The Odyssey | Not a Disaster, but Not a Masterpiece

[00:00:00]Okay, so it happened. I went and watched The Odyssey. And after complaining about it so much, I have to give my opinion about it. I'll give an initial impression, but once the intro hits, I'm going to hit all the spoilers. So, was it a disaster?

[00:00:14]No. Was it a masterpiece? No. Every single one of my critiques in my previous videos is still valid. I do not walk back any of that. I was hoping going into the movie that there might be some explanation for the anachronisms.

[00:00:27]Like maybe the story's being told through the lens of some modern guy who doesn't really know how Greek culture looks. Or maybe the narrative is being told by an unreliable witness or something. I was kind of hoping the anachronisms would be explained somehow with some meta-narrative device. They weren't. They were just inaccurate. It did follow the plot of The Odyssey pretty closely and I appreciated that.

[00:00:47]It could have wildly veered off. I understand if someone enjoys the movie or says, "Oh, yeah, I liked that. That was a fun movie." But I think that anyone who's raving about this movie saying it's a masterpiece, it's amazing, it wasn't.

[00:01:08]Okay, now let's get into a spoiler-filled review. And like I said, it did follow the plot of The Odyssey pretty closely. So, the movie starts out with the Trojan Horse and then you have a Greek soldier who convinces the Trojans to take the Trojan Horse into the city and then the whole Trojan Horse thing happens where the Greeks climb out of the Trojan Horse and they open up the gates and Troy is destroyed. And then Odysseus takes his crew and they land on the Cyclops Island and that whole thing happens. We skipped the Lotus-Eaters, but that's fine. It's only like 15 lines in the original book then they run into the Laestrygonians who attack them and destroy their ships.

[00:01:41]And then they encounter Circe who turns them all into a bunch of pigs. Then they visit the Shades of the Dead and talk to them. They sail past the Sirens. The crew stuffs their ears with beeswax like in the book. And Odysseus ties himself to the mast just like in the book. They sail past Scylla and Charybdis and Scylla eats some of the guys. And then they get to the island of the sacred cattle, and they eat the cattle, and then Zeus destroys their ship with a lightning bolt. The only one who survives is Odysseus, and he drifts to Calypso's island, and she traps him there for 7 years, and then he goes back home. The first person that he encounters back home is Eumaeus the swineherd, and Odysseus is disguised as a beggar, and he goes into his own house at Ithaca. He strings the bow, he shoots the bow through the axes, he kills all the suitors, everything's fine after that. suitors have been there 3 years, and I think that's only mentioned once in the book, and that's how it plays out in the movie. They're there for 3 years.

[00:02:31]During all that time, Telemachus, he travels from Ithaca to go talk with Menelaus about news from his father.

[00:02:37]Menelaus can't really tell him very much, and so Telemachus goes back home.

[00:02:40]So, all of that plot point stuff is accurate. Now, Christopher Nolan adds a few more things, and he changes the presentation of some of those plot points. Such as Calypso, in the book she is a beautiful goddess, she has an opulent cavern with grape vines and springs, and she has this beautiful loom. It's gorgeous. In this movie, she's a poor single woman on a deserted island. So, that's a little weird. And then Circe, in the book Circe has a big palace, but in the movie, she's this old ugly woman in a shed. So, whatever. And in the book, there is an interesting detail of Antinous throwing a stool at Odysseus, and that detail made its way into the movie, and I appreciated that.

[00:03:19]And at the end there's this old woman who washes Odysseus, and she recognizes a scar on him that came from a boar hunt 20 years ago, and she recognizes him because of that. And the movie included that as well, and I appreciated that.

[00:03:31]And then we have the bard, and he just stomps a stick and chants. So, I thought that was kind of weird. He just goes, "A face, a fleet, a war." And it's not at all a song that actually would be sung.

[00:03:43]Although, I did catch the first line of the Odyssey, "Sing to me of a man, muse." And that's the first line of the book. There are some good scenes in the movie. The one with the Cyclops is pretty cool. I thought the Cyclops in the movie was pretty good. He was gruesome, he was terrifying, he was monstrous. In the book, he's more human.

[00:04:01]He chats it up with the guys. You can see that he makes cheese and his own goods. In the movie, they have definitely dehumanized him. He doesn't sit and chat it up with the guys. He just walks in, sees them, and just starts eating them. But that particular scene does play out roughly the way it does in the book. He traps them inside the cave, and then the men stab him in the eye, and then they escape by putting material on their back so that the Cyclops, when he touches the men, he thinks that he's touching the sheep. So that little detail was there from the book as well. So the Cyclops scene was pretty cool. The way that Circe turned the men into the pigs was pretty terrifying. She doesn't just wave a wand and turn them into pigs. What she does is that she gives all of the men bowls of food, and for some reason they can't stop themselves from eating the food.

