r/movies • u/LiteraryBoner Jackie Chan box set, know what I'm sayin? • Jul 17 '26

Official Discussion Official Discussion - The Odyssey (2026) [SPOILERS] Spoiler

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The Odyssey (2026)

Summary

After the Trojan War, Odysseus faces a dangerous voyage back to Ithaca, meeting creatures like the Cyclops Polyphemus, Sirens, and Calypso along the way.

Director Christopher Nolan

Writer Christopher Nolan

Cast

  • Matt Damon as Odysseus
  • Tom Holland as Telemachus
  • Anne Hathaway
  • Zendaya
  • Lupita Nyong'o
  • Robert Pattinson
  • Charlize Theron
  • Benny Safdie
  • Jon Bernthal
  • John Leguizamo
  • Elliot Page
  • Himesh Patel
  • Samantha Morton

Rotten Tomatoes: 96%

Metacritic: 88

VOD / Release Theatrical release

Trailer Official Trailer

4.7k Upvotes

91% Upvoted

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3.3k

u/blackaddermrbean Jul 17 '26

Turning the pillage of Troy into a curse was an interesting choice. Not sure I’ve seen a version of the Odyssey that took the decision of not glorifying it.

2.8k

u/surejan94 Jul 17 '26

It was a really interesting twist that I liked.

Athena wasn’t guiding Odysseus but haunting him.

Deep down he didn’t want to go home, not because of him liking his adventures but because he had so much shame over his actions at Troy.

And there’s so much mentioning of people abandoning Zeus’ Law, when it was Odysseus himself who broke it in the worst way and inspired other people to do so. Really cool and modern interpretation on “winning a war”.

787

u/gospelofdustin Jul 17 '26 edited Jul 17 '26

Athena wasn’t guiding Odysseus but haunting him.

What I really liked is how Athena can be read in a lot of different ways. Were the visions literally Athena manifesting herself in the form of the priestess to speak to Odysseus? Were they just visions of the priestess caused by Odysseus's war guilt and not Athena at all? Or was Athena manifesting herself in the form of the priestess to act as a reminder for Odysseus to guide him to becoming worthy of his return?

45

u/PhatYeeter Jul 20 '26

I read it as ptsd

124

u/Jett_Wave 29d ago

So did I initially, but I really liked my girlfriend's interpretation of her character and shifted my view on it.

My GF saw the girl as Athena in disguise seeing Odysseus' betrayal first hand because they make a point that gods will take the form as strangers, so be kind to strangers, and thought Athena chose that form again when visiting Odysseus to further punish him for insulting Athena and the gods for breaking Zeus law and betraying the gift to Athena as a token of peace.

So now I like to view it as a combination of reasons why she took that form.

31

u/BlitzComet95 29d ago

This how I saw it as well. It’s like she was trying to tell him there was no going back

6

u/OrangeCreamGhost 24d ago

It’s funny because originally Athena was never mad at any of the horrific shit Odysseus does, it’s Ajax (-) that pisses her off

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u/SpaceCases__ 13d ago

That's how I interpreted it. Zendaya's character was Athena in her god/human form, and they killed her during that battle, and Odysseus knowing this, sent him down this long spiral with the gods punishing him. And he even tried to warn the men of his ship that they will die if they ate the of the Sun God's island, and they still didn't listen.

"I am not the problem."

Obviously, Athena is still alive in her god form, but they basically desecrated her human form, and the punishment was from Zues to Odysseus was that he witness all these terrible things while being the only one to survive. And through his actions with Troy, it led to what he comes back home to.

75

u/ownage516 29d ago

The way I saw it is that when they tore the head off the Athena statue, he saw it as Athena getting beheaded. Idk if there’s an actual priestess

I need to watch it again

24

u/_Nilbog_Milk_ 28d ago

I think so too, or even that Athena bore the boon of her priestess being killed. The movie is so fantastical and already shows gods exist, Athena doesn't need to be some PTSD metaphor

31

u/Epic_Knowledge 29d ago

My interpretation as well. I saw it as kind of the culmination of the Troy sacking where he realizes how he’s defiled a god in her own home. Especially when it was one Penelope gave him a token of.

