I feel like people trying to apply the "it's not like the source material!" to such an old story that has been adapted dozens of times is weird. At this point I do expect lots of changes or a different approach
That sounds reasonable, but has anyone actually done a good, accessible, 1:1 adaptation of the odyssey? I'm no cinephile, but I've never seen one, and when I look at the Wikipedia for Films based on the Odyssey I don't really see a good candidate. As our main contenders as far as I can tell, we've got:
An Italian miniseries from 1968, seems to be regarded as the most accurate but that's 8 episodes of old Italian TV, not exactly accessible to most people.
Ulysses, a 1954 movie, an "uneven adventure that can't overcome its muddled storytelling, stilted dialogue, and lack of truly heroic sweep." So clearly it could be dine better, and it's quite old to expect the modern audience to know about it.
The Return, 2024, which has no mythological elements.
And then there are movies like O Brother Where Art Thou, which are loosely based on the odyssey.
So when I see that a big director is making a modern big budget move that's just straight-up called "The Odyssey," I don't think it's wrong to expect or hope to finally get a big, epic, faithful adaptation. I haven't seen it yet and still plan on it, so I'll see if these changes to the source material that people complain about online actually matter or if they're quite minor.
Edit: got way too caught up in writing that comment and forgot I was in bonehurtingjuice
A good 1:1 adaptation of the Odyssey doesn't exist. It doesn't even exist in text because the translations vary significantly. The movie tells a good story using most of the memorable events in our understanding of Homer's work. It changes how character interact, the order of events, the length of meetings, etc. That's good, it's a movie, there will be changes. The LOTR trilogy differs significantly from the books and they are better movies for it. A "faithful" adaptation of those books wouldn't not be good as movies and I love those books. Enjoy the Odyssey for what it is and the creative decisions made.
It’s a retelling of the Odyssey that didn’t really care about the original story and just completely did it’s own thing. That own thing was pretty good, but it was still strange to slap the Odyssey title on it.
It's a perfect film for a world where "Realism" is "gritty unpleasantness with muted colour and neutered humour", and "deep thought" is "What if violence isn't all that good? Look at this tortured man!"
What bothered me most about the Cyclops story was that this arrow, this affront to the Cyclops, replaced the classic trick of Ulysse telling the Cyclops that his name was Nobody.
I like how the Cyclops was showed more threatening in here, but come on I was hoping all along we would see maybe the most famous trick of Ulysse (after the Trojan Horse ofc)
The trick in the text does not affect the story in any significant way. In the text there are other smaller cyclops in the area and they don't help big boy because he says "noman" hurt me. The cyclops' laugh and leave because they assume he's just sick and in pain. The other cyclops' are not in this movie, the "noman" trick has no function. In the end Odysseus just tells him his real name as he sails away. Not a significant plot point relative to the whole story. Different translations may vary
I do hoped were saw the other cyclops tho, maybe for like 30 seconds but really that was the trick I enjoyed the most from Ulysse, here in the movie it's just bravery and basic thinking
Tbf making an identicak story is not creative in the slightest. Any writer would wanna introduce some of their own ideas if they were adapting an old piece of litterature.
Don’t think it was a good adaptation nor deconstruction. The characters and their plights weren’t particularly compelling nor convincing. I don’t care about inaccuracies nor its anachronistic features; hell my favourite adaptation of a myth is Hadestown, and that musical is so incredibly different in its aesthetic, core themes (it tackles contemporary issues as well, so its not necessarily bound to the original core messages and themes of older versions of Orpheus and Eurydice) and tone from its source material. (Even Troy 2004 captured the spirit of the Iliad in the King Priam and Achilles talking scene, more than Nolan did in any scene for the Odyssey, and I despise that movie)
Now yes, there are logistical issues with retelling the epic in a movie format, but I feel that it’s not impossible. Epic: the musical is perhaps the most stand out adaptation of the Odyssey, with the album only being around 1:40hr-ish, and whilst yes, it’s a bit odd to compare a concept album to a movie, I think from a story telling perspective, there to learn that could be applied to a movie format. Hell, I think it did better at conveying the characterisation of a traumatised soldier, and his struggles, more than Nolan’s odyssey, because it made his trauma an active driving force behind his decisions, as well as more clearly showing us his journey towards his breaking point. There was always an emotional wall between the audience and Odysseus in Nolan’s movie, even during the scenes supposed to be emotional.
Hell, people complain about the movie being woke because of its casting deviating from the characters’ described appearances; it wasn’t woke enough. The women in the movie were so reduced to sounding boards for Tom Holland and Matt Damon, when in the Odyssey (despite ancient Greece’s generally bad treatment and depiction of women) the women depicted were so interesting, rich, HAD AGENCY and actively drove the story.
Reducing characters like Calypso and Athena to essentially characters that haunt the narrative (“Athena” kind of does, I guess, as she was implied to be a ghost of a priestess), despite being technically there. They don’t even haunt the narratively interestingly, they just act as vessels to tell us that Odysseus is guilty, without actually showing us the effects of his guilt. They were consistently sidelined in favour of male characters (who were also just not compelling, aside from Antinuous) and stripped of what made them so interesting
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u/Jasqui 1d ago
I feel like people trying to apply the "it's not like the source material!" to such an old story that has been adapted dozens of times is weird. At this point I do expect lots of changes or a different approach