The Odyssey

[Kumquatqueen]

I'm basically your mum, too.

Now that *is* somewhat disturbing...

That was my take (my post above, only there to please @AwkwardlySet, but blanked so that poor old @SimonDoom can read only if he wants to).

What's the criteria for an R rating in the UK and US?

R is American, no under-17s allowed without a supervising adult (no idea if your 18yo friend counts?). Below that is PG-13, which recommends a supervising adult (no idea if your 18yo friend counts?). Below that is PG-13 which recommends younger kids not be taken but doesn't prevent them.

In the UK, cinema ratings above PG are 12A (under 12s only allowed with an adult), 15 and 18 (no-one under those ages allowed at all, which nowadays is actually enforced, which is kinda tough on kids without passports and probably a factor in the decline in cinema-going). For buying media to watch at home, there's a 12 rating.

A 15 (like the Odyssey) will typically have a bit of swearing but not directed at people, some brief nudity, brief consensual sex scenes that aren't zoomed in on, and some violence that isn't too sick-making nor anything that might encourage imitation. Sexual violence and nasty realistic violence will net you an 18 rating. So like the Aussie MA and R, but nudged up a grade for the unnerving pigs.

My guess is the American classifiers judged it as too much unnerving violence for young kids to see without a supervising adult, and there's a fair bit of swearing.

It was actually the sailors who mum thought were unrealistically diverse, with prominent black guys and a Chinese-looking guy who went overboard - she figured Helen could well have been 'exotic' and more to the point could actually act!

Here in Australian it's M, for violence, mature themes, and coarse language, which is a mild rating (parental guidance, really). We also have MA (technically, a 16 year old limit, add in sexual content or up the violence) and R (sexual content including full frontal nudity, extreme violence). Films aren't censored (except by the studio, if they want to target a lower rating), just the rating given on the film as presented to the Board.

M is typical of most releases these days. An R (which must be equivalent to Australia's MA) would seem excessive to me (especially given that it will stream in six months time).

The whole woke debate seems to be American bullshit, from what I can see. Black girl, so what? Trans actor, so fucking what (too short to be a soldier, but really?). It didn't strike me as A Movie With an Agenda, more a filmmaker trying to find a source for new content, having too many things to squeeze in, and needing a much more aggressive editor who would say no. Or two movies, paced much much better, with some human drama, not just looking good.

It's Cecil B DeMille for the twenty-first century. Remake Cleopatra next, and cast an Egyptian actress to really fuck the squealing "critics" minds up.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Have you seen The Duellists? His first picture?

He'd clearly studied Barry Lyndon, with a notebook for good tips.

It's slightly uneven, but overall it's amazing. The composition of each scene is something he paid clear attention to, and stills from that movie look like Romantic paintings. It was the first movie I ever saw where I said to myself, "wow. That shot looks fuckin' beautiful."

The acting... well. Occasionally it's suspect. But Scott storyboarded and directed like a pro.

Alien is breathtaking.

Kubrick helped him out when he couldn't come up with an ending for Bladerunner, that would satisfy the studio. He dumped 40,000 feet of film from the opening of The Shining on his doorstep and said, use some of that. So the original (silly ending) for Bladerunner, whether Deckard and Rachel escape from the city, was mostly shot by Kubrick's second director, the helicopter guy. Scott was right to remove it from the subsequent versions.

 

[PennyThompson]

Just a little something that is sort of relevant to the better parts of this thread

The Onion: Translator of Original Minions Epic Poem Slams Sexless Bloodless Film Adaptation

"Sure, there are a few scenes of the Minions’ bare butts, and we see one Minion get all charred after he throws a grenade and it bounces back and blows up in his face, but where is the gore? Where is the pathos?"

 

[SimonDoom]

He'd clearly studied Barry Lyndon, with a notebook for good tips.

That's an astute observation. It hadn't occurred to me, but they do have a similar look and feel. The emphasis on natural light.

Ridley Scott deserves a lot of credit. Alien was a watershed film. So was Bladerunner. I thought Gladiator was an almost perfect example of that type of movie. Like Nolan, Scott has a good feel for how to make a movie entertaining and visually striking while also including intelligence in the story building.

 

[Voboy]

That's an astute observation. It hadn't occurred to me, but they do have a similar look and feel. The emphasis on natural light.

I mean, almost any movie is better if you're drunk on cheap beer.

 

[GuiltyCowboy]

Have just remembered the very possibly apocryphal story that, in the Athenaeum Club in London, there was the following short exchange in the visitors book:

‘Question: Was Homer sexual?’

