Its Hollywood Baby | Christopher Nolan's "The Odyssey"

Added: 2026-05-27

[00:00:00]They both were were leaders of different region, but if you would change that to modern times, Caesar would be a [ __ ] thotty.

[00:00:10]And Cleopatra would be like the girl boss and telling everyone like how um what a tiny Caesar has, right? He be cocked. And that's that's it. That's the modern version.

[00:00:28]>> [music] >> Let's watch this. This one by Critical Drinker.

[00:00:35]>> If there was one genre I'd love to see make a serious comeback, it's the historical epic. Swords and sandals, gods and monsters, battles and adventures, legendary warriors and terrifying villains. I mean It's a beautiful. I mean it doesn't get more uh dude movies than that, right? Like >> [snorts] >> these battles and I don't know. I get that they want to tell a modern story, but it collides with these worlds, right? The way they talk, saying dad and bro and and they got this hip hop music.

[00:01:11]>> Hollywood's flirted with the idea from time to time over the past couple of decades. Some more successful than others. Don't worry though, 300, you'll always have a Cuz you want to kind of like immerse yourself, right? So you don't want to change it too much from the source material.

[00:01:28]>> special place in my heart. Hi, appreciate that. I would be it. No. THIS IS SPARTA!

[00:01:37]YES.

[00:01:38]>> BUT IT SEEMS LIKE THIS year things might finally be changing. Christopher Nolan has turned his gigantic quantum space brain away from discovering the secrets of the universe and assembled one of the biggest all-star cast in modern Hollywood.

[00:01:50]>> we've been talking about this all week, right? The way I mean we're talking about this all the time, the way Hollywood is ruining the industry. For The Odyssey, a retelling of Homer's epic saga about the Greek king Odysseus and his long journey to get home to his family after fighting in the Trojan Wars for another 10 years before that.

[00:02:12]Meanwhile, his wife has to keep the home fires burning and contend with the unwanted advances of men who want the crown. It's actually kind of hilarious when you look at all this on a map because a journey from Troy to Ithaca is only like 500 miles by sea and it should have taken him a couple of weeks. But man, the gods just had it in for that [ __ ] guy. "Honey, I'm home."

[00:02:33]What the hell happened? Look what the fates stranded. Anyway, stories don't get much more epic than The Odyssey. It truly is one of the great adventures in human history, blended together mythology, religion, monsters, and the unbreakable determination of the human spirit. And bringing it to life on screen is a challenge that will strain the very limits of modern filmmaking. But now that I've seen the trailer and I've considered the artistic vision behind this movie, I have to say my reaction was meh. I don't know what it is, man.

[00:03:03]There's just something about this movie that doesn't quite stir anything in me, which is pretty surprising because in theory, at least, it's got all the ingredients for success.

[00:03:12]>> Yeah. The kind of source material that's practically tailor-made for epic Hollywood filmmaking, the kind of all-star cast that only comes together once in a generation, and a director with a mostly good track record as a filmmaker. So, why the [ __ ] does it feel so bland? Well, to try and answer this, let's take a closer look at those key elements again, shall we? First of all, there's the source material. I don't like you at all. Wrong. Wrong. Well, the problem is that The Odyssey [laughter] was originally written in ancient Greek, obviously, meaning that it has to be translated into English for it to be legible. And what kind of story you ultimately get very much depends on which translated version you reads. In this case Yes, of course. The it matters with the translation, but the concept should be like, come on. You can't just go because you're a feminist in 2020s go like, "Oh, by the way, let's change history and it turns out that I can translate the old Greek into like the women um basically made all the decisions.

[00:04:23]And I don't want this version and clearly no one cares for this version either. It's a stupid chick that decided to change uh the the translation so it fits her norm.

[00:04:36]This is not history. This is her um trying to do a spin-off of what never actually happened.

