My review of her review is that it was biting and enjoyable, even though it was unfair at many times.
> Defying the gods is noble and brave when Odysseus blinds Polyphemus, son of Poseidon; it’s stupid and greedy when Eurylochus eats the Cattle of the Sun.
I thought the movie also
said blinding Cyclops was stupid and not noble.
It's because the film isn't really about "defying the gods", it's about what happens when we betray our own internal sense of fairness, like when you win a war by tricking the enemy, or shoot your prey without giving it fair warning.
And Nolan links this sort of moral self-betrayal to an almost magical, teleological collapse of civilisation itself, which I think is probably more about contemporary things like MAGA than the historical ancient Greece someone like Emily Wilson is more interested in. But moments like the Polyphemus scene aren't incoherent - for better or worse, they're very coherently telling a different kind of story.
This is one point where I felt the film was deeply inconsistent. There is a consistent theme of destiny versus control throughout, with Odysseus finally being able to leave Calypso's island when he just lets the sea take him on the raft. However, it's never really developed and is wildly inconsistent internally, with Polyphemus being an example of that.
I definitely agree that the film is more about modern events and is meant as an allegory for the collapse of the current world order, but its portrayal of that collapse isn't as consistent as it could have been.
I personally don't think that scene is about destiny so much as relinquishing control and guilt, relating back to the bit where Athena says he's putting himself above the gods by taking on responsibility for everything that's gone wrong. But I can see why these bits didn't gel for you.
Yeah, I also don't think it was shown as stupid and greedy when they ate the cattle. It's very clear that they were doomed to die one way or the other, and the line about "they decided they'd rather drown than starve" is an acknowledgement of that. They weren't stupid, they just decided they'd rather die quickly and with a full stomach rather than slowly starve to death, which is what would have happened if they hadn't eaten the cattle.
I think that's a very unfair criticism, and I wasn't even totally sold on Hathaway's Penelope. But the film sets up a perfectly solid romance between her and Odysseus, and it establishes very clearly that she yearns for him partly because of the political vacuum his absence has created, an "empty" throne she's been left to maintain singlehandedly. Which makes her fairly complex, because she both misses him and feels betrayed by him and the social order he represents.
I get why these things might not work for Wilson in particular, but acting like the film simply forgot to include them is very uncharitable.
I don’t think it’s unfair. Nolan films are pretty infamously thin on character and this one is no different. It doesn’t do much to develop their relationship beyond one scene of them before he goes.
That's pretty faithful to the original poem, though. And it's hard to give them too many scenes together when the whole point is that Odysseus and Penelope are separated. Their relationship is developed in other ways, both in the film and the poem, like how Odysseus is presented with several "substitute Penelopes" like Calypso to contrast with. But I think things like Penelope dreaming about them chasing the sunset together instead of him going to war isn't exactly neglecting their relationship. Whether it landed for you or not, classic movie romances have been built on far less.
Also, I'm not a crazed Nolan fanboy, but I disagree that his films are thin on character. Nolan structures his stories pretty firmly around character arcs - even his Batman movies are all designed from the ground up to push and develop his character, which is pretty unusual for someone as static as Batman. And while I don't expect everyone to love films like The Prestige, Interstellar, or Oppenheimer, I think it's hard to look at these films and say they're thin on character or drama.
I don’t think we’re going to find middle ground on this, friend. I enjoy Nolan films as blockbusters but I have never once been impressed by his direction of the actors, or the material he provided them in the script. I’m one of those for whom his films always feel a bit cold.
From my perspective his films are built around a big idea and a series of set pieces and narrative tricks. I enjoy that just fine, but the films have never really engaged me.
That's fine, I'm not saying anyone has to love this movie, least of all someone like Emily Wilson. My point is that there's a difference between criticising a film for what it is, and criticising it for what it's not. If the film left you cold and the characters didn't engage you, that's completely valid. I've felt that way about several other Nolan films too.
But there are multiple points in this review where I feel like Wilson strays from "this didn't work for me and the poem did it better" into something like "the filmmakers didn't even bother trying". Not to mention several criticisms that feel like she simply misunderstood or missed bits of the film. For instance, whether this beat works for you or not, I found it baffling that she criticises the film for not explaining why Sinon is upset that Odysseus didn't tell him about his scheme - something that's made very clear and ties in with the theme of the movie.
