The Odyssey Movie - Review | Does This 3,000 Year Old Epic Finally Get It Right? Yay or Nay?

[00:00:00]Greek gods, epic adventures, Zendaya, holy feta cheese Batman. I just saw The Odyssey and we're talking about it in the reaction chamber.

[00:00:13]>> [music] >> Hey, you're watching the 757 hustle show. My name is George. Just saw The Odyssey finally. Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey is out. Check it out if you want. I'm going to be giving you a 3,000-year-old spoiler. So, WARNING WARNING WARNING.

[00:00:28]YEAH, YEAH, YEAH. IT'S a 3,000-year-old story. It's out in the theaters this week. It's got Matt Damon, Zendaya, Spider-Man, Tom Holland, The Punisher's in it, Batman's in it. Uh Uh Benny Blanco from the Bronx is in it from Carlito's Way. Yeah, man. Why is this important? Why isn't this important?

[00:00:47]>> Odyssey is a foundational pillar of Western literature because it established the blueprint for modern storytelling. Most notably, it popularized the hero's journey template, the narrative structure still used in everything from Star Wars to The Lord of the Rings. Beyond its structural legacy, the epic is important for several key reasons. Timeless themes. It explores universal human experiences like the longing for home, nostos, tempta- >> Nostos. We're going to learn some Greek today, too.

[00:01:12]>> and perseverance, identity, and loyalty.

[00:01:15]Cultural blueprint. It shaped ancient Greek identity. Values such as xenia, the sacred law of hospitality.

[00:01:22]>> In the movie, remember that. In the movie they referred to that as Zeus's law, xenia. Zeus's law. That's a big theme in the movie.

[00:01:30]>> Just beliefs.

[00:01:32]Character archetypes. It introduced enduring archetypal figures from the cunning flawed hero, Odysseus, to the faithful partner, Penelope, and the coming-of-age son, Telemachus.

[00:01:44]>> All right. So, that's your main cast right there. That's uh Matt Damon is the daddy. Uh what's it? Everybody Devil Wears Prada. What's her name? She plays Penelope. That's his wife, Matt Damon's wife. And uh Spider-Man is their son.

[00:01:59]Right? Till I don't know. I mess up these names, so I'm just going to talk pop culture references, okay? [laughter] Yeah, so you got uh Jason Bourne, uh Devil Wears Prada, and Spider-Man.

[00:02:09]That's the fam. All right?

[00:02:11]So, uh all right. Let's break this down.

[00:02:16]Did I enjoy the movie?

[00:02:18]Did I enjoy the movie? Yes, I enjoyed the movie. Right? I enjoyed the movie.

[00:02:23]Yeah, yeah, yeah. That That's good.

[00:02:27]But, I was disappointed. I was disappointed in this movie.

[00:02:32]And I I think I was so hyped up for it, you know? And let me tell you why. I have a deep connection to the story. Uh my I'm half Greek. My dad, growing up, these were my bedtime stories. So, growing up, these were my bedtime stories, Greek mythology, Odysseus, Hercules, Perseus, all that stuff, you know? And uh maybe this is why I got into comic books, you know, and I'm into pop culture and superheroes and and storytelling. I mean, I've always been into the Odyssey.

[00:02:58]Uh I love the '97 movie. I love that one. I could watch that all the time.

[00:03:04]Leading up to this movie, I was going down a lot of rabbit holes again. I was re-educating myself on the story. I read the I read the big-ass book, uh the Iliad in uh high school, you know what I'm saying? A lot of big words, a lot of big Greek names, you know, souvlaki this, souvlaki that.

[00:03:20]But, uh but I basically I know that you know, I'm not going to say I'm an expert. I'm not going to say I'm an expert on the Iliad and Homer and on Trojan War and everything. But, I pretty much know the story. Just like I know the He-Man lore or you know, I know the you know, the Superman lore. You know, you know the basics. You know the basics, right?

[00:03:38]All right.

[00:03:39]So, there's a lot of controversy with this movie leading off with the casting, because of the way it looked, the skin color, blah, blah, blah, blah. That [ __ ] don't bother me. That stuff don't bother me. So, disregard disregard there's a Chinese guy playing Odysseus. Disregard, there's a trans playing Achilles. I mean, disregard all that stuff.

[00:03:58]First of all, here's the big spoiler.

[00:04:01]Elliot Page or whatever he identifies himself as is is not playing Achilles. Yeah.

[00:04:08]No, all that hate and all that stuff, forget that. There's none of that stuff. Lupita plays Helen of Troy.

