Prior to beginning this review and essay, you, Dear Reader, should be forewarned of strong spoilers to director Christopher Nolan’s recent and somewhat controversial film, “The Odyssey.” I am a story and movie enthusiast myself, and as such, oftentimes I like to experience things before anyone tells me about them. However, if you have seen the movie already or have yet to see the movie, if you are deciding to see it based on the modern political nature of the movie and question whether it is going to lecture you on modern political values or not, or if you are merely interested in the historical accuracy as it relates to Homer's Poem, then this review and dissection of the film is for you.

For months now, while online, I have seen people, especially those on the political ‘right’, lambasting the information that could be gleaned from the trailers of this new take on the epic of the Odyssey. Their complaints were as follows: 1: the boat that was used by Odysseus and his men in the trailer looked strikingly like a Viking boat, and not an ancient Bronze Age vessel which would have been used 2000 years earlier. 2: The language used in the trailer sounded very modern, even with modern slang, and that is an awkward choice. 3: Elliot Page, a female-to-male trans actor, was portrayed in the position of Achilles in the Underworld; thus he was cast as Achilles, and that is an awkward choice for someone supposed to be a man of epic skill and proportions. 4: The cast of the film is stacked with some of the same actors we have been getting in what feels like every big blockbuster movie, and/or it is actually too stacked and that could draw someone out of the movie, (i.e. Tom Holland, Zendaya, Charlize Theron, Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, Travis Scott, Robert Pattinson, John Bernthal, Elliot Page, John Leguizamo – the list goes on). 5: The armor of the Greek King Agamemnon looked modern, out of place, “like Batman”, like a car’s black matte paint. 6: No actual ethnic Greek actors, 7: Helen of Troy and her sister were of African ethnicity, 8: the rest of the armor in the film was not historically accurate. “

Before I go into which of the complaints ended up having merit and which did not, I should actually speak on Ridley Scott’s excellent movie, “The Gladiator." In that film, there was a conscious choice not to portray ancient Roman Gladiatorial life accurately, with the express intent to get the audience to believe the setting. In reality, Rome had fast food restaurants around the Colosseum, as well as things like famous Gladiators standing on podiums, yelling and selling "so-n-so’s body wash, get it now for only a few coins!” Back in the early 2000s, such a scene of some Romans munching on sandwiches at a fast-food bar, next to a sports arena as they squirted garum (a cherished sauce like ketchup) over their food, while some dude advertised businesses right behind them – who wouldn’t have been taken out of the serious revenge drama? That seems so modern. 

Thus, when making movies about the past, filmmakers have to both add things to ‘help’ transport you to a world of imaginings, and remove things which would take you out of it. 

So, to the film. First the bad. 

After having watched the trailers for the Odyssey and listening to videos, both from social media commentators and historical experts, I truthfully went to the movie expecting to be mildly disappointed, but not totally. As a storywriter myself, I already knew and acquiesced that Nolan would take liberties to entrench the audience in his version of ancient Bronze-Age Greece, so when I was met with the Greeks all having that famous Corinthian-crested, Spartan helmet with the horse-hair fan from front to back, I accepted it and generally had no issue with it. To the modern audience, that particular helmet from 600 BC is “Greek" (though honestly it would be cool to get the real horned helmets that the Greeks wore in 1100BC, during the Trojan War). So there is 500 years of difference (give or take) between what the real helmet looked like and what we got. But it is observably vernacular, Greek. 

But what did take me out was the boat. Sure, for maybe people who aren't history fans and are just looking for some fantasy dive, then Odysseus and his men sailing around a Viking ship looked cool, but for me that is a 2000-year difference. That's an inane leap of naval technology, as was Agamemnon's Batman armor. It looked like it was some fanfiction superhero novelist’s ideation of what fantasy superhero Greek armor should look like. I did cringe each time it came on screen. I also had an issue with the choice of lighting and close-ups of camera shots. Most action sequences were shot so fast and so close that the viewer didn't have time to witness the mistakes in combat. In good fighting/martial arts films, combat is smooth, and there is no shaky/earthquake lens to give the effect of impact or to hide poorly choreographed moves. I wondered if it was Nolan’s first foray into hand-to-hand combat sequences because he shot most so close up on the actors that I felt like I could smell the Hollywood cardboard, rather than witness and feel the impact of hits or trepidation of a potentially connecting strike. 

