The Odyssey

[LaBreia]

Matt Damon was okay. Not brilliant, just okay.

Zendaya was gorgeous but didnt really have to do very much.

Anne Hathaway was very good, but she completely overpowered Tom Holland. Not a good match. Imagine Timothee Chalamet in that role.

Robert Pattinson wasn't bad, maybe a little over rhe top.

Lupita was very good, but it wasnt much of a role. Not enough screen time to justify the controversy of having a black woman in that role. She seemed a lot more comfortable in her role than TomHolland did in his.

 

[Writer61]

Incarnation of a live satire.

Did that make sense to you?

 

[Writer61]

Anne Hathaway was very good, but she completely overpowered Tom Holland.

Wasn't that the point? She was in control, he didn't know what to do.

 

[Writer61]

I can't really tell you what I think a Greek person "looks like," but it damn sure aint that.

Lookist.

 

[LaBreia]

I could definitely identify with the movie's central struggle of trying to find your way home after a lengthy ordeal.

A lot of my dates end in an early morning "walk of shame" that feels as brutal as what Odysseus and his men endured.

 

[LaBreia]

Wasn't that the point? She was in control, he didn't know what to do.

Well, i meant acting-wise. He looked in over his head, more than he looked like he was playing a character who was in over his head.

But it's an interesting point.

 

[LaBreia]

Lookist.

Is that even a thing? Lol

 

[Kumquatqueen]

Tom Holland was out of place in that movie. He was basically Peter Parker. I kept waiting for him to quit whining like a little boy and turn into Spiderman.

I can't really tell you what I think a Greek person "looks like," but it damn sure aint that.

Timothee Chalamet would have been a better choice. He much more "looks" the part and has a nuch wider acting range, including "brooding," which Holland just can't do. Also, I think he could have held up his end of rhe scenes with Anne Hathaway, which Holland did not.

Telemachus' role is basically to be useless and get rescued. And be told what's what by his mother, and everyone else. Kinda entertaining to have such a character being male, for once - the plot device of someone needing protection is usually female, especially with a poor script.

Chalamet would be more decorative from my point of view, but half the pics of Holland online show him plausibly southern European - and like Anne Hathaway, he's a royal, kept out of the sun to have desirable white skin. And he doesn't brood so much as be a petulant kid, told he's too young/useless to kick the suitors out and rule in his own right.

A couple of my friends wished that the female characters had had more screen time - and yes that would have been great, but it would be a different movie. A film called the Odyssey is allowed to centre on Odysseus and his experience! I've been meaning to read The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood for ages - perhaps that will get filmed someday.

 

[SandraMaus]

Tom Holland was out of place in that movie. He was basically Peter Parker. I kept waiting for him to quit whining like a little boy and turn into Spiderman.

I can't really tell you what I think a Greek person "looks like," but it damn sure aint that.

Timothee Chalamet would have been a better choice. He much more "looks" the part and has a nuch wider acting range, including "brooding," which Holland just can't do. Also, I think he could have held up his end of rhe scenes with Anne Hathaway, which Holland did not.

I'm a big Nolan fan, but I agree with you that Tom Holland was out of place. That is something Nolan gets wrong now and then. Harry Styles in Dunkirk was the same thing. This usually happens when to many things change the production. The studio or producer might wants some change or cuts the budget. Alexander the Great having an Irish accent springs to mind
Nolan is one of a few directors that have absolute control over the production from first take to last cut and budget as well. So this shouldn't happen

 

[SandraMaus]

I saw it over the weekend. I loved every beautiful second of it.

I'd like to see it again, possibly in IMAX. The IMAX theaters around here were all pretty well booked up when I got tickets. Which is a good thing, I think. It's nice to see people going to theaters again.

I watched it 2 times in a ' standard ' IMAX. It looked amazing. I would love to see it on IMAX 70mm, unfortunately we don't have it in Germany

 

[AwkwardlySet]

https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/2026/07/christopher-nolan-odyssey-bible-god/688059/

I read a bit, and I think I see where it's going, but most of the article is behind a paywall. If someone subscribes, it would be nice if they copy-pasted the whole article.

 

[SavannaT]

Matt Damon was okay. Not brilliant, just okay.

Zendaya was gorgeous but didnt really have to do very much.

Anne Hathaway was very good, but she completely overpowered Tom Holland. Not a good match. Imagine Timothee Chalamet in that role.

Robert Pattinson wasn't bad, maybe a little over rhe top.

Lupita was very good, but it wasnt much of a role. Not enough screen time to justify the controversy of having a black woman in that role. She seemed a lot more comfortable in her role than TomHolland did in his.

Hathaway and Leguizamo were the big ones here. You can see their pain in almost every shot. Pattinson was hammy but they gave him little to nothing here, they gave more to Elliot Page and he had only one speech (not counting their death scene).

