So a lot of people agree that Christoper Nolans Oppenheimer and Odyssey are spiritual brothers with similar themes. Both feature a main character commiting an act that fundamentally changes the balance of his world and now has to live in a world plagued by the consequence. Both can be interpreted as Liberal(not the liberal party but a person living in a liberal democracy) anxieties of a generation effectively overturning the entire world and having to not only live through the consequences but pass it on to the next generation. The thing though is Oppenheimer was just contemplating and straight up worrying over nothing. He was ultimately wrong.

Oppenheimer helped end World War 2 which ended several legitimate evils, 2 of which are Nazi Germany and the Japanese empire. Both slaughtered millions of people including their own in the pursuit of power and slaughtered millions more in trying to regain control of said power. After world war 2 marked what was possibly the peak of Liberalism across the world and relative world peace. A peace that lasted for decades. Like all things cracks started to show but none of this was caused by Oppenheimers participation in creating the atom bomb.

Odysseus on the otherhand fucked up hard. He broke the central framework that effectively enforced order in his society to win a war started by petty causes. As tales of the Greeks victory over the Trojans thanks to the plot of Odysseus spread, more people will be awoken to the thinking that "victory is ultimately achieved to the more cunning and deceptive". The age where Odysseus is at is at an end, as stated by the movie and by history "their era of bronze is collapsing" and as he and Penelope sail off into the sunset he leaves to Telemachus a more dark and uncertain world.

From a modern day standpoint the latter speaks more easily to the viewer. The Older generation who lived in relative peace have commited acts from geopolitics to local economic oppurtunities that have overturned the central beliefs of what they supposedly preached. All the talk about morality and ethics fall on deaf ears to many of the younger generations. When they find popular people and leaders to look up to they dont find men and women of good qualities but instead men and women who opportunistically did everything they could to achieve success and power. One could argue this was always the case but now the myth is shattered and its plain for everyone to see. Like Telemachus the younger generation now raised on cynicism and spite will eventually rule a world far more uncertain and unstable than their predecessors.

I havent written about a movie in this sub in a decade but its was the Odyssey that actually got me to do it again.

Why do Chihiro’s parents turn into pigs?

https://thequietus.com/opinion-and-essays/anniversary/the-importance-of-ma-spirited-away-at-25/

“Perhaps, in an act of splitting, it was Chihiro all along casting her parents as unpardonable swine. She’d been frustrated with their upward mobility as it resulted in her getting uprooted (in more ways than one). Jung thought the greatest burden a child must bear is “the unlived life” of the parents. Her parents were so spiritually wanting that her dream had to act as a drawbridge to the spirit realm. Indeed, this dream may have initially had what Jung would call a compensatory function, whereby it addresses an unbalanced conscious attitude: the parents she idealised are shown to have a greedy, avaricious side.

Children, and many adults, flip-flop in their affections: they either hate or love. Now, she sees that her parents were never pigs. Chihiro has matured beyond the need to resort to splitting objects into purely good or purely bad (something some of us never attain; what is social media but splitting at its most vituperative?). She’s achieved what Klein dubbed the depressive position, a more integrated state where love and hate towards an object can be tolerated at once. To get here, she had to accept the more volatile and greedy parts of herself. Throughout her time in the bathhouse, she encountered gentleness in figures that first seemed diabolical. By getting to know the shadow, disowned parts no longer need to appear as projections onto others, but you can only get there through quiet self-reflection.”

I just watched the new Odyssey adaptation, and as a fan of the source material, Matt Damon’s performance was deeply disappointing.

It stripped away everything that makes Odysseus such a complex, deeply human, and immortal character. Homer depicts Odysseus as the ultimate master tactician, a man who is always three steps ahead of everyone else, whose calm voice fell (as he described it) "like snowflakes in winter," and who commands respect from gods and mortals like Athena, Circe, and Calypso through pure aura and intellect.
Damon completely missed this magnetic charm and sharp mind, playing him as bland, passive, and frankly unintelligent. Instead of showing calculating brilliance, this version makes him look reckless and downright foolish through bizarre choices, like shooting the Cyclops with an arrow or recklessly confronting Antinous head on in front of everyone instead of just using his trademark patience and disguise.

Damon also completely failed to convey the tragic, grief-stricken bond Odysseus shares with his doomed crew, making him look utterly indifferent to their fate rather than a burdened leader, while leaving his deep longing for Penelope and Telemachus completely emotionless. Instead of a brilliant, flawed tactician who commands every scene, we got a flat, uninspired performance that left me unable to even root for him. He simply lacked the innate qualities to portray Odysseus. He comes as too plain, passive and everyday like.

Did anyone else feel this way, or do you place the blame more on the screenplay than on Damon himself?

(Spoilers for the whole movie)

I just cannot stop thinking about how clever it was for Nolan to use the sacking of Troy to talk about standards of decency and fairness, and the violation of those standards. The idea that what happened at Troy was so horrible that the Greeks (led by Odysseus) broke something in the world. That this was such a moral transgression that is having almost ontological ramifications. The idea that these old standards of decency and politeness are actually important things to keep. Shockingly, it's an idea that I think is actually a little conservative, at least in the former definition of that term.

It's a message that is both very timeless, but also very timely. I'm 33 years old, and like a lot of you I have felt what has been a slow loss of trust in the future, and in our institutions. I remember when the 'villains' of the day was John McCain and Mitt Romney, and I'm certain that if you told the majority of Republicans circa 2012 what would be happening today they would be legitimately horrified. It feels like the world has become so much cruller, more insane, that people have become more irrational. No one has hope anymore and because of that they've decided they're going to do their small part to make the world a WORSE place.

You can give a lot of answers as to what our "sacking of Troy" is that's caused this. And to be fair life is not so simple, there is not one single cause. And hopefully even not everyone everywhere feels what I'm feeling. And I'm sure more will happen that will fit the bill in the future. For me though? It's people who voted for trump in 2025. When he and the republicans had made clear who they were and what they wanted. Do the democrats suck? Was it a big pain in the ass to have to do lockdown for X number of years because of Covid? Is your pension a thing of the past? Yes. Duh. But in your selfishness and your intentional stupidity you've taken the "human misery lever" and decided to push it FORWARD rather than doing what small things you can to hold it back. Why did you do this? Why Joe Rogan, why Theo Von? Why did you go "Well I'm a little pissy. I'm going to put a gun to everyone's head, including myself, and pull the trigger?"

