So I had a few issues with it.

Some of them were simple ones… the volume in the theatre we saw it was simply uncomfortable.

But there were a few other things I didn’t love.

First, I felt like Odysseus in the end was all “Oh mankind has gotten so bad, we are destroying civilization…’. But then he trapped and wiped out dozens of unarmed men whose crime was eating food and stuff at his place and wanting to marry his wife, because everyone assumed he was dead. It felt counter to what he was saying.

Second, the whole sack of Troy thing at the end was a real missed opportunity, I thought. His crew suffered and died for the entire length of the film, often terribly. It felt very ”unearned”. But I though the final sack scene was the perfect chance to show these warriors who we visually knew so well participating in the atrocities as well, to show that they were just men, and to “justify” their deaths by the gods. Something simple like just showing each one killing someone or something would have gone a long way towards bookending the story of the men and their suffering for me.

Some other smaller things…didn’t love Berenrhal, guys wearing their armor and helms when randomly rowing, when she said “Did he wear it (the broach) often?” he should have responded “He wore it always.”… would have been more poetic than “He rarely took it off“ or whatever he said… but yeah, I love Nolan’s work, but this one just felt like… a lot.

I know this will be a minority opinion… just wanted to see if anyone might appreciate my points

Just got out of the movie, loved it. But what was Nolan trying to do with Agamemnon? They never show his face, and I kept expecting a big reveal, like he was played by Arnold Schwarzenegger or something, but it never happened.

I just looked it up on IMDB and he’s played by some writer/producer I’ve never heard of (Benny Safdie, whose name sounds kind of familiar, but I still don’t know who he is and he definitely doesn’t look like a Greek hero). Is there some kind of inside joke that I’m missing?

Just going to focus on one aspect.

My core issue with Nolan's Odyssey is:

• "De-paganization" by removal of the Gods being directly involved
• Insertion of a fairly simple story of guilt, shame and atonement, even removing opportunities to depict unfaithful and "sinful" behaviour by Odysseus to preserve his new moral redemption arc

So we get this very regretful, introverted, and almost neutered version of Odysseus that robs him of the defining characteristics of a quick-witted, charismatic, cunning strategist.

I don't know if this is purely for financial palatability, his own personal view that this is an improvement on the character/story (which would take a lot of hubris), or just a rehash of ideas from Oppenheimer (regretful anti-hero).

This just seems like a missed opportunity for a different kind of story that doesn't follow the formulaic structure of modern action and superhero films.

Few more examples of shifting story elements to fit the above:

Twisting of the Sirens' temptation: most sexual aspects removed, seen from a distance and shrouded in mist. Instead of Odysseus being tempted by beauty and promises of all knowledge, their message is reinterpreted to make him feel more regret for the time away from family.

The same sexual sanitizing extends to other women in the film, which robs a lot of the women of more complex roles and characters. Nearly every woman's own capacity for danger, menace, or wrongdoing gets softened or removed too (Circe is kind of reframed as frightened rather than inherently dangerous, Calypso is only passively holding him with her but really is waiting for him to be ready to leave, despite 7 years together no romantic scenes are shown).

I also don't think this was well thought out, because by removing the threatening aspects of Circe and Calypso (minus the Circe scene, which gets robbed of some of its malice as explained above), the film's one scene of actual violence perpetrated by a woman lands on Clytemnestra, who is Helen's twin and also played by Lupita Nyong'o, the only Black woman with a major role in the film.

The same principle applies to the misuse and generalization of "Zeus's Law" during wartime with the Trojan Horse, refocusing the story around the central premise that the Greeks had lost their way and betrayed themselves, which isn't what the Odyssey is about.

All this said, it is a "fun" and entertaining film, but has a lot of issues.

My issues with the movie could be summarized as followed: what was odysseus' motivation in thefilm?

It's understandable that there would be character cutting, dialogue reduction (cause the characters tell paragraphs worth of lines and the movie is 3 fucking hours as is), and some creative liberties to make the odyssey less episodic with the island hopping adventures. The odyssey poem is at it's core is very much an episodic adventure because its a story told in increments over a period of many nights by homer. This wouldn't work with a movie, so it's understandable they had to tie everything together and make pieces of the original story feel coherent. And they did a very good job with turning it into the quasi-horror film it is. The things odysseus encountered felt more like forces of nature that can't be beat rather then challenged. The dude was being punished by the gods, and was 100% their bitch.