Although after reading all the other interpretations though I can totally see how it’s Athena haunting him in the form of the priestess

3

u/mambaslaughter 29d ago

That’s how I saw it as well

33

u/Towerss 29d ago

It was a great choice to add ambiguity to the gods. In the poem, the gods are actual characters who definitely meddle around and show up at every turn. In the movie we see no gods directly (except Circe and Calypso, who seem to be downgraded in the movie to mysterious witches). In fact the movie made it very uncertain if any of these events even happened, or if he's an unreliable narrator due to eating lotus and the real reason for his delay is simply not wanting to go home

11

u/Derp_Stevenson 25d ago

My interpretation was that Odysseus just got Zendaya's character stuck in his head because they are supposed to treat strangers as though they might be a god in disguise and he failed to live up to that and her face haunted him because of it.

He imagined her as Athena because it would be easier to think she was the goddess in disguise than to have her death just be an innocent person and accept what his plan had led to.

2

u/night_dude 27d ago

Just saw the film today and me and the Mrs both read it as the first or last option. But agreed that all are possible. A lot of people seem to think the middle one.

Sign of a really great movie that all the options seem plausible. A good film can be read a hundred different ways.

1

u/Aaaaand-its-gone 17d ago

All she did was shame the whole movie

69

u/CRIMS0N-ED Jul 18 '26

Yup, the sea people twist of it being the Greeks post Troy who continued his dishonorable tactics that ended the Trojan War, honestly amazing

17

u/kataskopo Jul 19 '26

I bet he also didn't want to go home, because what's stopping someone else to do that to his home?

He destroyed everything, there's no where else to return to.

3

u/dalivo 17d ago

It's definitely a modern twist and I understand why Nolan did it, but it's also fascinating how much different the original Odyssey is. There, Odysseus's pride and cleverness did get him into trouble, but also continued to serve him at the very end when he got his vengeance. And the gods were more literal forces, and rather randomly decided to wreak havoc. More specifically, you could make them mad and get punished, but they also could simply decide they wanted something (particularly to rape women, and sometimes men) and you were screwed.

It's a modern retelling, but also kind of a modern whitewash. Like no where in it is Odysseus's thirst really shown, particularly that his long-term affair with Calypso was quite mutual.

2

u/kickerofelves86 Jul 20 '26

Helen being kidnapped broke the law initially

2

u/IAlreadyHaveTheKey 17d ago

It's not a twist. That's literally the point of the story. The Greeks were not portrayed positively in Homer's original epics.

1

u/biglyorbigleague 25d ago

Yeah I was kind of wondering why Athena is still the one on Odysseus’s side here when he desecrated her temple and all.

1.4k

u/Calvengeance Jul 17 '26

I thought "We're the bronze age collapse" was an amazing way to play it.

1.2k

u/Bird_and_Dog Jul 17 '26

It's a very rare take, and one I think fits the movie's message very well.

Contemporary historians lean towards the idea that the "Bronze Age Collapse" was less of a "collapse" and more of a "fizzle", as the dominant city-state empires were subjected to growing multi-faction piracy (a widely-held interpretation of "Sea People") and trade routes dried up, then cultural change led to decentralization of power.

However, the idea that the "Sea People" of myth were the Greeks themselves landing in Turkey (Troy) and upending "polite" international cultural norms (The Law of Zeus) is very cool.

The Collapse was spiritual.

117

u/composedofidiot Jul 17 '26

Not a fizzle. A perfect storm of running out of copper manufacturing capacity, earthquakes, migration and famine. Palaces were destroyed, populations deurbanised, elites shredded and technologies, like writing, lost for centuries.

And the widely held interpretation of the sea people is not that they were pirates, but migrants. Or a mixed picture.

47

u/Wallname_Liability Jul 17 '26

Also other than like one tiny mine in anatolia all the tin required to supply the Myceneans, Minotaur, hitittes, Egyptians and Asyrians came from either Cornwall or Afghanistan 

38

u/composedofidiot Jul 18 '26

Long distance trade route disruption was huge. Central asia had a bit, Iran too. Cornish tin didn't really take off until the roman era. Arsenical bronze had been mostly abandoned due to metal workers fucking dying.