[00:04:42]And so while they're eating, she grabs them and starts molding their bodies into the shape of pigs. She shoves her hand into their mouths and like pulls on their jaws and like makes the snout.

[00:04:52]It's really It's really terrifying, actually. That was pretty cool. So this movie does a good job of making magic really kind of terrifying. So I appreciated that as well. I also like that So the movie actually skipped the Lotus Eaters. But the Lotus actually shows up on Calypso's island. Calypso uses the Lotus to keep erasing Odysseus's memory, and so she traps him there through his mind rather than his body. I actually thought that was really brilliant. I thought the design of Scylla was pretty cool. They looked like reptilian heads without eyes. The monsters looked straight out of the Alien franchise, which is pretty interesting. The movie could have been worse. There could have been a lot of modern agenda and messaging shoved in there, aside from the anachronisms that I've already talked about. It could have wildly diverted from the plot. It had some interesting themes of regret. And that was kind of the theme of the movie is that Odysseus making decisions that he regrets. And the major decision that he regrets is his role in destroying Troy because when they go into Troy, it's very clear that Odysseus is looking around seeing all the innocent people being killed and he feels bad. And so that's his major regret in the movie. In the book, obviously he has no regrets about destroying Troy. He is very happy about it. But the anachronisms that I complained about were all there and they bugged the heck out of me. But the thing is, even if all of the anachronisms were fixed to my perfect satisfaction, it still would not be an amazing movie. The movie was very mono motive. There was no diversity in emotions. Everything was very dark, heavy, depressing. The two emotions that I saw were angry or tense.

[00:06:23]Those are the two emotions in the movie, angry or tense. The one emotion that you get from the trailer is the emotion of the whole movie. The dialogue was also very stiff and awkward, especially at the beginning. At the beginning of the movie, there is some very awkward dialogue. Telemachus is expositing to his mother about how the suitors are there every day and night and that felt very forced just for the audience's benefit. Penelope exposits to her son about Odysseus being gone for 20 years and she goes on about that and that felt very forced for the audience's benefit.

[00:06:54]And then Telemachus exposits Zeus's law to Antinous and that felt very forced as well. Like all of this was just obviously forced and for the audience's benefit. Usually movies solve this problem by introducing some new character who's not familiar with the culture or the environment and so there's a reason to explain all of this.

[00:07:12]But in this movie, all the characters just exposited to each other and it didn't make didn't make any sense.

[00:07:20]>> [laughter] >> This felt so forced. Also, there was this weird rift between Telemachus and his mom. That felt very forced as well.

[00:07:29]Like Penelope is getting all suspicious about her son wanting to assume the throne and wanting to jostle her out of power and she gets all angry at him.

[00:07:38]That That felt really awkward and weird. I don't know why that was shoved in there.

[00:07:45]Can't a mom and her son have just a nice relationship? What's wrong with that?

[00:07:49]>> [laughter] >> Um What else? Okay, let's talk about Lupita as Helen. So, obviously miscast, but let's talk about how the movie handles Helen. So, there's a problem in Greek literature where the Iliad portrays Helen as willingly going to Troy, but then the Odyssey portrays Helen as unwillingly going to Troy and she wants to be with Menelaus. So, from what I understand Greek literature has solved this by saying that Helen was under a spell. And that would kind of make sense with Paris choosing Aphrodite as the most beautiful among the goddesses and then Aphrodite offers him the love of the most beautiful woman in the world.

[00:08:25]And so, then she would bewitch Helen to go to Troy. And so, that would kind of make sense. But, the movie solves this problem by saying Helen willingly went to Troy and then Menelaus doesn't actually care about Helen. He grabs her chin and then just makes a joke about her being the most beautiful woman in the world. And he's clearly joking. He's clearly being sarcastic because Lupita is presented as having these deep scars on her body. And Menelaus makes a joke about the scar and makes a joke about her being the most beautiful woman in the world, obviously being sarcastic.

[00:08:57]And then Helen obviously does not like Menelaus. And so, Menelaus does not like Helen. Helen does not like Menelaus. The only reason Menelaus went and got Helen back was just for his honor. It was just because someone stole something of his and he went to get it back. It could have been Helen or a big fancy piece of treasure. But, for Menelaus it was just an act of getting his honor back. And he didn't actually care about Helen. Okay, I thought that was an interesting interpretation of that whole story. And let's talk about Zendaya as Athena. Not good. Not a good actress. What's interesting is that even though Zendaya played Athena, that's actually not what Athena looks like. The movie makes it clear at the end that we're not actually looking at Athena's actual appearance.

