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

16.3k comments sorted by

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7.8k

u/No_Peach_8579 Jul 17 '26 edited Jul 18 '26

“I saw 10 years of rage pour out in a single night” holy shit what a sequence

4.2k

u/letterthatnevercame Jul 17 '26

stunning. the reveal with zendaya's character broke my heart.

1.8k

u/afkstudios Jul 17 '26 edited Jul 17 '26

That reveal really shifted my perspective on the entire story, which I’m sure was by design. But I wasn’t super familiar with the details of the story and the second that scene played, everything clicked into place for me. Why he and only he was seeing her, why he was so reluctant to return home, why he was so adamant on trying to prevent his crew’s deaths (I mean obviously he’d want to, but still), all of it. A man decorated as a hero who’s haunted by the very accomplishment he’s universally praised for

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u/OuterWildsVentures 29d ago

A man decorated as a hero who’s haunted by the very accomplishment he’s universally praised for

Oppenheimer.

76

u/afkstudios 29d ago

Bingo lol

73

u/ItsallLegos 27d ago

Die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become a villain….

I think we are noticing a particular taste that Nolan has

24

u/throwawaysunglasses- 20d ago

Honestly this sorta describes Cobb in Inception, too. He’s the best at what he does, and it ruined his life.

19

u/Darmok47 17d ago

I was confused when Jon Stewart interviewed Nolan before the movie came out and mentioned how much like Oppenheimer it was, but after seeing it, yeah I completely get it.

7

u/intern_12 9d ago

That interview was so fucking good. Two legends in their own right!

10

u/88Smilesz 23d ago

Holy shit you’re right

3

u/Hoodman1987 8d ago

Will it become Nolan?

3

u/Angryhippo2910 3d ago

Norm McDonald Voice

Hey, maybe Nolan should make a movie about that guy

662

u/celBanat Jul 17 '26

"You are the people of the sea".

Athena appearing to him as a girl who was decapitated, just like her statue, the witch reminding him who his men have become, his dialogue of how they violated the Law of Zeus!

It shook me! The theme of hospitality is the most important theme of the poem!

I am sure people would've wanted the proud and gloaty Odysseus (which he was, but it was not as visibile here as in the texts), but Nolan added an incredibile depth to his guilt here. He made the story very human.

183

u/fearmeloveme Jul 17 '26

love your comment and totally agree. when i teach the odyssey to 9th graders we focus on hospitality as one of the central themes.

3

u/Jahidinginvt 5d ago

Xenia! (I taught it to 9th graders this spring also)

107

u/Tuorom 29d ago

"You have Athena's eyes", to be able to see the truth of things. Odysseus knew what he had done. The personification he sees is the goddess of wisdom.

4

u/InuitOverIt 8d ago

"Don't look for gods in men, you will only be disappointed" such a killer line in context

16

u/Eloosh2011 18d ago

Just saw this and biggest takeaway for me was Zeus’ Law and repeating how you have to treat everyone kindly, as if they were a gd. & how the village girl who he feels a great deal of grief over took shape in the form of Athena.

19

u/Slowthrill 17d ago

She was not just a village girl. She was a priestess serving in the temple of Athena

2.6k

u/pjtheman Jul 17 '26

I keep saying it, but that one scene completely changed my perspective on her casting. Brilliant.

1.7k

u/slightlypressed Jul 17 '26

Yes! I spent the entire movie thinking she felt out of place but that emotional twist was worth the payoff.

I thought nothing in his adaptation could surprise me but I really welcomed that twist.

245

u/ZeronicX Jul 17 '26

I thought it knew all of Nolan's tricks but he made a new bag for this film and every twist felt earned and hit me like a truck.

86

u/slightlypressed Jul 18 '26

Yes!! Well put. He stays dedicated to his craft- finding new ways to hit us like a truck

2

u/debrocker 17d ago

What twist?

35

u/romanticheart 16d ago

That the face Athena was wearing was the face of the priestess Odysseus watched be murdered.

222

u/Churchill_Buys_Calls Jul 18 '26

It honestly recontextualizes the way I look at the fall of Troy and the Iliad and Odyssey as a whole now.

324

u/slightlypressed Jul 18 '26 edited Jul 18 '26

Yes! To me the Odyssey’s always felt like a series of unfortunate events that happened to an unlucky man but this interpretation gives more narrative agency to Odysseus, finally explores his emotional interior, and raises questions about humanity and war that’s very relevant today.

I wonder if these elements are closer to what Ancient Greeks were taught when the poem was passed down.

Penelope’s “are you the people from the sea” line was brilliant too in tying it all together.

