An excerpt from my script review for The Odyssey which will be available 08/07/26:
2.) Plot Stability
I’ll come right out and admit it, this was not my favorite Christopher Nolan project.
It wasn’t bad, but similar to my feelings on Project Hail Mary, I’m not sure I’ll be sitting through this one again when it comes to streaming.
The two camps on it seem to be either those who read the poem and liked it, and those who were only vaguely familiar with it and thought it was just okay.
Admittedly, I’m in the latter camp, having escaped reading it in AP English senior year and then while in college.
Two people that did enjoy it though were the boy, who I went to see it with, and my buddy from work I mentioned during our Obsession review.
Both had read it before, the boy most recently having just completed AP Greek Mythology spring semester.
(Naturally it was fresh in his mind.)
Both clued me in to what was done right, and then certain aspects that were left out.
Again, the film wasn’t bad, but I have no real desire to go out and learn more about it based on the experience and aside from a few spots in this review.
(In fact as we were walking out of the theater, and the boy was explaining to me and his girlfriend all the details that were missed, I’m glad she drove him home to suffer through all that and not yours truly!)
One of the aspects that Nolan apparently got right was the idea of Zeus’s Law, in that households had to treat others as they’d want to be treated because you never know when a god may visit your home in disguise.
(So, the golden rule.)
This was apparently absent in earlier cinema versions and played a crucial role in this plot, as Telemachus couldn’t insult or throw out his mother’s suitors (even after 4+ years) and then later when Antinous assaults Odysseus cloaked as a beggar.
Breaking Zeus’s law is a big “no, no” and folks take it seriously…even freeloading would be kings…
And it’s implied that this is why Odysseus and his crew are cursed when they try to return home, by creating a fake offering to Athena to sneak into Troy and sack the city.
Cheating the gods so to speak.
But according to my buddy at work, and it’s hinted at in the film/script, the main reason they’re cursed is because of Odysseus’s interaction with the Cyclops and angering Poseidon.
Apparently in the actual poem, Odysseus converses with the Cyclops, explaining his name is “Nobody”.
(This was before Bob Odenkirk’s time…)
When the Cyclops calls for help, after being blinded, other cyclopes (the plural of “cyclops” that I had to look up) ask who’s attacking him, to which he says, “Nobody is attacking me,” and thus gets no help.
Then, instead of firing the arrow (or maybe in addition to it, I didn’t read the poem remember) Odysseus arrogantly shouts his name to the Cyclops as a final taunt, and it’s then that Poseidon curses Odysseus and his crew for their hubris and assaulting one of his children.
Feel like this could have been added in, but probably wasn’t because it kind of makes Odysseus look like a real dick.
In addition to that, and I assume the epic poem shares the same issue, is that Odysseus’s voyage is very episodic.
They bounce from island to island with one encounter after another that in the script and film, really only serve as different action set pieces.
My biggest complaint, and a point I chose to go to the bathroom, was the Laestrygonians (wow that’s a mouthful!) who were the giant soldiers on the one island that killed all but the main ship and crew.
I get that they needed to resupply, and that Odysseus was forced to face these various challenges before returning home, but this scene in particular just felt disjointed compared to the rest, almost as if it belonged in some sort of montage a la 300 where we see the various forces the Spartans fight.
Here though, I’m assuming from the back-story I read online, are merely giants who threw rocks at the boats from the cliffs in the poem, but in the film are these random armored giants who could will the trees to move to trap the soldiers, just felt out of place.
Another episodic scene was visiting the old lady in the hut…it wasn’t bad, and felt connected in that by beating her challenge by not eating or attacking her, Odysseus is pointed in the right direction how to get home.
What I didn’t care for here was how there’s a graveyard of wrecked ships on the beach and then a graveyard of armor behind her house and it doesn’t throw up warning bells to the soldiers?
They’ve seemed pretty competent up to this point.
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