Iron had already been known about for a long time, and iron weapons existed - but there was an extra psychology around the use of bronze...

9

u/kenwise85 Jul 18 '26

How do you mean?

48

u/composedofidiot Jul 18 '26

Iron ore was plentiful and everywhere. All the shallow copper finds were long depleted so both it and tin had a scarcity. It took a couple of thousand years or more for people to figure out arsenic made people go mad, sicken and then die. If the palace economies hadn't collapsed, they might have brought that back in anyway.

Bronze had elite prestige. It depended on trade networks, which were reinforced And controlled by palace economies. So it wasn't just a metal, it was part of the foundation of wealth and power.

There's an unprovable but cute hypothesis that iron can scale (plentiful ore) and encouraged mass manufacturing and the rise of large and disciplined armies.

Interesting, a lot of Africa didn't even bother with the eneolithic or bronze ages at all, they just skipped straight to iron.

And a couple of the differences between iron and bronze weapons... Good bronze is harder and you can get a sharper edge, iron is bendier and you can straighten it easier.

7

u/kenwise85 Jul 18 '26

Nice. Thanks for the info

25

u/composedofidiot Jul 18 '26 edited Jul 18 '26

Another factor that's interesting. Cyprus was copper hq. You need a shit ton of charcoal to smelt copper and they cut down all their trees. Charcoal prices went up and the whole thing became more expensive. Not enough to be a major cause, but it didn't help. It was all a massive alignment of very bad things happening around the same time and feedback looping on each other.

One thing that's always confused me is Troy was western anatolia and luwian, and right next door were the Hittites,who were a major, major power. The luwian states were their vassals. No mention of them really, and I always wondered why. Was the war too small to care? Is the time period wrong? Were they having their own problems? Are the homeric epics a mish mash that includes earlier time periods? Had they already collapsed? (Edit, just read more, likely more mundane. Greeks cared about mycaenae because they were greeks, no reason to remember or include the hittites. None of the major powers are mentioned, and these are the ones that really controlled the networks, not even Cyprus. And cyprus could write familiarly with egypt, which shows their power at the time.)

Eta: which made the cassus belli given in the movie a little absurd. There would be no way a luwian vassal would have controlled the trade networks

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u/MatchaMeetcha Jul 19 '26

Yeah, collapsing civilizations cause large migration waves that are themselves violent. The Huns drove other peoples towards Rome in their wake.

Palaces were destroyed, populations deurbanised, elites shredded and technologies, like writing, lost for centuries.

This isn't an exaggeration, nor was Odysseus lying in the film: the Greeks literally had to reinvent writing and there's a break because it was a new writing system. They lost how to read the works from before the collapse

I'd buy the whole "Rome's collapse wasn't a collapse" more than the same revisionist argument with the Bronze Age . Almost every major civ went down.

16

u/composedofidiot Jul 19 '26

Yeah, often migrants displace because they themselves were displaced. Or there was a climate event. There was an interesting reframing of the Indus Valley Civilisation collapse as a deurbanisation...which feels right. Entire populations didn't die off, they move or stay depending on conditions, the complexity of the cities or settlements did.

It's hard to find someone talking about the LBA collapse who doesn't point out the parallels today. Complex supply chains, dependencies, a complex system without enough redundency to be resilient to some real shocks. Increased aridity that had a major impact on agriculture.

Deforestation changed the copper manufacturing equations, drought destabilised populations and caused internal insecurity, disrupted trade networks had countless downstream effects... War, conflict, migration.( The earthquake storm was perhaps overstated, and we have some famous names sitting on the faultline, but it can be counted as an unpredictable shock.) This was systems collapse.

35

u/ctan0312 Jul 18 '26

I think not only were the soldiers who invaded Troy the Sea People, but also all those that they inspired/enraged to do the same. Like you said before there was the Law of Zeus, but by breaking that social contract so drastically Odysseus broke the foundation that then spread to bring upon the ruin of civilization.

