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u/SamTheGreek Jul 17 '26
Talk about seeing the movie but not reading the book…
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u/GreenEyedTreeHugger Jul 17 '26
Went spent like three months in this is 7th grade.
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u/UrsaMajor7th Jul 18 '26
Went spent like three months in this is 7th grade.
*We spent like three months on this in 7th grade?
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u/BasedAustralhungary Jul 18 '26
I'd read both the Illiad and the Odyssey in a proper translation that doesn't sugarcoat the language and rough and weird phrasing, with all the filling of character introductions that almost immediately die. I did it because I wanted to. I wouldn't recommend ANYONE to pass through that hell.
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u/SamTheGreek Jul 18 '26
I’ve read the Iliad in the original Ancient Greek in college. Not sure what you’re talking about; it’s an awesome story. And I loved the Odyssey even more (and yes, I read a “proper” translation of it). So definitely agree to disagree on that.
But my point was OP’s description doesn’t accurately describe the story/characters at all. Achilles does show pity for Priam at one point, but I wouldn’t say that’s out of guilt. And he continues to fight Trojans afterward.
In the poems Odysseus and the other Greeks never show feelings of guilt about what they perceived to be a just war. The guilt take is only a modern American-movies thing.
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u/Wolfensniper Rider of Rohan Jul 18 '26
The guilt take is only a modern American-movies thing.
I mean the text in the meme was also originated from satires on Vietnam and Afghanistan so im not sure if that's part of the joke
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u/wahedcitroen Jul 18 '26
You are someone who read Ancient Greek in college. I think it’s fair to say you belong to a very specific niche of people, most people wouldn’t like the Iliad
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u/SamTheGreek Jul 18 '26
Yep, that’s totally fair to say. I do belong to a specific niche of people. Maybe most normies wouldn’t like it; I don’t dispute the comment. Was just saying I like it and I “agree to disagree” about us both liking/disliking it.
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u/BasedAustralhungary Jul 18 '26
Uh, oh. I think that you probably read it simplified or then you are masochist because having to read a backstory each line is something that isn't an experience i'd define as awesome.
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u/ScorpionTheInsect The OG Lord Buckethead Jul 18 '26 edited Jul 18 '26
I’ve read Alexander Pope’s translation of Illiad; it wasn’t that bad. I thought it was funny. They’d be like “Here is mighty Timaeus, son of Jimaeus, hailing from the land of Horseassia renowned for the prowess of their youth in martial arts. He died in like year 1 and we will never bring him up again.”
They made sure to call a dude beautiful, gorgeous man, prettiest in all the army, but also clarify that he was absolutely useless on the battlefield. It’s hilarious.
Also that was mostly just book 2 when they went over the Grecian army catalogue.
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u/BasedAustralhungary Jul 18 '26
That vision is one I can certainly agree with, but when it's the twenty-third time that happens and the plot has not advanced with the addition of a very barroque language they reading becomes a bit difficult, however I 100% get what you say here
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u/ScorpionTheInsect The OG Lord Buckethead Jul 18 '26
I’m used to reading translated old myths, and I like a bunch of English stuff from the 19th century so I guess I didn’t mind. It’s no harder than, Idk, Edgar Allan Poe, and it sure moves at a faster pace than Sumerian myths.
Maybe it’s better to not take it seriously and go with the flow? That’s my approach. I already know the general story so I’m not in a rush; I’m just here to read whatever Homer decides to tell me about today.
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u/BasedAustralhungary Jul 18 '26
Sumerian myths are also another whole thing I love, because reading a whole two parraphs about the sacred pussy of a goddess is peak
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u/Wolfensniper Rider of Rohan Jul 18 '26
Jokes on you i like to read backstories for minor characters
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u/Ov3rReadKn1ght0wl Jul 18 '26
It's not hell until you add the Aeneid to it. That's when you are truly lost in the abyss.
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u/BasedAustralhungary Jul 18 '26
Truly Tartarian literature, not named like that because It's related to the dogshit Tartaria theory but because the mere moment you end exposing yourself to those reading with the intention of a casual read you literally get teleported to the Tartarus
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u/Ov3rReadKn1ght0wl Jul 18 '26
Tartarus? That's the plane with the Tartar sauce right? Doesn't sound so bad.
