The Odyssey Forced Me to Change How I Review Movies

[00:00:00]I'm gonna come out and say it. If Nolan's Odysius were a girl, he'd be a girl boss.

[00:00:07]Oh my god, the freaking discourse around this movie has been so unbelievably contentious. It's made me contentious.

[00:00:17]Okay, guys, I am grumpy now. I am grumpy. Why am I grumpy? Because kids, I have been accused of harboring a prejudice toward this movie before it has even come out. When I did my review, I was accused of being a grifter. I was accused of hating on this movie for views. I was accused of perpetuating the culture war. I was accused of confirmation bias. These people think I went into this specific movie looking for a reason to hate it, which clearly shows that they don't know anything about me because I hate everything. I don't discriminate. The the truth is I just don't think modern movies are as good as they used to be. I just don't.

[00:00:59]And I think we as an audience are being asked to lower the bar. I don't think the same thing applies for television. I think there's a lot of really good TV shows out there. And in fact, I gravitate a lot more towards television than movies because I see a lot of really good things, a lot of really interesting concepts, unique new stories that are being told. And I get the same thing over and over and over again from movies. It's a sequel. It's a reboot.

[00:01:24]It's an adaptation. And they're all just like some variation of kind of sucky.

[00:01:29]And so it really bugs me when somebody accuses me of having a prejudice against film. Maybe I do, but that's just because I have standards. Okay? Don't come for me when your movie doesn't meet my standards. But since we're here and since I don't want to be labeled as the girl who just hates everything, I've developed a set of criteria that I'm going to use to judge movies and TV going forward. I'm going to call it the Emily score. [bell] And here's the criteria I'm going to use to give an Emily score to a film or TV show. Here we go. One, character development. This includes the dialogue, the acting, the writing, uh exposition, like the backstory of a character.

[00:02:11]Number two, plot. Now, there's a lot that goes into plot. Is the plot cohesive? Is it easy to follow? Does the story have momentum? Do I just absolutely need to find out what's going to happen next? What about the pacing?

[00:02:24]Does it feel rushed? Do I feel like I've invested in these characters that I've spent an appropriate amount in each act before reaching, you know, the final payoff or the climax? A lot that goes into the plot. Number three, payoff or emotional impact. You know, this could be seen as part of a plot, but I think it's really impacted by both the plot and the character development. After all, if we have characters that we don't really like or care about, why should we care what happens to them? That greatly impacts the payoff of the whole thing.

[00:02:54]The payoff or emotional impact, it's usually the climax of the film, but not always. You know, sometimes this could be a death of a major character, right?

[00:03:02]Or a big romantic moment like when Jim and Pam finally finally get together.

[00:03:07]Those are emotional impacts or payoffs that we the audience get out of putting our time and energy into the story.

[00:03:14]Number four, world building or suspension of disbelief. How much does the movie invite me into the world? How much does it make me forget about where I am and how sucked up into the story do I get? You know, this is easy to articulate when you have these big sci-fi or fantasy movies like Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings or Star Wars, but a lot of time it's even just more subtle than that, right? Like how believable is it that a group of terrorists can take over Nakatami Tower in Die Hard? How believable is that storyline? In Disclosure Day, there was no world building. You had no idea how the aliens were in relation to the people. They had this little alien thing, this little gadget that conveniently did anything that the script asked of it, right? Like it could like melt people's faces off or it could make you telepathic or it could like make you invisible, but you really didn't get a sense of what the aliens world was, how that interacted with human beings. So, the world building, the suspension of disbelief is a really key component in letting us buy into the story. Similarly, you've got Game of Thrones season 7 where they absolutely just stopped giving a [ __ ] about the geography of Westeros and decided that someone could make it from the north all the way down to King's Landing in two days as opposed to the month's journey that it took them in season 1. There there are little elements in both movies and TV shows that allow us to suspend our disbelief to buy into this universe.