[00:04:16]She's in it for 30 seconds. She's in it for 30 seconds and actually has a badass scene. She's a beautiful lady. Yeah, she's not blonde with blue eyes like the way everybody wants or the way Homer described her. But then again, Homer was blind. So, true story. Look that up. All right. With that being said, now the story is the story. The story I'm going to talk about the movie itself as a movie. Okay, it's almost 3 hours long.

[00:04:42]Man, I was in that chair like this at one point like, come on, man. Come on.

[00:04:46]Come on, man.

[00:04:47]You know.

[00:04:48]They set it up in flashbacks. They set up the story in flashbacks. Based on and but the story felt the movie felt like it was edited. And it's weird, man. I You know, Chris Nolan is a genius, you know. I I Batman Begins is probably one of my favorite, probably a top five favorite movies of mine. Not just cuz it's a superhero movie, but just as a movie itself. The music, everything, you know.

[00:05:14]That's the hero's journey right there. I did not get the hero's journey with Matt Damon. For real.

[00:05:20]I did not get the hero's journey with Matt Damon. No. Actually, it felt like Matt Damon was a dick. Everybody in this movie was kind of like had an attitude.

[00:05:28]I'm telling you, everybody in this movie was Odysseus, Matt Damon was kind of like a prick. His right hand man the whole time the I don't know the actor's dude, but his Achilles What's his name?

[00:05:43]Epilipus? I see these names. I'm Greek and I screw up these names. So, his right-hand man didn't like um Um um I don't know, man. There was a lot of edits, a lot of deliveries, a lot of line deliveries I felt like distracted me. You know what I'm saying? It was just weird. It's like they get to the Cyclops, they get to the cave and all of a sudden it's just like Matt Damon is just like we need this, we need rope, we need this, we need this. And I'm like, what?

[00:06:09]It just It just felt weird. It just didn't Let me rephrase that. It didn't feel natural.

[00:06:14]It didn't It didn't feel natural. You know what I'm saying? It It didn't feel natural.

[00:06:18]Now, I don't need everybody speaking like ancient Greek or whatever the you know, they didn't even talk ancient Greek back then, but you know, whatever language they spoke back then.

[00:06:27]So, that kind of bothered me. All right.

[00:06:30]The action sequences we basically see everything in the trailer.

[00:06:36]The Cyclops scene, yeah, that was cool.

[00:06:39]The Cyclops scene, you know what I'm saying? He comes in there and they did the whole thing. And they did the thing with the sheep and everything. You know, the Cyclops the action was good. Seeing him on the boat was good. You know, you see him all on the boat, you know, and they're sailing and all that. A lot of the I I I think Nolan tried to give us his version of Lord of the Rings, but I think he failed. I think he missed it.

[00:06:56]You know, he tried to give us that epic epic feel. No, there's a lot of PTSD in this. A lot of PTSD in this.

[00:07:05]Like I said, it didn't feel like the hero's journey.

[00:07:08]All right. So, as a movie itself, as a movie itself, it's okay. It It looked dark. It looked like It was a uh a a doomy filter. There's like no color.

[00:07:20]You tell me there was like no color back then. Even like the the the the flowers, everything everything looked looked you know, Charlize Theron was the the most brightest thing and then God bless her. God bless her, I guess.

[00:07:31]But but uh All right. With that being said, like I didn't like But that's all subjective.

[00:07:36]You know, if It looked It felt like a uh a Snyderverse film if if that makes sense to my nerds out there. You know, Mar- MCU's all popping with colors and this felt like very dim.

[00:07:49]Everything was like gray and you know, everybody was like Deb- everybody like I said, his boy I kept calling his boy Debbie Downer, his his his right-hand man.

[00:07:58]All right, so but that is just all subjective, that's all taste. I like a little bit of salt, I like a little more garlic, you know, like I always said, so that's up to you if you like the way something looks.

[00:08:10]Now, what it's based off of.

[00:08:16]I'm going in to see a movie called The Odyssey.

[00:08:19]The Odyssey has Greek gods.

[00:08:21]The Odyssey has monsters. The Odyssey [music] has battles, soldiers, you know?

[00:08:28]Do we get all of that?

[00:08:30]No.

[00:08:31]We did- We didn't. First of all, we see Zendaya as Athena.