Zendaya was on par with Damon, getting the job done, I’m glad they gave more agency to Helen (Lupita) as a character but could have used more of her.

 

[anthrodisiac]

So, I saw it, and I thought it was all right. The pacing felt weird, kinda blowing through big plot points and languishing through other parts. Probably could've cut about 20 minutes and not lost much. I did very much enjoy Circe and that gorgeously unsettling transformation scene (I love TF stuff, and Circe was a huge presence in TF smut back when I first started reading it). A lot of the acting felt uninspired though, and for such a long movie, I didn't really feel all that much of a connection with anybody, which is unusual. Sure, it got into depth of character and their heads (okay, Odysseus's head primarily), but even then, Damon didn't just do that great a job selling the agony and PTSD of his character.

I did like the mention of the sea people though. I don't remember if that was in the original, but the sea people are one of the most interesting mysteries about the Bronze Age, responsible for the collapse of a lot of civilizations, but not a lot of clear records about who, exactly, they were. I think it's interesting that Odysseus feels that they were the sea people all along, and the movie does kinda make that point that they were the boogeymen that they were so worried about, and in their war and the events to follow, were responsible for their own downfall.

Wasn't woke in the slightest bit, I have 0 clue why anybody would have issues with any of the casting or message of the story if they'd actually watched it, just more fake outrage machine nonsense for people to whine about dumb crap so they can play victim and have that righteous sense of aggrievement

 

[PennyThompson]

I did very much enjoy Circe and that gorgeously unsettling transformation scene (I love TF stuff, and Circe was a huge presence in TF smut back when I first started reading it)

...are you suggesting that Homer was a Furry?

 

[XerXesXu]

https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/2026/07/christopher-nolan-odyssey-bible-god/688059/

I read a bit, and I think I see where it's going, but most of the article is behind a paywall. If someone subscribes, it would be nice if they copy-pasted the whole article.

Toward the end of Homer’s Odyssey, Odysseus and Penelope finally see each other after 20 years apart. Odysseus, disguised as “an ancient old man” by the goddess Athena, tells Penelope that her husband will return to kill the suitors who have tormented her. “Not one will avoid his death and destruction,” he says. This is Homer’s protagonist: wily, aided by a god, and eager for revenge—reflective of a culture that prized honor, strength, and fealty to a set of interventionist deities.

This is not, however, Christopher Nolan’s protagonist. At key moments in the recent blockbuster adaptation of the ancient-Greek poem, Odysseus’s story seems more biblical than Homeric.

In the film, when Odysseus reunites with Penelope, he hasn’t been turned into an old man. Nolan keeps his identity secret through more naturalistic means: a dimly lit room, a cloak over his body, and latticed sliding doors that separate the two characters. The doors, which are not found in Homer’s poem, are evocative of the screen between priest and penitent in Catholic confession—a setting that Nolan, who was raised Catholic, would be familiar with. And although in Homer’s poem, Odysseus is thirsty for retribution, Nolan emphasizes a different emotion in this scene, one that is integral to the confessional and to Christian life as a whole: contrition.

Odysseus describes deep guilt over his central role in a famous episode of the Trojan War: when Greek soldiers hid inside a wooden horse to trick the people of Troy into letting them into their city. “We left them a gift,” he tellshis wife, “an offering of peace, that they took into their home.” In sacking Troy, Odysseus says, he and his fellow soldiers “violated all that’s ever sacred between people”—he recognizes a link between mistreating humanity and disrespecting divinity. He confesses that he “lost his way,” not just temporally or physically but in his soul.

Other aspects of Nolan’s adaptation feel biblical, even Christian, rather than Homeric—a quasi-baptism scene at sea, for example, and the conspicuous absence of the references to sex that populate the poem. The core principle of the film’s moral universe seems to echo the Bible. “Treat others as you would be treated,” Penelope declares early in the film, expressing an ethic that various characters refer to as “Zeus’s law.” Many versions of the idea exist, in secular and religious forms. But in the film, Penelope’s words sound more like Jesus’s Golden Rule than anything in Homer, where the heroes—though bound to host strangers as if they might be gods in disguise—seek to achieve glory more than convey empathy.

The film’s treatment of Odysseus’s lies, too, seems consonant with the Ten Commandments instead of Homer’s moral worldview. In the poem, Odysseus’s lies are often portrayed positively, as evidence of his intelligence and resourcefulness—when he tricks the Cyclops, for example. In the film, however, Odysseus’s falsehoods have dire consequences, an apparent reflection of the biblical assertion that false witness is a sin. Odysseus tasks a young soldier named Sinon—a character who does not appear in the poem—with offering the horse to the Trojans. But he doesn’t tell Sinon that its purpose is to attack the city. Sinon dies as a result of Odysseus’s deception. Later, in Hades, he admonishes his commander: “Did you have to lie to me?”

