The Odyssey CHANGES Christopher Nolan Made INSULT The Intelligence Of The Audience!

[00:00:00]Yesterday, I dropped my review of The Odyssey, and the main problem with it is it really does not match the tone, the themes of Homer's Epic. Now, a lot of YouTubers are out there on the sort of anti-woke cultural side already going, "Oh, it's such a good movie." I'm going to talk about that a little bit tomorrow uh and the reactions and kind of explain why people are uh gravitating towards this uh despite all of its flaws and despite the fact that it is clearly a political monstrosity aimed at uh subverting what Homer actually put out there. Now, uh I made a list of where this departs from the book. That's what we're going to cover today. And we have a lot of great content for you guys. I appreciate you being here. Please hit the like and subscribe button. It's been an awesome week and I appreciate you guys being here. Um, I mentioned yesterday I do a lot of my articles first uh and some of them I actually don't even cover on here on fandom pulse.com. Uh, we've got great updates.

[00:00:55]You can see that Warner Brothers almost made a Mel Gibson Odyssey, five classic Greek texts uh that you should read. I'm also covering uh things about the World Science Fiction Convention, the Science Fiction Writers of America, uh large topics in the cultural realm uh from a very intelligent literary perspective that you don't get from a lot of media outlets. We're gravitating. We actually got over 7,000 subscribers on here as of last night. Uh I think uh about 150 of you signed up uh since the Odyssey.

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[00:01:24]Pulse.com uh because YouTube, you never know if I'm going to find you with the algorithm or whatever. I've got a lot of commentary. I could talk about the algorithm right now, but I'm going to save that for another time. Just go to phantom.com. It's in the description below. And uh sign up here. Make sure you don't miss any of the great commentary that we make. Thank you so much for the support, guys. It means a ton. And uh I appreciate everybody uh for subscribing here. Uh it's been awesome this week. So this is where we're at. Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey makes dozens of changes to Homer's text. And the pattern only becomes clear when the changes are lined up against the poem itself book by book rather than treated as isolated trivia.

[00:01:58]It's very very difficult. He made so many changes, guys. Uh it was like, whoa. I I really would have had to take notes in the theater uh based on my most recent reread. And it's it's it's painful. But really what happened is is the thematic core of it changed. It was a deeply masculine poem about and celebrating masculinity. And in this he actually laments masculinity and the feminine is the way to be it. It's really disgusting what they did to it.

[00:02:28]Uh if you look at it from that perspective. So this is where we go. Uh let's look at books one through four uh and the poem's opening argument. Now uh Homer doesn't open at Troy. In book one, he opens on Olympus uh 10 years into Adysius's absence. This is a big deal.

[00:02:44]And there's no Olympus present in the film whatsoever. It's crazy. It's like the big onus of this with Zeus uh using example uh killed by uh Orest uh Orestes for murdering Agamenon to argue that the mortals bring extra suffering on themselves beyond what fate assigns them. In that same council scene, Athena successfully argues that Odysius has suffered enough. and finally should be allowed home over Poseidon's ongoing ejection. This is the whole framework of of this deal. The gods debating uh what to do about the mortals and intervening in the life of mortals that it's not really in the mortals control here. The scene establishes the entire theological engine of the poem. Divine debate causes and resolves the plot. The mortal responsibility uh is a live theme from the first page. Now, the film largely abandons this frame. As I said, Nolan's Athena appears as an occasional vision rather than an active political operator in the text. And uh this is a huge deal here. She disguises herself first as mention as the mentor to push Telmachus into calling an assembly against the suitors and to accompany him on his information gathering trip uh to Pyos and Sparta.