Again, did you actually read the review you’re commenting on? Wilson explicitly analyzes specific textual passages from the original poem which disagree with what you’re saying here. And calling Calypso a “substitute Penelope” tells me you’re not super interested in the key themes from the original poem.
Yes, I've read the poem. Wilson's translation happens to be my favourite. I'm not exactly a classics scholar, so please do enlighten me, but I don't think it's a stretch to say that Penelope, Circe, and Calypso are thematically related.
They’re thematically related in that they are women, I guess, but that’s a very uninteresting way to interpret the source text. Calypso is a cruel Demi-goddess who keeps a human sex slave and rails at her Olympian brethren about her disempowerment in the pecking order of the gods, and lives in otherwise total social isolation. Circe is a charming sorceress who enthralls and transforms mortals for her own amusement and is otherwise closer in narrative purpose to Arete than she is to Calypso, in that she is a host to Odysseus and entices him to stay longer via pleasure and feasting—-not force. These two at least you could say act as a narrative mirror as obstacles in the Wanderings, but only in the approximate way that Polyphemus and Scylla are “substitutes”. Penelope serves an entirely different narrative role, occupies a distinct political and social class, and has a totally different inner life than the others.
What you’re saying is true on the surface, but this disinterest in engaging with the distinctions among women is absolutely what Wilson is pinpointing as Nolan’s issue. These women are “substitutes” for each other in the same way that Poseidon is a substitute for Agamemnon, as in, not really at all and only if you consider “fighting” to be a man’s core character trait.
>They’re thematically related in that they are women, I guess, but that’s a very uninteresting way to interpret the source text.
This is exactly the sort of uncharitable criticism I'm talking about. Obviously my point is not "Penelope is like Calypso because they're both female lady women". Of course other people's opinions will seem uninteresting to you if you assume they're least the least interesting thing possible.
Odysseus finds Circe weaving at a loom, just like Penelope. He lives with her for a year and has children with her (I forget if that's in The Odyssey or the lost Telegony, but either way). Calypso also obviously functions as a sort of "wrong wife" in the story, offering him everything he wants, but not what he actually needs, which is to return to Penelope.
I think you've taken my choice of the word "substitute" way too literally. Because yeah, I think Odysseus's encounters with powerful women are related to each other in the story, much like, as you said, Polyphemus and Scylla are both obstacles for him to overcome. I'm not saying these women are literally interchangeable any more than I'm saying those obstacles are - but it'd be silly to criticise someone for thinking the monsters are all serving a narrative purpose as obstacles.
EDIT - Funnily enough, I just stumbled on an NYT article that calls Circe "a kind of substitute wife", so it's not just me: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/27/movies/the-odyssey-circe.html
I get what you’re saying, though finding a woman weaving at the time is again a little bit like saying Agamemnon and Achilles are narrative parallels because they are both always fighting.
But putting aside narrative function (and again, I disagree that Calypso and Circe play the same narrative function), the bigger issue to me is the flattening out of the unique humor and personality of each of these women. That’s what folks mean when they say Nolan’s characters aren’t good which you disagree with above.
I think Wilson puts it better than I can: “There are more female characters than in most Nolan movies, thanks to the source material. But none of them has much to say, in contrast to the characterisations in the poem. Homer’s Calypso has a wonderfully outraged, operatic speech about divine double standards: male gods can kidnap and rape any mortal woman they desire, but when a goddess tries it, Zeus and his cronies scupper her chances. It’s a clever and comical distortion of the mythological ‘facts’: the poem’s listeners know that it is primarily Athena (a female deity) who is taking Calypso’s mortal victim away from her (Hermes, whom she’s complaining to, is merely the messenger) – and Eos, goddess of the dawn, as we’ve been reminded only a few lines earlier, has not been prohibited by the divine patriarchy from holding on to Tithonus. Charlize Theron’s Calypso looks gorgeous, but she is never angry, never funny, not skilled in rhetoric, and never consumed by lust for her scraggly mortal victim. She’s an unpaid therapist, soothing the soul of the bedraggled, PTSD-ridden Odysseus with drugs, and graciously listening to his disjointed tale of woe.”
I think you're overlooking that weaving was also an idealised representation of women's roles, which (IIRC) the poem uses to present Circe in a different light before revealing that there's more going on. It's not just that women were always at the loom, the poem knows that the loom is symbolic of feminine domesticity as well. In much the same way that, yes, you can parallel different warriors in a poem like The Iliad, because the poem is commenting on how these characters are functioning as fighters in a context where fighting is also symbolic of masculinity and their characters' functions in that.