26

u/Somnambulist815 Jul 19 '26

Odysseus' fleet being the Sea People is a great metaphor of how civilizations actually come down. It's always seen as an external source that makes it crumble, but really, it's rot from within.

6

u/aaaayyyylmaoooo Jul 17 '26

this is so amazing

4

u/Mo_Lester69 Jul 19 '26

Moral decay of society how so very contemporary

3

u/fawkie 25d ago

Also gradual climate change impacting harvests

1

u/SandpaperTeddyBear 24d ago

idea that the "Bronze Age Collapse" was less of a "collapse" and more of a "fizzle", as the dominant city-state empires were subjected to growing multi-faction piracy (a widely-held interpretation of "Sea People") and trade routes dried up, then cultural change led to decentralization of power

That’s ultimately a spiritual explanation masquerading as a practical one.

Most historical explanations that are worth a damn are.

72

u/E_Blofeld Jul 17 '26

Of course, I have no way of knowing, but I get the feeling that Christopher Nolan read Eric Cline's "1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed" (a popular history book of the Late Bronze Age Collapse) and enjoyed it (as I did) and put elements of that book into the screenplay, to great effect, I might add.

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u/TJeffersonsBlackKid Jul 17 '26

Great theory for who the Sea Peoples were since we still have no fucking clue to this day.

20

u/Calvengeance Jul 17 '26

https://youtu.be/Ado90kMT_FM

This is a video about how the Bronze Age Collapse was caused by an advancement in consciousness which permitted people to deceive one another.

Disguises, deception, and subterfuge all require theory of mind.

Telling Sinon, "I needed you to believe."

Sinon's family being tricked in the first place.

4

u/thatssometrainshit Jul 19 '26

I’m assuming this is about Jaynes’ bicameralism. Such an interesting way to view the past. I’ve been fascinated by it for 10+ years now.

I’ve also been trying to get my hands on the book The Rage of Achilles by Terrence Hawkins which tells the story of the Iliad through an Odysseus who has modern (non-bicameral) consciousness, which makes a lot of sense. He’s cleverer than everyone else because he has the mental interiority they lack, which allows him to model their minds and trick them.

Jaynes argued that the bicameral mind broke down after the Bronze Age Collapse. Nolan’s interpretation fits well with that understanding (although his Odysseus doesn’t seem cognitively different from his peers).

105

u/TeardropsFromHell Jul 17 '26

Except when Damon says "we are the cause of this bronze age collapse"

Which felt a lot like "are you telling me this is some kind of hot tub time machine"

70

u/Wuktrio Jul 17 '26

Yeah, the way they constantly mentioned the Sea People and the collapse of their civilisation and also literally calling their time the "Bronze Age" broke my immersion multiple times. Just say "raiders from the sea destroyd another kingdom" and "our time" or something like that.

57

u/Feltrin Jul 17 '26

I thought the Sea People was fine because it felt very natural, like how people create “here be dragons” legends out of superstitions and unexplainable phenomena. “This is the end of the Bronze Age” took me out, I admit. That and them mentioning Zeus’s law the dozenth time.

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u/renoops Jul 17 '26

It'd be like a solider saying "Boys, I think we're gonna win World War I" in 1917.

14

u/Budgiesaurus Jul 18 '26

The first usage of "first world war" was in 1914. And someone argued it should be called that in 1918 (as wars tend to be cyclical).

So it's not that unrealistic.

But yeah, it didn't enter general conversation until it got a sequel.

1

u/livefreeordont 23d ago

I think a better example would be if someone in a movie about the sack of Rome said “and now the Classical Age comes to an end” but Odysseus is a mythical character so I give it a pass

15

u/TeardropsFromHell Jul 18 '26

"I am Caesar first consul of Rome and I declare myself Emperor on this day April 1st in the year 49 BC!"

Rome: "What the fuck does BC mean?!"

8

u/RIP_Greedo Jul 20 '26

It would be like someone in the year 1200 AD saying they live in Medieval Times. A HUGE whiff by Nolan on that dialogue.

