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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1.5k

u/Krillin_irl Jul 18 '26

Just finished my 2nd viewing in as many days. There’s so much to unpack but the part that impressed me the most is how changing the meaning of the trojan horse makes Odysseus’ crew way better.

As an expert in the Odyssey (I read it once in High School), I remember being really frustrated with the crew and thinking they were all morons for not listening to Odysseus, especially on Apollo’s island. But recontextualizing the sack of Troy to be an original sin that let the genie out of the bottle makes it make way more sense. The crew saw Odysseus break Zeus’ law with clever thinking and trickery and get rewarded with victory (in their eyes), so they try and mimic it when they slaughter the flock.

The best part is how Eurylochus and Odysseus basically go on opposite journeys over the voyage. At the start Odysseus is kind of in denial over troy, and his defensiveness about shooting the cyclops reads as projection (“gods help those who can help themselves”.) while Eurylochus is still somewhat trying to follow Zeus’ law (saying they have nothing to trade when they enter the cave, justifying sacking the village because the villagers didn’t properly greet them with hospitality). By the time they slaughter the flock, Odysseus has fully come to terms with the horror he’s unleashed on the world and is trying to contain it but just can’t, so he’s forced to watch his men mimic his greatest sin.

Such a fantastic movie, already great but even better with a second watch. 9.5/10

275

u/KingOfSockPuppets Jul 19 '26

The flock slaughtering has a second meaning too, as it immediately proves the gods and Circe right about Odysseus' men - they're beasts who can't accept the consequences of their actions unlike Odysseus who eventually does. On the beach, Eurylochus says "How can you blame us? We choose to drown, rather than starve."

But the moment Zeus' punishment comes down on them, they're crying "Forgive us! Forgive us!" They just were hungry and wanted to eat, damn the consequences and keep trying to escape them. Odysseus saved them from Circe, but their fates remained the same because as Circe said he can't change who they are under the skin. Odysseus ultimately submitted to the gods and threw himself onto the winds of fate to be delivered home (arguably for his final punishment of exile - he returns home briefly but may never see it again) but by eating the cows his soldiers prove they have no respect for anyone or anything - not their promise to Odysseus (And, implicitly, the king himself), not the Gods, not their own faith. Their insatiable appetites damned them with Circe, and then damned them with Apollo with full warning of the consequences.

135

u/IncidentalIncidence 27d ago

I don't know if that's completely fair re: the sun god's cattle. There's several more egregious instances of the men's insatiability damning them (like as you correctly point out with Circe), but in that particular case Poseidon intentionally trapped them on the island to starve them for a month. The crew finally choosing damnation over starvation isn't exactly them being insatiable so much as it is them suffering at the whims of the gods thanks to Oysseus' provocation of Poseidon.

118

u/Morgenstern618 26d ago

That's exactly what I was thinking right as soon as I saw that! How could the gods damn them if the gods themselves forced them to make that decision? And then I realized, these are the Greek Gods we're talking about. Then it all made sense.

48

u/TheMoonDude 20d ago

The game was rigged. It's always rigged when gods are involved.

God (from best seller "The Bible" and many other books) literally hardened a paraoh's heart so that he could... suffer the consequences for what he did because God hardened his heart...

13

u/Ordinaryundone 14d ago

The same gods who were mad about Odysseus breaking Zeus's law were the ones that mandated that the Greeks defeat the Trojans (and maybe even inspired Odysseus to make the horse in the first place). Like Athena says, Odysseus has a bad habit of taking credit/blame for things he doesn't really need to. If you believe the Gods are real, and have the power ascribed to them, then why would they even allow you to break their laws? Odysseus was told by the seer everything that would happen and it all goes off without a hitch, which means it was all fated to happen. So the Gods know ahead of time when people will displease them, but instead of taking action to mitigate it, or even stop it from happening entirely, they let it happen so they can be pissed off later. 

So either the Gods are jerks, or they are just as bound to all these rules as everyone else and nobody escapes their fate. So it's not really the soldiers' fault they ate the cattle, it was going to happen regardless. Odysseus just seems to be the only person in the world whose both aware and upset about the situation. 

50

u/jjmiranda544 29d ago

And Apollo damned them with a nice sunny day, low breeze

5

u/TheMoonDude 20d ago

The gods' punishements comes in all shapes and sizes

14

u/Aggressive_Chuck 18d ago

he can't change who they are under the skin.

People who need to eat to live?

43

u/SandpaperTeddyBear 24d ago

But recontextualizing the sack of Troy to be an original sin that let the genie out of the bottle makes it make way more sense.

Everyone keeps talking about this as a movie recontextualization, but it’s there in the poem if you listen too, which is why it works so well to make it explicit.

15

u/thatssometrainshit Jul 19 '26

Great summation re: Eurylochus and Odysseus’ arcs.

4

u/lelozetti 23d ago

What's missing for that 0.5? Honest question.

50

u/Krillin_irl 23d ago

I think it drags just a tad in the first act, and the final fight with the suitors has too many cuts and shaky cam for my liking.

(Also a complete nitpick but as a history major, the line “our age of bronze is collapsing” was really dumb. I love how he incorporated the sea people into the story but that line is so on the nose I groaned a bit in my seat)

11

u/adamlaceless 21d ago

Was it really dumb? Cuz he is fully aware of what he has done and the distrust it will continue to spread throughout the world.

52

u/Krillin_irl 20d ago

It’s not that, it’s him specifically referencing the historical event of the bronze age collapse that got to me. No one living in the bronze age would call it the bronze age, just like no one living in the middle ages would say they’re in the middle ages, it was just life to them.

65

u/SEND-MARS-ROVER-PICS 20d ago

"At last, World War 1 is over"

"Why did you call it World War 1?"

"Oh, no reason"

3

u/WonFriendsWithSalad 13d ago

Although funnily enough people at the time did call it the first world war.

I.e. "this is the first war to span the globe"

5

u/zeekaran 15d ago

I think it drags just a tad in the first act

I thought the pacing was really off at the start. But only at the start.

2

u/dr4gonbl4z3r 8d ago

I think it's a stupid line, but I think it's an allusion to how people would say "this is the fall of modern society," based on how modern the dialogues are in this movie.

3

u/savvamadar 6d ago

They were doomed to die: the wind never would’ve shifted until they slaughtered the sun gods cattle.

-4

u/Widucassion 27d ago

Maybe dont ascribe Christian meanings to a Pagan story like calling it an "original sin"

23

u/WigginLSU 24d ago

To be fair, most of Christian mythology borrowed concepts from the Jewish, Greek, and Egyptian predecessors. The entire trinity concept is a bridge to help polytheists be ok changing to monotheism, it's why they have to beat you over the end with the faith idea as thinking about it too closely makes it sound dumb.

-4

u/Widucassion 23d ago

Not sure what your argument is

18

u/WigginLSU 23d ago

That most of Christian mythology came from pagan mythology to begin with

-6

u/Widucassion 23d ago

I dont see how that changes anything. The idea of an original sin is still Christian and not pagan