[00:04:42]whatever it is that you're asking us to buy into, there are rules, there are established protocols, there are visuals that get us to buy into that world. And number five, technical creativity. Okay, this is the just the big bucket that encompasses like cinematography, practical effects, music, art direction, all of those things, all of those components that go into the bigger picture that translates the story onto the screen. This is something you can't get in books, you guys. This is something that only a film or a television show, anything on the screen can bring to us. The little emotions that an actor portrays as their character, those are things that are just they're not available to us with the written word. And so I think it's a really key component when we're evaluating a piece of cinema, whether it's film or television, how that is impacted or how that is aided visually through the technical aspects. So each one of these criteria is ranked on a scale of 1 to 10. They get averaged out and then turned into a percentage. And I go by the grades that my high school gave me. And I don't care if they're tough. This is what I had to do to graduate high school. And now it's the standard that I'm applying to film and television. So suck it. A 93% or above is an A. A 90 to a 92% is a B+. An 85 to 90% is a B. 80 to 85% is a B minus. 75 to 80% is a C plus. 70 to 75% is a C. 65 to 70% is a D and less than 65% is an F.

[00:06:12]So, where does the Odyssey rank for me?

[00:06:14]First up on the list is character development. And I'm just going to group all of this, all of these characters together under one big bucket. It would just take like an entire separate video to go through and separate each individual character, each individual's performance. It was an ensemble cast, so there was a lot to dig into. But just as a general standard, if I'm just looking at the big bucket, I'm just going to go ahead and say that the performances were great. Okay, I have nothing against any of these actors. I think they all did a tremendous job. Really think she's good in almost everything she's in. I have, you know, kind of a personal fondness for Tom Holland. I can't unsee Spider-Man and how just kind of like adorable he is. I do think he was getting a little old for this role. Like I could tell that he was 30, you know what I mean? But I still think he pulled it off. I think by and large all of the performances in this movie were great.

[00:07:04]The big problems I had were with the writing and you might say that there wasn't enough time to develop all of the characters that there were too many things happening at once and a lot of that was overtaken by the action. But it was a threehour film you guys. There's plenty of time in there for exposition.

[00:07:20]There's plenty of time in there for backstory that I just don't feel like I got. And the biggest disappointment of all of them for me really was Odysius. I think people were right. I think Matt Damon was a complete miscast for this role. Especially when I went back and I looked at Shawn Bean's Odysius in Troy.

[00:07:37]It's there's no comparison.

[00:07:40]>> Mean's brother. We were told King Odysius is here in the hills.

[00:07:46]>> Odicius.

[00:07:50]That old bastard drinks my wine and never pays.

[00:07:54]>> More to respect your king, friend.

[00:07:57]respect him. I'd like to punch him in the face. She was pouring at my wife trying to tear her clothes off.

[00:08:04]>> And and also just as a disclaimer, you guys, I am evaluating these characters, not based on who they are in the Odyssey and Homer's Odyssey. I am only looking at Nolan's characters. I am looking at the characters of this movie as Nolan wrote them as they were portrayed on the screen. And I'm just I'm asking you now, what is the most memorable line of dialogue that Odysius gave us? What is something that sticks out in your brain like in a really good way? What what said to you, "Yeah, this is Odysius.

[00:08:36]This is the guy."

[00:08:37]>> You are you.

[00:08:45]>> King Agamemnon has a favor to ask of you. Of course he does.

[00:08:53]>> But Nolan's Odysius, he's bland. His his dialogue is completely interchangeable.

[00:09:00]You know, when you look at any given scene at any given time, it's actually a little bit tricky to predict what Nolan's Odysius would do in that situation because sometimes he's torn and he wants to get out of the situation. He just wants to get home.

[00:09:13]And then sometimes he's a little bit clever and wily and then sometimes he's just like, you know, a fighter. But like all of it just seems like a very scattered portrayal of a human who is whatever the scene needs him to be in that moment. I'm going to come out and say it. If Nolan's Odysius were a girl, he'd be a girl boss. There's no development there. And just to just to articulate my point, I'm going to put him to the butler test. So, if you guys don't know what the butler test is, I developed a character assessment test that primarily would be used on female characters because that's part of a whole another diet tribe that I went on.