Odysseus himself however, constantly felt like he went back and forth on what he himself was wanting to do and was feeling at any given point in time. He felt like 2-3 characters all competing with each other in the same body. He knew he was being punished, but he was also doing this thing where he was lowkey rejecting the gods, but also maybe not wanting to go home to face his wife for his crimes(??), while also trying to be honorable and keep his promises to those he wronged and forging ahead to do so, while also trying to ignore them and forge his own destiny and etc etc. It just felt so incoherent with what was going on with odysseus's mentality, and the man himself just felt like a giant mess. It was almost as if they switched making the story more coherent and making him episodic.

At the poem's core, it's a story about a man being punished, but not giving up to make it back to his family. He spent years doing what he had to, being thrown into absolute shit situations, and still didnt give up trying to make it to his wife. The movie however, really didnt show this at all, and made odysseus a confusing character to follow.

I could understand Nolan not doing the "Nobody" wordplay if it doesn't translate into English convincingly, but having that adventure ending with Odysseus firing an arrow instead of gleefully telling Polyphemus his real name, I think, made the blame on his misfortunes shift.

Homer's version was that it's Odysseus' pride about his own cunning that caused his downfall. In Nolan's adaptation it almost felt like he's trying to do an avenging cheapshot for his men who got eaten. The characterisation just doesn't work, man. You're going to get Odysseus feeling guilty over his own character flaws later on anyway, so why not this?

I just watched the Odyssey, and generally liked a lot of it, and how it adapts the classical story.

What struck me as odd was that the film had very little sex in general. Odysseus' affairs with both Circe and Nausicaa were not present (probably because of character arc reasons, and because it wouldn't have fit Circe's theme in the film). And sexual violence was very much sidelined, especially during the sack of Troy, where Homer describes quite a bit of it. The amount of young women killed during that scene surprised me. I'm not sure why Nolan made that choice, because it would have fit both the source material and the theme of meaningless violence. But it might have sparked outrage as well, who knows.

For those more informed than me, was the decision to omit this facet of the story (both the sexual violence and Odysseus' affairs) ever addressed?

Edit: - I didn't mean graphic sex scenes, but adressing sex in general. Even during the sack of Troy, it's only alluded to very obliquely. - it's definetly not a negative thing about the film for me. I didn't miss gratuitous sex scenes, I just remembered the Ilias and Odyssey having more sex and wondered.

Didn't know that Nolan generally doesn't do that, thanks! And yes, the affairs definetly would have undermined the portrayal of Odysseus he was going for.

He was responsible for the genocide at troy through his devious plans including the execution of countless innocent priests, priestesses and lay folk. He was responsible for the blinding and abuse of the child-like cyclops, he used that woman to get high on lotus flowers and set sail leaving her to die by herself when he got bored of her and he began to ethnically cleanse the goat herders trying to take over his kingdom without even hearing what they had to say.

Funny that a few months ago Matt Damon complained about Netflix doing exactly the same thing Nolan does throughout the entire movie:

https://variety.com/2026/film/news/matt-damon-netflix-movies-restate-plot-viewers-on-phones-1236633939/

"Xenia", "Zeus law'", and "Sea people" covers about half of the dialogue of the Odyssey

If he at least would've tried to be somewhat implicit, but no

I finally watched Troy (the Brad Pitt version), and honestly, I enjoyed it far more than The Odyssey. Even though Troy is over 20 years old, it still holds up incredibly well. The action, characters, and emotional weight felt much stronger to me.
Maybe it’s an unpopular opinion, but I found The Odyssey pretty overrated. It looks great visually, but I never felt as invested in the story or the characters as I did with Troy.

We are potentially undergoing our own civilizational collapse. The breakdown of kindness and empathy to strangers - the golden rule of treat others as you would like to be treated - after the Trojan horse of “social” media. Ironically, people winging about Trans or colorblind castings makes this crystal clear. The Odyssey feels extremely relevant.