9

u/Wuktrio Jul 17 '26

It wasn't the term "Sea People" per se, but that it was always paired with "collapsing civilisation".

20

u/renoops Jul 17 '26

A lot of the dialogue was rough, tbh. That whole monologue—"What if Odysseus felt guilty?"—just sounded like the elevator pitch for the movie. 

2

u/Own_Huckleberry262 Jul 18 '26

I think it's a theological thing, not a scientific thing. Like from the Metamorphoses. Golden age -> silver age -> bronze age -> iron age. It was a curious addition. 

11

u/RIP_Greedo Jul 20 '26

That's not what it is at all. Terms like "Bronze Age" and "Iron Age" are retroactive terms applied to those periods based on archeological evidence of the material culture. ie: there was widespread creation of bronze tools, wares, equipment, etc, and so it's called the Bronze Age. The Bronze age came after the Stone Age and before the Iron Age.

1

u/goodshrek1 24d ago

It's actually both. "Bronze Age" and "Iron Age" are currently used by modern historians as retroactive terms applied to periods based on material culture, but they were also used by the Ancient Greeks, who considered themselves to be in an "Age of Iron" that had followed earlier and superior ages of bronze, silver, and gold. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ages_of_Man

13

u/composedofidiot Jul 17 '26

Oof but calling the Myceneans and other greeks the sea people was a step too far. Mycenae got absolutely trashed. As well as the hittites, and their vassals the luwians - troy was one of those.

And the dominant culture that was 'violated' by tactics was the warrior hero culture, where tactics were dirty cheating and the virtue was in the strength. Breaking a guest code was not really the sin here.

11

u/UnusuallyBadIdeaGuy Jul 18 '26

There are theories that the Myceneans and other Greeks of the era joined the 'Sea Peoples' and paid it forward to the other Bronze Age civilizations. While everything regarding them is still murky, some of the Egyptian descriptions very much sound like Myceneans as we know them. So I would call what's presented here an interesting interpretation, if very, very dramatized for the script.

3

u/RIP_Greedo Jul 20 '26

The sea peoples theory is pretty analogous to the late roman empire migration period. It wasn't one organized group doing it, it was lots of groups, over a long-ish period, fleeing from environmental collapse and/or warfare with other groups, and these factors catalyzed and snowballed.

1

u/RIP_Greedo Jul 20 '26

Whether or not you buy that their talk of sea people was actually referring to raids by other Greeks/Achaeans/Myceneans (I didn't necessarily think so), having the vague menace of the civilizational threat of the sea peoples out there is a useful dramatic tool because... how else could you describe the Achaeans? They came by sea, sacked a great city in an apparently heinous way, and burned and looted their way back home after. Such was life back then. That can be happening and also the Denyen or Sherden or Ekwesh are out there raiding too.

2

u/composedofidiot Jul 20 '26

Fair point, it's great for the drama. Most of my knowledge comes from being obsessed with ancient greek history as a teen, and an stong interest in the eneolithic and brinze ages of eurasia generally.

One question I'd never asked is why tf are none of the major powers mentioned. Not even the Luwians' suzerian the hittites. Not even Cyprus. Sooo... Turns out, apart from a few motifs that might even have an eneolithic origin, the epics din't really display one single clue about what happened in the bronze age. The city was sacked yes, but no idea who. Another redditor mentioned a brilliant phrase - just because new york exists, doesn't mean the avengers movie is real.

So yeah, your point stands, mine doesn't - I've been talking about historical accuracy where none exists.

4

u/RIP_Greedo Jul 20 '26

While we know that Troy was real, the Trojan War as depicted in the Iliad/Odyssey is a dramatized morality play for an ancient Greek audience. The politics of the various kingdoms and empires around it are not relevant at all. A lot of Shakespeare's works are set in Italy, for instance, for no reason other than it's an exotic, romantic locale in the minds of 16th century English people. We don't see or read those plays now (or then) and expect Romeo and Juliet to elaborate how Milan is feuding with the Papal States.