So did Christopher Nolan make a Christian film, which the Daily Wire founder Ben Shapiro and others have suggested since the movie’s release? Not quite. As my colleague Gal Beckerman wrote, Nolan diminishes the role of the gods, treating them as socially useful but not necessarily real. It’s hard to call definitively “Christian” a movie that regards the divine as a possible fantasy. The film is God-haunted, though. Homer may have viewed Odysseus’s deceit and pillaging as glorious. Nolan’s adaptation seems to pass a different judgment. Animated in part by the wisdom of the Bible, this modern Odyssey can’t help but see how the deceptions of war degrade a person and a culture.

 

[anthrodisiac]

...are you suggesting that Homer was a Furry?

He sure was. I helped him with his fursuit. He wanted to be "the goat," which, it wasn't until a couple hundred years later I realized he wanted to be the Greatest of All Time, but once I convinced him he'd make a sexy nanny, he was way too enthusiastic about dressing up as a female goat. Very popular fellow, let's just say that.

 

[PennyThompson]

He sure was. I helped him with his fursuit. He wanted to be "the goat," which, it wasn't until a couple hundred years later I realized he wanted to be the Greatest of All Time, but once I convinced him he'd make a sexy nanny, he was way too enthusiastic about dressing up as a female goat. Very popular fellow, let's just say that.

as much as I aesthetically and ethically dislike AI image generation, "Femboy Homer Goat Nanny Fursuit -Simpson" is a banger prompt...

 

[anthrodisiac]

as much as I aesthetically and ethically dislike AI image generation, "Femboy Homer Goat Nanny Fursuit -Simpson" is a banger prompt...

Sounds like something that needs to go in PBP... Be right back.

 

[LaBreia]

The Cyclops was pretty freaky tho

 

[Writer61]

The Cyclops was pretty freaky tho

Yup

 

[LaBreia]

Yup

👁

 

[TheLobster]

Wasn't woke in the slightest bit, I have 0 clue why anybody would have issues with any of the casting or message of the story if they'd actually watched it, (...)

Sorry, Anthy, but the idea that you, of all people here, would possess a sufficiently disinterested perspective to judge the 'wokiness' of Nolan's Odyssey honestly got me rolling

And I mean it with no ill will; you've never been anything but genuine, kind, and respectful, no matter the topic of discussion. It's just that it's perfectly evident your qualifications to discern what does and does not fall within the sweeping mainstream zeitgeist are, let's say, a little bit compromised

 

[yowser]

I did like the mention of the sea people though. I don't remember if that was in the original, but the sea people are one of the most interesting mysteries about the Bronze Age, responsible for the collapse of a lot of civilizations, but not a lot of clear records about who, exactly, they were. I think it's interesting that Odysseus feels that they were the sea people all along, and the movie does kinda make that point that they were the boogeymen that they were so worried about, and in their war and the events to follow, were responsible for their own downfall.

For a fairly thorough discussion of a fraught period (and mention of this mysterious group) the book 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed by Eric H. Cline does a worthy treatment.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

Sorry, Anthy, but the idea that you, of all people here, would possess a sufficiently disinterested perspective to judge the 'wokiness' of Nolan's Odyssey honestly got me rolling

And I mean it with no ill will; you've never been anything but genuine, kind, and respectful, no matter the topic of discussion. It's just that it's perfectly evident your qualifications to discern what does and does not fall within the sweeping mainstream zeitgeist are, let's say, a little bit compromised

That's quite the slippery slope.

I do agree that Anthy, who is probably the nicest person in the AH, leans towards woke - along with many other AHers. But does that make them too biased to judge wokiness?
Maybe. Yet wouldn't the same apply to you and Kellie in the opposite sense? Just saying that the logic goes both ways.

This has always been a challenging topic for the AH, and I stand by what I said about how difficult it is to talk about these things here in a way that doesn't lead to namecalling, exactly due to the heavy bias that exists.

To be honest with you, I see maybe a few AHers in total who seem to be able to approach this subject in an objective way and who can discuss these things without falling into fire. It is what it is, and there is no changing that reality.

But my point stands that one should always be careful when talking about anyone's right to speak meaningfully about some topic.

 

[PennyThompson]

what does and does not fall within the sweeping mainstream zeitgeist are

I'm not sure that Appeal to the Masses is on your side with this one, given that the Odyssey is making Avengers money

It's interesting because Ben Shapiro and others (referenced in the Atlantic article that Xer kindly stole shared for us) sees the cultural writing on the wall and is trying to celebrate it as a judeo-christian adaptation that will get the kids reading the Western Canon, and he's getting blasted for it by Twitter racists...