[00:03:53]That entire arc, Telmachus' coming of age under a goddess's direct guidance is compressed or removed in favor of his own storyline running mostly on his own initiative and eventual alliance with the returned Adysius. That's where the really the big basis of the poem changes a lot is it's about uh the people's initiative, not the god's initiative. Uh which is a huge undercutting of the whole deal. uh it cuts the mechanism of by which the poem explains why Telmach is previously passive for the first 10 suitors in 20 years suddenly acts. On books five through eight we have Calypso uh the uh the fashions and the frame narrative. In book five uh it opens with Calypso holding Adysius uh on an island after 7 years and uh it's Hermes sent to Zeus's orders at the book one appeal who forces her to release him. That's not what happened in the movie. She offers Odysius immortality if he stays. And if he refuses her, choosing a mortal wife and mortal homecoming over godhood. That refusal is one of the poem's clearest statements of its own values. Odysius wants his real life back, not an eternity somewhere else. It's very beautiful, very romantic, very manly. Um the uh the Nolan's film changes this uh and rather than a captor offering immortality, she's reworked into a sympathetic figure who gives Odysius lotus flowers to numb his trauma. This is millennial writing crap. trauma, trauma, trauma, trauma. That's not part of this whatsoever. Uh, folding her role together within the Lotus Eaters, a separate, much briefer episode in book nine involving different people entirely whose flower induces careless forgetting in a few of Odysius's men before he drags them back to the ship. Merging these two episodes changes what each one's doing to the text. Calypso's captivity is about a choice between mortality and immortality. The Lotus Eaters episode is about temptation and to simply stop and to forget the goal of home altogether. The collapsing one into another turns two different moral tests into single scene about medicating pain which is a modern therapeutic frame and the text does not use it. Like I said, millennial writing. Books 6 through8 introduce the faians uh king alchemist's court uh where Odicius washes ashore after Calypso releases him. This is where the poem's famous embedded narrative begin. A feast in book 8, a court singer performs a song about the Trojan horse in the sack of Troy. And Odysius is moved to tears by hearing his own legend sung back to him. Not because he's traumatized again, but because he's so proud of what he did. Uh the king notices, stops the music, and finally asks Odysius who he is, which triggers the entire story of what happened here.

[00:06:24]The scene is the hinge and it's not in the movie whatsoever. This is relocated as the device. Uh and of course, Odysius's memory is bewitched by Calypso. His voyage is recounted during a cascade of flashbacks as he uh figures out that memory thing. And again, memory loss and not remembering something and coming back to who your senses are is a very modern uh sort of storytelling trope. Uh once again thrown in there.

[00:06:50]And again, this one isn't really political, but it is modernist in the way that it's done. It's just ridiculous. Now, books 9 through 12.

[00:06:57]This section, Odysius's own account, is most heavily reworked. The Cyclops, Odysius's escape, depends on specific piece of word play. Uh he tells uh Polyphamus his name is Nobody so that he can uh so that when blinded Cyclops screams for help, the other Cyclopses ask who's hurting him and he answers nobody. They leave assuming he needs no aid. The physical escape itself is also specific. Odysius's men cling to the underside of Pmis's sheep as they are led out to graze, escaping uh by touch rather than by sight. Nolan's film cuts the nobody trick entirely. there's no other cyclopses present and changes the escape method to blinding the cyclops and strapping straw to their backs so that they feel like sheep. Uh cutting nobody word play in particular is meaningful as a loss because it's the clearest demonstration of the entire poem of his defining trait merits and cunning intelligence that wins through wit rather than through strength, arriving specifically as a pun that only works because of Odicius's cleverness with the language. Removing that and reworking this as a physical escape reduces the episode to something stupid.

[00:07:58][laughter] And that's what it comes down to, right? It's all reduced to something stupid. Cersei turns Odicius's men into pigs, and Odysius resists her magic through protective herb given to him by Hermes, then becomes her lover for a full year before she warns him of what lies ahead. Uh, this is provocative and seductive in the text, using her voice to lure men to her house for transforming them. No one's film compresses a year-long stay into a brief encounter, recasting her as an earthly sorceress and a hag at that. No, no seductiveness whatsoever. Whose transformation of men and pigs illustrates her greed rather than seduction, changing both her characterization and the method she transforms it. Uh, ridiculous. The underworld. Uh, he travels to the edge of the underworld and speaks with several shades. The blind prophet delivers the poem's forward uh, looking prophecy about Odicius's death. His mother tells him about conditions back home. Agamenon recounts his own murder.

[00:08:47]Achilles who tells Odysius he would rather be a landless surf alive than the king of the dead. Nolan's underworld scene treats a guest list uh to uh of course his mother Agamenon and then the invented character Sinnon who's not in the Odyssey whatsoever cutting Achilles and uh Antia entirely. This matters because Achilles appearance in the text is doing specific thematic work. Uh the poem's clear statement of glory does not compensate for death. It delivered by one of the figure in Greek myth most associated with choosing glory over a long life. Uh the removing him in favor of Cinnon replaces the meditation on mortality and glory, a masculine traits again with a scene built entirely around Odysius's guilt, a feminine trait which is invented and discussed below. Next, so uh the prophecy deserves particular attention because the film's ending directly contradicts it versus the text.

[00:09:37]In the text, uh the prophet tells Adysius that after dealing with the suitors, he must make one further journey inland carrying an ore till he meets people who mistake it for a winnowing fan. Then plant it and make peace with Poseidon. After that, he says, "Death will come to Odysius, a gentle death from the sea, in comfortable old age, among prosperous and peaceful people." This is the poem's own stated future for the hero, a long settled life home. Nolan's ending, Odicius selling into the unknown west to self-imposed exile, is not a vague tonal shift away from the poem spirit. It contradicts the specific prophecy the text puts into the mouths of the name prophet. Crazy the sirens. In the text, the sirens song promises knowledge, not homecoming. Odicius has himself lashed to uh to Mast specifically so he can hear it and survive because to get that knowledge. His curiosity is intact, but he's kept uh by his own foresight. In the film, it's just a song that makes him go crazy a little bit for a while.

