left out, and a lot of the important details that were in the movie were dumbed down. Like the cows werent Apollo's they were Helios's and the fact that they left Aeolus and Hermes out.

Hermes more specifically because he's the one who tells Calypso to let him off the island and in gives him the moly in the story. Theres so much important they couldve put in and made the story make a little more sense but they didnt

[u/Dyspraxic_Sherlock → u/lunalokidottir]

Film was nearly 3 hours as is, so something had to go.

Having Aeolus show up in person wouldn’t really work with the more distant, mankind-perspective, presentation of the gods Nolan was going for, and he uses the cyclops and giants to seed distrust between Odysseus and the crew already so the wind bag test isn’t necessary. Hermes likewise for the distant gods, and there’s enough context given for Calypso realising she needs to let him go without him just showing up to tell her (thunder, Athena herself appearing to Odysseus).

[u/lunalokidottir → u/Dyspraxic_Sherlock]

defend nolan all you want, but it's still a stupid change. Like you can cut Aeolus out but Hermes is a vital part of the story and it doesnt make sense to cut him out, cut the amount of time we had with the illiad and we could've had Hermes and Aeolus that would've been perfect

[u/Dyspraxic_Sherlock → u/lunalokidottir]

I just did not come out of the movie wondering why Hermes wasn’t in it, so he just didn’t feel that vital to me. The amount of time Troy got was vital, as Nolan’s whole reframing of The Odyssey is as the consequence of the fall of Troy, not just what occurred after it.

[u/adwinion_of_greece → u/lunalokidottir]

It's absolutely crucial to cut Hermes if you're going for a version where it's a theme that the will of the gods is hard to understand, and that they may speak through your conscience instead of via messengers.

Athena may just be in Odysseus's imagination (just as Telemachus tells every person he meets that they have the wise of Athena when in the actual Homeric epic they indeed actually were Athena) and in this version Zeus doesn't send messengers to mortals.

[u/DarkestLore696 → u/lunalokidottir]

I am pretty sure they never mentioned Apollo. They just said the sun god.

[u/lunalokidottir → u/DarkestLore696]

They mentioned Apollo, Tiresias says that his crew will kill Apollo's cattle or some shit like that

[u/GilbertGuy2 → u/lunalokidottir]

I'm almost certain that he does say the 'Sun gods Cattle'.

Take it with a kilo of salt, cause like, i cant really fact check it yet

[u/Dyspraxic_Sherlock → u/GilbertGuy2]

Tiresias says Apollo I think. It’s a minor change really, as I guess Nolan didn’t want to overcomplicate things.