[00:09:50]But you can apply this to any character.

[00:09:52]And so, I'm going to put Adysius through the butler test. It's got three rules.

[00:09:56]Rule number one, does the character possess a skill, trait, attribute, or worldview that is completely unique to them? And actually, I'm thinking of rewriting this rule and just replacing all of that with a unique psychology. I am considering making this change because so much of what exists in rule number one is surface level, right? Like you can just say, "Oh, she's a good fighter." Or, "Oh, he plays the piano really well." Like, that doesn't really tell you about who a character is. If you say that this character has a psychology that's unique to them, that needs to show up in the backstory. That needs to show up in the dialogue. So, I haven't quite made up my mind if I'm going to change this up. We're going to apply the original test to these characters. But I'd love to know what you guys think in the comments if I should switch up rule number one. I think it would make the test immediately a lot more difficult, but maybe it shouldn't be difficult. Maybe the standard should be it should be this easy. Make the character unique in some way. Very curious to hear what you guys think about that. So, I'm I'm actually just doing the butler test on Odysius. I could do it for all of these characters, including Penelopey and Tmicus, but like in the interest of time, I'm just going to walk you through the butler test with Odysius because he's the one that I had the biggest problem with. Let's go ahead and let's apply rule number one to Odysius. Does he have a skill, trait, attribute, worldview that is completely unique to him? For the purposes of argumentation, I'm going to say yes. I'm going to say that he's skilled at fighting and he's skilled at archery. It gets a little bit trickier when it comes to his cleverness as it exists in the movie because I'm I'm a little bit painted by knowing that this is who he is in the original Odyssey. But I got to be honest with you guys, it didn't come out a lot in the movie. You know, there were times where he did something clever, but you didn't really feel like cleverness was his owned attribute, if that makes sense.

[00:11:54]You know, like I said, he really is whatever the the scene calls him to be.

[00:12:00]Similar with his hubris, you know, there are many instances of him confidently making the wrong choice. But when we look at the Odysius in Troy and the way that he jokes about himself where he's like, I ought to punch King Odysius in the face for drinking all my wine and never paying. It's like he there's this hottiness to him. There is this grandeur that's like, yeah, you know what? Yeah, I bet he is asking a favor. It's it's very he knows who he is. Uh he's got a swagger to him. There is no swagger to Matt Damon's Odysius. I'm sorry. There just isn't there is just straightforward next thing next thing next thing and then somebody describing Odysius to the audience and then him sort of acting it out. You might disagree with me. I did not feel like this Odysius is clever in the way Indiana Jones is clever. I didn't get a sense of personality from him. So I'm just going to go ahead and I'm going to say rule number one. Yes, he's skilled at archery. He's very skilled at fighting. I'll say that he's clever and that he's got hubris, but really really that is tainted by knowing who the actual Odysius is. That's really tainted by knowing that. What else is given to us in the movie? We know that he really cares about his wife and son more than anything in the whole world. I feel like that's pretty general. You know what I mean? Like that's kind of like saying, you know, Sarah Connor is unique because she's a mom. What man wouldn't really go to the ends of the earth to protect his family? It's an admirable trait, but I think it's a pretty common trait that doesn't really set Odysius aside. We're just going to go ahead and say he passes rule number one. Rule number two, does the story explain how Odysius came to be the way he is? Does it really explain how he came to be such a good archer or a warrior or how clever he is or how egotistical he is? The answer is not really. We see him doing hunting and fighting early on. There might be some lines of dialogue that explain this, but one of the things that I'll touch on here in a bit, the music, the the sound mixing was so unbelievably messy and just so loud that almost half the dialogue was lost to me. So, there could very well have been some some dialogue in here that explains how long he trained to, you know, be good at hunting. There's a whole back scene that explains how good at hunting he is and his philosophy behind hunting where he like, you know, flicks the bow before he aims at the animals that he's hunting and he says that he wants it to be a fair fight. Um, curiously enough, when they're invading Troy and they're coming out of the Trojan horse and they're attacking all the guards to open the gates of Troy, he doesn't flick his bow.