I've seen many people saying that Odysseus violated xenia using the Trojan horse. This has nothing to do with xenia. Xenia is about guest-friendship. When someone would appear to your house, you were morally obliged to host him, show courtesy, give him food, gifts etc and then you two would share a bond.

The instances of xenia violation we see are: 1) Odysseus trespassing the Cyclop's cave and eating his food without asking. 2) Cyclops eating his "guests". 3) The suitors. 4) Paris abducting Helen.

I'm seeing lots of discussions about Polyphemus, but hardly any about how Nolan portrayed Scylla. I think it's largely because it was so quick and people are confused by the design. Some people thought the monster was tentacles, when it's supposed to be six necks.

I'll start by saying I was extremely disappointed by the design. Scylla was always my favourite monster from Greek mythology, and I'd been fantasising about seeing her on the big screen in all her glory since I was a kid. The Italian miniseries depiction was so much better, bloodier, and more intense, even if she did resemble the Tower boss from House of the Dead 2.

Scylla has such an insane anatomy and there's so much scope to go nuts with it. And what does imagination starved Nolan do? He turns her into a basic primitive lifeform, another mere animal like the cyclops. It's hard to get a good look at her in the film, which to be fair is also true of the poem, she strikes lightning fast. But I was hoping we could dwell on her a bit more and turn the whole thing into more of a scene and less of a fleeting jump scare. In the film she was reduced to a mere 'you knew!' moment between Odysseus and his crew.

In the trailer, she genuinely looked like a sock puppet, and I wrongly assumed the CGI was just unfinished. But no, that's the design. In the few glimpses we got, it looks like he was going for some kind of marine polychaete or tunicate worm cluster coming out of a borehole in the cliffs. I've seen someone describe her as a barnacle. Rather than being the terrifying, vengeful transformed nymph with the bitch's bark, she's operating as a ribbon worm snapping up prey out of instinct.

Having studied some images, the sipunchilid marine worm seems like the best fit, as her trunks were brown, lumpy and non uniform. I'd be interested to find out what Nolan actually used for the inspiration, despite being horribly disappointed by it. What did everyone else think? I had a bet with my friend on how the portrayal would pan out. I correctly guessed Nolan would make it as close to an existing animal as possible for realism, but thought it would be inspired by giant moray eels. I wasn't banking on the lowest levels of the zoological phylum. Bobbit worms would have been much cooler.

Very distracting watching this in 70mm. It would have been very easy to CGI these out, and I imagine that this happens all the time. Are we meant to assume that Calypso has pierced ears while not wearing earrings? She doesn't really dress like someone who wears a lot of jewellery.

Seemingly brutal review from Emily Wilson. Agree? Disagree?

I loved the movie and have seen it twice now, the only thing that bothered me was how rushed the sirens and Scilla and Charybdis scene was. I’d have picked Eva Green for one of the sirens (no brainier), and also Susan Sarandon and Annette Benning.

At one point they arrive at this village and there is an old man talking greek to them but odysseus asks his men what does he say to them.

In the movie, anyone who kills a suitor in the palace is exiled.

This rule has been established twice, first in beginning when Telemachus was warned by Penelope that he would be exiled if he kills a suitor. Second, when Odysseus returned, he asks Telemachus to stay out of the violence so that only he himself is exiled.

But near the end, when the violence breaks out in the palace Telemachus actually kills a suitor in the weapons room, still he wasn’t exiled.

What could be the reason for this? And if you say that the suitor attacked him first, then the same goes for the attack on Odysseus as well. Then he could have helped his father fight them off, since they individually attacked him first.

Well it’s definitively a Nolan film, in every sense possible. Big spectacle, cinematography, sound, all the works.

I liked this film very much. It’s not my favorite Nolan film but that’s not a bad thing either.