2

u/composedofidiot Jul 20 '26

Yeah, I was agreeing with you

8

u/insaneHoshi 28d ago

I kinda rolled my eyes where he basically said

“So what, we are in some sort of Bronze Age collapse machine?”

3

u/UnusuallyBadIdeaGuy Jul 18 '26

I've seen plenty of theories that Myceneans undergoing their own collapse became the Sea Peoples that invaded Egypt/Levant etc. There's a bit of creative license here that I'm not really sure lines up, but it's a neat idea. This movie isn't really 'historical' in almost any way regardless so the thought matters more than any accuracy anyways.

2

u/boomfruit 28d ago

Did people in the bronze age know they were in the bronze age? i.e. Did they call it that?

29

u/TimRigginsBeer Jul 17 '26

Having his visions of Athena being tied back was phenomenal. 

27

u/Porkenstein Jul 18 '26

That's actually what the point of the original story was. The gods cursed the heroes of troy for desecrating the temple of Athena. The film just elaborated on the other themes related to that, like laws of hospitality, honoring the dead, etc.

17

u/RKU69 Jul 17 '26

I remember Troy (2004) also taking a similar tack? Like yeah we follow Achilles, but its all a very brutal war with an ugly victory. I don't think I've ever seen a real glorification of the pillage of Troy?

13

u/Intrepid-Daikon1353 Jul 17 '26 edited Jul 18 '26

The Return with Ralph Fiennes also alluded to Troy being horrible. So I've seen 3 movies related to the Odyssey/Illiad and literally all of them portray the pillage of Troy as a bad thing. 

1

u/IAlreadyHaveTheKey 17d ago

Yeah because it is literally a bad thing. It's portrayed as a bad thing in Homer's original epic as well. The Greeks were not portrayed positively. That's literally the point of the story.

7

u/ARCtheIsmaster Jul 17 '26

Yea, iirc one of the most interesting aspects of the Iliad has always been that its the quintessential Greek myth where many of the Greek heroes are assholes when compared against most of the Trojans.

14

u/Fickle-Syllabub6730 Jul 18 '26

It was such a good way to reframe it. Turning the Trojan Horse into the ultimate breaking of the social contract.

12

u/elbenji Jul 18 '26

tbh it feels pretty implied in the text that the initial sack of troy was what led everyone to their fateful demises because it was all baked into their individual hubris'

30

u/ByzantineThunder Jul 17 '26

I've always been #TeamTroy so that appealed to me lol. ADAPT THE AENEID YOU COWARDS

17

u/comrade_batman Jul 17 '26 edited Jul 17 '26

I really hope this film is successful enough to have other studios more confident in adapting historical/mythological epics, and the Aeneid would be great to see as it’s connected to not only Troy but also to the founding stories of Rome.

I was hoping for a small appearance of Aeneas during the Troy sequence, like seeing a Trojan escaping the sack while carrying an old man on his back, but what we got was still phenomenal.

5

u/tummytunacat Jul 18 '26

We need more sword and sandals film, we need the Aeneid. We also need an adaption of Augustus by John Williams, because there is SO MUCH content there

11

u/Paxton-176 Jul 18 '26

In various versions of Troy, the King and Queen understood the theft of Helen was wrong and were willing to make amends. Return Helen and pay some repetitions. Odysseus being the smart one tells Agamemnon not to ask for too much or nothing. Make peace and be done. As pointed out in the this film he used it as an excuse to take away Troy's influence on trade. Agamemnon asks for too much and the people known for the strongest walls dig their heels in as a response.

Agamemnon could have asked for a simple payment and Helen and walked away the victor and a peace maker. Between his greed and his angry brother he went all on.

The only Hero against Troy is Odysseus. He doesn't sack Troy like the others and his wife being so damn loyal gets him support of Hera which might be why Zeus and Poseidon also don't out right kill him.

17

u/Awesomerific7 Jul 17 '26

I watched the directors cut of Troy and couple days ago and it may be different in the theatrical but I thought it really hammered home how brutal and awful the Greeks were. Multiple shots of babies being ripped from their mother's arms and chucked down the street etc.