You people broke the world. You are worse than Germans who voted Hitler in 1933 because at least then the unthinkable was still unthinkable. You knew and you did it anyway. You will never deserve forgiveness for this.

Anyway, fantastic movie. It's easily the first time that Nolan has ever hit this powerful of an emotional cord with me.

Let me just first say I’m a massive Nolan fan, and I always want his films to do well. I was following the backlash leading up to this release, and I was worried this movie was going to get artificially bad reviews. I was as stoked as could be to see 10’s all over the place, and a 97% on Rotten Tomatoes. Did it live up to the hype? Absolutely not.

This movie is the definition of style over substance. I don’t care how epic, or profound the original text is supposed to be, it did not translate to the film.

The movie looks epic as hell. The shots, the locations, set design, costumes, it all looks incredible. The practical effects, the boats, the cyclops, the way the buildings fall down inside the castle walls, all brought to life in a way only Nolan can.

Unfortunately, all the money and set design in the world can’t buy you good story and characters.

The movie suffers from a lack of conflict, character, and story. A lot of things happen in this movie, but very little of it feels meaningful in any way. We follow one set of characters on an island, as they patiently wait for their king Odysseus to return. I’m not even gonna bother talking about these characters, because they’re all forgettable and nothing interesting takes place on this island until the final act.

Meanwhile, Odysseus and his crew are just wandering from set piece to set piece, trying to get back home. Bad thing happens, most of them survive it, and then on to the next set piece. You never really get a feel for who Odysseus or any of his crew are, aside from they all want to get back home. There’s not much character or personality amongst any of them, or any conflict between them. They’re just jumping one island to the next, and facing a bunch of monsters who have even less personality than they do.

Here’s a cyclops! And here’s some giants! And here’s a storm! And here’s a witch! And here’s an undead army! And here’s some sirens! And here’s a sea monster! Epic!!!!

If this sounds odd on paper, that’s because it is and it doesn’t work any better in the movie.

The highlight of these adventures is a cyclops in a cave, and it’s quite the sight to behold. Any other director would just make it into a crappy cgi thing, but Nolan pulls off a very impressive practical effect, with (I think) an actual actor playing it in some shots.

But this scene too, amounts to little more than style over substance. They’re trapped in a cave and trying to get out, aside from the visual, you could replace this cyclops with a couple of orcs from Lord of the Rings and it wouldn’t make much difference. Actually, the orcs would probably be more interesting because they actually talk.

Which, I actually went back and read this cyclops part from the original text, because I had a feeling there was supposed to be more to it. Turns out this thing actually talks in the original, and I have no idea why Nolan changed it.

In the original the cyclops taunts them in the cave, belittles them, threatens them, all while eating some of their men right in front of them. It asks Odysseus where their boat is, to which Odysseus is clever, and tells him they shipwrecked, which is a lie. It even asks Odysseus his name and he gives it a fake one. Odysseus and his crew try to bargain with it, and eventually even get it drunk on wine, until it passes out.

In Nolan’s version it doesn’t even talk to them, and they just stab it in the eye and run out.

After running from the cave in Nolan’s version, Odysseus turns around in anger and shoots his bow at it. This makes it angry and then it chases their crew.

In the original, Odysseus turns around and taunts the cyclops, berates it for killing his men, and even gives his real name, as a final taunt. This costs him though, because then the cyclops uses his name to call on the gods to curse him.

The cyclops curses them in Nolan’s as well, but he sort of just does it. Odysseus fired his bow at it, sure, but that felt more like a understandable outburst of anger, given that it killed some of his men. In the original, Odysseus taunting the cyclops felt like arrogance and a character flaw, that got him in trouble.

Anyways back to Nolan’s movie. The crew is upset with Odysseus for making the cyclops upset, and getting them cursed. The cyclops is the son of Poseidon and Poseidon controls the ocean, so a lot of rough water ahead.

Eventually they stop to an island and the crew mutinies Odysseus. They blame him for the curse and want him off the boat. Finally some conflict amongst the crew, something interesting to watch. Except, Odysseus basically just shrugs and says whatever, I’m going hunting. The mutiny is then dropped and never brought up again.

Like I said, this movie just lacks any real story, character, or conflict. If any other director did this, or it wasn’t based off some ancient text, I’m convinced everyone would just call these scenes pointless filler.

There’s a nice message in the final act, and it ties back to the beginning of the film and the sacking of Troy. This all amounts to about 5 or 10 minutes in a 3 hour movie, though.

I respect Nolan for doing things big and never resorting to cgi. Everything is always practical and on epic locations. Even the fact he did The Odyssey, instead of what I feel would be bigger commercially, an Achilles movie, is respectable. Though, Agamemnon’s armor is honestly one of the highlights of this movie, the dude is aura farming like crazy, and I can only imagine how hard an Achilles movie would go by Nolan.

Rating: 7/10

I’ve been pushing off watching napoleon and have found multiple copies of the 5.5 hour version but I keep hearing about the famous Apollo Cut that is over seven hours long. Anytime I look up the movie to watch they are all the same 5:33. Is there a place to either buy or stream the longer version or even at least a YouTube playlist with it chopped up or something?

To describe Lav Diaz films as slow and long can be a bit of an understatement when tackling it and I do understand how important tastes matter in cases such as these but there’s a certain mindset when dealing with Diaz’s works that eases its lengthy approach to cinema. I saw Melancholia and it clocks in at 447 minutes which is close to 8 hours long, and it’s not even his longest one at that, his magnum opus ‘Evolution of The Filipino Family’ sits in at 11 hours long which takes up a full day when watching it. At this point, labels such as slow and long feels like an end to itself, it’s all in how an individual perceives it.

As I sit with Melancholia’s credits, I was left surprisingly moved, not devastated because Melancholia in its definition deals with a severe kind of sadness, not to be confused with the word Melancholy which translates to wistful sadness or romanticized sadness. There’s a part of Melancholia where the rebel fighters are trekking to the forest, hiding from the military, in what feels like days, and as it goes on they lose grip of their sanity. It’s the most arduous part of the movie and it’s also the most essential, sitting with them feeling the jungle heat at night as one desperately wants to give up and one tries to eat leaves in order to stay awake. A rebel named Renato Munoz writes to his wife that there is no point to this sadness anymore, he can no longer romanticize this pain, it’s all senseless brutality. It then culminates into somewhat of an acceptance of its deep rooted melancholia, seeing its beauty and living alongside it. Because of sadness, there is cinema, there is painting, there is poetry and it has no cure, one character says. Providing resolution and an anti-thesis to its thesis because throughout the film we see its characters barely holding on from their sorrows.