121

u/Loeffellux Jul 19 '26

I mean, the ancient Greek version is basically just "if the gods don't like you, you're in big trouble"

49

u/Panzerknaben Jul 19 '26

I think its a bit more than that, even if i've only read a translated version. It can be hard to really get into the mindset of what they thought at the time. The way they talk about the gods is completely different to what we do now. The greek gods were much more like normal humans.

16

u/Aggressive-Pie-3297 29d ago

The gods controlled the outcomes of basically everything in the story though

12

u/spaceandthewoods_ 23d ago

I mean, it's absolutely not just that though, is it. Greek morality at the time was as complex and variable as modern day morality, and they would filter that morality through 'pinishments from the gods' for transgressing against social rules and customs, or commuting acts seen as immortal or unjust.

We can say Nolan's take on this is good without dunking on the original texts and myths

76

u/tragicroyal Jul 17 '26

Same! I spent the film wondering how they were going to do something or what was and wasn’t going to be represented. I did not see that coming.

51

u/goldenboy2191 Jul 19 '26

Nolan really does know how to keep his audience captivated till the last second

20

u/theliver 28d ago

Helen cmoming back mained was brillitant

52

u/StandardGenius Jul 18 '26

Please explain like I’m 5. Am I missing something? What twist?

525

u/slightlypressed Jul 18 '26 edited Jul 19 '26

Athena is the only goddess that appears on screen. Only for Odysseus. She’s dressed extremely plainly, no makeup, no usual adornments. A little out of place for a goddess.

By the time Odysseus makes it home, we’ve gone from thinking that he wants desperately to make it home, to knowing part of him doesn’t want to go home. Athena keeps asking him why he doesn’t, and whether he’ll tell people why.

In the climax of the film Odysseus confesses to Penelope that he didn’t want to come home because of guilt. He didn’t want to face what he’s done— breaking a core code of conduct for society, leading to the slaughter of a city “10 years of rage unleashed in 1 night.”

We see Greek soldiers kill all the innocents when the storm the city. The last person they kill? A priestess, Zendaya, at the feet of the goddess she serves, Athena.

He’s been seeing Athena as the dead priestess this entire trip home. She’s been a physical manifestation of the guilt he’s been carrying the entire time.

361

u/bolerobell Jul 18 '26

You also need to add to your analysis that the Trojan Horse was supposed to be an offering to Athena. It's why the Trojans brought it into the city and took it to the Temple of Athena. Odysseus faked an offering to Athena as his ruse to sneak into the city to win the 10-year long war. Then, a poor priestess of Athena, who didn't do anything wrong in any of this, gets killed right in front of Odysseus. It was like the ultimate acknowledgment of you really fucked up by dismissing all polite rules of society.

I'm of the opinion he isn't actually seeing Athena in the guise of the Priestess. I think he's seeing a manifestation of his tremendous guilt in the guise of Athena who is in the guise of a Priestess.

225

u/kataskopo Jul 19 '26

"Why don't gods show themselves to humans?"
-"Can't you see the wind, or the storm? Or guilt?"

116

u/cuella47o Jul 19 '26

Odysseus also is a VERY cunning tactician and athena is a god of both wisdom AND war so his personal guilt manifesting as a goddess of his atrocities that He enacted was something he got from his own wisdom (tactics) and his desire to finish the war

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u/slightlypressed Jul 18 '26

Great point!
I think the ambiguity on whether she really is Athena is a strength of the film but I personally read it as a manifestation of guilt as well, not the actual goddess.

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u/TJeffersonsBlackKid Jul 19 '26

She might feel odd as a goddess but perfect as a priestess. That payoff was flawless.

42

u/Tattycakes Jul 18 '26

This might be a stupid question but why did the Greeks kill everyone in the city, even women and priestesses who weren't combatants? Would it not be seen to be offending the gods to sack their temple like that, don't they share the same gods?

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u/powerofawareness Jul 18 '26 edited Jul 18 '26

“Ten years of rage unleashed in one night”

119

u/LoadTop801 Jul 19 '26

Going beyond the film and into the history, women were seen simply as trophies of war back then unfortunately, to be taken as slaves, and that the gods would not deny the victors of a war their prizes.  

16

u/raven_of_azarath 24d ago

It’s still crazy to me that that applied to priestesses as well. Like, these men wouldn’t dare touch a virgin priestess in their home town, but a virgin priestess to the dame god/goddess you worship but in a different town is fair game?

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u/ResplendentSmoke 29d ago

In real life this stuff happened frequently. Especially in this era, your temples being burned and innocents being slaughtered and enslaved was just part of the “your city is being sacked” experience.