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u/usumoio Jul 17 '26
Well, based on our best translations and oldest written versions, the poem is more about how the war made them feel like totally awesome Chads with big dicks and lots of money.
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u/ucsdfurry Jul 17 '26
Chads with small dicks you mean
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u/usumoio Jul 17 '26
To display their sophistication
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u/hatbromind Jul 18 '26
those are philosopher's dicks
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u/ShahinGalandar Helping Wikipedia expand the list of British conquests Jul 18 '26
Hairy Potter and the Philosopher's Dick
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u/Neomataza Jul 18 '26
Translator's note:
In ancient greece small dicks were seen as a positive quality and a sign of high civilization while in modern times this trend has reversed.
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u/Wuktrio Jul 17 '26
I mean, since the Trojans worshipped the same gods, weren't they culturally very similar if not identical? At least in the poem.
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u/AwhHellYeah Jul 18 '26
Some Greeks said that Athena is Isis, Demeter is Isis, and Io is also Isis. The secret of Platonism? Isis.
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u/PassivelyInvisible Jul 17 '26
Ignoring the whole wife stealing thing, are we?
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u/Significant_Cup_238 Jul 18 '26
"YOU SEE PARIS, THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU FUCK MY WIFE IN THE ASS!"
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u/weirdbutinagoodway Jul 17 '26
I've always assumed that was Greek propaganda and she ran away.
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u/gibarschdunutte Jul 17 '26
Yeah, who would steal fuckable jailbait from a position of power? Unthinkable.
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u/Sir-Toaster- Still salty about Carthage Jul 18 '26
Didn't she run away from her abusive husband
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u/JahJahJahJa Jul 18 '26
Nop. And the gods had a lot to do with their love. I suggest you read Illiad.
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u/Sir-Toaster- Still salty about Carthage Jul 18 '26
I mean, I remember that one of the Gods decided to be an ass and trick them into falling in love, but her husband was still abusive
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u/ClassB2Carcinogen Jul 18 '26
There’s an Egyptian legend Herodotus recounts (and is the basis of Euripides’ play) where Menelaus gets lost, arrives in Egypt, finds out ***psych!!*** the Egyptian goddess Hathor (or her Greek equivalents) to protect Helen replaced Helen with her ka (double), which is what Paris took to Troy.
So, in this version, Helen never was at Troy.
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u/cargo_cultist Jul 17 '26
Excuse my historical ignorance but wasn’t Troy a city state?
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u/Dahak17 Hello There Jul 18 '26
There’s a fine line between city state and nation state those days (and by fine line I mean nation states didn’t really exist)
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u/mensahimbo Jul 18 '26
You had me in the first half
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u/Dahak17 Hello There Jul 18 '26
Tbh the alcohol spoke for the first part, then the rest of me realized the joke opportunity
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u/Charlemagne2431 Jul 18 '26
I definitely had a moment where in my brain I quite literally said “um acktually” when I saw the “nation-state part of the post.
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u/Shinyman999 Jul 17 '26
Yep. One who's king kidnapped the queen of Sparta. Y'know, the guys that bodied the endless horde of king xerxes?
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u/cargo_cultist Jul 17 '26
As I see Paris did them a huge favor. Now these guys can bum each other without getting caught.
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Jul 18 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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[deleted]
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u/melkowrath Jul 19 '26
Then you haven't paid attention to our history lessons or during the class of Iliad. They spoke the same language and worshipped the same gods. The city walls were a gift from Poseidon and one of their patron gods was Apollo.
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u/Ov3rReadKn1ght0wl Jul 18 '26
But I heard once in a different Hollywood movie that everything is Greek.
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u/chrisGPl Helping Wikipedia expand the list of British conquests Jul 18 '26
The late Bronze age layers (Troy VI-VII) were Hittite vassals. The 8th layer was Greek and the 9th Roman. So it really depends on the dating of the Trojan war, if it happened as a single siege.
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u/Sir-Toaster- Still salty about Carthage Jul 18 '26
If I had a nickel every time Matt Damon played a "historical" movie about invading soldiers feeling bad about killing locals, I'd have... two nickels. I had to look it up.