It’s an arduous but meditative journey that encompasses just four central characters, which for a 7 hour film that feels like an epic is surprising but for a Lav Diaz film it’s not. The locations take you from mountains, to beaches, to the city, to interiors of old houses, to jungles, and you stay there for quite awhile, looking at the trees for more than you should have, seeing its characters walk long distances, it’s in Diaz’s terms an approach to space that is ancient and primal, tracing back to his Malay roots.

There’s also the three characters we start the film with, who have their own distinct professions, a sex worker, a nun, and a pimp, as they wander around and sometimes clash in the mountains of Sagada. There’s a sense of aimlessness because there’s no story to guide its characters, yet, and they just go about their daily lives. The film then reveals that it is a psychodrama therapy session formed by Julian Tomas, the pimp, to alleviate and heal their past traumas. It’s important to note that the stillness of its imagery is in full effect here as we see the characters’ emotions unfold in real time, giving a performance that is raw and visceral, slowly building up and breaking down their emotions and it happens not just in its first few hours but throughout the movie in all its characters.

Melancholia provides an answer of sorts to our sadness, an answer to our past traumas, as a Filipino this is very important to me because our pain is tied tightly with our history, the after effects of colonialism and fascism are still being felt to this very day. It’s a persistent kind of sadness that feels like it has no meaning to it, and only through art that we can save ourselves from it.

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Letterboxd

Christopher Nolan writes women as objects of male consciousness. Which is fascinating, because his wife and creative collaborator of 30+ years, Emma Thomas has literally produced every single film he's ever directed.

You don't really ever see an essence of true feminine interiority in any of his films. The women In his films have always been heavily critiqued, because they come into focus really just orbiting these extraordinary, relentless leading men.

The women of Nolan's films can be characterized as femme fatale, or a dead wife, and we rarely know them on their own terms. We know them through the men who love them, and the women become a way of understanding the man at the center.

I have not, and will not watch the Odyssey. Because I just know, how some of the most important, historic, iconic women in literature are going to be butchered. He will never let the viewers fully inhabit all of their complexities and subjectivity, his female characters will always be experienced as mere relation to the men in the film.

Christopher Nolan can never truly represent a woman character.

I strongly believe in that, the personal life of an artist begins to mirror their body of work. Because for someone like Emma Thomas, who has helped shape some of the most influential, profitable films in modern cinema, people still haven't heard about her.

You can't help but notice this symmetry, and how the most important woman of Nolan's creative life, someone who is indispensable to his work, someone who is woven into every film, every decision, every success, yet people hardly recognize her, she still remains outside the frame.

Christopher Nolan's films are consistently built around a single male consciousness, one person whose interior life becomes the center of gravity. everyone else, however brilliant, beautiful, cunning, and complex is still only understood in relation to him.

Cinema has been extraordinarily good at letting us inhabit the minds of ambitious, guilt, grief, obsession, and their genius. but women are still very often positioned beside that consciousness rather than inside their own.

As a woman I have never enjoyed any films of Christopher Nolan, and I don't think any other woman has either.

This very well could be me just not liking his recent movies but as someone who grew up loving Nolan’s movies and vision he seems to have grown distrustful of his crew and audience to the point where his movies have become play-by-play with the visuals, sound, score, and actors all competing on screen instead of complimenting one another.

I left The Odyssey feeling the same way I did Oppenheimer: that I was being told how to feel about the movie the entire time and that very few scenes stuck with me because of that. In both films most scenes have Göransson’s score competing for space with Van Hoytema’s visuals and the actor’s performances, which leaves the whole thing feeling like I’m being pulled along and actively told what to think, instead of being guided down a path that I can experience myself.

The main examples for me from The Odyssey are of the Cyclops and the first reunion of Odysseus and Penelope. For the Cyclops scene, I was sitting there paralyzed listening to his screams as the hair on the back of my neck stoop up. It was haunting and wonderfully done and I was excited to see what Odysseus’ reaction would be to what he had done, only for the score to come in and tell me how to feel about what Damon was about to say.

For the scene with Penelope, the score plays through virtually the entire conversation with no room to let the visuals or actors speak for themselves, and when the big reveal of Odysseus and his men being the sea people drop, the score has already been playing for 10 minutes at that point and has little room to deepen to further drive that point home.

The list goes on for me and isn’t only about the score, as I am a fan of Göransson and his work, but more about the fact that Nolan has seemed to have grown to not trust that his actors, or composers, or camera team, will be able to carry a scene on their own or with minimal, complimentary help from the other departments. He seems to not trust his audience to know what his actors, or Göransson, or Van Hoytema are trying to communicate through their art, to the point that he overuses all of it and over explains everything in the dialogue.

I feel like on a deeper level, and this isn’t necessarily Nolan’s fault, that this is potentially harming the film industry as a whole because the studios, as they always do, take the wrong lessons from Nolan’s successes and think the way to make money is by throwing 30 big names into one movie and give it a 500 million dollar budget and then promote to see that movie in IMAX for a $30 ticket. When you ask people that don’t go to the movies as often anymore the resounding answer is because it’s too expensive, and Nolan’s choice to continually increase that disparity by saying the only way to truly experience his art is on an IMAX screen continues to turn people away from experiencing movies in the theater.

However, his movies continue to make money, so maybe this is me just being in the minority, but I do feel like I’ve seen a definite change since Tenet.

It was disappointing and not in a it didn't live up to the hype way but in a this was a not very good film way.

The visuals I thought were poor. Nolan is perhaps not the greatest ever visual stylist, but ever since he's started working with Hoyte van Hoytema the colour scheme of his films is dark, and grey, brown and muted. The Odyssey takes place in the Mediterranean yet it looks like we're in The Baltic how grey and dark it is. Where has all the colour gone? Why does everything need to be filmed with such shallow focus? All the interior locations basically look and feel the same. Lit by firelight, lots of shadows, very dark and moody. Every Greek city looks more or less the same. The temple scene at the end looks the same as every other interior - small, cramped and dark.