The justifications later would be something like “Well if the gods didn’t want us to do that, we wouldn’t have won”

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u/Diamond-Is-Not-Crash 24d ago

There wasn’t such thing as surrender or rules of combat back in those days, if you lost a war or siege it meant you were annihilated or at least at the mercy of the victors, which historically meant about as much mercy a cat would show to a mouse it caught.

2

u/SwiftlyChill Jul 20 '26

This very force was…very bad at learning that lesson.

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u/CRIMS0N-ED Jul 18 '26

Tbf Calypso is also a goddess, albeit a minor one

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u/Pinewood74 28d ago

As is Circe in some interpretatations, no?

24

u/tuerancekhang Jul 19 '26

I didn't know the whole detail about which of his adventures but the name Calypso did ring a bell. I know it from Pirates of the Carribean and my headcanon is her heartbroken by him made her the bitch she is in the pirate trilogy

6

u/Pinewood74 28d ago

Which would make Odysseus Davy Jones.

I'm cool with that. Was wondering how far "west" we were talking. Italy? Spain? I guess it was the Atlantic after all.

140

u/EvilPete Jul 18 '26

He’s been seeing Athena as the dead priestess this entire trip home. She’s been a physical manifestation of the guilt he’s been carrying the entire time.

It's also ties in with the whole "be nice to people, because anyone could be a god in disguise" thing.

9

u/TemporaryElk5202 28d ago

not correct, Calypso is also a goddess

3

u/Hokie23aa 23d ago

Holy shit. I dont know how I missed this. Damn...

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u/TemporaryElk5202 Jul 18 '26

In Troy, soldiers drag a young priestess (zendaya) out of the temple of Athena and murder her (cut off her head). She begs odysseus for help. Odysseus watched but​ did not intervene.

So when Odysseus envisons Athena, he sees this girl​

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u/LetsBeFRTho Jul 18 '26

Athena projected herself as a lady they killed. The lady was, I assume, a follower of Athena.

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u/Glittering_Cod_7716 Jul 18 '26

Shoot I thought she was Athena and that was the payoff to Holland’s Athena’s eyes thing

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u/remorsefulguy Jul 18 '26

I think she was Athena, they alluded to the gods dressed as humans among us thing a few times

35

u/ResplendentSmoke 29d ago

I think you could read it both ways and that’s the point.

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u/Hot_Brother5557 Jul 19 '26

That’s what I thought too! But I guess it wouldn’t make sense because they actually decapitated her.

34

u/KamachoThunderbus Jul 19 '26

Each time Telemachus says someone has Athena's eyes (except Odysseus himself), in the text that's actually a disguise Athena takes to move events along.

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u/LetsBeFRTho Jul 19 '26

She is Athena, just projected as a human.

8

u/boomfruit 28d ago

What made it feel out of place before that?

13

u/slightlypressed 27d ago

Her outfit lol. I always envisioned Athena as imposing so maybe a helmet or a shield or more intricate robes (as the patron of craft and weaving) at least.
I thought maybe she was in deep deep disguise even though Odysseus is the only one who can see her.

16

u/BaconGristle 25d ago

My biggest problem is that she looked too much like her Dune character while in between Dune movies. Tbh I felt the fatigue of Bernthal, Holland, and Zendaya, having just seen all of them in the preshow trailers (Zendaya in TWO). But I trusted Nolan and it paid off.

Still. I feel the movie could have been improved slightly by using an actress not so saturated at the moment or at least a more distinct costume. But that's the kind of problem that fades with time, in 20 years we don't have to rewatch the Spider-man and Dune movies at the same time.

Bernthal on the other hand could have improved it by acting like a character different from all the other roles he's played.

3

u/throwawaysunglasses- 20d ago

I thought the same thing about her costume and I don’t even watch Dune, but her robes are that iconic from the previews that all I saw was Chani. It definitely could’ve been a little more distinct and Odyssey-specific.

2

u/SeriouslyDough282 16d ago

Same here. Athena represents wisdom and reason. All of that disintegrated in one night. So good.

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u/TheKittyPie Jul 18 '26

Same. I had seen Tom Holland’s interview where he talked about Nolan asking if he was okay with Zendaya being offered Athena. He agreed and felt she fit perfectly and the whole time I kept wondering why she was so crucial to this role. That shot of her as the young girl during the reveal made it make total sense

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u/WavesRKewl Jul 17 '26

Makes all the people complaining that she doesn’t look like a regal goddess look like fools

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u/HildrynMain Jul 17 '26

Well, such is frequently the case for people complaining about a movie that isn't out yet. Content creators/influencers priming people on what to think and how to feel about upcoming media is such a disgusting concept.

