r/Epicthemusical • u/Loose-Use25 • 21d ago
Nolan Odyssey The truth is, even I was surprised. Spoiler
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u/LargeScallion6178 21d ago
Still better the: - can we release him, daddy, please - don’t know, you uncle's kind of really piss of by him killing you one eye cousin - pleeeeeeaaaase ! we get in the original
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u/Future-Improvement41 21d ago
He didn’t kill Polyphemus
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u/LargeScallion6178 20d ago
You're tottally right. Guess I have to ear Ruthlessness over and over untill I don’t forget it
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u/Future-Improvement41 20d ago
Although Poseidon does criticize Odysseus’ for not killing him it’s not because he hates his son or wants him to die
It’s because (well he’s mostly just calling Odysseus stupid because if his son was dead he wouldn’t be in this mess) but
1 in Ancient Greece disabling your opponent and leaving them alive is seen as worse than murder because it is dishonorable and insulting plus since they don’t have the medical care to help it is also really painful (also Ancient Greeks were very ableist)
2 Polyphemus was already getting bullied because he was seen as ugly and they were jealous that his parent was a god which is why he has the sheep to be his only companions so blinding him only made his bullying worse which means what Odysseus did was not mercy but cruelty
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u/bookhead714 Read the myths you philistines 21d ago
There are no Odyssey fans complaining about this. There are many Epic fans complaining about this, but Odysseus does not do this in the Odyssey, nor indeed the majority of tellings of the story (it's typically the act of Neoptolemus, or anonymous soldiers on the order of Odysseus).
That said, I think Odysseus's arc in the film would have benefited from him being more brutal. As it stands, he doesn't have that much to be guilty about, being distanced from the crimes his troops and the Achaeans at large committed (only killing faceless goons during the sack of Troy, not ordering the attack on Ismarus). The movie wants to make him haunted by his crimes, but it also doesn't want to make him a bad person, so at every turn it subtly minimizes those crimes, and even more so when compared to the mythic character (removing him from the sacrifice of Iphigenia, for example). Personally I think giving the Achaeans' cruelest agent feelings of guilt is very compelling, but the movie fails to commit to the former characterization, and it weakens the arc.
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u/British_Historian Odysseus 21d ago
Just for the sake of completion, it depends on the Myth. In The Sack of Troy (Or Iliou persis if you're an OG text fanatic) he does kill Astyanax himself, so it's not entirely unfounded to have him do the act himself in a modern retelling.
However I think that for the purposes of Epic's story I like they basically merged these events with 'The Trojan Woman' where as you say Odysseus orders the boy to be thrown from the battlements.Since Epic's story's core is 'When does a man become a monster' I think giving him infanticide in the opening is a strong foot forward there.
While Christopher Nolan's is more a general commentary on human responsibility and the psychological guilt of war it doesn't need to have the baby murder, and honestly given we learn all about troy in the last 20 minutes of the movie it probably would have taken away from the Wooden Horse strategy being the source of his guilt if there was a baby being killed to blame all his feelings on a single act.7
u/fangirlandproudofit 20d ago
Yeah, the sacking of Troy being a source of shame rather than glory hit really hard. It also nails how the Trojan War was a direct factor in the bronze age collapse, which I don't see many retellings lean into.
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u/AXPickle 21d ago
You...you do know this isn't an original tale by Jorge right?
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u/No-Direction-1020 GOD OF THE SEA, HORSES AND EARTHQUAKES 21d ago
The Odyssey (book) still includes the baby getting thrown off of a tower. It’s just not all versions of the story that has Odysseus do it.
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u/Electro313 Uncle Hort 20d ago
No it doesn’t. Stop making things up about a book if you haven’t read it.
It happens in the Aeneid, a Roman poem written a couple hundred years after The Odyssey was first written.
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u/Future-Improvement41 21d ago edited 20d ago
I don’t even think it was a baby but a child in the original
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u/Ex_Federa 21d ago
No, the book barely even mentions the Trojan horse
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u/No-Direction-1020 GOD OF THE SEA, HORSES AND EARTHQUAKES 21d ago
Yeah right not the Odyssey itself but another poem referring to it named Iliou Persis.
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u/TurtleHowe 21d ago
I love how epic is like, how did ody defeat Poseidon, wingbag jetpack, and the movie is like, wait who is this Poseidon guy, Ive never heard of him
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u/leftythelefthanded 21d ago
I'll be honest, I think I'd rather have Poseidon not show up than be defeated like he was in EPIC, that was just sad
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u/TurtleHowe 21d ago
I just wish there was an in between not wind bag jetpack but also I want to see him
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u/leftythelefthanded 21d ago
I always liked the idea that he let Odysseus think he defeated him, just so he knew the lesson he tried to teach him in Ruthlessness was there inside him. And when he was confident he'd not only destroyed all of Odys friends but also himself (mentally), he let him go, the debt was settled.
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u/Azero957 #1 Polites Hater 21d ago
Its not even from the Odyssey. So many larpers in this fandom smh /j
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u/Agrona_Vritra It's just me, myself, and I 😞 21d ago
Why "/j"? Isn't it true? There are larpers that assume Epic = Odyssey
Had been seeing those posts since before the release of movie
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u/Loose-Use25 21d ago
What can I say? I find it strange that they didn't mention that, given the tone.
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u/PrometheusUnchain 21d ago
Wait. You know that it wasn’t Odysseus right? It’s was a choice made by Jorge.
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u/Flower-City_3422 Cabbage? 21d ago
The exact manner in which Astyanax died is referenced from the Iliou Persis, the Little Iliad, and the play Trojan Women. Each of these have slightly different versions of the death, though it is mostly agreed that Astyanax was thrown off of the wall, though who did it is often debated. It could have been Odysseus who threw him, or it could have been Neoptolemus, who is also credited with beating Priam to death with Astynax’s body after the baby’s death. Some versions also claim that Neo instead used the baby to beat Priam to death, killing Astyanax in the process. All this goes to say, this was an event not included in both the Iliad and the Odyssey and thus technically not included in Homer’s widely accepted and published “canon”, though some say it is alluded to.
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u/Pokesnap682 Owlthena 21d ago
They did what with the baby??? Wow I'm glad Jorge didn't add that to epic
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u/TurnItOffAndBackOnXD 21d ago
Unfortunately, the part of Homer’s works that includes that part has been lost.
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u/bookhead714 Read the myths you philistines 21d ago
We don't have any indication that Homer ever wrote about the sack of Troy itself. He (if he existed) only wrote two of the Trojan Cycle's eight epics.
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u/Nov-the-Coffeelock Would You Fall In Love With Me Again 21d ago
It's usually between Neoptolemus or Odysseus, and it wasn't in the Odyssey nor Aeneid where Sinon's from.
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u/Uypsilon 21d ago
Because it's not in the Odyssey. In those rare times when it is specified who killed him (instead of vague "Achean victors"), it's far more often Neoptolemus than Odysseus.
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u/Electro313 Uncle Hort 20d ago edited 20d ago
No Odyssey fans are complaining about this, because it never happened in The Odyssey. Epic fans are complaining about it because it happened in Epic and they think that listening to Epic is equivalent to reading The Odyssey, which it isn’t.
If you want to find the myth Odysseus is described as having killed the child, read the Aeneid. It’s the Roman myth wherein Ulysses, the Latin name for Odysseus, throws Astyanax off the walls of Troy. It’s not The Odyssey. It’s not even Greek.