[00:14:48]So, that might be something specific that Nolan put in there. could also just be a character inconsistency, but it's not ever really explained to us how Odysius came to be the way that he is.

[00:14:57]Uh, and rule number three, is the character wrong in some way or do they possess a meaningful flaw? Again, you could say his hubris. You could say that his his ego is played out through the film. It doesn't really ever articulate how egotistical he is or how much of a downfall he causes truly. You know, there's a big scene in the original Odyssey where, you know, he's blinded the Cyclops and the Cyclops has cried out, "Who blinded me?" And Odysius says, "I am no one." And uh it's it's like a really famous line that's completely cut from the movie because Nolan felt that it didn't work with his modern dialogue.

[00:15:35]Those are things that really establish who Odysius is as a character. But one of my biggest problems with this movie is that Nolan just assumes that we already know everything about this character and so we don't really need to see him come to life because we just kind of know who he is and we're just supposed to sit back and enjoy his visualization and his cinematography as opposed to his world building and his storytelling. That's my absolute biggest gripe with this and it just comes through for me in Odysius over and over and over again that I really have no emotional connection to this character despite spending the better part of three hours with him. Those are, you know, to say that he's wrong. He's wrong a lot of times in a lot of little ways.

[00:16:18]And one of the big themes when you come to the end of the film is he realizes that part of the reason he was on this odyssey is that subconsciously he didn't want to go home because he felt that his actions at Troy were part of these this broader movement that sparked the downfall of his civilization. And you hear this in a piece of highly contested dialogue where he says our age of bronze is collapsing. You know, to me that's kind of the equivalent of somebody saying getting done with the Treaty of Versail going, "Man, that was a crazy World War I." Like, I I don't know that you would say that. You know what I mean? Like, our age of bronze is collapsing. But anyway, to go back to rule number three, he does. He is wrong about many things many times. He doesn't quite pass the Butler test for me specifically because there really isn't a backstory. There isn't a fleshing out of who he is specifically and intentionally. It's just kind of like whatever scene he's needed to be, he is in that scene. If he's climbing out of the out of the Trojan horse, he's a trickster. If he's showing up at the end um to best all the suitors, he's an archer. Like there are whatever he needs to be in the moment, that character is.

[00:17:30]And it never really feels fully formed to me. And that is one of my overall complete and total biggest problems with The Odyssey. So, just giving this category, character development, one bucket score, I'm going to give it a 6 out of 10. Overall, the performances were far far far better than the writing. The editing mucked that up even just a little bit more, but you could really tell that there were some very talented actors on the screen giving some really good performances. All right, now we get into the plot. And this is where a lot of people will disagree with me. This is probably one of the more highly contested parts of the movie because I just I didn't love it. And I think a lot of people are going to disagree with me on this, but a lot of it was embedded in the pacing. It was very, very choppy. It was very awkward. Um, the scene with the Cyclops, I think, was just one of the absolute worst in the entire movie. And it left a really really bad taste in my mouth because there was such a lack of suspense in so many of these plot points in so many of these set pieces that Odysius and his men visited. There's no setup for anything that feels like fragments of scenes. Everything is smothered in music. Even the scene where he's telling his wife that he has to go to war. And it's a very emotional scene, a very touching scene, too. Really good performances from the actors. But it's just it's so drowned out in music that is so loud and it never feels like you can take a beat and sit in any particular scene at any given time. The Cyclops scene should have had so much more suspense. There was so much more in each of these obstacles that Odysius goes through that were so completely rushed. And you just sit there and you're like, "Okay, now we're on to the next thing. Okay, now we're on to the next thing. Okay, now we're back to Penelopey. Okay, now we're on to the next thing. And it never felt like anything was building up to something bigger. It didn't feel like it was intertwining. And I realized that this was just the series of challenges that Odysius had to take to get home. But there was no compelling forward motion to it. There was no like, oo, I wonder what's going to happen now. You didn't live in any scene long enough to to get sucked into it to wonder how are they going to get out of this one. the whole scene with the giant the Lagosonians or the laryngitis I don't know the big suit guys right the giants you're in that scene for like 30 seconds it feels like like I'm sure that it's longer than that but literally they wash on shore they stroll through the forest for a little bit they see a kid in a suit of armor who's as big as a man they're like if that's a kid what's an adult and then the adults come over here and then they start killing all the guys and slaughtering them and they run back to the boats as fast as they can and it's kind of gory It's a little bit intense, but not a ton. And then two of their three boats get smashed up and they start sailing away as fast as they can, and that's it. Uh, you know, I realize that maybe there are parts of this in the original Odyssey that are as convoluted or aren't as, you know, fleshed out, but I think that's if you're going to make an adaptation, that's where you have those creative liberties to give us a little bit more of that. You know, I think that's that was a big big struggle for me. I will say the plot is extremely cohesive despite the story being told out of chronological order. I realize this is not just a Nolan thing that this is how the Odyssey is told, but it also seems to be a niche of Nolan's, right? It seems to be like this kind of trope that he has and he does it well. At no point am I confused as to what time period we're in or you know what we're talking about or where in the journey we are you know if it's if it's present day if it's in the past all of that is very very cohesive and he tells it very very well.