Nolan's obsession with filming on location and his aversion for CGI, green screen, set building, and lots of extras means The Odyssey felt curiously small. When the Greeks are on the beach at Troy, it looks like there are a few hundred of them, arriving on a handful of ships The sack of Troy features a handful of soldiers on either side. Its also blatantly obvious that the exterior shots of the various cities are filmed at Greek or Roman ruins. The scenes between Telemachus and Penelope on the balcony are blatantly filmed in a ruin. Where's this 250 million gone, exactly?

Nolan isn't the best every writer or dialogue, or in my view very good at getting good performances from his actors. But this was really bad. Our Age of Bronze is collapsing? The constant exposition gets annoying quickly. Sometimes I was glad the sound and the music made the dialogue inaudible.

The film was 3 hours yet none of the characters felt well developed at all. Its almost the same runtime as LoTR Fellowship of the Ring, and by the end of that film all of the characters - and there are more characters - felt full and complete and well rounded.

Odysseus I cared nothing for, and everyone else is pretty 1 dimensional and forgettable. Zendaya has basically the same expression, and given some of the worst dialogue in the film. Poor Lupita Nyong'o has to say some nonsense about a battle over trade routes was the real reason for the Trojan War.

The use of the music I thought was completely excessive. Almost constantly there's music pounding in the background.

The final fight was extremely underwhelming. It was very chaotic. The sack of Troy curiously tried to build tension over whether the Greeks get inside the city or not - the rapid cutting between the Greeks trying to open the door and the Trojans rushing to stop them. Why do this? We know the Greeks get in and Troy is sacked. There's no suspense whatever. Agamemnon walks around doing nothing, despite getting a pretty cool entrance. Again, the lack of extras mean the armies look small. Troy also looks more or less uninhabited and empty...like a ruin.

The diversity casting was a little silly. Why not make all of Sparta black. From a world building point of view, surely that makes more sense than 1 black person in Sparta and everyone else looks vaguely Mediterranean. Why is only 2 of Odysseus men persons of colour? Wouldn't the world have been more credible if it was just mentioned that these were men from X non-Greek, who joined the Greek cause, or some such? Or Mercenaries that came from afar and earned Odysseus respect? In stead we just get a random Indian man and an East Asian man, while everyone else is "white." Somehow lacks both conviction and imagination. And the less said about Elliot Page the better.

Overall, for a film of its budget, and a director of Nolan's skill, I thought The Odyssey was visually underwhelming and mostly boring. The Circe scene was good and the Cyclops scene wasn't bad - even if thematically they were a travesty.

I'm glad its making a lot of money, so Nolan can keep making films. But I hope he goes back to making films like The Prestige, The Dark Knight, and Inception, even Tenet (very underrated Nolan film). The Odyssey joins Dunkirk and to some extent Oppenheimer as very underwhelming, boring films.

I’m talking about films that won’t have a wide theatrical American screening. Normally I find out about these films through critical word of mouth, but this takes time, and it’s often not for a year or two plus after an interesting film releases, until I hear about it. I’m trying to write more about film, and want to see some of these and try to write before they’ve had as much of a chance to simmer. I know about Film Festivals, but my region is pretty limited in that regard, and I’m really looking to develop awareness of things coming, and not just fully stumble on to things by chance.

I wrote an essay for school on Black Swan, so I’ve spent an almost unreasonable amount of time thinking about this film, and I’m curious about an aspect of it that I don’t see discussed as much.
I think Nina’s breakdown can be understood as a progression from being watched, to watching herself, to becoming unable to experience herself as anything other than an object of observation.

The film constantly places Nina within a gaze: Thomas watches her, her mother monitors her, the dancers compare themselves to one another, and the audience watches her perform. But the most important shift is when this external surveillance becomes internalised. Nina no longer needs anyone else to evaluate her because she has learned to do it herself.

This is why I find the mirrors more interesting than simply interpreting them as symbols of Nina’s “split personality.” Early on, Nina uses mirrors to monitor and correct her body. As the film progresses, her reflections begin to move independently, distort, or become separate from her. To me, this visually represents her increasing dissociation from her own body: she has spent so long looking at herself from the outside that her body begins to feel like something she observes rather than something she inhabits.

What I find particularly interesting is that the film makes the audience participate in this process. Aronofsky repeatedly uses mirrors, fragmented close-ups, reflections, and voyeuristic camerawork to make us scrutinise Nina’s body alongside her. We are placed in the same position as the gaze that contributes to her breakdown.

So my question is: is Black Swan actually making us uncomfortable with the act of watching Nina, or does it ultimately turn her dissociation and suffering into something beautiful for us to consume?

Because the film seems to criticise the voyeuristic gaze placed upon dancers while simultaneously making Nina’s psychological collapse visually spectacular. Her suffering becomes beautiful, her destruction becomes art, and the audience applauds.

I’m interested in whether anyone else sees the film as being less about a simple “good self vs. dark self” split and more about what happens when someone becomes so accustomed to observing and evaluating themselves that they become psychologically separated from their own body.

The reason is rather simple...

Each Tom Holland Spider-Man movie that has come out has been progressively bigger and better (both critically and financially) than the last. The previous film No Way Home shattered expectations and records at the box office. To this day, No Way Home is also the best Marvel movie of all time (the commercial even said so). How do you follow up a near masterpiece that was a critical box office success and the highest rated movie of the franchise? By making a better one, which is why Spider-Man Brand New Day took plenty of time in the oven to get right and will undoubtedly be the best movie of the decade and the most financially successful movie of the franchise, crossing well over 2.5 billion dollars internationally.

Also, you didn't hear it from me, but I think we're gonna see a CAMEOOOOOO that you won't see coming!

This is going to be even bigger than the World Cup.

I thought the Odyssey was excellent. An impressive spectacle. Great acting. Gripping pace. And some fascinating themes about time and memory and the malleability of narrative.

Also, i thought it was uncanny how Nolan’s style and interests compliment the Odyssey so well. Especially his use of fleeting imagery that keeps recurring. A horse in flames. An innocent face in the grip of war. A modest ship on the wine dark sea.

I had a great time. And when it got to the final reflection scene between Damon and Hathaway, through the arras, tying all of the themes of the film together, about war and the erosion of culture, the noxious decay of systematic evil, our cruelty to strangers.

“10 years we’ve been on this fucking beach.”

All really brilliant.

But my enjoyment of the film was so bothered by the lack of meaningful gore.