Below which someone had scribbled ‘No one was as Odyssey’.

(I tried to find evidence for this online and google’s po-faced AI informed me that ‘Homer Simpson is canonically heterosexual’. So there’s that, in case you had any doubts).

 

[SimonDoom]

I'm finally going to see it this weekend.

Usually I like to see a movie like a blank slate, not knowing too much about it, and not having preformed ideas or opinions. This is going to be about as opposite of that as possible.

It's still doing incredibly well. Domestic gross about 423 million after three weeks.

Of course, the new Spiderman movie already has 481 million after its first week.

 

[PennyThompson]

I'm finally going to see it this weekend.

Usually I like to see a movie like a blank slate, not knowing too much about it, and not having preformed ideas or opinions. This is going to be about as opposite of that as possible.

It's still doing incredibly well. Domestic gross about 423 million after three weeks.

Of course, the new Spiderman movie already has 481 million after its first week.

Simon sits in the theater and tries to clear his mind of all preconceived opinions and discourse.

He wishes to live in the moment, to receive the artist's work as if he were a blank canvas.

Forty minutes into the movie, he mutters to himself, "Goddamnit, Penny was right."

 

[AwkwardlySet]

Simon sits in the theater and tries to clear his mind of all preconceived opinions and discourse.

He wishes to live in the moment, to receive the artist's work as if he were a blank canvas.

Forty minutes into the movie, he mutters to himself, "Goddamnit, Penny was right."

Swap Penny for AwkwardlySet, and you are onto something.

 

[SimonDoom]

Swap Penny for AwkwardlySet, and you are onto something.

It's cage match time for you two.

"Are you not entertained? Are you not entertained?"

 

[PennyThompson]

It's cage match time for you two.

"Are you not entertained? Are you not entertained?"

Wrong movie!

Also I've been doing weight training and HIIT for the last 10 months, I think I can take him

 

[AwkwardlySet]

Wrong movie!

Also I've been doing weight training and HIT for the last 10 months, I think I can take him

Well, I've been building up my alcohol breath these last couple of nights, and I'd say I can take you with my arms and legs tied.





Yeah, I know you kids don't know who that is. I'll let the fear slowly build up as you discover!

 

[SimonDoom]

I finally saw the movie. I liked it. I wasn't sure I would. I hoped to, but had hesitation because of some of the reviews I read.

There have been a lot of good points made about the movie in this thread, good and bad, so I'll try not to repeat them but add a few things:

1. First, I didn't think it was woke at all. The movie makes no effort to present a visually faithful replica of the Ancient Greek world. It might as well be set in Northern California. It's a multi-racial cast, but I didn't see any political message in it. Nolan decided he wanted his "sword and sandal" epic to have a contemporary American feel (as opposed to the usual Britified epics we usually get). The racial diversity, like the use of American English vernacular, plays into that.

2. I liked Nolan's thematic update of the original story. "Zeus's Law" (hospitality) is laid on pretty thick, but I think it works because it ties the story together thematically and dramatically, and it makes the ending more poignant and more acceptable (I always thought the revenge against the suitors in the original story was a bit of overkill, but in this version you really want those bastards to get it, especially Antinous, well played as a smarmy creep by Robert Pattinson). Nolan also turns the epic into something more like Odysseus's personal psychodrama, which I think works as a way of unifying the story and making it more sensible to a modern audience.

3. Visually, it looks good, but it didn't overwhelm me. I like that Nolan maximizes the use of practical effects. The movie feels "real" despite all the fantastical things that happen. But it's a bit dark and somber. I would think the Ancient Greek World would generally be bathed in light and bright and colorful. I appreciated seeing it in an IMAX theater.

4. I liked Anne Hathaway. I always do. If she were my queen I'd make an extra effort to get home to her too. And watch out, suitors.

5. Matt Damon was better than I expected as Odysseus. I like Damon but thought he might not have enough weight for this role. This is a wearier and more grizzled Damon than we've ever seen before. He's wracked by guilt but still crafty and confident in himself. I thought he did a nice job.

6. My least favorite thing about the film was the musical score. It was written by Ludwig Goranson, who wrote the (IMO better) musical score for Oppenheimer and who shares a lot of traits with Hanz Zimmer. See Penny Thompson's comments on the music above, which are more erudite on the subject than mine but with which I completely agree. There's a trend of moving away from more melodic musical scores to what I call "walls of sound." This is very much a wall of sound score. At times it was too loud, at times too lugubrious, and at times it made it hard to hear what the actors were saying. Put it this way: there's nothing you can hum afterward.

