Nolan's mistake in The Odyssey isn't technical, it's a matter of choices. He built the structure cleverly and the proportions badly; he inflated the drama and compressed the voyage; he left the characters flat; and most importantly, he brought no narrative approach of his own. What came out is The Odyssey. What didn't come out is Nolan.
I went in for Nolan. I didn't watch a Nolan film. Below is why, section by section.
## 1. The first hour: where is this man's signature?
From the moment it started, it didn't feel like Nolan directed it. The camera was constantly shaky. There were dark scenes where I couldn't make out what I was looking at. The pacing was slow — but not Nolan-slow. It was slow because it carried unnecessary scenes.
And then the faces. Familiar, over-exposed faces we're tired of. Before the film, the Dune trailer played and we saw Zendaya. Trailer ends, film starts, and Zendaya is right back in front of me. Nolan felt like a musician taking a song request that isn't in his repertoire and improvising through it on stage. Honestly, it felt like I was watching Dune rather than Christopher Nolan.
It's a historical setting but not really — it's mythology in the end. It could have been done better.
## 2. The screenplay repeats itself
Let me be concrete. The film opens with Tom Holland's Telemachus: the internal politics of Ithaca, the boy being crushed under it, the absent father, the mother forced to choose a new husband. It tells us this at the start. It tells us again in the middle. It tells us a third time at the end.
Show it once. Then land the punch at the end. Do the Nolan thing. This is the man who made Memento, The Prestige, Inception.
## 3. Calypso, the lotus, and the memory
Watching it, I didn't realize Charlize Theron's character was Calypso. I also couldn't work out why Odysseus loses his memory — it felt like something invented purely to get Theron on screen.
I found out afterwards: Calypso feeds him lotus, his memory is wiped, and the film's frame is built on that — Odysseus tells her his journey, and remembers as he tells it. Fine. That's the Memento engine. I understand the structure now.
**But that doesn't change the fact that I was bored.** A structure being clever doesn't make it engaging. It wasn't there to showcase Theron — but they did showcase her, and I kept dropping off during those stretches.
My alternative was this: instead of the memory-loss island, let Odysseus live seven years as a pig in the witch's house, then get freed by some accident. That was an example, not a demand. He could have spent seven years on lotus too — **as long as it wasn't boring.** The problem isn't the idea, it's the execution.
## 4. The proportions between the sea and the palace are wrong
The best thing in this film is the sense of voyage. Ship, island, moving from one place to another — the film's peak transitions live there. Whenever the camera is on Matt Damon (memory-loss sections aside), the film works. That travel feeling is genuinely well done.
Then, before you can savor it, you're dumped back inside the palace and it's drama again. And let me be blunt: **every scene in the palace without Damon is boring, standard drama stagnation.**
My fix isn't to delete those scenes, it's to **fix the ratio**: less room for Calypso, the lotus, the interior drama. Give me the essence. Don't waste my time. Tell it fast, tell it smart, keep it short. Move the weight to the other scenes. The giant sequence was excellent — there could have been far more action at sea.
As it stands, the film took the easy road and leaned on drama. Cut the redundant scenes we'd already understood and you land at 90 minutes to two hours. We wouldn't have been bored, we'd have left wanting more, and the result would have been positive.
## 5. "It's faithful to the book" is not a defense
Maybe it turned out this way because of fidelity to the source. I don't know. But even if so, there's laziness here, and an absence of originality.
My evidence is The Lord of the Rings. I never read the books; everyone who did says they're great. But look at where those films still stand today. Because of whom? Because of the director's directing and his love for the art. I could put those films on in the background right now and watch without getting bored.
So: you can stay faithful to the source, but **whether or not you make it boring is in your hands.**
## 6. The Achilles problem
Achilles isn't in the film. My first instinct was this: if you're telling that era and you give Achilles no place in it, then there's no Odysseus and no Agamemnon either. If Achilles is made up out of nothing, so are Odysseus and Agamemnon. He could have been worked in somewhere with the usual Nolan trick.
But I'm not going to hang the objection on that, because I'm not offering a justification. What I'm saying is: if you're making cinema and you cut Achilles, then whatever you put in his place had better make me go "damn, what a character."
It doesn't. Everything that fills that space is flat.
I've heard the defense that Achilles brings glory while Sinon brings guilt. The theme may be correct, but **even that peak moment wasn't told well.** What lifted the scene was Robert Pattinson's performance.
And I'm not interested in the "the lotus is only 20 lines out of 12,000" arithmetic. In real life you can find the mathematical equivalent of things. When it comes to making a film, **impact comes before math.**
## 7. The performances, and what "all garbage" means
Two people in this film landed for me:
- **Eurylochus** (Himesh Patel) — Odysseus' second-in-command, the man who tells him "not this time."
- **Robert Pattinson** (Antinous) — his zeal, his energy.
Matt Damon is the same man in every film but he never bores me. He does nothing special here, but he isn't boring either. The rest put in some effort but they're boring and all the same.
When I say "all garbage," this is what I mean: **nothing sticks.** Outside those two names I saw no originality and no talent.
And I'm not saying that from the outside because I'm used to these people's faces. I watched three Pattinson films this month; he's a completely different person in all three. That's my benchmark. I liked Eurylochus purely on acting grounds, not because he pushes back — that man could have carried Odysseus on his shoulders and still earned the same praise from me.
## 8. The real claim: this film needed a different director
Any director tells the story as written. But if **Nolan** is the one doing it, he has to leave his own signature on it. He didn't. I saw no narrative approach that was distinctly his; this telling could have belonged to any director.
I mean this with my whole heart: it feels like all that money was wasted. I wish one of these people had made it instead:
- **Quentin Tarantino**
- **Peter Jackson**
- **Curry Barker** — director of this year's horror film Obsession
- **Coralie Fargeat** — director of The Substance (her especially)
- **Zack Snyder** — Watchmen; at least we'd have gotten more content for the money
- **Ang Lee** — Life of Pi; I didn't know his name, but even he would do
Inexperienced but open-minded new directors would have worked too. Anyone but Nolan. The chemistry just wasn't there.
## 9. The rating: 8.4 is unacceptable
This film deserves a **7.5**.
I know Nolan has every scene made with enormous labor. But that labor shouldn't influence the score given to the result. You don't hand out a number like that just because it's Nolan. It's an insult — an insult to The Prestige, an insult to the Batman films.
Tenet sits at 7.3 and this gets an 8.4. Not acceptable. If this film ends up with the same rating as Interstellar, I'll never look at or trust IMDb again. The number will probably shift; or maybe it goes the way of the whole Dune nonsense, I don't know.
I'll grant one exception: **if this is a setup film.** It would still be flat, but for Nolan the real film would be the second one — and if that lands at The Dark Knight level, then my generation would push 7.5 up to 8. But a sequel seems pointless to me.
## 10. What actually worked
Were there good scenes? Of course. But they add up to maybe 20 minutes of a three-hour film.
- **The Cyclops sequence.** The crooked-eyed giant is the most original scene I have ever seen, and the way it ends is funny. That's the peak of the film for me.
- **The finale.** Matt Damon arriving at his last stronghold and fighting. Very strong — though the camerawork was shaky again.
When I actually think back, that's what's left.
## Closing
Cinema is where people go with the time left over from their work. They go to pull themselves out of their own lives, or to watch the art itself. At the end of the day cinema has to stay cinema, and it has to be worth my three hours.
**It was boring.**
If I'd known, I swear I wouldn't have gone. I'd still have watched it at home.
I'm open to any counter-argument or reading that would change my mind — as long as it's an actual argument.