[00:21:26]So I will give him that um I wasn't really wondering what was happening at any given point. I will say there's also a general buildup through the course of the movie that gives us that payoff that we're looking for and I'll talk about that in a little bit. But by and large, I feel like a lot of the exposition was told to us. It wasn't shown to us.

[00:21:43]There's no real backstory to Odysius or to any of the characters to help us get invested in them. It's just kind of like, and we're in this moment with them right now. And if something needs to be told or explained to us, one of the characters just goes off on a monologue for a backstory. A lot of telling, not a lot of showing. You have like you have the sirens. A lot of that was just told, not shown. You have Hades just telling Matt Damon this that and the other thing and explaining it in a flashback. You have the cows of the sun gods. Like you have Calypso and all of it is just it's a lot of talking and the action sequences, the action pieces. There's not enough buildup for me. There's not enough suspense. There's not just enough that's built into each of these scenes to keep me compelled in them for a long period of time. So, all in all, I just kind of found myself wanting to get this stuff over with. I give it a five out of 10. But moving on to category number three, payoff or emotional impact. I actually really give this a a pretty strong seven. You know, after all of the wandering, I was ready for the journey to be done. Um, the use of dramatic irony when Odysius comes back and he's hiding and he's waiting to reveal himself and nobody really knows who he is and then his son Tmicus figures it out. Like those are things that really built that reveal up for me and I really enjoyed it. I knew it was going to be predictable, but I enjoyed it nonetheless because there was a really good portrayal of the suitors as just [ __ ] just villains. Like they're kicking his dog. Robert Patson is just this creepy douchebag kind of guy. I mean, I I don't know if I hated him enough. I think I hated him enough that I just I was really ready for Odysius to come home and kick his ass. And that's exactly what I got. I do think the ending left a little bit to be desired.

[00:23:33]Um, only because I felt like I was ready for Odicius to come home and rule Ithaca and be their king and be a world builder kind of like he is in the original Odyssey. But he kind of just like throws the the crown over to Tmkus and he and Penelopey head off into the sunset. I I feel like that was a little neutered.

[00:23:51]You know what I mean? Like I was waiting for King Odysius to return. He came home. He kicked some ass and he's like, "All right, I'm going to go sailing again." again and you're like, you just got home, like you just got back. So, that was a little eh for me in terms of the ending, but the actual moment of the third act where he comes home basically kind of rescues his wife and son, I enjoyed that a great deal. Oh, now we come to category four, the world building or suspension of disbelief.

[00:24:18]This is probably the most contentious category for this movie. This is probably the the cornerstone of the culture war as people are calling it.