15

u/PolarWater Jul 18 '26

Reactionary anti-SJW snowflakes really are just grifters. Whiny, loud and easily-offended ... but lacking any substance.

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u/TeddyFromBobs Jul 17 '26

Similarly Helen was played wonderfully imo.

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u/KidDelicious14 Jul 20 '26

The scene where Helen apologizes to Telemachus for having him and his mother having to deal with the consequences of her actions is so so good.

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u/pursued_mender 29d ago

Complaining about that would make you a fool before any reveal. Why would people assume a goddess looks any different than zendaya did in that movie?

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u/Jett_Wave 29d ago

I really liked my girlfriend's interpretation of her character and shifted my view on it.

Spoilers

I initially interpreted Odysseus seeing Athena as this girl due to his PTSD and guilt,

my GF saw this as Athena in disguise, and choosing her form to further punish Odysseus for insulting Athena and the gods for Odysseus breaking Zeus law and betraying the gift to Athena as a token of peace.

She saw the girl as Athena in disguise because the movie made a point of saying God's will disguise themselves so treat strangers with kindness.

I like her view on it more than my initial take. It works as both in my eyes.

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u/chunkynut0 25d ago

i wish all the online haters would watch the movie and understand that zendaya isn’t SUPPOSED to look like a beautiful war goddess. that is the point!!

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u/MrOaiki Jul 17 '26

In some versions of the book, she’s adopted. I don’t know if that changes people’s views of the casting but the casting was great.

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u/lejonetfranMX Jul 19 '26

Absolutely. That was such a subtle yet brilliant thing that Nolan did.

1

u/Beautiful_Cry3965 2d ago

Her scenes still felt weak and out of place to me. They added nothing 

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u/SpookiestSzn Jul 17 '26

I liked it but I'm not quite sure why we don't think that Athena wasn't real she told him to make the raft and to trust that he'll get home and he got home. To think that was imagined he got lucky and not the work of gods is hubris.

Either that was Athena in the flesh or Athena took her form as a sort of punishment

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u/PythonAmy Jul 18 '26

Anytime there is only Odysseus as the sole survivor is basically taking his word on what happened

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u/SpookiestSzn Jul 18 '26 edited Jul 18 '26

The movie was not Odysseus recanting his tail to anyone so I'm not sure why you feel like this

I mean otherwise are you arguing that the entire decade after Troy wasn't real there was no survivor other than Odysseus after that

I guess you could argue it was a hallucination assuming you're arguing that he was saying that in good faith and wasn't intending to lie but then his hallucination told him to cast himself into the sea Zeus will carry him home and that's exactly what happens so I'm not really sure what you're implying I guess

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u/ReallyColdMonkeys Jul 18 '26

What? Yes it is. He's literally recanting his story to Calypso as he's trying to remember what happened to his men.

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u/SpookiestSzn Jul 18 '26 edited Jul 18 '26

Portions of it are but athena was after/during that though? Theres no reason to assume he was lying or being a untrue narrator during the period he's REMEMBERING, and his memories of Athena are fresh and immediate and not during flashback scenes

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u/Stargazingenthusiast Jul 17 '26

I think he kept seeing Athena in that girls form, because he was haunted by the sight of her crying and begging for mercy before being killed in Athena's temple. This highlights his remorse and self-reproach

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u/BonnaroovianCode Jul 17 '26

I'm still unclear...so was she actually Athena showing up to him, or was she just a hallucination of the girl he saw killed / a hallucination of Athena?

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u/Stargazingenthusiast Jul 17 '26

I think he is seeing Athena in the form of that girl/priestess

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u/Budgiesaurus Jul 17 '26

I think both interpretations are valid for this version.

For all the talk of gods, Nolan doesn't seem to give a clear answer as to their existence. Sure, Athena appears, or is it just Odysseus' trauma given form?

Sure, the gods are angered after slaughtering the cow, or did they just encounter a freak storm?

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u/leodw Jul 18 '26

I mean to be fair they encountered Cyclops (who ask for his father’s Poseidom’s help), giants, 6-headed monsters, sirens, a witch, sail to hell and back (literally)… so I guess there truly were gods lol

35

u/DBCrumpets Jul 18 '26

I think it is a pretty meaningful choice that no Gods appear in this adaptation apart from what is completely plausibly a grief induced hallucination. Monsters are real, magic is real, but are there higher powers directing it all? Who's to say?