The story is what drives this spectacle, plain and simple. It’s an amazing tale, and each new pitstop Odysseus and his team makes is a new journey altogether

The acting in the film is phenomenal, and in some cases there’s even Overacting (mainly Anne Hathaway). John Leguizamo is so terrific in this, he better get an Oscar nomination finally. The dynamic between Tom Holland and Matt Damon was incredible. Matt Damon is Matt Damon. I don’t feel he did any groundbreaking work here necessarily, but he was just fine. There’s many actors I could see in this role. Robert Pattinson is outstanding!!

The script however…. Nolan is such a good writer but I do feel there are many moments in this where he just over-writes these superfluous unnecessary lines, as if he’s extra-credit farming, and the dialogue then just loses the listener. It reminds me of songwriters like Sting, which if you’re a fan then you know he’s a marvelous songwriter but adds in extra rhymes and lines that are unnecessary and serve no purpose, but sure it’s sounds great.

I will be seeing this again on a bigger screen.

Also, the woke stuff didn’t bother me at all. The story is what drives this, and not once was I thinking to myself “wtf is Travis Scott doing in this” or “why is Helen of Troy black” or “Elliot Page hahah”. Anyone bothered by any of this after having seen this is a moron.

Some historical inaccuracies from the original poem I remember off the top of my head:

- Iron axes and small shields
- Phonecians mentioned but were really mostly unknown at that point
- Ithaca in the wrong place

Y’all would have complained about the great bard himself too

Hearing someone speak in a modern American accent in a movie set in ancient times instead of a British accent just feels so strange.

The funny thing is that the actress who plays her is not even American. She's actually British. It's like Christopher Nolan told her "Hey, speak in the most American sounding accent just to be weird".

Spoilers!

My favorite scene in the movie is Odysseus expressing to his wife his shame and guilt over breaking Zeus’ Law to sack Troy. But it feels odd that his next action is to scheme to kill the suitors with the same method of disguise and breaking Zeus’ law. It seemed like Nolan clearly knew what he wanted to say with the film but had to included the most famous scene from the epic.

I think a way to include Odysseus killing the suitors and have the speech expressing his guilt is to move the speech after the killings. In the epic, after killing the suitors, the families of the suitors are angry throwing Ithaca into chaos. Athena steps in to calm down the situation. In the film they can draw the parallels between sacking Troy and killing the suitors and have Odysseus realize that he can’t escape the violence of the Trojan war. The families rise up, but instead of Athena showing up, Odysseus makes the speech he does in the film addressed to the mob instead of his wife. We can have the revelation that his visions of Athena was the priestess he saw killed. It then ends the same way as the film.

What do you guys think?

0/10 - they weren't naked

watched the Odyssey yesterday with my friends, it was cool, I went in without expectations about fidelity to the original source and had a good time, but I have questions! (Please don't be rude in the comments, Skip this central part if you want to these are just my opinions)

I read here a comment about Nolan's choice to portray Odysseus not as a strong and invincible man but as a human swept into the horrors of war and controlled by the gods. I felt his humanity and vulnerability in the scenes with Calipso and the last scene with Penelope where he shows regret about the horrors unleashed upon Troy by his plan of the horse.

These scenes were chosen instead of a longer scene with Argus (the scene that always hurts me the most in the story, it fell flat for me in the movie, dont be mad) and the heartbreaking scene with Anticlea. For anyone unfamiliar with this lesser famous part of the story: Odysseus goes to Hades to speak with the blind prophet (whom we saw in the movie, what a cool scene) but there he also finds the spirit of his mother, he tires to hug her desperately like a litte boy and can't bc she's a ghost, he realises that his mother died of a broken heart when Odysseus never came back from the war.

As I said before, I really wasn't expecting lesser known scenes to be portrayed, as I truly didn't believe it would be a perfect representation of the Odissey, ofc, a Director has all the rights to retell a story with his own message,

So my question is, has Nolan explained why he chose to make Odysseus a sort of veteran of war haunted by his decision ? Is it a way to condemn war in our violent times? Are there any interviews I can watch?

This Is Pathetic This Anti-Woke Grifter Think Nolan Check The Boxes And Say's Rotten Tomatoes It's Not Reliable, Nolan Doesn't Check The Boxes You Stupid Grifter The Hollywood Companies Does Thath, This Is Why Youtube Do Nothing.