The actors mostly couldn't give their all because the scriptwriting gave them such modern dialogue. Of all the sins of the movie, it was the Netflix-level writing with the dialogue that I had the biggest problem with. Hearing Odysseus’s soldiers saying, “stuff." Nolan did make the argument that he meant to use modern language, but that doesn't make it a good choice. None of the big-name actors stood out as doing particularly better in this film than what you would see in their other movies (save for one, noted below).

The trans actor Elliot Page is a whole interesting diatribe which I could go down, but I shall condense it down for the sake of the article: Elliot Page in the trailer was shown in the role of what should be Achilles for those who know the poem, but in the movie they had Page play " Sinon” a character who isn't even in the Odyssey, and gave Sinon Achilles' place in the Underworld. However, that could have been changed in post-production after the backlash. Honestly, why put Sinon in Achilles' place? A filmmaker would have had the chance to make his movie more epic by being able to represent one of the most famous mythological heroes in the world, if not thee most famous. At best, it was a stylized choice to replace Achilles with Sinon. At worst: Nolan had cast a trans actor as Achilles and, after the backlash, changed it, and now Elliot Page has been wronged of a chance to portray that hero. 

Also in brief: the musical score was forgetful.

Now for the good in the movie: 

First: I am not a fan of Tom Holland; however, I believe this is Holland's best work yet, and of all of the characters, it did seem Holland played a prince so very well. Honestly, his work has shifted my opinion of him, and in the future I will watch his films to see how much he grows as an actor. Himesh Patel as Odysseus’s second in command also deserves a shout-out for a job wonderfully done, and I hope to see him in more movies. 

Second: the movie as a whole had two beautiful scenes, which I absolutely recognize as a job well done for Nolan. They were beautiful:

(Skip the following A, B, for spoilers) 

A: The scene near the end of the movie when the Greeks are marching through Troy: pure gravitas.

B: The scene when Odysseus is reunited with his wife, still disguised as a beggar.

(Spoilers done) 

Third: as an action-adventure movie, I am sure it will rerun on TV and be popular on streaming platforms. It was done well enough that it will rise above much of the streaming slop that is spoon-fed to us by Hollywood. It is a drama-adventure-romp, which might inspire the current generations of teenagers. It might also inspire them to get into history and read classical literature. 

After the movie came out, though, and just before I saw it in theaters, there were what seemed like hundreds of reviews from magazines and news outlets that praised Nolan's film as being the greatest movie ever made, or “100/100,” “10/10,” “5 Stars!,” etc. And I do mean hundreds. I was at a party two days ago, and I heard a teenage boy say, "I heard The Odyssey is the best movie ever made. Like everyone loves it.” 

As a journalist myself, I understood then that the media did its job of damage control, or just to get back at the conservatives who were blasting the movie as going to be “the worst of Nolan’s films,” and far, far harsher criticisms. I think that made me somewhat sad, as there is no way that you could put “The Godfather" in front of a film critic, then Nolan’s Odyssey, and they would rate Nolan’s higher. There isn't a snowball’s chance that The Odyssey is the best movie of all time, and yet the media was giving it perfect scores. That sadness was not because I am a film critic and I witnessed blindness in an art I love, but that the media continues to push narratives as a whole. 

"100 out of 100.” 

Ah… maybe 80/100. I’d give it a B-minus. It's worth the watch if you are there for a modern adventure, a lover of dramas, or a Tom Holland fan. What it is is “fun" and “entertaining". It is not, however, the greatest movie ever made, nor is it close. 

Austin Petak is an aspiring novelist and freelance journalist who loves seeking stories and the quiet passions of the soul. If you are interested in reaching out to him to cover a story, you may find him at austinpetak@gmail.com.

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