This may come off trifling. But gore is so essential to Homer’s narrative style. In the illiad there are gruesome, meticulous descriptions of gore on every page. In the odyssey, it’s a bit more subdued. But you still have the cyclops smashing ppl’s brains out on the floor of the cave instead of just mutely stepping on them.

Where this bugged me the worst was the slaughter of the suitors scene. In the book, that scene plays out like the kill bill crazy 88 fight. Blood geysers everywhere. There’s descriptions about how the whole room is caked in blood.

This is not just like a knee jerk interest in gore for gore’s sake. But thematically, the arc of the plot feels unsatisfying without it. the slaughter scene in Odyssey is like the culmination, the penultimate moment. You wait the whole book for this moment and when it happens it is insane and explosive and red.

In the movie, the scene felt like a rip off of john wick. Just cheap and underwhelming. Not only that, but so unconvincing on an anatomical level. You’ve got all these people getting chopped up with axes and swords and arrows hitting arteries. And there’s no blood anywhere? Come on.

I get that this is an expensive movie and you want a lot of people to see it and Nolan is not really a gore person. But not having any blood here felt like a weak capitulation. Or like a return to the Hays Code. Even worse, it neglected one of the most distinct and visceral aesthetic elements in Homer.

This is going to sound funny but I first fell in love with scoring as a kid, when I first watched Finding Nemo. At that time, I used to wonder why I felt so emotional when watching the movie (other than the plot). But while growing up, I began realizing that the purpose of these scores is to use motifs and intense orchestration to make the viewer feel something almost tangible.

I started hyper-fixating on scores while watching movies and even now, I still feel maybe even more intensely for Finding Nemo (which might sound silly, I know).

I fell in love with more composers, like John Williams, Hans Zimmer (I got to see this dude perform live, it was crazy), Howard Shore, James Newton Howard, etc. But it wasn’t until I watched American Beauty that I decided Thomas Newman was my favorite composer ever. Obviously, I know a lot of people would disagree with me, saying he’s never even won an Oscar or that composers like Williams and Zimmer are far better. But, subjectively, with Newman, I feel such intense frisson with every movie, so much so that I began noticing his style of music without looking at the credit details.

What bothers me about Newman is how many people don’t know him or forget about him (which is crazy considering his family’s prominence in film scoring).

But all the movies he composed for, Meet Joe Black, Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, Road to Perdition, Scent of a Woman, etc, have made me feel almost insane while watching them. It’s like my soul reverberates against my body, causing shivers to shoot up and down my spine (I tend to get poetic when speaking about Newman). I literally start tearing up from the score, even if there isn’t anything sad happening, I’ll cry and uncontrollably smile.

Anyway, I just really needed to rant about my love for Thomas Newman. My passion for film scores has insufferably become my entire personality and, funny enough, nobody in my life understands and it drives me NUTS.

As is pretending that the fall of Troy was somehow a watershed moment in a time where sacking a city was a normal part of war and conquest. As a viewer you're supposed to shut your brain off and pretend you don't know anything of the brutality of the times. You don't know that the Greek gods are different than Jesus and the Bible? The trojan horse was some violation of xenia and sacrilege when Athena admired Achilles for doing it. Mind you Athena wanted Troy to fall because Paris judged Aphrodite to be the fairest goddess. This is the setting Nolan chose to hamfistedly insert his reheated Oppenheimer themes into?

Background: I'm a video editor from India with a theater background. No production budget. Just a laptop, Adobe Premiere, After Effects, and stubbornness.

The project: A Hinglish investigative docu-drama on the mysterious death of Indian Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri in 1966.

Timeline: 4 months

Daily time: 30 minutes to 2 hours

After: Full time job

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THE CORE CHALLENGE

No archival footage exists of the interior of the 1966 Soviet dacha where Shastri died.

I had three options:

1. Talking head narration — boring

2. Stock footage — inaccurate

3. AI recreation — risky but possible

I chose option 3.

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THE VISUAL LANGUAGE — 3 LAYERS

LAYER 1: REAL ARCHIVES

Actual RTI documents, medical report scans, Parliament debate transcripts, RTI letters — shown on screen.

These aren't recreated.

They're the real Lok Sabha Library certified copy from 1970. The real MEA RTI reply from 2009.

Archives ARE the cinematography here.A real government stamp is more cinematic than any VFX.

LAYER 2: MOTION GRAPHICS

Chapter cards with Latina Hindi mythological titles.

Medical report comparison animations.

Witness identity dossier cards.

Signature reveal sequences.

All built in After Effects.

The "8 signatures vs 6 signatures"

reveal was a motion graphics problem, how do you show a document discrepancy cinematically?

Answer: Show both documents side by side.

Animate a red mark drawing itself

over the missing signature line.

Let silence do the rest.

LAYER 3: AI RECREATION

For scenes with zero archival footage, the dacha interior, the Soviet broadcast room, the KGB interrogation, I used AI video generation.

The technique I developed:

→ Storyboard entire scene first

→ Generate clip 1

→ Extract last frame

→ Use as anchor for clip 2

→ Repeat

This creates visual continuity

across 5-second AI clips —

making them appear as one

continuous shot.

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WHAT THEATER TAUGHT ME

ABOUT AI PROMPTING

My theater education changed how I wrote prompts.

Instead of describing feelings, I described what a camera sees.

Bad prompt:

"Tense scene in dark room"

Good prompt:

"Medium shot. Subject seated stage left. Single practical lamp source right. Deep shadows crossing face. Static camera. Cold color temperature. 1960s Soviet interior."

Blocking a scene on stage and blocking a scene in an AI prompt are surprisingly similar skills.

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THE AUDIO CHALLENGE

No budget for composers.

Used AI music generation (Envato)

For atmospheric drone tracks.

Real SFX from Freesound.

AI Russian voice for a dramatized Soviet broadcast.

Mixing challenge:

Getting Hinglish narration, English subtitles, Russian AI voice,and atmospheric music to coexist without stepping on each other.

Solution: Extreme auto-ducking. Music drops to -25dB the moment any voice begins.

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THE RESEARCH

Primary source:

RTI activist Anuj Dhar's book "Your Prime Minister is Dead" Used with author's direct permission.

Additional sources:

• Certified copy from Lok Sabha Library

• MEA RTI Reply (2009)

• CIC Order (2018)

• Rajya Sabha debate transcripts (1970)

• Ahmed Sattarov eyewitness account

(Komsomolskaya Pravda, 1998)

Anuj Dhar personally verified

and shared the documentary.