[00:24:26]This is where a lot of these, you know, diversity choices that Nolan made have really bugged a lot of people. I will say I don't think these choices were made out of an intentional political message that was meant to be pushed down our throats. That really wasn't the vibe I got. Nolan has never really been political as a filmmaker. And I know that he's like probably political as a person and he's giving us the lens with which he views the world. And people may disagree with me. They may say that it was overtly feminist that was it was overtly woke or whatever it is. And there were definitely feminist themes in there. I I didn't even get into half of all the stuff about Odysius, which again just dragged me down in the movie. But I think Nolan's vision here was really to marry ancient Greece and the modern age.

[00:25:14]I really think that there was a vision here of us just being able to step outside our door and have it be ancient Greece in a way that you know somebody from Shakespeare's time would feel like they were connected to would feel like they were connected to the play that they were watching in the moment that we ourselves were a part of ancient Greece or that the ancient Greeks were us in that moment. I think that's why he made all of these interesting creative choices, not just the diverse casting, but with the dialogue, with a lot of the costumeuming, you know, his own words.

[00:25:48]He wanted it to feel earthy and grounded. Like he he wanted this to be almost just one continuous visual where it was like our world was ancient Greece and vice versa. It didn't work for me.

[00:26:00]In my opinion, it was a creative failure. I didn't like it. Others can disagree with me. I didn't like it one bit. You know, it when we talk about world building, when we talk about the suspension of disbelief, there's just something about having, you know, an Indian guy and an Asian guy running up a hill yelling in an American accent going, "Hey, we're Greeks from Ithaca."

[00:26:18]I don't know what world I'm supposed to be in. You know what I mean? I'm certainly not an ancient Greece. You're not Greeks. You know, you're you could be Americans. You can be Europeans, but it's not you're not even Europeans because you're speaking with an American accent. It felt very American. It felt like people almost putting on a high school play. And it wasn't just, you know, a diverse cast here or there. It was like half the cast, right? Like every there was a lot of diversity in that cast that it's not like I have a problem with that, but it doesn't it doesn't speak to what was what was he going for? I couldn't get that vision.

[00:26:57]What world was I supposed to put myself in? I couldn't suspend disbelief of where I was at any given moment. I was never fully in ancient Greece. I wasn't ever really fully in the modern world.

[00:27:09]And I'm not saying this from a political perspective. I'm saying it from the worldview perspective of I think Nolan's vision failed and he neither invited me into a new world or made me feel like ancient Greece was part of my world. For me personally, I think I think even beyond a lot of these creative choices, I really think the biggest failure here of the world building was Nolan's failure to properly incorporate the gods for me. You know, it was just kind of something that they talked about. They didn't really feel like an active presence. And then there was this whole kind of running theme throughout the movie where Zenia played Athena who's kind of, you know, haunting Odysius almost like she appears in certain times when he's kind of at his most troubled or when he's at moments of crisis, not necessarily, you know, the goddess of strategy or the goddess of wisdom that she normally is.

[00:28:06]It's more like when he's in confrontation with himself, she appears.

[00:28:10]And there's a theme that can just repeats over and over where he feels like he doesn't really want to go home because he doesn't really want to face the collapse of society. And whenever he's having these little internal crises, she appears and then it comes to the end of the movie and you kind of find out that this girl who was with him the whole time that we think was Athena, maybe she was Athena, but you you pull back to watch the siege of Troy and he watches Zeniah as some peasant girl in Troy getting like beheaded by his men.

[00:28:40]And so there's this whole sort of existential crisis mode that Nolan puts the movie in where he almost has the ancient Greeks questioning the existence of the gods in the same way that that an agnostic would question God's presence today. It was a modern theme to layer into an older story that I think greatly conflicted with the original meaning of the story. Took me out of it. All of it took me out of it.

[00:29:11]All of this stuff took me out of it.

[00:29:12]Elliot Page took me out of it.