[00:04:45]Christopher Nolan has publicly stated that he's a big fan of the 2017 adaptation of the Odyssey, which was translated from Greek by British writer Emily Wilson. Why exactly does that matter? Well, because Emily Wilson just so happens to be a hardcore progressive feminist who specifically set out to rewrite sorry, reimagine Homer That's it, though. Can we please stop reimagining things? text through a female-coded gender-critical postmodernist lens.

[00:05:14]Because of course she did. Of course she did. stretching the very limits of the original text and around modern sensibilities.

[00:05:22]It's the same kind of creeping, clawing, "Well, I think what he really meant to say here was" [ __ ] that gave us 2026's Animal Farm, a story that went from a parable about the Russian Revolution to a ridiculous, shallow, capitalism bad piece of Hollywood slop.

[00:05:39]That is the version we're likely to get here with all its gender identity navel-gazing. And if that doesn't raise a few red flags, then let's take a closer look at that all-star cast, shall we? Now, Matt Damon and Anne Hathaway are solid enough as the two leads, at least. I mean, if I was to be super critical, I'd say that Hathaway hasn't done anything particularly significant since, well, the last time she crazy the crazy >> in a Christopher Nolan movie, and she was arguably the worst thing about Interstellar, but that's a conversation for another day. I can't say I'm ever particularly excited by an Anne Hathaway project, but holy [ __ ] is she making a comeback this year. In 2020 Oh my god, is it only chick flicks?

[00:06:21]six alone, she's in five separate movie projects, one of which is playing in the cinemas right now. But speaking of overexposed actors that we could all use a break from, Zendaya is in this movie as Um the crazy thing is there's always been a powerful women in history. They have.

[00:06:39]Yet whenever they cast a woman now, they act like the strong women in a a brand new concept. And I hate that there's only a strong women, but not strong men anymore, and they don't live in harmony and balance, right? They don't respect one another.

[00:06:57]So if there's a powerful woman, let's say Cleo- Cleopatra, right? She was a leader and a woman, and then let's take Caesar. They both were were leaders of different region, but if you would change that to modern times, Caesar would be a [ __ ] party, and Cleopatra would be like the girl boss, and telling everyone like how um what a tiny Caesar has, right? He be cocked. And that's that's it. That's the modern version. Is Athena, the goddess of wisdom. OH NO.

[00:07:35]>> [laughter] [laughter] >> HOLY [ __ ] MAN. THIS GIRL'S THE female equivalent of Jason Statham and she is just everywhere all of a sudden and for the life of me I cannot understand why. I have never seen a single Zendaya She She is boring. She's like the same role in all the movies like Dune, Spider-Man, um the Doctor Strange one. She's always got the same expression and the same like totally overrated if you ask me. There's not much you very boring.

[00:08:11]Yeah, she looks hot but that's about it.

[00:08:14]performance in my life and thought, "Oh my god, she absolutely carried this movie." Tell me, what's your favorite Zendaya expression? The angry frown, the confused frown, or the confused angry >> which expression is it? The happy Zendaya, the sad one, the confused one, the raging one, the really loud and obnoxious one, the mysterious and and and strange one.

[00:08:41]Maybe she's horny in this one. Who knows? Look the same.

[00:08:45]>> be frowned. Yeah, she's hot but she She doesn't show emotion. High strung.

[00:08:51]>> As what exactly? I don't [ __ ] know.

[00:08:53]She's like 5 ft tall and weighs 90 lb soaking wet.

[00:09:02]This is not an Achilles. It's not.

[00:09:06]And I know it's just rumor and but since the other one got confirmed, I'm I bet this one's confirmed, too.

[00:09:13]It's so bad.

[00:09:15]Oh, no. Wait, so I don't really see how they're going to fit into the role of the terrifying monsters.

[00:09:21]And Zendaya is rumored to be playing the Greek princess Helen of Troy, which if it turns out to be true would make about as much sense as the terrifying monsters. And Zendaya is rumored to be playing the Greek princess Helen of Troy, which if it It It has been confirmed. She's the Helen of Troy. It's confirmed now. This uh video is a couple of days old, but yeah, it's true.