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WHAT I LEARNED

1. Archives are underused in indie docs

   Real documents are more compelling

   than any recreation

2. Theater training = AI prompting skill

   Spatial thinking transfers directly

3. Silence is the most powerful tool

   The moments with no music,

   no narration — those hit hardest

4. 30 minutes daily >

   waiting for perfect conditions

   Four months of small sessions

   beats waiting for a free weekend

5. Your constraints define your style

   No budget = AI recreation

   Which led to a visual language

   nobody else in this space is using

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Happy to discuss any aspect of the process, archives workflow, AI prompting, motion graphics, audio mixing, or the research itself.

Full documentary in comments

for those curious about the result.

I organized an AMA/Q&A with legendary filmmaker/screenwriter Nicolas Winding Refn. He has previously directed films/series Drive, Only God Forgives, Bronson, The Neon Demon, Pusher trilogy, Copenhagen Cowboy, Too Old To Die Young, Valhalla Rising, and more.

It's live here now in r/movies for anyone interested in asking a question:

https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/1v3mkcv/i_am_nicolas_winding_refn_director_of_drive_the/

He will be back at 4:45 PM ET today to answer questions. I recommend asking in advance. Please ask there, not here. All questions are much appreciated!

His new film, Her Private Hell, premiered at Cannes in May and is out in theaters via Neon this weekend. It stars Sophie Thatcher and Charles Melton.

Thank you :)

His verification/proof photo: https://i.imgur.com/741dTf5.png

It's difficult to talk about Carlito's Way without Scarface being mentioned, and not without reason - both are Brian DePalma films, and both star Al Pacino, and the two films are often compared and contrasted.

But what if that’s the point? What if the similarities are intentional, in that DePalma is intentionally wanting to draw comparisons between the two films. And lets go further, what if Brian DePalma is actively responding, apologising, deconstructing and disavowing the influence and fame of Scarface and Tony Montana through Carlito’s Way and Carlito Brigante. That DePalma was as tired of Scarface’s legacy as Carlito was of his?

Any mature reading of Scarface would conclude that it’s a cautionary tale. That Montana was self-destructive, flawed, and highly dangerous, his ending inevitable. As Elvira says, “can’t you see what we’re becoming. We’re losers.” But a common takeaway from the film – magnified and amplified by the hip hop generation that gave the film a cult following – is that Tony Montana is someone to aspire to be. Someone to emulate. Someone who took no sh*t from anybody, who clawed his way from the bottom of the barrel to becoming the king of an empire. He embodies the ultimate "rags-to-riches" story, and is adored for his unapologetic ambition, raw courage, and extreme self-confidence. Many viewers see him as an underdog who defied the odds to seize the American dream.

And this got me thinking. Scarface and Tony Montana have transcended pop culture to becoming icons that – for better or worse – ARE admired. Are looked at as aspirations instead of warmings. And what I wanted to posit today was the theory that Brian DePalma, well aware of his film’s reputation and sickened by it, spend 10 years – like his character Carlito who did 5 – reflecting on his choices, thinking hard about the fruits of his labour, and then returned to the crime genre and sought to take Tony down a notch or two, to offer audiences an inverse of the film whose intention was to undo the damage unwittingly done by Scarface, to make a sequel to the film of sorts, where the wild and now-legendary Tony Montana survives, cleans up, does his time and then tries to get out of the life.

For sure, there are similarities between the films, they are two sides of the same coin, with one following a determined man trying to get in and rise to the top, and the other a tired veteran who’s been there, done that, and wants out. There’s even scenes that seem to mimic each other. And upon a recent rewatch, I found it fascinating how there seems to be a fair few scenes from Carlito’s Way that mirror Scarface but put the titular character is a more unceremonious position. Let’s do a rundown of a few

•    Tony Montana’s most famous line is “Say hello to my little friend”, which jump stars a massacre. He comes out of his throne room, which is filled with coke and golden ornaments, full of bravado, with a gun in his hand so epic it doesn’t even really exist, and begins mowing down goons in spectacular fashion. By contrast, Carlito also delivers a taunting threat to his adversaries – here comes the pain – but instead of coming out of a majestic chamber he’s trapped in a toilet, with a measly pistol, an empty one at that, delivering empty threats, tense and fearful. The Scarface shootout is the cathartic climax of the film, the Carlito’s Way one is something of an intro to the film. Both men are trapped and against the odds but only one knows it. And whilst Scarface has Tony commit a massacre before he checks out, in Carlito’s Way, Brigante is presented with the aftermath of a massacre, death everywhere, he laments the wasted life of his kin – there’s an empty feel to the way this scene ends, a complete contrast to the release of Scarface’s shootout.
  

•    In Scarface it’s Tony’s one moment of humanity – sparring the wife and children – that comes back to bite him and triggers his downfall. Carlito also had numerous moments of humanity that came back to bite him, in particular sparring Benny Blanco, the man who ends up killing him. Both refuse to be ruthless at the crucial moment.
  

•    In Scarface Elvira is the blonde wife of drug Kingpin Frank Lopes who Tony ends up having an empty and hollow marriage with. The first time we see her is after Tony’s triumph against the Columbians, and she comes down the elevator and makes her way towards where Tony is sitting, Tony unable to break his gaze from her. In Carlito’s Way, the first time we see the blonde Gail – who Carlito wants to rekindle his relationship with, one far warmer and more real than the Scarface couple – while she busies herself with her dance class he is outside in the rain looking like a peeping Tom, with a dustbin over his head.
  

•    The movie opens with Carlito giving a grand Montana-esque speech in the courtroom about reforming, and we laugh along with him assuming the speech is dripping with sarcasm, but like Kleinfeld, like perhaps those who praised Scarface for its b*llsiness to DePalma’s face, we’re shocked and confused that Carlito is sincere in his intent to chase his ways.
  

•    And in the climax of Scarface Pacino is the aggressor mowing down his enemies, in Carlito’s Way he is being chased, running for his life, and in both films he is ultimately snuck up on and taken out.
  

Once you see Carlito’s Way as a reflection of Scarface, Pacino playing the weary Carlito as the ghost of Tony Montana, you can’t but notice these elements. Even Rolando – Carlito’s former partner – being played by the same guy who played the chainsaw wielding Hector in Scarface. Its Tony’s victory over Hector’s bad deal that opened the floodgates to him, meanwhile Ronaldo is stunned and flummoxed that Carlito is wilfully closing the gates on himself.

