Christians, Before you see The Odyssey, Watch This!

[00:00:00]Christopher Nolan spent $250 million adapting the most famous pagan story ever told. Greek gods, monsters, witchcraft, all of it shot entirely in IMAX with maybe the biggest cast ever put on a single screen. But at the foundation of this movie, Nolan does something to one of Jesus' most famous teachings that I haven't been able to stop thinking about. Even the New York Times asked them about it, and the real story behind it is even stranger than what's in the film. So, before you buy a ticket to see the Odyssey, you need to hear this.

[00:00:33]And per usual, I won't be giving away anything that you can't find in the trailer or the synopsis, so you don't have to worry about any spoilers. So, as the title shows, Nolan is adapting Homer's monumental epic, the Odyssey, for the big screen. Set after a decade-long Trojan War, Odysseus embarks on a dangerous voyage to return home.

[00:00:50]Crossing the Mediterranean with his fellow soldiers, they find themselves battling the elements, several deadly obstacles, and vicious mythical creatures along the way. Now, audiences have been pretty divided on some aspects of this movie. So, real quick, let me give you my honest thoughts on the production itself, and then we'll get into the film from a Christian perspective and what it does to the words of Jesus. So, when it comes to the cast, they had everyone in this film.

[00:01:14]Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Zendaya, Lupita, Jon Bernthal, Richard Patterson, and the list goes on. Just saying all of those names on the same screen was actually a really cool experience, and by and large, all of them did a really good job. But what I found even more impressive was the fact that the story always felt bigger than any individual name on the screen. So, there wasn't any one actor or set of actors that were carrying the movie. And the set designs were also incredible.

[00:01:42]The film used practical effects and real locations whenever possible, and so the reason that the water felt so real is because it was. I saw the movie in IMAX, and I didn't have really good seats. I was in the fifth row, but even up close, the scene with the Cyclops felt like I was actually in that cave looking up at this giant monster with the soldiers.

[00:02:01]And going into this film, I was initially worried about the runtime since the movie is almost 3 hours long, but even though the first half hour or so was a little bit slow, after that, the pacing is so good that it honestly did not feel like 3 hours because I didn't get bored for a single second after that. But with that said, there are a few things that will inevitably bug a lot of people. To start, the music score was genuinely great, but this was also the absolute loudest movie I have ever experienced in a theater. In fact, my Apple Watch kept going off warning me that the sound could damage hearing if prolonged. And at first, I thought it was due to my cochlear implant or because my seats were so close, but it seems like tons of others have been complaining about this online as well.

[00:02:43]And in some scenes, the volume actually works because you really do feel the terror of being at the mercy of the scene or giant monster, but at other times, it felt distracting and pulled me out of the movie. And another thing.

[00:02:55]Okay, on the casting side, it was actually really cool to see that they got Travis Scott in the movie, but he was one of the few actors that really felt awkwardly placed. Even though he's barely on the screen, his acting jumped out to me in a bad way, unfortunately.

[00:03:08]And then there's the whole casting controversy that you've probably already seen all over social media. The biggest and most controversial rumor that everyone heard was that Ellen Page was playing Achilles, but Achilles wasn't even in the film. Now, Page does play a minor character named Sinan, who has maybe 5 minutes of screen time and really isn't prominent in the film overall. Now, I have a lot more to say about this film from a Christian perspective that I want to get into, but all of the controversy around the casting situation really did make one thing clear. I was reminded that how these stories get covered has a significant impact on how we feel about them. And depending on where you get your news, you probably missed the other side of the story, which is why I asked Ground News to be the sponsor of this part of the video. You see, Ground News is supposed to gather the covers from over 50,000 sources all around the world and shows you how a story is being covered across the political spectrum, along with context on each source's bias, reliability, and ownership. So, for example, when it comes to the controversy around this film, you can see that 38 sources have covered it so far, but look at how differently they're covering it. The right-leaning outlets are claiming that Nolan is facing frightening backlash over the casting, while the left-leaning outlets say that Greece itself is awaiting the movie with anticipation, and the controversy barely registered there. The bias couldn't be more clear, and that's why I keep using Ground News, because it helps me to quickly see both sides, so that way I can be aware of the bias before I even start reading. Even the Nobel Peace Center called it an excellent way to stay informed and avoid echo chambers.

[00:04:37]So, if you want that same clarity when you read the news, you can use my link ground.news.com/whatdoyoumean, and that'll give you 40% off unlimited access to the Vantage plan, which is the same one that I use. You can use the QR code on the screen or use the link down below in the description. All right?

[00:04:52]Now, let's get back into what Christians should know before seeing this movie and what Nolan does to the words of Jesus.