[00:09:39]>> [snorts] >> She's going to be the Helen of Troy.

[00:09:42]She's the reason Sparta is going to war with Troy.

[00:09:49]And I don't see it. Papa as sweet as you point Severus Snape, but hey, what can I say? It's Hollywood, baby. It's Hollywood.

[00:09:57]But the thing that stood out for me about the entire cast in this trailer was >> that launched a thousand ships.

[00:10:04]Every time I saw one of them, all I thought was, "Oh yeah, there's Robert Pattinson. There's Charlize Theron.

[00:10:10]There's Tom Holland. Where are the larger than life mythical figures of legend that should be True, it's only actors. It's not really like >> [snorts] >> brutes and berserkers and like these edgy square where where you would believe that they have spent decades in a war fighting the uh front and and actually pull it off, like make it believable that these are rough and tough men, right?

[00:10:40]Leaping from the pages of Homer's epic to amaze us all, it all feels weirdly subdued and underwhelming. And a big part of that decision is to have them speak with American accents, modern terminology.

[00:10:52]My dad is coming home. Oh, your dad's coming back, is he? Did he take some [ __ ] selfies? Hope he didn't get Godmogged along the way. Can you imagine like a um Greek uh gentleman back in the days going like, "Yeah, my dad.

[00:11:08]My dad going to pick me up, you know?"

[00:11:10]And it's like e-scooter.

[00:11:12]And then [snorts] I'm going to go shopping with mom. They would use words like father and and make it more poetic, make it more believable. Use the language to set a narrative and um immerse yourself on how they would have expressed themselves back in the days with being more civilized.

[00:11:34]Like, you know, and titles and respect and the way the world used to be.

[00:11:43]You couldn't just like, "Yeah, bro, 6 7.

[00:11:47]Dude, is my dad going to come any minute now?" Like, what the [ __ ] are we doing?

[00:11:54]Hey, there's a reason movies like this traditionally use theatrical English and formal language in movies.

[00:11:59]>> the music, right? It You want to hear orchestras, you want to hear classical music, you want to hear like epic horns blowing in the distance and I don't know, big drums slapping and what do you get? Like hip hop, like, "Yo, yo, yo."

[00:12:16]Like, what the freak are we doing?

[00:12:18]>> dialogue. It gives them a sense of grandeur, seriousness, and formality, which naturally lends itself to the epic story they're trying to tell. Having your actors talk like they just walked in off the street in downtown LA just feels I'm thinking of actors like >> [snorts] >> Patrick Stewart or, you know, like real theater, how Imagine if you watched Lord of the Rings and Frodo would be like, "Yo, dude, I'm going to trust the ring in the mountain."

[00:12:49]And then dad is going to be like, "What the [ __ ] 6 7?" Can you imagine?

[00:12:55]What a shitty movie it would have been like if the elves just talked like any random Joe Schmo on the street. It feels weirdly lazy and immersion breaking. And before anyone chimes in with little pearls of wisdom like, "Drinkard, you know as well as I do they would have spoken Greek in a story like this.

[00:13:13][laughter] So, why does it even matter what accents they use?"

[00:13:15]>> matter.

[00:13:16]>> Well, hypothetical straw man, we all know the language they would have spoken, but we also know that having your entire cast learn a whole new language just so the audience can sit through 3 hours of subtitles is neither practical nor logical. That doesn't mean that you have to go in completely the other direction and give us [ __ ] like this. Let's go.

[00:13:36]And this all brings me Let's go.

[00:13:39]Now, I'm thinking like movies like Braveheart and you know, it's set in a certain era of time and you wouldn't have had these modern words that are slang. me back to the man at the center of all of this. Christopher Nolan, the director and writer. Now, I know the man has a fan base so rabidly loyal that they make Snyder bros >> They have a character and personality and they are fascinating films. He's a brilliant director and writer.

[00:14:08]The guy can also be his own worst enemy.