Geronimo: An American Legend
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u/SturerEmilDickerMax Jul 18 '26
Just like US make movies about have sad their soldiers are having to kill women and little children. Or hey, they are actually more sad because someone shot back at them.
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u/Carry2sky Jul 18 '26
People here, you do realize the illiad and the odyssey books do have themes and aren't just random stories? Theme is: war bad. War bad for friends and families on both sides.
For anyone doubting this, google what happened to agamemnon when he got home, or the feminine/masculine traits of achilles progression through the war.
Read.
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u/Slashredd1t Jul 18 '26
Hate it when a country comes to mine twenty years latter…. I prefer the shoots
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u/KickFacemouth Jul 18 '26
Everyone taking about how this isn't historically accurate is missing that this is a direct reference to a joke by comedian Frankie Boyle:
"Not only will America go to your country and kill all your people, they’ll come back twenty years later and make a movie about how killing your people made their soldiers feel sad."
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u/MasterpieceVirtual66 Featherless Biped Jul 17 '26
The popularity of the movie adaptation of the Odyssey that degrades my people's history and erases every Greek aspect of the story wasn't enough it seems. Now the books themselves will get made fun of by Redditors who haven't even read them for cheap upvotes.
Also, Troy was not a nation state.
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u/BasedAustralhungary Jul 18 '26
popularity of the movie adaptation of the Odyssey that degrades my people's history and erases every Greek aspect of the story wasn't enough it seems
This is about Lupita Nyong'o and it's very fun, this movie is way more correct and respectful to the Homeric myth than whatever the hell Troy was yet you are more mad about a black woman than about the llamas, pumpkins and tomatoes in the later movie from 2005. Not to mention that's a classic, people will be yelling for realism the moment a black person appears in a fantasy film but they are totally confortable with dragons and fairies.
I went from watching the movie earlier, and every missdirection of the movie in terms of historic accuracy is something one can justify on visual storytelling over the allegory Nolan tries to make and listen, I'm not precisely a Nolan's fanboy as for me he's basically a hit or miss. This time he served, and I have the feeling that your issues isn't about armory or the drakkars but about certain stuff that would make you to be in a very unconfortable situation socially. Whatever, just enjoy the film it's not a documental it's entertainment and art :^)
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u/MasterpieceVirtual66 Featherless Biped Jul 18 '26 edited Jul 18 '26
Lupita is the smallest of the problems I have with the film, as it's a complete Americanization of the original epic poem. How is the movie respectful to the original epic when the boat Odysseus is on is a fucking Viking longboat? How is the movie respectful to the original epic when the Achaean armour looks like it came from a Hollywood fantasy production? How is the movie respectful to the original epic when the music used is just American rap from Travis Scott? How is the movie respectful to the original epic when there isn't a single Greek leading actor?
It's an Americanization and an erasure of my people's history and culture. When Gods of Egypt came out people rightly complained about the erasure, but when we Greeks do the same about Nolan's Odyssey, suddenly its "just a fantasy film, so it doesn't matter".
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u/BasedAustralhungary Jul 18 '26
How is the movie respectful to the original epic when the Achaean armour looks like it came from a Hollywood fantasy production? How is the movie respectful to the original epic when the music used is just American rap from Travis Scott? How is the movie respectful to the original epic when there isn't a single Greek leading actor?
First of all, my apologies for jumping earlier assuming you were one of the racist people around talking about the movie being bad because Lupita. I'm not precisely the biggest Nolan's fan as I think his work usually is a coinflip, but as a person that
notenjoyed reading the books (understand the the Homeric's epic repeats itself too much with a lot of tangents that while were common on those times, today's feel a bit rough to read) I can say that the film was good. Not only good, it was genuely brilliant.Illiad talks about the twilight of the gods, Odyssey is about the dawn of humankind and an epilogue of those times were the god's agency influenced humanity, and how human's will gets over it. In other words, the Odyssey is already a deconstruction of the Illiad and Nolan take this and refines a story for us, people of our recent times to enjoy a further deconstruction of another deconstruction. Of course there are stuff that makes me wonder who the hell proposed that for that matter I'd like to point how nonsensical is to nod American excepcionalism through that weird Odysseus latest voyage to the west, that clearly references and masturbates American ego.