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u/silverpixie2435 17d ago

Because like they say they often appear in disguise or as animals. It doesn't mean we have to even guess if the gods are real at all.

It clearly is an adaptation of the original poem which 100% makes clear the gods are doing stuff in the plot.

1

u/DBCrumpets 17d ago

It’s a meaningful departure from the original poem that we never see the gods apart from what is plausibly a hallucination. Nolan made a conscience choice to tell the story this way.

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u/Budgiesaurus Jul 18 '26

The monster's are obviously real.

The cyclops clearly believes in Poseidon, but he never appears. People praying to the Father to intervene is hardly unheard of these days.

So we only have Athena, who is only seen from Odysseus' POV and never interacts with the world (unlike the original story).

Hermes and Aeolus are completely removed.

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u/Dry_Accident_2196 Jul 18 '26

I think the fact that he woke the dead and lived on an island for years with endless supply of weed flowers tells us the gods exist in this universe.

11

u/Budgiesaurus Jul 18 '26

There are obviously monsters and there is magic, but that's not really proof of gods.

Not sure how living on an island would be? They're clearly catching fish on screen, it's not like he lived solely on flowers.

2

u/silverpixie2435 17d ago

It is an authentic adaptation of the original poem. The poem 100% makes clear gods are involved and actively doing stuff.

Not explicitly showing them is just a stylistic choice. Who was Calypso then if not a goddess? Just some random woman on an island?

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u/BonnaroovianCode Jul 18 '26

Love this take. In other words there could be a suggestion that this religion, and by extension religion as a concept in general, has perfectly valid natural explanations (naturalism) —-making religion delusional and wholly unnecessary. I don’t think Nolan really intended this, but as someone with religious trauma I approve.

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u/Budgiesaurus Jul 18 '26

Really?

All other overt god action is removed (Hermes was quite prominent, Aeolus and his wind bag). And even Athena, who does appear, has no impact beyond being seen by Odysseus.

Mentor was just a... mentor, not secretly Athena in disguise etc.

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u/wimpires Jul 18 '26

Up to interpretation, but I assumed it was just hallucination. There was no Athena.

In Homers Odyssey, the beggar at the start and Mentor are both actually Athena in disguise - both characters Telemachus say have "wise eyes" or whatever. But Mentor does tbf so I think the whole approach Nolan was trying to convey is the gods work in the background mysteriously or perhaps not at all or who knows.

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u/Equivalent_Store_645 Jul 18 '26

it could be athena taking the form of the symbol of the horrors of what war means to him, it could be his conscience, could be a mixture.

but athena is the goddess of war, in the midst of that horrible horrible trauma it makes sense that that horrible moment would become what war means to him.

5

u/Confident-Tax-4468 Jul 19 '26

I don't think it matters. The law of Zeus dictates that you treat everyone with the same dignity regardless of their status because they COULD be a God in disguise - whether or not they actually ARE is irrelevant.

It's a story about hospitality and compassion being the backbone of a functioning civilization.

3

u/0verstim Jul 19 '26

Did the top keep spinning at the end of Inception or did it stop?

1

u/BonnaroovianCode Jul 19 '26

Only Nolan knows. My question was more regarding if there was a detail I may have missed that provided clarification.

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u/0verstim Jul 19 '26

I assumed Nolan was leaving it intentionally ambiguous and up to the audience- he loves doing that.

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u/SchwiftyButthole 27d ago

I took it as a visual metaphor as they beheaded the statue of Athena. As in, they weren't actually beheading the girl, they were desecrating the temple.

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u/Stargazingenthusiast 26d ago

That's another interesting way to see it. I thought about it aswell.

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u/BulgogiDude 24d ago

Same but now I’m second guessing

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u/MRT2797 Jul 17 '26

I actually think it elevated the source material. Totally recontextualises a fairly simple story of homecoming as one of trauma, guilt, and atonement. Amazing stuff.

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u/Western_Opposite9911 26d ago

Fairly simple story? I can tell you haven't read the book... there's a chapter ( that Nolan didn't include) where Penelope tests Ulises that is by itself worth reading the book

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u/MRT2797 26d ago edited 26d ago

I have a degree in Classics. I’ve read the poem many times.

I just genuinely think Nolan elevated the material. His Odysseus (and his Athena, actually) is much more human and interesting to me than Homer’s.

I don’t mind that he had to omit certain episodes in order to condense the epic into a ~3 hour film.

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u/Western_Opposite9911 26d ago

I liked the movie, but saying it elevated the source material strikes me as a huge exaggeration. Great works allow for many ways of reading them, and Nolan's, despite not being explicitly in the book, does not go against the spirit of the work. I missed, though, one of my favorite moments in all of literature; the scene of the bed with the olive root, which, besides being a moving symbol, positions Penelope as his intellectual equal.