[00:09:39]At the end, the movie makes it clear that Athena has assumed the appearance of a Trojan girl that Odysseus watched get murdered by the Greeks. And so, Athena has assumed the appearance of this Trojan girl as a way of haunting Odysseus and his regret. And that makes sense because Athena changes her disguise and her appearance a lot. That brings me to another change from the book. In the book, Athena has a major role in a lot of stuff. She is orchestrating a lot of events with Telemachus and Odysseus. She tells Telemachus to go talk with Menelaus, and then she tells him to go back. And then she's constantly talking with Odysseus and helping him out. And when he gets back to Ithaca, she's orchestrating that whole return and she's very active in all of that. But in the movie, Athena does absolutely nothing. She shows up to Odysseus a few times, talks about how horrible his life is, and then leaves.

[00:10:29]Something else that made me laugh is that in the book, Odysseus leaves Calypso's Island on a raft. Hermes flies down, he tells Calypso, "Let Odysseus go."

[00:10:40]She says, "Fine." She gives him a big fancy axe, and then Odysseus uses the axe to build a raft. I think it takes him 2 days or something like that, and then he leaves. And then he runs into the Phaeacians, the Phaeacians. And so, in the book, his entire journey is told to this king of the Phaeacians. And then the Phaeacians sail him in splendor back to Ithaca. And then Athena meets him there, and they hide the treasure, and then she helps him destroy the suitors and all that. But in the movie, in the movie, he leaves Calypso's Island on a raft. The raft is destroyed in a storm, and then we're expected to believe that he drifts all the way across the Mediterranean Sea to Ithaca. And if you look at the distance between Calypso's Island and Ithaca, it's ridiculous. So, not everyone's going to notice that detail, but I did. The acting was all fine, I guess. The problem with the acting is that it was very mono-emotive.

[00:11:38]Like the whole movie was mono-emotive, and that applies to the actors. They just kind of had one emotion. Penelope was just angry all the time. Penelope Penelope did not come across as strong.

[00:11:50]She came across as kind of unhinged. She kept getting angry and suspicious at her son for no reason and yelling at him. It was kind of weird. So, I didn't like how they handled Penelope. And that's not Anne Hathaway's fault. Christopher Nolan is just bad at writing female characters. So, all of the anachronisms were there, the miscastings, the arms and armor, and the ships. For me, the most distracting part of the movie was the armor. The armor was so fake. It looked like spray-painted plastic because it very obviously was. You could see it kind of flapping in the wind and bouncing around. And then, while they're sailing across the Mediterranean, pulling oars, working the rigging and the sails, they're in full battle armor.

[00:12:30]Why are they in full battle armors?

[00:12:33]Why are they in full battle armor sailing across the sea? You know, there's no reason for it. It's hot, it's heavy, take it off. Take it off, guys.

[00:12:41]And then, Agamemnon's armor actually looked worse than it did in the trailer cuz you have like the very defined pecs that he looks even more like Batman than in the trailer. It It's so distracting. And the Trojans, they their armor, again, looked 3D printed, looked awful. Which is weird because the costumes looked pretty good.

[00:13:01]Penelope wore some really beautiful dresses, and overall, the costumes were pretty good, but it was just the armor that was so bad and so distracting. What is it about modern movies and bad armor specifically? I know in different industries, there can be this thing where there's like a monopoly on a particular product. Like most restaurants get their produce from Sodexo, and most jean companies get their jeans from the same manufacturer.

[00:13:25]I'm wondering if it's the same thing in Hollywood where everyone is getting their armor from the same place and that place just has bad armor. The armor to me was even more distracting than the casting and the Viking ship. The Viking ship was just wrong, but it's at least real. It's a real functional ship that they're filming on and the armor was just plastic. Honestly, the armor to me was one of the most distracting parts of the movie. The cinematography was not good. It felt like the trailer.

[00:13:50]It felt claustrophobic and weird. It did not feel big, expansive, or epic. There was no single shot in the movie that I thought, "Wow, that is a really great shot. That was beautiful." None of the shots were good. I thought the soundtrack would be good, but it wasn't.

[00:14:06]I didn't really notice it except for really heavy drums during intense parts.

[00:14:11]There's nothing memorable about the score. It's super unfortunate. For me, this movie is a 5.5 out of 10. Even if all of the anachronisms were solved to my perfect satisfaction, it still would not be an amazing movie. I understand if someone enjoys the movie or says, "Oh yeah, I liked that. That was a fun movie." But I don't understand the raving about it. These critics are raving saying it's the best movie of the year. It's a masterpiece. The critical review is 96% and the audience review is 97% I'm just wondering, have you guys watched a movie before? I don't understand how it's getting these astronomically high ratings. If you want to enjoy the movie, fine, but it is not amazing. It's not a masterpiece. It's not Christopher Nolan's best. The best movie of the year so far is still Project Hail Mary. If you think this is better than Project Hail Mary, I question your judgment. I seriously question your judgment in movies. So, it was long. If you want to watch it because you're interested in the book, fine, but it is not a recommended watch from me. It's not a disaster, but it is definitely not a masterpiece. That's all I have for you today. Hit the button.

[00:15:17]Hit the bell. Catch you later.

[00:15:19]>> [music] >> I'm sorry.

[00:15:38]I