I think Calypso was absolutely flattened, and I get why Wilson misses the original, superior version - but it's also hard to square that character with Nolan's interpretation that lacks real gods. Circe was certainly different, but I don't think she was any worse or flatter, and it's not like this is the first time Circe's been rewritten.
So what did you make of the passage from Wilson’s review commenting on how Nolan removed Penelope’s ambivalence at his return? She may have been the best female character in this movie, but Wilson argues he still somehow managed to make her less compelling that the 3000 year old source text.
Well, that's a good example. Where Wilson sees fascinating ambivalence, other scholars have read that beat as Penelope typifying very banal ancient expectations of womanhood. Imagine if Anne Hathaway's character had started weeping over the suitors' impending deaths, today's audiences would likely read that moment as the latter. Nolan changed her into an avatar of vengeance - not exactly accurate to the poem, but arguably more interesting and characterful for today's tastes.
I don’t expect any classicist to love the film as an adaptation. She seemed mostly concerned with separating her translation from the film as a lot of the media is acting like it’s a direct adaption of her translation. So think she gets very strangely personal and biting due to that imo
Yeah, I think the thing missing here is that filmmakers are trying to tell *their own* story about the world they live in. When they go to a classic text, they're doing it to use it more as a frame for their picture than to highlight the story itself. In some moments, the review reminds me of when I show an adaptation to my students, and they get worked up about how much was changed. Yes, I KNOW you wanted to see them design and construct the Trojan Horse! But that's not what most audiences go to see, nor was it relevant to the story Nolan was trying to tell!
But I can see, if your translation was given crap for being "too modern" and then this film comes around and messes with it in a way that comments on modern society rather than historical (which is what you were trying to do), that you'd feel an urge to be like "HEY I didn't make it modern like this! My goal was actually showing modern audiences the HISTORY! Not using it as a frame for my own message!"
I just keep thinking, classicists should know people (cough Ovid cough) consistently rewrite the myths for their own ends and complaining about it is pretty odd. As long as Metamorphoses exists, this movie is going to be totally fine with me.
Some of this is very fair, some of this is perhaps based on a very deep understanding and love for the text that can never be replicated in a film adaptation, and some of it is just a bit nonsensical.
"Most of the non-white actors – Zendaya, Lupita Nyong’o, Himesh Patel, Corey Antonio Hawkins, Travis Scott – play versions of the Black best friend, whose only role in the drama is to provide aid to the white protagonist."
At most, one of those characters could be referred to as Odysseus' friend and even he eventually turns on him. I mean, Corey Hawkins plays an active villainous role! It seems like a real failure on her part to watch this film and then place all the minoritised actors into a box they don't actually exist in.
I agree it was clumsy phrasing, but it is notable that right-wingers were so up in arms about race blind casting, but the Black actors in the movie were in actuality given very little to do.
Zendaya in particular is pretty egregious. Athena is a primary character of the source text, Nolan trotted her around months of press tours as though she was the main character you’d expect her to be, and then he chopped 95% of the character’s speaking lines and action and left her with about 5 lines of dialogue. That made for an extremely substantial reduction in screen presence for the main Black actress he cast, and worthy of examination.
and I think that’s a perfectly fine argument and definitely worth discussing. But she’s not done that - she’s describing all the nonwhite characters as being part of the same trope when they very obviously just aren’t, and that hurts her whole argument. Like how are we supposed to credit her critique if she can’t see how Zendaya and Himesh Patel are not doing the same thing or playing the same part or even from the same background?
I interpreted that she meant “Black best friend” trope is the act of casting a POC as a supposedly main character but ultimately giving them nothing to do. I already said I thought it was clumsy, so I’m not totally disagreeing with you.
I guess? I kind of didn’t expect anyone in the Odyssey to be the main character except Odysseus. Some of the POC had little to do, but otoh Eurolychus (Patel) and Eumaeus (Leguiziamo) had significant and unexpected roles and arcs.
If her critique is that more major blockbusters should star POC in lead roles, that is a fine argument - I’m not sure why that’s Odyssey-specific and like you say she’s communicated it very clumsily.
I think you’ve got it backwards. It’s not that he should have made the roles of the POC side characters greater, it’s that if it was truly race-blind he could have cast Odysseus or Penelope or Telemachus as POC and chose not to.