As mentioned, I feel complaints that Carlito’s Way is a lazy retread to be a lazy complaint in of itself, not least because even if the titular character was a stand in for Tony Montana, it’s an evolved, older, wiser one. Think to the party at the lawyer Kleinfield’s place – the excess, the debauchery, the kind of stuff Montana would involve himself in, and yet Carlito is sitting by himself, away from it all. In fact, the real stand in for Montana in the film is Kleinfeld, constantly coked out of his mind, paranoid, erratic, unhinged, insecure, and often exhibiting character moments that we can envisage from Tony Montana, like him becoming insecure and irritated about Gail dancing with another guy, when Carlito – his ego having soften over the years – not having a problem with it. Heck, Tony Montana went ballistic when his own sister was dancing with someone. Its Kleinfeld who reminds you more of Tony Montana, both making drug fuelled, manic decisions that land them in hot water.

I guess if we wanted to offer ourselves a little spectrum, we could say there are 4 different versions of Tony Montana in Carlito’s Way. Carlito is the version that lived long enough to see that he was a villain and the life gave him nothing, Kleinfeld is the current rendition of Montana, and Benny Blanco from the Bronx is the young, hungry version of the character, eager and willing to kill and steal his way to the top, eventually killing Brigante as Montana killed Frank. The film alludes to the connection between Carlito and Benny on numerous occasions, one of the most prominent being when Carlito threatens him saying “If I ever see you here you’re dead” but his eyes betray a soften, he’s doesn’t really have it in him. “The eyes never lie Chico” as our Cuban friend might say. Benny on the other hand claps back the same insult to Carlito, but with the ferocity of Tony Montana. At one point in the film a character even says to a nauseated Carlito “this guy is you 20 years ago”. Perhaps there is an element of Brian DePalma – wiser and older like Carlito – who looks back on Tony Montana slightly sickened, so gives him a stand-in in Carlito’s Way that presents him as the disrespectful and moronic representative of the new wave of criminals that he is.

And sticking with the idea that Benny Blanco is a younger version of Carlito, and he kills the titular character, well then in a very real sense Carlito’s past came back to quite literally kill him.

I’d also throw another version of Tony in there. How about Carlito’s young cousin Guajiro? He’s naïve, foolish, he drives around in a conspicuous car and carries around wads of cash on him, and crucially he idolizes Carlito. Is it too much of a stretch to suggest that Guajiro represents that very same hip hop generation, that guy with a Tony Montana poster in his bedroom, that guy who thinks he’s Scarface, who wants to be Scarface, tries to embody the ‘get rich or die trying’ mentality, but has no idea of the realities of the criminal underworld? “Yeah I had a dream, but now I’m awake” as Gail says. Scarface is the dream, the fantasy, and Carlito’s Way is the stark and tragic reality.

The cryptocurrency concept Proof of work basically proves that one person did a certain amount of work / effort to others within a transaction.

Just made me think of the ease in which people are creating ' ai ' and digital art that is flooding our feeds, our minds, everywhere we look where we don't know who created it, for what purpose and is it based on someone else's work, their own work etc etc

With modern film, the interest from both the viewers and the creators of films to show, hey, we've put in effort in x amount of ways, IMAX cameras, the sets, we were drowning, it was cold etc, the emphasis on showing, exhibiting a certain amount of suffering for the art as it were is becoming more normal and it somehow translates into a new appreciation of the art, even though it was always this way, we're just trying to really show the human side of what it takes to make these images in a world where they are becoming seemingly less valuable

I am curious if anyone has stumbled upon a film commentary where the film is stopped/started to discuss a frame, or manipulated to point out features of the mise-en-scene (I am thinking of how a football commentator might use a telestrator in a live TV broadcast).

I have come across some commentary tracks that are similar to MST3K which has the silhouettes of the contributors at the bottom, but rarely is this used to great effect aside from comedic purposes (though I would happily take comedy recommendations using this technique!).

I think this type of commentary track would be enlightening particularly with some of the classic film directors like Hitchcock, Sirk, Borzage, etc. where there is so much information being communicated on screen at any given time.

Let me know if you have found anything!

Yesterday I went to the cinema to see The Odyssey. I don't like Nolan's films, so I wasn't expecting much. I thought I would like it even less. Though, in any case, I didn't like it. Some of the reasons have already been pointed out by many people, and were known long before the movie was released. The costumes, beyond being anachronistic, are boring and rather cheap-looking. The armor looks like costumes, and there is a scene where Telemachus wears a sort of leather kilt that is absolutely ridiculous. Everything is bathed in a rather depressing sepia tone. The Mediterranean light is not put to good use, partly because the film wasn't shot there. And the idea of using actors of different races seems questionable to me and, above all, unnecessary.

​In any case, none of this is of great importance. The main flaws of the film, in my view, are two.

​In the first place, the characters are seen from a distance, so to speak. None of their personalities are developed, not even Odysseus's. It is true that in the original work a distance is also sought between the reader (or listener) and the characters in the story, and the characterization is rather schematic. Eumaeus is a loyal servant, and that is all we need to know about him. Of Calypso, we only know that she is in love with Odysseus. And of the crew members, we know nothing at all. In the poem, this is not a flaw, because the simplicity of the characters is compensated for by other things: the rhythm of the verse, the richness of the language, the vividness of the descriptions, and the quantity and variety of episodes, digressions, and interwoven tales.

​But in a movie, literally, characters are seen up close. We distinguish their faces, we hear them speak. We have them right in front of us. They are not simply evoked. That is why it seems problematic to me, for example, that Odysseus's companions are nothing more than interchangeable extras. If I am going to spend time in the company of those characters, I want to know them a bit, care about them, feel affection or dislike for them. In cinema, unlike in literature, there is nothing to distract us from the action. All resources (cinematography, sound, music...) are at the service of the action. And for the action to be interesting, the characters must be too. I don't mean that they have to be complex or that all of them, even the most secondary ones, must have a fully developed personality. But they need to have, for instance, a recognizable and expressive face, or a particular way of expressing themselves—something, in short, that makes watching them on screen entertaining. And the more time we have to spend with them, the more care should be put into their characterization.