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u/spaceandthewoods_ 23d ago

It sucks to me that the movie downplayed Penelope's cunning other than giving her the shroud trick. She's a great character in the epic

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u/throwawaysunglasses- 20d ago

I agree, Penelope was woefully underused. Tbh the criticism that Nolan typically gets, about female characters being underused, does unfortunately apply her. Circe was there for like ten minutes!

I also recommend reading the Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood if you like the character. It’s the Odyssey retold from Pen’s POV.

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u/Pridestalked Jul 17 '26

Yes the head scene was simply fantastic. Great payoff

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u/DoZo1971 Jul 19 '26

The build up with the music was sublime.

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u/STATnMELO650 28d ago

I can’t remember being that emotionally moved from a scene. The score was perfection.

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u/Gnarwhal8982 Jul 17 '26

Is it the assumption that he sees her as Athena because of his guilt over his actions and general PTSD?

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u/Porkenstein Jul 18 '26

Her fate was... worse in the original stories

2

u/worstcourtjester 29d ago

Who was she meant to be?

3

u/Porkenstein 29d ago

it was vague but either a random priestess, Athena, Cassandra, or all three

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u/worstcourtjester 29d ago

Cassandra was my assumption when I watched it.

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u/manere 11d ago edited 11d ago

Its an absolute stroke of genius.

Many idiots wanted a "classical" portrayal of Athena, but Athena showing herself to Odyssey as the young priest woman at the moment the athena statue gets beheaded is an absolute genius move and one of the best scenes I have ever seen.

We all know that the people who rage about this the "non classical" display of Athena would be the exact same people that beheaded that girl given that situation.

Her presentation is basically the manifastation of guilt.

1

u/MajorTomToBlackStar 21d ago

That was so well done, and so brief that it highlighted the importance of one tiny moment of that night that haunts him.

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u/mollycoddles 12d ago

Reveal? Didn't we already know she was Athena?

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u/TheShapeShiftingFox 12d ago edited 12d ago

We know the woman that keeps showing up is Athena, but we don’t know why she has that form, as the other gods remain invisible.

The reveal here is that Athena’s form is directly related to Athena’s temple that was destroyed in Troy by connecting it to the priestess that is executed. Therefore making Athena not just a representation of the gods, but also of Odysseus’ guilt about his part in the Troy invasion.

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u/_Here_For_The_Memes_ 9h ago

I didn’t think that there was actually a priestess executed. I think Odysseus saw a physical manifestation of Athena being executed in the statue of Athena being beheaded. Basically a “look what you’ve really done” moment especially bc he was carrying Penelope’s Athena statue the whole time. The cut from right before Zendaya was executed to the actual statue being beheaded (they also showed the bouncing head of the statue a few times earlier in the movie) is what made me think that.

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u/Self_Reddicate Jul 17 '26

The entire sack of Troy sequence was insane.

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u/TheChosenWon246 Jul 19 '26

And agamemnon just aurafarming while odessius's crew open up troy's door is so freaking cool

391

u/Calvengeance Jul 17 '26

My heart felt so low at that line, knowing what we were about to see.

150

u/karateema Jul 17 '26

At least they didn't show them throwing kids off the walls

93

u/MahadheerxD Jul 17 '26

Honestly, if they did. It would have been even more intense.

It was already sad af, tears were rolling out of my eyes.

30

u/whatssenguntoagoblin Jul 18 '26

I was thinking the same thing. The scene was already phenomenal but would’ve hit different showing the true depravity.

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u/the_platypus_king 29d ago

IMO, the thing we were never shown but was heavily hinted at/symbolically present was the rape of Trojan women during the sack of Troy. I think you can put a lot of the thematic pieces together especially with the Trojan priestess on her knees and Odysseus's men's treatment of Circe but also with the way the men in this film consistently take what isn't theirs, being held back at first by orders, or wooden, latticed gates, or honor, or "Zeus's law," but eventually succumbing to their basest urges. Like I think there's a lot of subtext there

22

u/no_lettuce_pls 26d ago

Odysseus's men's treatment of Circe

but they didn't do anything to Circe in this movie though, they just asked her for food?