But overall, I enjoyed it. Not a perfect film, but very much a Nolan film -- a movie with a characteristic Nolanesque blend of popcorn fun and intelligent working of themes and ideas. I'm glad I saw it.

 

[SimonDoom]

One other thing I liked about Nolan's Odyssey. I liked the way he handled the gods. The gods play a very important role in explaining the events of The Odyssey, but in the film they're presented like aspects of Odysseus's psyche. Athena and Calypso appear only to him. Poseiden and Zeus never appear, but it's not hard to see "Poseiden's wrath" as a projection of Odysseus's guilt for his bad decisions that lead to getting lost and caused so much death and ruin.

 

[ElectricBlue]

3. Visually, it looks good, but it didn't overwhelm me. I like that Nolan maximizes the use of practical effects. The movie feels "real" despite all the fantastical things that happen. But it's a bit dark and somber. I would think the Ancient Greek World would generally be bathed in light and bright and colorful. I appreciated seeing it in an IMAX theater.

I think he's running up against the limitations of IMAX 70mm, which needs a lot of light to fully register the depth and intensity that can be got using film.

I don't know the details of the lenses, but they're not as fast as the NASA lense Kubrick adapted for Barry Lyndon, for example, which allowed candle lit indoor sequences. Reading the techno babble, the IMAX lenses are also a bitch to focus - that's a comment I've seen several times, out of focus sequences.

 

[anthrodisiac]

At times it was too loud, at times too lugubrious, and at times it made it hard to hear what the actors were saying. Put it this way: there's nothing you can hum afterward.

This is very much intentional. Nolan seems to love this and uses it a lot if you watch his movies. It's one of his most annoying habits in my opinion. It can work well, but he just way overdoes it. Like any obvious technique in any creative endeavor, these things are best used in moderation for maximal effect. If you use it everywhere, it loses the punch and effectiveness that makes it such a great tool.

 

[SimonDoom]

I'm not generally a huge Nolan fan, personally I think he's a great filmmaker but an overrated writer, to me most of his scripts just feel like this:

But that being said, I'm kind of excited to see Odyssey, specifically because he's adapting a classic and not relying on his own weird story predilections. Reviews seem promising, and a certain kind of Twitter guy seem to be really mad about it, which definitely works as a reverse anti-endorsement for me

I'm hoping to see it with a friend later this week, though I don't know if we'll bother with the iMAX-but-not-real-IMAX screen option near me, I would rather have reclining seats for a three hour movie

I haven't given my due to this video, which is awesome, until now. I like Nolan, but there's a lot of truth to the way this video spoofs his plots. It doesn't apply so much to The Odyssey, which is pretty much about a guy who gets lost on the way to getting home to his wife, but it aptly spoofs Inception, Tenet, Interstellar, The Prestige, and to some extent the Batman movies.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I haven't given my due to this video, which is awesome, until now. I like Nolan, but there's a lot of truth to the way this video spoofs his plots. It doesn't apply so much to The Odyssey, which is pretty much about a guy who gets lost on the way to getting home to his wife, but it aptly spoofs Inception, Tenet, Interstellar, The Prestige, and to some extent the Batman movies.

Laughed out loud at the elephant!

 

[PennyThompson]

The amount of time in my life spent patiently waiting for other people to catch up and realize that I was right about something is significant

 

[anthrodisiac]

The amount of time in my life spent patiently waiting for other people to catch up and realize that I was right about something is significant

I'm still waiting for them to realize that about me.
"What if you just weren't right?"
...oh.

 

[SimonDoom]

Laughed out loud at the elephant!

Reminds me a little of this, the final scene from the Coen Brother's movie Burn After Reading:

 

[PennyThompson]

Reminds me a little of this, the final scene from the Coen Brother's movie Burn After Reading:

The Coens, of course, having made the best adaptation of the Odyssey already

 

[TheLobster]

Nolan decided he wanted his "sword and sandal" epic to have a contemporary American feel (…)

Emphasis mine; and I think that’s the key. Nolan film is a story on its own terms, and it works well enough within his usual formula and with his favorite actors.

But Odyssey it is not, for many reasons you have outlined in your review.

 

[XerXesXu]

I'm not a movie fan. I decided to watch it in three one-hour chunks, at bedtime, to send me off to sleep. I watched 10 mins and decided to bin it. A few days later watched the last 10 mins - I binned it. There's no way I could have sat through three hours of that in an air-conditioned cinema.

 

[SimonDoom]

The Coens, of course, having made the best adaptation of the Odyssey already