And it’s tbh worse because in this case, he actually did cast one of the main characters of the poem as a WOC (Athena)! It’s just that he then basically chopped that character’s importance to the plot and presence on screen by like 50% or more.
Edit: sorry I misread, yes you and I are agreeing. I agree it’s not really an Odyssey specific problem other than the Athena change.
This portion was a complete misunderstanding of what the “Black best friend” trope is, not to mention the fact that Himesh Patel is NOT Black.
I think reading this critique is so interesting due to her relationship to the work, but this part raised my eyebrows. Calling an Indian actor Black and looping in random other Black characters to make her point feels like a bad-faith argument. If anything she could have just said that she would have liked if the leading roles were played by POC instead of just mislabeling a racist trope for the sake of an argument.
I know what you are trying to say, but as I said, she is misunderstanding and misapplying the trope. Applying the “Black best friend” trope to someone who is not Black is simply wrong and ignores the context of why the term was coined. She could have phrased this critique in many different ways and I would have agreed with her, but she purposefully cited the “Black best friend” trope.
That was the part where this critique feel apart for me. I came out of the film thinking Hamish Patel did a wonderful job of creating sympathy and audience understanding for a character who could easily be hated. It's difficult getting across on screen a characters weariness and di
sillusionment with the main character so that the mutiny before Circe and eating of the cattle feel earned.
Audiences tend to turn on characters they see as betrayers or who make a choice which ends in disaster. Patel managed to make both feel earned and understandable. To say his character was a Black Best Friend feels very reductive.
I think she made a fair point for Lupita and Zendaya's incredibly reduced role as Athena/the high priestess. But Himesh doesn't fit in that category. Frankly, all of the characters ARE supporting characters other than Odysseus, Penelope, Telemachus, Antonius, and I'd argue Circe for the raw power of her scene. I think any of these characters could be played by POC - the casting is diverse enough not to be tokenizing but it doesn't go far enough to be true colorblind casting.
God this was so refreshing. I saw the film the other day and halfway through thought, this is it? Just “this happened and then this happened and oh yeah we better cram in the sirens, and make the brave choice to not let anyone hear them, and let Odysseus tell us about it with cringy pap.” And then cram a point of view in at the end. And there was not an iota of wily in Matt Damon’s dead eyes (I generally like him but this was really bad casting). So disappointing.
Fully agreed and I'm a Nolan diehard. The movie's production values were breathtaking especially in IMAX 70mm but it was the clearest and most undeniable example for me of Nolan using sight and sound to distract from his writing flaws, and it was the first time for me that that actively took me out of the movie when previously I've always been swept along in his spectacle. It was just very difficult this time not to notice how much richness and texture he depleted from the material. It would've been more forgivable in any other Nolan film.
I completely agree that dialogue is not Nolan's strength. Never has been. I still found the film immensely enjoyable, especially the lack of CGI. Totally unverifiable, of course, but I think Homer would've had a blast watching his work come to life on the big screen.
ChaltaHaiShellBRight | 10 hours ago
My review of her review is that it was biting and enjoyable, even though it was unfair at many times.
> Defying the gods is noble and brave when Odysseus blinds Polyphemus, son of Poseidon; it’s stupid and greedy when Eurylochus eats the Cattle of the Sun.
I thought the movie also said blinding Cyclops was stupid and not noble.
TheWatersOfMars | 10 hours ago
It's because the film isn't really about "defying the gods", it's about what happens when we betray our own internal sense of fairness, like when you win a war by tricking the enemy, or shoot your prey without giving it fair warning.
And Nolan links this sort of moral self-betrayal to an almost magical, teleological collapse of civilisation itself, which I think is probably more about contemporary things like MAGA than the historical ancient Greece someone like Emily Wilson is more interested in. But moments like the Polyphemus scene aren't incoherent - for better or worse, they're very coherently telling a different kind of story.
Quouar | 41 minutes ago
This is one point where I felt the film was deeply inconsistent. There is a consistent theme of destiny versus control throughout, with Odysseus finally being able to leave Calypso's island when he just lets the sea take him on the raft. However, it's never really developed and is wildly inconsistent internally, with Polyphemus being an example of that.
I definitely agree that the film is more about modern events and is meant as an allegory for the collapse of the current world order, but its portrayal of that collapse isn't as consistent as it could have been.