[00:14:10]Sometimes he really is just >> And honestly, I miss ugly actors. Ugly actors have character.

[00:14:18]Everyone looks so plastic face and botoxed up and and weird and I I don't want that. Like that's a different weird character. I need those scruffy dudes and I don't know.

[00:14:32]If I compare with like '80s and '90s movies, they look way more scruffy.

[00:14:37]And which was cool because it made you believe that this could actually be um real, right? This could be me and in the ancient times or my neighbor or I I can relate to this character rather than having that plastic face that uh this Hollywood look, you know what I mean?

[00:14:58]too smart for his own goods. Rightly or wrongly, he's developed a reputation as a clinical, intellectual, and slightly sterile kind of director. A master of ideas who can't seem to wrap his head around simple humanity. And I get the impression that's always chafed at him, especially with his movies and movies where it feels like he's got something to prove. Like the weirdly out of place line Cuz if you think about it, and I notice this a lot. Modern movies back in the days, let's say we we have a wild west movie, right? From Let's go time frame 60s.

[00:15:35]Um some kind of Let's go Charles Bronson for instance.

[00:15:41]His face would be smeared up with mud and ash and and you know, um the dust that's that's blowing and and so you would hardly like see his face.

[00:15:52]It would be all uh scranny and and rough, right? And nowadays you you make the same movie and you you put an actor in like Brad Pitt or or I don't know, Leonardo DiCaprio.

[00:16:06]Um Leonardo DiCaprio in in that one movie where he's like that It goes way too long and he um slays all these bears, right? His face He doesn't look dirty enough. He's crawling around in the yet he doesn't look dirty. It kind of looks like almost this perfect a little bit mud stain here and a little bit of of a scrap there, but not fully on, you know?

[00:16:36]And it's it's weird. The Revenant, yeah.

[00:16:39]Compare that with an old um Charles Bronson movie. I I don't know. I like A handful of few uh dollars more or The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Take an actor from those movies and look how how dirty and and um smeared up they are.

[00:17:00]Which makes it believable because you really believe like, "Okay, he went to uh through some [ __ ] and that's why he looks so disgusting."

[00:17:08]But then you take a newer movie like The Revenant for instance and yes, he's still dirty, but not in the same way. He looks almost too perfect dirty.

[00:17:21]Love scenes in Oppenheimer that feels like two androids replicating their understanding of a human relationship.

[00:17:27]And Nolan definitely has a niche, but character-driven historical [clears throat] epics don't seem to be it. And with Odyssey, it's like he's saying, "See, there's more to me than sci-fi thrillers and slightly overrated superhero movies." And I don't know, man. All movies are overrated. to the bleak washed-out cinematography, I can't shake the feeling that he just isn't the right man to direct a movie like this. I mean, [ __ ] maybe I'm totally wrong on this one. Maybe the Odyssey will be the crowning achievement in Nolan's career and make more money than Avatar. Or maybe it'll turn out to be his own personal albatross. Time, as always, will tell. But I'll be interested to see how it pans out one way or the other.

[00:18:05]Anyway, let's look at this image here.

[00:18:10]Look at this. You can tell this is not Well, sorry.

[00:18:17]This is not like a in an actual area.

[00:18:23]And the sand, I don't know.

[00:18:27]It's almost perfectly in line. It's not as messy. It's not like you know, they weren't like a hundred actors there getting all down and grungy and and messing up.

[00:18:42]It looks too clean. And also, if you notice like the colors of movies today, everything goes in a shade of beige and and this gray. And there's not these like orange, bright colors that we used to see in in older movies.

[00:19:01]It had a more like vivid light because probably because they were recording in and doing live-action takes.

[00:19:11]They would actually travel to foreign destinations and record and and make everything, you know, look kind of real.

[00:19:23]Still on a movie set for sure, but but with the combination of adding um real sequences. And today, everything is kind of uh just set up to perfection. We're not real. Let's just be honest. Nothing is real anymore. Certainly not the internet. Everything is freaking fake.