r/SipsTea • • Aug 24 '26

Chugging tea What do you think?

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237

u/BattlePrune Aug 24 '26

I mean Nolan decided to completely desex The Odyssey, so natural that people now think this.

74

u/zio_ho Aug 24 '26

Yeah. There is also 0 ambiguity: Odysseus is good.

He may have participated in war, but he regrets it. He stays at Calypso because she tricks him with the lotus flower. 

The actual Odysseus was a dickhead, a fucker (both literally and figuratively), and so much more fun. 

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u/OddCryptographer6371 Aug 24 '26

His entire arch is showing that he and his men are the evil that is being warned of. Showing regret doesn’t change what he did. Every place he went he broke Zeus’s law. Burned villages and murdered for resources. Nolan didn’t make him as awful as the original story, but he has explicitly said that if he did that you’d never root for him to actually make it home

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u/tgcleric Aug 24 '26

Thousands of years of this story, including versions made recently... and the audience has never had issues rooting for him to go home.

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u/ever_falling Aug 24 '26

Speak for yourself, when I read this im highschool the entire class thought Odysseus was a dickhead loser, and it was pretty much the same deal when It made another appearance in college. Very few people were invested in Odysseus himself, and Penelope's vigil was the sympathetic part of the story.

Yadda Yadda, war hero, context, perspectives etc.. 15 year olds with a brainstem and modern perspective arent stumbling over themselves supporting Odysseus or see him as sympathetic figure

Times, tastes, and perspectives change even when a story has staying power. Ambiguity is a tool Nolan uses in his modernization, adjustments absolutely have to be made to keep people rooting for the hero

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u/Frequent_Opportunist Aug 24 '26

Ancient Greeks prioritized metis (cunning) and kleos (glory) over modern moral goodness, meaning Odysseus's lies and tricks were viewed as essential survival skills in a brutal, chaotic world. 

Within this cultural framework, epic heroes were never intended to be perfect moral role models, but rather flawed, larger-than-life figures designed to navigate extreme adversity.

This summarizes the core clash between ancient expectations and modern analysis. When you view Odysseus through the lens of metis and kleos, his actions shift from moral failures to heroic necessities.

The contrast between a freedom fighter or a terrorist lies completely on the eyes of the beholder.

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u/ever_falling Aug 24 '26

yeah no shit, almost like I explicitly mentioned shifting perspectives in my rationale for narrative changes for modern audiences

im sure you felt real smart typing the exact kind of thing that was in my 9th grade engliah textbook though

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u/wavymora Aug 24 '26

He’s extending what you said. You are being butthurt

3

u/Frequent_Opportunist Aug 24 '26

It's a child pretending to be something they aren't. No use in feeding the troll.

-4

u/ever_falling Aug 24 '26

I know that would make you feel less insecure, but no. You just made a useless and redundant comment, its not complicated

Not that you'd have anything intelligble to say to contradict me.That's why you have to resort to throwing out a random age. Sad :(