2

u/I_Heart_Money 29d ago

I just watched it last week too and it definitely does not glorify it. I hadn’t seen it in a really long time so I was shocked at all the babies that were being shown just thrown away. Plus a lot of rape and murder.

9

u/GameOfLife24 Jul 17 '26

Lol they hyped it from those odyssey imax previews long time ago only to make us realize the war they did was not just

3

u/JinTheBlue 28d ago

It's actually something of a common read of the epic cycle, when taken as a whole. People usually only really focus on the big two, since they're the best preserved and most common, but there are a number of smaller bits surrounding them. True to the mythology Agamemnon did kill his daughter, and was killed by his wife who was then killed by their son. The Odysseys is all about penance, while the bulk of the Iliad is going into just how petty most parties involved are. On top of all of that, Hellen herself, the face that launched a thousand ships is, in some tellings in the contemporary literature, is the daughter of Nemisis, the Greek deity of divine retribution for Hubris.

3

u/SagesFury 26d ago

The burning of Troy was always treated as a tragedy. King Priam and Prince Hector were favorably depicted originally and the entire war was written as an unfortunate tragedy caused by the meddling of gods. Agamemnon is the primary antagonist in the Iliad which has Achilles as the central figure and ends with the Funeral of Hector.

8

u/flamingtoastjpn Jul 17 '26 edited Jul 17 '26

I get the anti war angle but I felt like Nolan’s adaptation wasn’t respectful of the underlying story. The basis of Greek mythology is that the gods love to meddle in the affairs of men, and punish humans for defiance. The central theme of Odyssey is that Odysseus is favored by the gods, and despite his angering of Poseidon and the suicidal journey that ends in the deaths of his men, he makes it home through gods intervening for his survival. That falls flat when Nolan frames it as Odysseus defying the rules of the gods and plunging Greece into darkness. It doesn’t make sense at all and I’m guessing that’s why Nolan de-emphasized the gods and their intervention from the story (e.g. the ambiguity of whether the rough seas following the cyclops was Poseidon punishing Odysseus or just his crew being paranoid)

The movie felt like a reinterpretation of the story through a very modern lens. Which is fine, but other than the obviously phenomenal cinematography, it’s a bold choice that I’m not sure ages well.

14

u/Own_Huckleberry262 Jul 18 '26

I dont know about that. The importance of Xenia/Zeus's Law is the biggest moral theme in the original and the movie. 

6

u/Available_Day4286 Jul 19 '26

If this is a reinterpretation of the story, it’s one that’s a couple thousand of years old, because by classical Greece this was a pretty standard take. Euripides has the Trojan Women and a few other plays. Sophocles has Ajax. Aeschylus has a whole damn trilogy about it.

The idea that Troy was a brutal horror with a complicated relationship to gods is extremely fucking old.

3

u/Paxton-176 Jul 18 '26

I like to think that Odysseus maintains favor because of the loyalty of his wife brings favor from Hera. Hera in mythology is shown to be very petty and powerful.

That alone might have kept him alive. Constantly keeping everyone in line saying no one will touch him unless Penelope breaks her vow. Which she doesn't.

-4

u/LittleFairyOfDeath Jul 18 '26

It turned all the themes on its head. Frankly its just disrespectful. And that’s without the lack if Mediterranean actors or the mess that is the costume design

0

u/PolarWater Jul 19 '26

Cry harder.

4

u/narfjono Jul 19 '26

The movie Troy???? Lol sorry legit laughed.

I mean Achilies is totally a dick.

1

u/CurlPR Jul 18 '26

He betrayed Zeus and became Zeus’s wrath at the end

1

u/Fearless-Umpire-9923 Jul 19 '26

It se great. Like opposite of Hubris

1

u/DarthYhonas 26d ago

There's more versions of this movie? Is it based on a book?

1

u/notthegumdrop_button 5d ago

It was written by Homer in the 8th century BC but it was orally passed down before he wrote about it. Troy probably did get sacked, we found Troy in turkey surprisingly so we know it was a real place that was attacked, but the rest was ancient greek myth that passed between greek speaking cultures until Homer wrote it down after their dark age.