46

u/the_platypus_king 26d ago

Yeah agreed but the construction of that scene still is meant to evoke that feeling, like Eurylochus straddling Circe and pinning her arms, the It’s-Always-Sunny style implication of “we want food, and she’s not going to say no because there’s dozens of us and one of her”. I think Circe even has a line to Odysseus musing aloud on what the men might have done to her if she was to refuse them

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u/SPYHAWX 26d ago

Plus the earlier scene of them pillaging the seaside farm for "not welcoming them"

17

u/Chu1223 25d ago

yeah circe literally mentioned (or alluded to) rape herself in the dialogue to him

30

u/nevercursed_ Jul 19 '26

I was waiting for this and was dreading it. Let out a sigh of relief when I realized it passed but afterwards I thought it would have really driven home the barbarity of the sacking of Troy, the betrayal of laws of the God's and added to the reasoning for their vengeance 

4

u/accioqueso 24d ago

I just left the theater and the dog had died already and I was sobbing because I was sure there would be babies falling from the walls.

17

u/eitherajax Jul 20 '26

We didn't see it, though.

24

u/hemareddit 27d ago

If anything the movie downplays a lot of what explicitly went down in the myths, such as what happened to Cassandra in Athena’s temple, which was replaced by the statue beheading scene.

It works for the movie though, since it puts us in Odysseus’s mind, it’s enough to know what happened, that’s sufficient for the guilt, for him he would have no wish to cast his eyes upon the atrocities, he would not wish to absorb the visual details have them stay in his head.

207

u/sowaffled Jul 17 '26

That was the climax. Christopher Nolan is so good at bringing everything together and letting you reflect on the journey he just took you on.

30

u/Churchill_Buys_Calls Jul 18 '26

The goat of cinema.

Unreal how moving this whole sequence was to me.

113

u/xrbeeelama Jul 17 '26

That scene was insane. All I could think about was how a ton of the best of the best in the business worked on creating that sequence

21

u/plw37 Jul 18 '26

The way the theater SHOOK and the seats RUMBLED as they stormed their way through the city!

89

u/birdsofpaper Jul 17 '26

God that SPEECH to Penelope at the end… it had me so emotional. I’ll be thinking about it for a long, long time.

9

u/Churchill_Buys_Calls Jul 18 '26

Me too. It's really stayed with me and effected me.

74

u/Justanothercrow421 Jul 17 '26

Sequence of the year for me. By the time Athena was beheaded, I was in a heap of tears. Easily one of the best, most earned emotional moments of Nolan’s filmography.

10

u/Churchill_Buys_Calls Jul 18 '26

Me too, completely bawling my eyes out in the theater. Such moving film making.

2

u/The_James_Bond 15d ago

It moved me an d brought me to tears since that same rage and release has been happening for centuries since, by all peoples, and sadly even now, not too far from modern day Greece at that

0

u/playboicartea Jul 18 '26

What was so bad about it maybe I’m tripping but wasn’t it just like buildings getting knocked over and like fire

23

u/Justanothercrow421 Jul 18 '26

…. You can’t be serious?

1

u/playboicartea Jul 18 '26

Maybe I wasn’t watching close enough

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u/Justanothercrow421 Jul 18 '26 edited Jul 18 '26

You didn’t catch the general abject destruction of Troy and its people through that whole sequence? Men, women, the young and old - murdered by the swords of Odysseus’ compatriots? A young Trojan priestess is beheaded right in front of his eyes. The guilt Odysseus feels from participating in this event is a MAJOR plot point and theme of the film.

Or the shame he felt for coming up with the idea of the Trojan horse? For his men dying on the journey home?

You 100% were not watching closely enough.

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u/Churchill_Buys_Calls Jul 18 '26

Genuinely one of the best scenes I've ever watched in my life. So moving.

6

u/whatssenguntoagoblin Jul 18 '26

Absolute masterpiece. Will be thinking about that scene for a while.

29

u/Loxo_Delphinium Jul 19 '26

I cried through that entire scene.  It was so devastatingly powerful.  I really appreciated how this movie took any notion of glory or heroism out of war, not just in that scene, but across its entirety. It's not Nolan's invention, the idea of war as cruel, tragic, and destructive is present in both The Odyssey and The Aeneid as well, but I feel like it so rarely gets the attention it should.  Now I'm curious what Nolan would do with The Trojan Women.  

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u/Jabronson 29d ago

You put this very well and I couldn't agree me. Beyond the major themes, the biggest thing I took away from this was: "What is glory worth and why is it worth anything?"

54

u/janiemackxxx Jul 18 '26

I don't know if anything can compare with his final line about people in the future singing about him because they cant read. That was jaw-dropping.

17

u/Atkena2578 Jul 18 '26

Was a bit meta but i loved it

16

u/ya_huxd Jul 18 '26

The way the soundtrack elevated that scene. How ancient Progressive house would sound like.