[00:08:37]We see Zendaya as Athena, but uh we don't even know spoilers, this is spoilers. We don't know if that's really Athena or just a PTSD ghost of somebody that got killed in the Trojan War. So, all right, uh we missed out on a lot of the Greek stuff. They mentioned Apollo and his calf, they mentioned, you know, they mention it. Uh they they they mentioned Poseidon, but no physical presence of Poseidon, you know? They mentioned Zeus, you know, in in the book uh Zeus sends a lightning bolt and blows up the whole boat and destroys everybody except for Odysseus. We don't even get that. We just see like a storm, some like like is he trying to be grou- he's trying to be grounded, but yet we have the monsters. We have the Cyclops.

[00:09:24]We have the I forgot the names, you know, the Scylla, the one that comes out out of the the mountain, the six-headed thing that eats the guys. The whirlpool was there and we had our two witches or or demigods or what whatever they're called Circe and Calypso.

[00:09:42]Right?

[00:09:43]That was a great scene. That was a good horror scene. I'm going to I'm going to that was good. That was good. So, in the story she turns spoilers cuz I know the spoiler 3,000-year-old spoiler Circe turns the sailor guys, the soldiers into pigs.

[00:09:58]You know, there's like a whole section that happens that the way that happens that was legit horror, bro. That was That was good. That was good.

[00:10:05]That was good.

[00:10:07]Like I said, we we get it we get our Greek monsters. The sirens that was a cool scene. I like the way they did that. I'll admit that was pretty cool.

[00:10:13]So, that was a good scene because instead of hearing what the sirens the crazy evil mermaids were doing all you hear is nothing.

[00:10:23]It was just like muted while the in the sailors and you just see Matt Damon going crazy. So, okay. That's there was good stuff in it. Don't get me wrong. There was good stuff. But the reason why is like everybody's like, "Oh my god, this is so epic. This is so epic." Like, calm down, bro. Calm down.

[00:10:40]It's not that great.

[00:10:42]It's not that great. A lot of people will be bored.

[00:10:45]A lot of people will be bored. I am familiar with the story. I am very familiar with the story, so I know what's going to happen. You know what I'm saying? I know what's coming up next.

[00:10:54]You know? But some people are like, "What is going on here?" You know?

[00:10:59]All right.

[00:11:00]Final thoughts. Final thoughts.

[00:11:03]Uh if you're not into long movies, do not go see this in the theater.

[00:11:08]It is 3 hours long. If you are into streaming, wait for this to come out on streaming. I highly recommend seeing it at home at your own leisure.

[00:11:18]You know?

[00:11:20]Uh the cast you know, I don't like the Punisher dude. I'll be honest with you.

[00:11:25]I don't like John Bernthal's uh The Punisher he does the same [ __ ] He was the same guy.

[00:11:32]He was the same guy in this movie. The same guy we see the Punisher all eating all like a slob. You know, you see that in there. I mean, I I guess he's a method actor. I don't know what you call that, but so John Leguizamo Benny Blanco from the Bronx he still talk like he he still talks like he's got a you know, Queens accent.

[00:11:53]Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's just like their deliveries were throwing me off, man. I don't expect everybody to talk with a a proper, you know, English accent or a Greek accent or anything, but but it was just like it just threw me off. It just threw me off, man. You know, and uh it had a lot of good, but a lot of the bad bothered me more. So, if you're going to go watch it, let me know in the comments if you made it all the way to the end, say hashtag hashtag I love I love Greek gods. Hashtag I love Greek gods.

[00:12:29]If you made it all the way to the end, let me know if you see it. You want you want to go see it and then you've seen this video, come back and let me know in the comments.

[00:12:36]I might have to rewatch it again. Like I said, I was so hyped up for it.

[00:12:40]The changes, you know, oh, he's got silver. Oh, Lupita's dark skin.

[00:12:45]None of that stuff bothers me.

[00:12:46]None of that stuff bothers me. That None of that stuff distracts from the movie.

[00:12:50]Oh, his sword is is 200 years wrong, you know?

[00:12:55]That stuff didn't you know, I don't care. I don't care about that stuff. You know, you really want to you really Some people do. I know some people it matters, but not to me. All right, my name is George. You've been watching the Sun Five Sun High Show. Like and subscribe. And uh thumbs up or thumbs down?

[00:13:11]I'm still going to give give it a thumbs up. I'm still going to It's not a bad movie. I just [music] think it's overrated.

[00:13:19]I just think it's overrated. I think it missed out on To me personally, it missed out on a couple of things.

[00:13:24]I I I not get the heroes Oh, trust me, there's a journey in this.

[00:13:28]But is Matt Damon a hero in this? I didn't get that. Anyway, my name is George. You be good. I'll talk to you soon. Peace.