TheWatersOfMars | 33 minutes ago
I personally don't think that scene is about destiny so much as relinquishing control and guilt, relating back to the bit where Athena says he's putting himself above the gods by taking on responsibility for everything that's gone wrong. But I can see why these bits didn't gel for you.
solodarlings | 6 hours ago
Yeah, I also don't think it was shown as stupid and greedy when they ate the cattle. It's very clear that they were doomed to die one way or the other, and the line about "they decided they'd rather drown than starve" is an acknowledgement of that. They weren't stupid, they just decided they'd rather die quickly and with a full stomach rather than slowly starve to death, which is what would have happened if they hadn't eaten the cattle.
cinekat | 11 hours ago
"But the script gives her nothing to do except yearn for Matt Damon, for reasons unknown." is one of the many reasons I keep returning to this sub.
TheWatersOfMars | 10 hours ago
I think that's a very unfair criticism, and I wasn't even totally sold on Hathaway's Penelope. But the film sets up a perfectly solid romance between her and Odysseus, and it establishes very clearly that she yearns for him partly because of the political vacuum his absence has created, an "empty" throne she's been left to maintain singlehandedly. Which makes her fairly complex, because she both misses him and feels betrayed by him and the social order he represents.
I get why these things might not work for Wilson in particular, but acting like the film simply forgot to include them is very uncharitable.
cheesaremorgia | 9 hours ago
I don’t think it’s unfair. Nolan films are pretty infamously thin on character and this one is no different. It doesn’t do much to develop their relationship beyond one scene of them before he goes.
That’s not nothing but it’s also not much.
TheWatersOfMars | 9 hours ago
That's pretty faithful to the original poem, though. And it's hard to give them too many scenes together when the whole point is that Odysseus and Penelope are separated. Their relationship is developed in other ways, both in the film and the poem, like how Odysseus is presented with several "substitute Penelopes" like Calypso to contrast with. But I think things like Penelope dreaming about them chasing the sunset together instead of him going to war isn't exactly neglecting their relationship. Whether it landed for you or not, classic movie romances have been built on far less.
Also, I'm not a crazed Nolan fanboy, but I disagree that his films are thin on character. Nolan structures his stories pretty firmly around character arcs - even his Batman movies are all designed from the ground up to push and develop his character, which is pretty unusual for someone as static as Batman. And while I don't expect everyone to love films like The Prestige, Interstellar, or Oppenheimer, I think it's hard to look at these films and say they're thin on character or drama.
cheesaremorgia | 7 hours ago
I don’t think we’re going to find middle ground on this, friend. I enjoy Nolan films as blockbusters but I have never once been impressed by his direction of the actors, or the material he provided them in the script. I’m one of those for whom his films always feel a bit cold.
From my perspective his films are built around a big idea and a series of set pieces and narrative tricks. I enjoy that just fine, but the films have never really engaged me.
TheWatersOfMars | 6 hours ago
That's fine, I'm not saying anyone has to love this movie, least of all someone like Emily Wilson. My point is that there's a difference between criticising a film for what it is, and criticising it for what it's not. If the film left you cold and the characters didn't engage you, that's completely valid. I've felt that way about several other Nolan films too.
But there are multiple points in this review where I feel like Wilson strays from "this didn't work for me and the poem did it better" into something like "the filmmakers didn't even bother trying". Not to mention several criticisms that feel like she simply misunderstood or missed bits of the film. For instance, whether this beat works for you or not, I found it baffling that she criticises the film for not explaining why Sinon is upset that Odysseus didn't tell him about his scheme - something that's made very clear and ties in with the theme of the movie.
thane311 | 7 hours ago
Again, did you actually read the review you’re commenting on? Wilson explicitly analyzes specific textual passages from the original poem which disagree with what you’re saying here. And calling Calypso a “substitute Penelope” tells me you’re not super interested in the key themes from the original poem.
TheWatersOfMars | 7 hours ago
Yes, I read the review.