[00:10:29]It's stupid. Again, it everything is just dumbed down for stupid people in this. It It's really really awful. Our society is very illiterate. All right, books 13 through 20. Book 17 contains the Argos scene. This is one I I talked about in the review. Homer places Adysius's old hunting dog on a dung heap outside the palace gates infested with ticks neglected because no one cared for the household properly and that's it.

[00:10:50]He's not a big part of it in this one.

[00:10:52]He the dog's abused etc. and the suitors go out there and they uh and it causes him to go all John Wick. Uh again just being a modernist interpretation of things. Penelopey's bow contest in book 21 uh book 22 killing of the suitors all 108 of them by the poem's count along with a disloyal servant in book 22 also includes a passage frequently left out of adaptations after the suitors are dead Odysius has the disloyal maidservants women who had been sleeping with the suitors during his absence called by name and denounced in harsh terms like he calls them uh made to help clean the hall of blood of the corpses. So he makes he makes all the the ma handmade clean everything up [laughter] very very much like hilarious feminists can't handle that in Hollywood of course I I'll wait for the extended edition I'm sure it'll be in there um and then uh he has his men outside uh uh take them outside and then kill them after they clean hilarious stuff uh this is completely gone so book 23 gives us a recognition between Penelopey using the secret of their marriage bed built uh immovably around a living olive tree as proof the real Odysius could know. Book 24 closes the poem with a second shorter visit to the underworld where the suitor and shades arrive at Egenman's ghost. Contrasts Penelopey's fidelity to Clemenstra's uh betrayal and then with the suitor's families led by Antonius's father marching on Odicius to avenge their sons. Athena intervenes at this point, another god thing that's completely moved. Zeus backs her with thunderbolts and fighting stops on divine command.

[00:12:25]The peace is imposed between Odysius and the families. The poem does not leave this indiguous. It stages one scenario in which the killings could be read as requiring retribution. Then the gods personally shut that down on the page.

[00:12:37]None of that is even a part of this. He just ends it with him sailing off into the sunset uh away and in his self-imposed exile as mentioned.

[00:12:45]Ridiculous. Huge stuff. Not only that, but the uh living olive tree, etc. uh and uh is uh a part of what the thing is and what people find is is a scar a lot of the times uh when they uh show uh the recognition there. The Sinnon and guilt arc of course is there uh and that's a big deal that's not a part of this. Nolan invents a brother relationship between the suitor Antonius and a Greek soldier named Cinnon, a character absent from the this entirely in the film. Cinnon dies at Troy in Antonius's place. His ghost confronts Adysius in the underworld and Odysius kills Antonius with history between them. This invented thread exists to manufacture guilt text in the the millennial trauma text again. And then uh the Odysius names uh himself to the Fasian court in book nine. He opens not with a confession uh where where we talk about he talks about how he regrets the Trojan war in the movie and the like. Uh in this it's an epit declaring that his cunning is known to all mankind. uh his fame reaches the heavens before narrating the war and the horse is his signature achievement. So by contrast to the film where he regrets the war and the war is bad because masculine is bad.

[00:13:53]He brags about it in the poem like it's a good thing, right? And that's the difference. It's a huge tonal shift that just doesn't work here. Lined up book by book, you should see that the changes are not scattered trims for runtime.

[00:14:04]That happens in Hollywood. It's a move in a different direction. The frame narrative is relocated from the formal recitation to a foreign court and a fragmented memory of surfacing under a captor's influence. The Cyclops loses the word play that proves Odysius's cunning. He's undercut as a male character. The underworld slaps Achilles meditation on mortality and for the invented confentration to build manufactured guilt. Teresus's specific property that of peaceful death at home is overwritten by the exile of prophecy itself rules out. Book 24, Divine Reconciliation, which vindicates the killings on the page, is replaced by a penance the text never asks for. Every one of these changes swaps out a piece of the poem's own stated argument that a man endures and outwits his way home is owed that home back for a modern argument that the same man should not be able to live with what winning cost him.

[00:14:50]It's absolutely a bastardization on every level. So, there's the big changes. Uh there's more to it, of course. This is uh this is what I could do without taking notes in the film and actually trying to watch it and process it. Uh, I hope that was enjoyable for you guys and thanks for being here. So, this is the type of commentary we do here on the channel and on Phantom Pulse. Hit the like and subscribe button. Sign up for phantom pulse.com in the description below. It's right here.

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