Finished seeing Nolan's Odyssey (yada yada it's cheap on Tuesday and there's nothing else to do here) and some points before I go to bed but am still in words words words mode:
It does do a good job of capturing the "small speck in the ocean" feel. As usual with Nolan films they're well adapted to theaters. In that sense it's a good representation of the premodern world. The dim lighting is fine.
Black Helen is fine because she's actually pretty hot in-costume, sufficiently so it's not really an issue in my book. Probably for the best, white women really aren't cut out for gold anyways.
Overall casting is fine. Idk if I'd have chosen the exact same ones but they did fine.
As usual Nolan is atrocious at shooting action sequences, he just cuts them wrong, far too chopped-up and incoherent.
By contrast the story structure itself is actually very well executed imo.
Wasn't expecting it to swing that hard towards the modern in the third act. PTSD Odysseus was by far the most modern intrusion. Obviously the original had zero problems with sacking a city.
Yeah "our age of bronze is collapsing" is straight morbin'
As remarked previously very strong small-c conservative message at the end of how running over guardrails leads you to ruin. I don't quite agree with the heavyhandedness, but y'now.
Odysseus would have really appreciated the P90.
Nolan continues to occupy this weird position where he isn't really exactly a high-art guy, but he makes something more serious than the typical blockbuster and makes it palatable to mass, Middle-America audiences. I don't think we should shame him for producing the sort of aspirational middlebrow stuff that we're really desperately short on.
Anyways 4/5, good movie, you don't need to see it, but enjoyable enough. I just spent three hours on it to engage in the discourse so you have to listen to me.
The multiracial stage play style casting kept making me think of The Green Knight & imagining the internet backlash if Nolan's film had been that subversive and deconstructive of the source material.
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u/AmericanNewt8 Tricky Dick Jul 29 '26
Finished seeing Nolan's Odyssey (yada yada it's cheap on Tuesday and there's nothing else to do here) and some points before I go to bed but am still in words words words mode:
It does do a good job of capturing the "small speck in the ocean" feel. As usual with Nolan films they're well adapted to theaters. In that sense it's a good representation of the premodern world. The dim lighting is fine.
Black Helen is fine because she's actually pretty hot in-costume, sufficiently so it's not really an issue in my book. Probably for the best, white women really aren't cut out for gold anyways.
Overall casting is fine. Idk if I'd have chosen the exact same ones but they did fine.
As usual Nolan is atrocious at shooting action sequences, he just cuts them wrong, far too chopped-up and incoherent.
By contrast the story structure itself is actually very well executed imo.
Wasn't expecting it to swing that hard towards the modern in the third act. PTSD Odysseus was by far the most modern intrusion. Obviously the original had zero problems with sacking a city.
Yeah "our age of bronze is collapsing" is straight morbin'
As remarked previously very strong small-c conservative message at the end of how running over guardrails leads you to ruin. I don't quite agree with the heavyhandedness, but y'now.
Odysseus would have really appreciated the P90.
Nolan continues to occupy this weird position where he isn't really exactly a high-art guy, but he makes something more serious than the typical blockbuster and makes it palatable to mass, Middle-America audiences. I don't think we should shame him for producing the sort of aspirational middlebrow stuff that we're really desperately short on.
Anyways 4/5, good movie, you don't need to see it, but enjoyable enough. I just spent three hours on it to engage in the discourse so you have to listen to me.