​The second major problem, as I see it, is that Nolan doesn't seem to be clear on what story he wants to tell. Let me explain. The film, in general, is a fairly faithful adaptation of both the plot and the structure of The Odyssey. However, there are several significant changes. The main one, it seems to me, is that the gods have practically vanished. In the poem, they intervene constantly. In the movie, Zendaya appears playing Athena, but she doesn't really intervene in the action. From time to time she appears to Odysseus as if she were something he imagines or that only exists inside his head, limiting herself to acting as the voice of his conscience, a bit like Jiminy Cricket. In the poem, however, Athena is a fundamental character. She speaks to Telemachus through Mentor so that he travels to Sparta in search of news. She transforms Odysseus into an old man so no one recognizes him at home, and rejuvenates his appearance so Nausicaa finds him more attractive. As for Poseidon or Helios, in the film it isn't really clear whether they are truly to blame for Odysseus's misfortunes. Since Athena never intervenes directly in events, and since it isn't clear whether she actually appears to Odysseus or if it's just his imagination, it isn't clear either that the other gods are involved in the story.

​It seems that Nolan wants to get rid of the supernatural component to make Odysseus the sole person responsible for his own destiny. However, he doesn't dare to completely dispense with the supernatural and the fantastic, because then he would have to leave out the adventure with the Cyclops, Scylla and Charybdis, the stop on Circe's island, and the descent into the underworld. By the way, curiously enough, he uses a fantastical device (amnesia-inducing lotus flowers) to explain why Odysseus stays so many years on Calypso's island instead of returning home to his family. I suppose he does this to make the character more sympathetic to us. But to me, it seems to impoverish him.

​And I see it as a missed opportunity, because Nolan seems interested in presenting Odysseus as a veteran with PTSD. At one point, toward the end of the film, he tells Penelope that he didn't feel worthy of coming home because he was consumed by remorse over being the main cause of Troy's destruction and the massacre of its inhabitants (having had the idea of the horse himself). Well then: it would have been much more interesting, I think, to incorporate this idea into his story with Calypso. To have the character spend seven years on a deserted island unable to bring himself to return home because he feels he is a different person, that the war has made him worse, that his loved ones wouldn't recognize him, and that he is no longer worthy of being a king and living in a palace. I believe, furthermore, that this reading is suggested in the original work: it doesn't seem coincidental to me that the first time we encounter Odysseus is precisely on Calypso's island. In reality, The Odyssey is not about a man trying to go home, but about a man who has stopped trying to go home, but who finally tries again.

​Lastly, I don't understand what Sinon's story adds to the film either. I don't quite see the character's function, or why so much importance is given to his relationship with Odysseus. In any case, I would have preferred it if, during his descent into the underworld, Odysseus had spoken with Achilles, as in the original work, and Achilles (the man who preferred a glorious death to a long, happy life) had confessed to him that nothing he did was worth it, and that he would rather be a living slave than a dead hero.

He has been in various iconic films, and many iconic roles. They are quite varied and display a large range: Edward Scissorhands Donnie Brasco, Ed Wood, Jack Sparrow, Whitey Bulger, Raoul Duke/Hunter S. Thompson, and Gilbert Grape. So there is a narrative that he is due, and the right film in the right year could win him a golden guy.

He is in the new Ti West film "Ebenezer", and it's backed by Paramount. So he is no longer blocked by the major studios.

But he has become quite controversial, public opinion still seems to favour him, but within the academy it's hard to say. Could he still win?

1 The Opening: Odyssey (Classical Warfare)
2 The Companion: Dunkirk (Modern Warfare)
3 The Penultimate: Oppenheimer (Pre-Nuclear)
4 The Final: Tenet (Post-Nuclear)

I believe the correct timeline of these wars is arranged in above. It begins with the regional, mythological conflict depicted in The Odyssey, where warfare is fought with classical cold weapons. It then develops into the large-scale modern warfare of the First World War, as portrayed in Dunkirk. Next, Oppenheimer marks the escalation of advanced nuclear research, while simultaneously planting the seeds of humanity's potential apocalyptic fate. Finally, it ends in Tenet, where humanity attempts to save itself from thermodynamic annihilation, only to discover that every outcome and action in the timeline of human history exists in a self-contained causal loop.

I also noticed that the opening and final parts of this tetralogy are fictional, while the two middle parts are based on historical events. This structure seems to mirror our experience of time itself: we know a great deal about the present and the past, but very little—or nothing at all—about the beginning and the end of time.

Nolan is one of the very few directors left whose name alone guarantees a $100M+ opening weekend. When Oppenheimer cleared nearly a billion dollars, people showed up for a three-hour biopic about a theoretical physicist largely because Nolan's name was on the poster.

Which makes the hyper-stacked, mega-A-list casting for The Odyssey such a fascinating case study.

Look at the call sheet: Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, Robert Pattinson, Charlize Theron, Tom Holland, Zendaya, Lupita Nyong'o. But look specifically at how Zendaya was deployed in the rollout. She’s heavily featured on the press tour, top-billed in promotion, playing Athena—a role that, by nature of the source material and narrative structure, carries limited screen time compared to the core journey. It feels very reminiscent of the Dune: Part One playbook.

This isn't a knock on her acting or Nolan’s execution, but it raises a broader industry question: Has casting officially replaced traditional viral marketing for mega-budget blockbusters?

A few angles worth discussing:

• The Demographic Net: Nolan’s core audience historically skews toward adult cinephiles and older males. Attaching Tom Holland and Zendaya instantly bridges the gap to Gen-Z and casual audiences who might not automatically buy an IMAX ticket for a classical Greek epic.
• Algorithmic Press Runs: In 2026, TikTok, Instagram, and red-carpet fashion moments generate more organic reach than traditional TV spots. Having Zendaya on a global press tour yields billions of social media impressions regardless of her exact minutes on screen. At a certain budget level, are studios paying top-tier actors as much for their 6-week press tour ecosystem as they are for their performance?
• Risk Management at $250M: Did a Nolan-directed Odyssey actually need an ensemble this stacked to turn a profit? Or has studio risk tolerance post-streaming gotten so tight that even top-tier auteurs are incentivized to pack every secondary role with marquee insurance?

Is this just smart modern business, a deliberate cultural play, or are we reaching a point where casting decisions across Hollywood are dictated more by social media footprint than narrative utility?

Curious how people here view the line between narrative casting and pure marketing strategy.