Yes, I've read the poem. Wilson's translation happens to be my favourite. I'm not exactly a classics scholar, so please do enlighten me, but I don't think it's a stretch to say that Penelope, Circe, and Calypso are thematically related.
thane311 | 6 hours ago
They’re thematically related in that they are women, I guess, but that’s a very uninteresting way to interpret the source text. Calypso is a cruel Demi-goddess who keeps a human sex slave and rails at her Olympian brethren about her disempowerment in the pecking order of the gods, and lives in otherwise total social isolation. Circe is a charming sorceress who enthralls and transforms mortals for her own amusement and is otherwise closer in narrative purpose to Arete than she is to Calypso, in that she is a host to Odysseus and entices him to stay longer via pleasure and feasting—-not force. These two at least you could say act as a narrative mirror as obstacles in the Wanderings, but only in the approximate way that Polyphemus and Scylla are “substitutes”. Penelope serves an entirely different narrative role, occupies a distinct political and social class, and has a totally different inner life than the others.
What you’re saying is true on the surface, but this disinterest in engaging with the distinctions among women is absolutely what Wilson is pinpointing as Nolan’s issue. These women are “substitutes” for each other in the same way that Poseidon is a substitute for Agamemnon, as in, not really at all and only if you consider “fighting” to be a man’s core character trait.
TheWatersOfMars | 6 hours ago
>They’re thematically related in that they are women, I guess, but that’s a very uninteresting way to interpret the source text.
This is exactly the sort of uncharitable criticism I'm talking about. Obviously my point is not "Penelope is like Calypso because they're both female lady women". Of course other people's opinions will seem uninteresting to you if you assume they're least the least interesting thing possible.
Odysseus finds Circe weaving at a loom, just like Penelope. He lives with her for a year and has children with her (I forget if that's in The Odyssey or the lost Telegony, but either way). Calypso also obviously functions as a sort of "wrong wife" in the story, offering him everything he wants, but not what he actually needs, which is to return to Penelope.
I think you've taken my choice of the word "substitute" way too literally. Because yeah, I think Odysseus's encounters with powerful women are related to each other in the story, much like, as you said, Polyphemus and Scylla are both obstacles for him to overcome. I'm not saying these women are literally interchangeable any more than I'm saying those obstacles are - but it'd be silly to criticise someone for thinking the monsters are all serving a narrative purpose as obstacles.
EDIT - Funnily enough, I just stumbled on an NYT article that calls Circe "a kind of substitute wife", so it's not just me: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/27/movies/the-odyssey-circe.html
thane311 | 4 hours ago
I get what you’re saying, though finding a woman weaving at the time is again a little bit like saying Agamemnon and Achilles are narrative parallels because they are both always fighting.
But putting aside narrative function (and again, I disagree that Calypso and Circe play the same narrative function), the bigger issue to me is the flattening out of the unique humor and personality of each of these women. That’s what folks mean when they say Nolan’s characters aren’t good which you disagree with above.
I think Wilson puts it better than I can: “There are more female characters than in most Nolan movies, thanks to the source material. But none of them has much to say, in contrast to the characterisations in the poem. Homer’s Calypso has a wonderfully outraged, operatic speech about divine double standards: male gods can kidnap and rape any mortal woman they desire, but when a goddess tries it, Zeus and his cronies scupper her chances. It’s a clever and comical distortion of the mythological ‘facts’: the poem’s listeners know that it is primarily Athena (a female deity) who is taking Calypso’s mortal victim away from her (Hermes, whom she’s complaining to, is merely the messenger) – and Eos, goddess of the dawn, as we’ve been reminded only a few lines earlier, has not been prohibited by the divine patriarchy from holding on to Tithonus. Charlize Theron’s Calypso looks gorgeous, but she is never angry, never funny, not skilled in rhetoric, and never consumed by lust for her scraggly mortal victim. She’s an unpaid therapist, soothing the soul of the bedraggled, PTSD-ridden Odysseus with drugs, and graciously listening to his disjointed tale of woe.”
TheWatersOfMars | 3 hours ago
I think you're overlooking that weaving was also an idealised representation of women's roles, which (IIRC) the poem uses to present Circe in a different light before revealing that there's more going on. It's not just that women were always at the loom, the poem knows that the loom is symbolic of feminine domesticity as well. In much the same way that, yes, you can parallel different warriors in a poem like The Iliad, because the poem is commenting on how these characters are functioning as fighters in a context where fighting is also symbolic of masculinity and their characters' functions in that.
I think Calypso was absolutely flattened, and I get why Wilson misses the original, superior version - but it's also hard to square that character with Nolan's interpretation that lacks real gods. Circe was certainly different, but I don't think she was any worse or flatter, and it's not like this is the first time Circe's been rewritten.
thane311 | 7 hours ago
So what did you make of the passage from Wilson’s review commenting on how Nolan removed Penelope’s ambivalence at his return? She may have been the best female character in this movie, but Wilson argues he still somehow managed to make her less compelling that the 3000 year old source text.