[00:29:14]Everything took me out of it. There was at no point did I feel like I could get into an actual world. And then I was assaulted by the audio mix that just compounded over and over and over again when they're in a cave and the reverb is just like ringing in my ears and at the same time I can't hear what anybody's saying.

[00:29:36]It's really, really difficult to get into a movie and into a story when you're so distracted by your ears hurting from unnecessary audio mixing.

[00:29:44]This is the absolute worst part of the movie. I give it a 2 out of 10. And the final category, technical creativity, straight out of the gate, 8 out of 10.

[00:29:52]Most of it was absolutely fantastic. Uh, I really respect Nolan's commitment to IMAX film for this entire movie. I love that he's committed to practical effects. Like when you had the suit giant guys instead of just using CGI or any kind of green screen, he really went into the forced perspective technique that they use in Lord of the Rings. My absolute favorite scene in the entire movie was when the Cersei gal was turning his men into pigs. I mean, that was just so so icky in just the best way. Like you really, you know, I take back what I said. There was that little bit of suspense there when you're watching it and you're like, "Oh my god, where is this going?" Like they were, it was like they were being mutilated as they were being turned into pigs. It wasn't like Cinderella's fairy godmother waving a wand and poof. You know what I mean?

[00:30:40]Like they just became pigs. It was like their faces contorting, their eyes disappearing. Fantastic. Phenomenal. I liked a lot. I mean, I I think a lot of the shots were beautiful. I really liked the scene in hell um where you're just kind of feeling like you're on this black beach and bodies were coming up out of like the black wet sand. Really some beautiful imagery there. Points are being taken off for his vigorous use of sound mixing. Uh it's clear by now through the last few movies that this is a creative choice that he intentionally makes and I just I completely disagree with it. The more he doubles down on it, the more I'm going to hate it. So any Nolan film from here on out, you're right. I'm walking into it with a prejudice because I wish he wouldn't do that with the sound. The dialogue gets lost. It's an assault on the ears. It takes me out. He loses points for that.

[00:31:30]I'm also taking away a few points for how dull and kind of boring and beige most of the scenery looked. I feel like there was an opportunity here to add a lot more spectacle. I expected more, but I'm not going to ding it too hard. Eight out of 10. It's It's really hard to argue with a Nolan uh cinematography.

[00:31:48]Haye Van Hoa, I think is his cinematographer. Before that, it was W-ally Fister, who's absolutely phenomenal. Fister did the Dark Knight.

[00:31:55]So, like there's there's really little room here for a complaint when it comes to Nolan and technical effects. Okay, so let's revisit the scores. Let's total them up. Let's average them out. Okay, character development, you remember I gave it a 6 out of 10. Plot, I'm giving it a five out of 10. Payoff or emotional impact, I'm giving that a seven out of 10. World building, suspension of disbelief, really harsh on that. Two out of 10. technical creativity, I'm giving an eight out of 10. So, this averages out, guys, to about a 5.6 out of 10 or a 56%. In my book, according to my metrics, that's an F, kids. Is it the worst movie ever made? Of It's not. Of course not. It's absolutely not. Like, I have seen much worse movies and TV shows this year alone than The Odyssey. But to all of the people who are out there ranking it, you know, 99% on Rotten Tomatoes telling us all that this is peak Nolan, that people who hate this movie or don't like this movie or think it's mid at best just don't get it and aren't like cinnaphiles or aren't intellectuals. Go ahead, tell me where you rank these things and give me your reasonings on all of the criteria, please. I welcome this debate in the comments because the gauntlet is down now, guys. I have laid out the criteria.

[00:33:10]I have laid out the metrics. I have laid out a complete score. I give you the Emily score that this movie has gotten.

[00:33:16]And I have what I think are pretty objective, reasoned arguments for giving this movie the score that I give it. But if you disagree with me, please come for me in the comments. Give me your own criteria. Give me your own metrics. Give me your own arguments as to why you love this movie or why you think I'm wrong.

[00:33:34]And uh if you like this video, please like, hype, subscribe so that you can get more of my content. Thank you so much you guys.