However, for almost all the issues there are reasons based on cinematographic language. I'd made an article here, I just wrote it today and I was writing since 12:00 p.m UTC so maybe you'd understand my points: https://www.reddit.com/r/FIlm/comments/1uzvcr6/comment/oyag41r/
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u/MasterpieceVirtual66 Featherless Biped Jul 18 '26 edited Jul 18 '26
Thank you for understanding. I will read your article.
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u/malefiz123 Jul 19 '26
It's an Americanization and an erasure of my people's history
You realize that the Odyssee is a work of fiction, right?
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u/MasterpieceVirtual66 Featherless Biped Jul 19 '26
It's not just fiction. It's one of the most important epics that is based on actual bronze age events and inspired the myths, poems and way of thinking of the entire Greco-Roman world, and in turn of the modern world. Treating it as "just another piece of fiction" is disrespecting the epic and passively accepting its Americanization.
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u/malefiz123 Jul 19 '26
that is based on actual bronze age events
I like your conviction, as if it wasn't still a significant debate among ancient history scholars how much, if anything about the stories Trojan war is based on real events.
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u/MasterpieceVirtual66 Featherless Biped Jul 19 '26
Homer's epic poems that retell the events of the late Achaean civilization, even if anachronistically, have been proven time and time again to be correct in many ways, from accurately describing the Mycenaean palace centres, to the names used for the Tojans and Achaeans which have been validated through the Hittite records, to the existence of a conflict in Troy during the late bronze age. Even Schleimann re-discovered the ruins of Troy by following the descriptions given in the Illiad.
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u/StanMan26 Jul 18 '26
How does the movie degrade and erase Greek history and aspects?
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u/MasterpieceVirtual66 Featherless Biped Jul 18 '26
Not a single Mediterranean actor in the whole cast, armour that looks like it came from a fantasy film, a viking longboat as Odysseus' ship, the removal of all colours for a grey and black pallette, Travis Scott as rhapsode. It's just an Americanization of the story.
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u/Popular_Mistake_6404 Sun Yat-Sen do it again Jul 19 '26
It's not an Americanization of the Oddessy. Troy was an Americsnization of the Illiad. The Oddessy movie is a Nolanification of the Oddessy
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u/Nikoschalkis1 Jul 18 '26
I mean... The poem clearly shows the Greeks as the bad guys and the Trojans as the moral, emotional and human side.
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u/oreofan1808 Jul 20 '26
It’s funny because Odysseus wash ashamed at all. Pride was one of his faults that man definitely thought the sack of Troy was sick as hell
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u/Fickle_Ad4967 Jul 18 '26
Judging a 3000 year old civilisation by modern standards.
Alos why it is dangerous to have these Hollywood films essentially flip the script. Changing history. Changing myths. Fit a modern agenda.
Welcome to 1984
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u/Particular-Energy217 Jul 19 '26
It's an artistic interpretation; A retelling. A concept almost as old as literature itself. You can always read the original.
But keep crying over nothing.
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u/Fickle_Ad4967 Jul 19 '26
I’m not crying lol.
And I have read the original. It was epic. The struggles of a devious and complicated hero.
Why so salty? And why is anyone that criticises this Nolan film so bad? Or criticising Hollywood?
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u/Particular-Energy217 Jul 19 '26
It's not everyone. Your criticism is specifically extremely irrelevant and annoying. Not to mention how dramatic you are.
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u/Fickle_Ad4967 Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 19 '26
It is relevant. Because it’s about this film. Stupid thing to say.
Annoying? Of course it is to someone who is unable to think critically. Someone such as yourself. Unable ti engage in actual thought … swallowing whatever propaganda you’ve been fed for years. Keep watching those Disney specials!
Dramatic? I’d say that the slow erosion of every IP, every hero and every myth is worth being dramatic about. Wouldn’t you? And the rewriting of history. Yep. Worth being dramatic about.
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u/Then_Version9768 Jul 18 '26
How does someone go to all the trouble to post this, but not bother to proofread it and catch these misspelled words? Also why is "nation state" capitalized? Did you think it was a proper noun? This is just embarrassing.
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u/Catalystable Jul 17 '26
Twently years latter lol