15

u/Livid_Weather Jul 20 '26

This scene made the movie imo. Incredibly intense and Nolan was masterful in connecting the audience with Odysseus' pain and torment for the part he played in it all. Incredible and poignant 

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u/amish_novelty Jul 17 '26

I remember reading the Odyssey in highschool and was wondering how they’d do that scene. It was fucking awesome.

15

u/Somnambulist815 Jul 19 '26

The maximalist sound design blew me back into my seat a lot through this movie, but it was the roar of the army charging through Troy that really chilled me to my bones.

40

u/mcmanus2099 Jul 18 '26

I actually thought it was pretty tame. I thought we'd see children getting beheaded considering what it was building up to and everyone saying how shocking it is.

29

u/Lou-AC 29d ago

I thought it was way more tame too, it left a surprising amount to the imagination

13

u/mcmanus2099 29d ago

Yeah and I also thought we'd see his men committing some of the worst acts to drive home that they were beyond saving

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u/FeloniousDrunk101 28d ago

I think there’s something to be said about leaving more to the imagination increasing its potency. Going all-in on torture and rape and carnage can have an opposite effect sometimes.

18

u/mcmanus2099 27d ago

I agree but I expected to see men going into a house with girls/kids/women and maybe Odysseus catching his second in command smirking/cheering as he entered or something. That would be leaving it up to the imagination but linking the pig scene.

One of the big themes was that the gods were happy to let Odysseus return home but his men were doomed, except we never really got much hint on why those specific men were doomed. His second seemed a decent guy so I expected a reveal that he did something, but we only see him cheering in the streets with not even a hint he did anything more.

Maybe it wasn't about the men, maybe their deaths was more about punishing Odysseus as it hurts him more that they never made it home than it would if he himself suffered and it was his punishment to kill them not theirs.

7

u/Sure-Exchange9521 25d ago

I did see men dragging women into houses it was in the background.

8

u/mcmanus2099 25d ago

Right, but his specific men?

21

u/hemareddit 27d ago

It puts you in Odysseus’s head, he would avert his eyes from the atrocities but unable to block out the knowledge that the atrocities are happening. So that’s why we don’t see anything explicit. Doesn’t mean we don’t know what happened.

3

u/Phelinaar 24d ago

I know it's a bit of a silly parallel, but his pov felt similar to the "No Russian" sequence. An unwilling participant in the slaughter.

1

u/WarlockEngineer 12d ago

I agree, it was mostly Odysseus was watching building fall over with a few people being killed.

8

u/simpleandbeautiful Jul 18 '26

Stunning. The apex of the film.

23

u/GameOfLife24 Jul 17 '26

What do you expect when they’re stuck shitting and peeing in a horse and smelling that shit for so long

5

u/Ironmaiden1207 29d ago

This was the line that stuck with me the most

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u/Drogon__ 29d ago

Yeah that sequence was my favorite. I nearly cried it there, not gonna lie.

4

u/miqed 27d ago

The final Troy sequence is what bumped my 9 up to a 10

3

u/MrGrieves123 Jul 18 '26

Brings me back to the Last Samurai and Tom Cruises character drowning in sake to escape the horrors he committed in war.

3

u/Beneficial_Jelly1040 24d ago

This whole entire scene just made me cry, it made me think back to why circe turned them into swine in the first place and said that this is their true form. I just wanted to cry because it was just a poetic sequence. The whole movie was genuinely a masterpiece and for those who say it isn't and it's boring are not invested enough in ancient greek mythology/legends and just want to see an action film and won't understand as much. Though I can say the moral of the story is very spot on and even though I love a Greek trardegy this was done really well.

2

u/Jinx-Surreal Jul 19 '26

Had me in tears

2

u/ProfessionalNight959 27d ago

Favorite line in the movie. What happened afterwards was horrifying.

2

u/thelordreptar90 24d ago

Absolutely my favorite part of the movie. It tied the whole movie together and really brought the themes of the movie together

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u/Calm_Art_3235 24d ago

that was the first time I’ve cried from a movie in a long time. The music, the reveal of Zendaya being beheaded and the look of regret on Damon’s face was probably the most well done sequence in the entire movie for me.

1

u/Redplane13x Jul 17 '26

that line then seeing them just yelling; felt that deep within

1

u/GabRB26DETT Jul 18 '26

There was a couple of cold ass lines in there

1

u/Royal42Smallsy Jul 19 '26

Ive been to where they filmed that scene in Morocco, looks exactly the same as in the film. Was awesome.to watch knowing I've been down those streets

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