TheWatersOfMars | 7 hours ago
Well, that's a good example. Where Wilson sees fascinating ambivalence, other scholars have read that beat as Penelope typifying very banal ancient expectations of womanhood. Imagine if Anne Hathaway's character had started weeping over the suitors' impending deaths, today's audiences would likely read that moment as the latter. Nolan changed her into an avatar of vengeance - not exactly accurate to the poem, but arguably more interesting and characterful for today's tastes.
Defiant-Variety-9473 | an hour ago
I don't think she meant the yearning was for reasons unknown but rather why she wasn't given more to do
TheWatersOfMars | an hour ago
Ah, my bad. I definitely misread that.
EmmyOk | 10 hours ago
I don’t expect any classicist to love the film as an adaptation. She seemed mostly concerned with separating her translation from the film as a lot of the media is acting like it’s a direct adaption of her translation. So think she gets very strangely personal and biting due to that imo
AltairaMorbius2200CE | 9 hours ago
Yeah, I think the thing missing here is that filmmakers are trying to tell *their own* story about the world they live in. When they go to a classic text, they're doing it to use it more as a frame for their picture than to highlight the story itself. In some moments, the review reminds me of when I show an adaptation to my students, and they get worked up about how much was changed. Yes, I KNOW you wanted to see them design and construct the Trojan Horse! But that's not what most audiences go to see, nor was it relevant to the story Nolan was trying to tell!
But I can see, if your translation was given crap for being "too modern" and then this film comes around and messes with it in a way that comments on modern society rather than historical (which is what you were trying to do), that you'd feel an urge to be like "HEY I didn't make it modern like this! My goal was actually showing modern audiences the HISTORY! Not using it as a frame for my own message!"
historyhill | 5 hours ago
I just keep thinking, classicists should know people (cough Ovid cough) consistently rewrite the myths for their own ends and complaining about it is pretty odd. As long as Metamorphoses exists, this movie is going to be totally fine with me.
InterwebHero20 | 10 hours ago
Some of this is very fair, some of this is perhaps based on a very deep understanding and love for the text that can never be replicated in a film adaptation, and some of it is just a bit nonsensical.
"Most of the non-white actors – Zendaya, Lupita Nyong’o, Himesh Patel, Corey Antonio Hawkins, Travis Scott – play versions of the Black best friend, whose only role in the drama is to provide aid to the white protagonist."
At most, one of those characters could be referred to as Odysseus' friend and even he eventually turns on him. I mean, Corey Hawkins plays an active villainous role! It seems like a real failure on her part to watch this film and then place all the minoritised actors into a box they don't actually exist in.
thane311 | 6 hours ago
I agree it was clumsy phrasing, but it is notable that right-wingers were so up in arms about race blind casting, but the Black actors in the movie were in actuality given very little to do.
Zendaya in particular is pretty egregious. Athena is a primary character of the source text, Nolan trotted her around months of press tours as though she was the main character you’d expect her to be, and then he chopped 95% of the character’s speaking lines and action and left her with about 5 lines of dialogue. That made for an extremely substantial reduction in screen presence for the main Black actress he cast, and worthy of examination.
InterwebHero20 | 6 hours ago
and I think that’s a perfectly fine argument and definitely worth discussing. But she’s not done that - she’s describing all the nonwhite characters as being part of the same trope when they very obviously just aren’t, and that hurts her whole argument. Like how are we supposed to credit her critique if she can’t see how Zendaya and Himesh Patel are not doing the same thing or playing the same part or even from the same background?
thane311 | 5 hours ago
I interpreted that she meant “Black best friend” trope is the act of casting a POC as a supposedly main character but ultimately giving them nothing to do. I already said I thought it was clumsy, so I’m not totally disagreeing with you.
InterwebHero20 | 5 hours ago
I guess? I kind of didn’t expect anyone in the Odyssey to be the main character except Odysseus. Some of the POC had little to do, but otoh Eurolychus (Patel) and Eumaeus (Leguiziamo) had significant and unexpected roles and arcs. If her critique is that more major blockbusters should star POC in lead roles, that is a fine argument - I’m not sure why that’s Odyssey-specific and like you say she’s communicated it very clumsily.
thane311 | 4 hours ago
I think you’ve got it backwards. It’s not that he should have made the roles of the POC side characters greater, it’s that if it was truly race-blind he could have cast Odysseus or Penelope or Telemachus as POC and chose not to.