[00:05:00]Now, from a Christian perspective, to be honest, I was genuinely relieved to see that Nolan toned down the more graphic sexual content that's in the actual book, like the siren scene, for example, which he chose to obscure. And in fact, there really isn't much sexual content in the film at all, although there are a few F-bombs. But what really earns the Rated R rating is the gore. It's not gratuitous, but the violence from the book is definitely on screen. Also, the film does have magic, witchcraft, and necromancy, which do appear throughout the film, although, to be fair, they're not shown in a way that glorifies them or anything like that. But they're still there, so make sure you exercise discernment. And of course, the story takes place in a world where the Greek gods are revered and worshipped, so a polytheistic worldview shapes how several characters think and act. And it's actually that last point that leads me to the thing that I've been wanting to talk about this whole video. Because inside this thoroughly pagan story, Nolan puts something that every Christian watching will recognize immediately. Early in the film, the characters start referencing something called Zeus's law. And the movie defines it as treating others the way that you want them to treat you. The reasoning they give behind this law is that you never know if the stranger in front of you might actually be a god in disguise.

[00:06:11]So, this whole movie keeps coming back to this law, and you see the terrible consequences that follow whenever someone breaks it. Now, if you grew up in church, you heard that and you probably immediately thought of the place in Matthew where Jesus says, "So, in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the law and the prophets." It's the golden rule, and it's one of the most famous things that Jesus ever taught.

[00:06:32]Except in this movie, it's coming out of the mouths of pagan Greeks in a story that was written several hundred years before Jesus was even born. And that's what got me wondering, did Nolan just decide to put Jesus' words in a Greek epic, or did this actually predate Jesus? I was really trying to figure out what was going on here. So, after looking into it, it turns out that he was asked this directly in an interview with the New York Times. And he said, "The greatness of the poem is such that you approach these things as if they're foreign and ancient. Then, as you explore them, they suddenly become stunningly relevant. Zeus's law is the golden rule. Treat others as you would be treated, and with a theological underpinning in their world that you might be a god in disguise." So, in Nolan's mind, the golden rule was just sitting there in ancient Greece under a different name. And you know what? As a Christian, that actually shouldn't shock us at all. In Romans 2, Paul writes that God's law is written on every human heart. That even people who never heard the scripture show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness. So, whenever we do find an ancient culture reaching for something that sounds like the golden rule, that's exactly what the Bible tells us to expect. Every culture gets a glimpse. Okay, but that's still not the full story because when we dig into what the Greeks actually believed, the picture drastically changes. If you try to go find Zeus's law, you'll quickly realize that there was no Zeus's law in ancient Greece. That was the part that no one invented. In fact, when one outlet asked classics professor Jim Crowther whether Zeus's law was a real ancient term, he said that there was no conception of Zeus's law as a Greek version of Jesus's golden rule. What they actually had was called xenia, the law of hospitality. So, basically whenever a traveler showed up at your door, you were obligated to feed them, house them, and give them gifts because Zeus was the god of hospitality and crossing him was dangerous, which can sound kind of close, right? Well, that's until you look at the differences because for one, xenia was a trade. You showed hospitality expecting it back plus a little divine favor for your trouble. And it had its limits. It covered the guest at your door, but you could still go and raid the village next door as long as there was no host guest bond that was in play. And on top of it, Zeus himself, the god who supposedly was enforcing all of this, was notorious for abduction and assault. So, the one enforcing the rule couldn't even keep it because this was never about love.

[00:08:53]That's the exact same thing that Paul describes in Romans 1. People catch a real piece of the truth and then bend it and shrink it and hand it to their god made in their own image. The Greeks' morals were better than their god and their sense of right and wrong kept reaching higher than anything that their religion could hold up to. So, when Nolan calls Zeus's law the golden rule, he's actually skipping the real difference. It's true that other cultures reach for a version of the golden rule as well, and Christianity doesn't need to pretend like nobody said anything wise before Christ. The real difference is where Jesus takes it.

[00:09:24]Xenia was a law between the guest and a host, but Jesus tore that fence down completely. For Jesus, this didn't just apply to your guest or your people or someone who might pay you back. Jesus said that this also applied to your neighbor, that outsider, and even your enemy. That's the whole point of the Good Samaritan. So, in other words, Nolan takes a narrow Greek rule and quietly stretches it until it sounds like Christ. And I don't think he realizes just how much that actually proves because Jesus didn't just say it, he lived it. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Nothing we could offer back, and he gave it anyway.

[00:10:00]The Greeks were kind of strangers because one of them might secretly be a god. But in the gospel, God actually did show up as a stranger, and instead of punishing us for how we treated him, he took on the punishment himself.

[00:10:16]So, overall, this movie has a lot going for it, both from a production standpoint and thematicly. But as I laid out, there are some real stumbling blocks for some viewers. So, weigh them prayerfully. But no matter whether or not you decide to see it, you can still remember that inside of the most famous pagan story ever told is a 3,000-year-old glimpse of a truth that Greece had never quite hold up to. And every time the characters in this film say to treat others the way you want to be treated, you'll be hearing the echo of the one who just didn't say it better. He actually lived it and did it all for you.

[00:10:50]If you want to see more videos that give you cultural clarity and gospel hope, then make sure you subscribe and consider supporting us down at the link below as it really does make a massive impact, more so than you probably understand. All right, thanks for watching. See you guys next time.