The Odyssey

Given my gripes with Nolan’s portrayal of Batman in The Dark Knight (and the larger trilogy), and the general impressions I got from the trailers (gray color-grading and comical armor), I was afraid that I would not like Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. I never thought that it would be “bad,” just as I don’t think that Nolan’s Batman films were anything less than fantastic. Instead, I was afraid that Nolan would “get away with” taking some of the same liberties that I hadn’t liked seeing in his Batman trilogy because of how good this movie would be. For example, I think his Batman trilogy sits among the best films with Batman in them, but they are not among my favorite Batman films. I was afraid that Nolan would take the colorful world of Greek myth and make it overly gray for the sake of being gritty just as I, frankly, think he did with Batman. The trailers did not help assuage this fear. Half of the scenes in these trailers are from the grayest parts of the film. But, to my great joy, the film was not like those trailers. It was so much more colorful than I had thought it would be, and the colors pop in a way that feels real; not like someone just boosted the saturation. The scene with Polyphemus (the cyclops) in the cave, and the way the fire flickered against the darkness was incredible. While on that scene, the musical cues throughout it and the film as a whole were stellar. The theme that plays for Penelope, the flair of the bow being plucked, it was all fantastic. I had still been trying to find problems to justify my prior hesitations, but, when that cyclops scene came by, I freed myself of such trappings.

None of this is to say that the film is “accurate” to the times of Greek myth. Let me be very clear out the gate, my concerns have nothing to do with the casting; this is a myth, it is not real, and you shouldn’t concern yourself with it so long as the performances are good. That said, there are many parts of the Homeric tale that were excluded or altered in ways that may well annoy true stalwarts. In that same scene with the cyclops, not only do the Greeks not speak to him, but they even joke about having not done so; very different from the version where they do speak with the cyclops and where the reason he falls asleep at all is because they get him drunk. Similarly, just because I say that it is more colorful than I had feared it would be, that does not mean that this film doesn’t still feel a bit gray; especially with the armor (the horse-mane helmets piss me off) and general costume designs. Agamemnon’s armor is especially heinous; he looks like he’s from a fucking Star Wars movie, and it was hard not to laugh sometimes seeing him. But these things all feel smaller than I thought they would. Even the “Zeus’ Law” lines, which made me cringe as they were repeated every 10 to 15 minutes, were something I couldn’t find much grievance in. Those lines were as repetitive as they were core to the theme and I can’t blame Nolan for feeling the need to remind audiences of that; especially given where American audiences are at these days… (I shit you not, there was a scene early on but after Athena was explicitly introduced where Athena appears on screen and I heard a grown adult whisper behind me “who’s that?” WHO DO YOU THINK? THEY SAID HER NAME! Pull out fucking ChatGPT and ask it why don’t you).

I guess what I want to say is this: the things that I thought I wouldn’t like were there, but they were not so bad as to take away from a viewing experience that was otherwise unbelievably enjoyable. In other words, in the same ways that many love The Dark Knight enough to overlook the (in my opinion) negative aspects of its Batman, I think I love this movie enough to get past some dumb armor, choice cuts to the story, and gray scenes. The whole package is just so good that I cannot bring myself to care about such things. Even Agamemnon, with his stupid, stupid, looking armor, has so much aura in the scene where he enters Troy that I kind of have to accept that that armor was probably chosen for that exact scene. Agamemnon is so imposing when those doors open that that scene will probably be used in edits for years to come.

TL;DR: Nolan, you’ve done it again, and I can’t bring myself to make the “I don’t like your grittiness” gripe.