And it’s tbh worse because in this case, he actually did cast one of the main characters of the poem as a WOC (Athena)! It’s just that he then basically chopped that character’s importance to the plot and presence on screen by like 50% or more.
Edit: sorry I misread, yes you and I are agreeing. I agree it’s not really an Odyssey specific problem other than the Athena change.
AndrewClemmens | 3 hours ago
100%! A POC Penelope, Antonius, or Circe could have worked well in my opinion.
Artistic_DewDrop | 8 hours ago
This portion was a complete misunderstanding of what the “Black best friend” trope is, not to mention the fact that Himesh Patel is NOT Black.
I think reading this critique is so interesting due to her relationship to the work, but this part raised my eyebrows. Calling an Indian actor Black and looping in random other Black characters to make her point feels like a bad-faith argument. If anything she could have just said that she would have liked if the leading roles were played by POC instead of just mislabeling a racist trope for the sake of an argument.
Defiant-Variety-9473 | an hour ago
I don't think she meant to imply Himesh is black but that that was the role he was given as a poc
Artistic_DewDrop | an hour ago
I know what you are trying to say, but as I said, she is misunderstanding and misapplying the trope. Applying the “Black best friend” trope to someone who is not Black is simply wrong and ignores the context of why the term was coined. She could have phrased this critique in many different ways and I would have agreed with her, but she purposefully cited the “Black best friend” trope.
TheTruckWashChannel | 6 minutes ago
If you get her point then you get her point, what's the point of quibbling over the specific terminology
patchworkedMan | 6 hours ago
That was the part where this critique feel apart for me. I came out of the film thinking Hamish Patel did a wonderful job of creating sympathy and audience understanding for a character who could easily be hated. It's difficult getting across on screen a characters weariness and di sillusionment with the main character so that the mutiny before Circe and eating of the cattle feel earned.
Audiences tend to turn on characters they see as betrayers or who make a choice which ends in disaster. Patel managed to make both feel earned and understandable. To say his character was a Black Best Friend feels very reductive.
AndrewClemmens | 3 hours ago
I think she made a fair point for Lupita and Zendaya's incredibly reduced role as Athena/the high priestess. But Himesh doesn't fit in that category. Frankly, all of the characters ARE supporting characters other than Odysseus, Penelope, Telemachus, Antonius, and I'd argue Circe for the raw power of her scene. I think any of these characters could be played by POC - the casting is diverse enough not to be tokenizing but it doesn't go far enough to be true colorblind casting.
ttekoto | 9 hours ago
Thanks for sharing the link OP.
JaneFairfaxCult | 9 hours ago
God this was so refreshing. I saw the film the other day and halfway through thought, this is it? Just “this happened and then this happened and oh yeah we better cram in the sirens, and make the brave choice to not let anyone hear them, and let Odysseus tell us about it with cringy pap.” And then cram a point of view in at the end. And there was not an iota of wily in Matt Damon’s dead eyes (I generally like him but this was really bad casting). So disappointing.
bye_button | 5 hours ago
Thank you. I felt the same as well. It felt like a checklist of plot points with no connection to the characters at all.
TheTruckWashChannel | 3 minutes ago
Fully agreed and I'm a Nolan diehard. The movie's production values were breathtaking especially in IMAX 70mm but it was the clearest and most undeniable example for me of Nolan using sight and sound to distract from his writing flaws, and it was the first time for me that that actively took me out of the movie when previously I've always been swept along in his spectacle. It was just very difficult this time not to notice how much richness and texture he depleted from the material. It would've been more forgivable in any other Nolan film.
fungibitch | 6 hours ago
I completely agree that dialogue is not Nolan's strength. Never has been. I still found the film immensely enjoyable, especially the lack of CGI. Totally unverifiable, of course, but I think Homer would've had a blast watching his work come to life on the big screen.
Severn6 | 10 hours ago
Meh. I loved this film - it felt like powerful poetry in motion.
macroturb | 3 hours ago
Next, as someone who eats a lot of chicken nuggets, I'm going to give McDonald's advice on how to fix their supply chain issues.
HandwrittenHysteria | 10 hours ago
🥱
leonzon | 11 hours ago
Emily wilson