'The Odyssey' Review

Christopher Nolan's epic is awesomely weird, visually stunning but not without its flaws.

Picture a group of men sitting around a table in an old hut on a grey island in the sea. Lost and hungry, they dig into bowls of meat. A woman walks around the table, coaxing them to eat. They need no encouragement. They tear at the meat, ravenous and increasingly desperate in their hunger.

The more they eat, the more feral they become, devouring and devouring as the woman begins to stroke their faces, their ears. She shapes them, molding them from man to beast. She reaches her arm down one’s throat. She grabs another’s jaw and stretches it wide. Slowly, they are transformed. It’s all deeply unsettling.

There are other moments in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey that are as beautiful as this scene is grotesque.

As I watched The Odyssey, a few things kept running through my mind. Some of these impressions of the movie itself and others related to the wider conversation around the film, which has devolved into screeching culture war controversies despite its lack of any discernible modern politics (other than an age-old warning against breaking with tradition and waging foolish wars).

We’ll start with what strikes you first, what is almost impossible to ignore.

The Vernacular

The modern American dialogue is jarring at first. It feels anachronistic and almost comical in the opening moments of the film. Quickly I came to realize that Nolan is doing something very intentional with these American accents and words like “dad” and “mom” (when you’d expect “father” and “mother” which are also used). Nolan is trying to make these people sound like actual people.

We refer to our “dads” and “moms” all the time. I’d say, at least in my experience, it’s much more common for my kids to call me “dad” than it is for them to say “father.” And while you lose a bit of the formality and grandiosity in the process, I understand the vision here.

We might think it would be strange for Darth Vader to say to Luke, in Empire Strikes Back, “Luke I am your dad.” But rewrite the scene a little bit – Vader, after lopping off Luke’s hand, cradles him in his lap as the young man wakes up slowly to see the dark mask of his enemy above him. Luke struggles and tries to stand, woozy and afraid and Vader says, “Luke… I’m your dad.”

Okay, it’s still weird, but there is a familiarity in the use of the word “dad” that is missing from the more formal “father” and it’s interesting that later in The Odyssey, Telemachus does use “father” instead. (And perhaps Vader would have had better luck getting Luke to join him if he’d been less Big Bad Scary Guy In A Mask and more “Luke, I’m your dad.”)

I think we’re accustomed to this kind of movie having British accents, but that’s just what we’re used to it, not because it’s a hard and fast rule. And having everyone try to speak in English with Greek accents (not that the Greeks 2700 years ago would have sounded like Greeks do today) would have been awkward. See, for example, Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey.

Ultimately, this is a style choice. Part of Nolan’s creative vision. Would it have worked better with British accents instead? Or a mix of British and American? It’s impossible to say. I think if Nolan had gone full British, he would have had to recast Matt Damon, and Damon was actually excellent in this film. It might be my favorite of his roles since Good Will Hunting. Speaking of casting . . . .

The Casting Controversy Is Wildly Silly

The cast of The Odyssey is not entirely Greek which a lot of people are pretending is a problem. The real problem that critics of this film have is that the cast is not entirely white. (They often use Troy as an example of good casting, which has tons of non-Greek cast members, or 300 which, again, almost nobody in the cast is Greek.)

Helen of Troy in this film is played by Lupita Nyong’o who is Black. Travis Scott is a bard. These two characters have maybe two or three minutes of screentime between them, and yet a certain portion of the internet, and Elon Musk, have raged, gnashed teeth and howled to the wind about the way this denigrates a Greek classic. Corey Hawkins, who is also Black, gets more screen-time than either and is one of the film’s suitor villains.

Two things: First of all, The Odyssey has become something much more than simply a Greek myth. It is a foundational text of Western Civilization. It is taught across the globe. It has been interpreted and reinterpreted countless times over 2700 years. It was, for many hundreds of years, an oral tradition that was changed over and over and over again.

Changes to the details in an adaptation only matter if the adaptation misses the spirit of the original. Nolan hits that mark quite squarely on the head, though I’ll get to that a bit more in a moment. Angry detractors also got very, very angry that Elliot Page, who is trans, was cast as a Greek warrior. Page’s role is also quite small, and their character, Sinon, while important to the story and its themes–is never portrayed as a great warrior, but rather as a brave one. You don’t have to be huge and muscular to be brave. Just ask Frodo Baggins and Sam Gamgee.

The cast also includes Will Yun Lee, John Leguizamo and a number of other actors of color and none of this feels like tokenism, but rather a colorblind approach to casting. Nolan isn’t making a social statement with his casting choices. He’s simply casting whoever he wants to work with (and he’s worked with many of these actors in the past) in a legend that feels universal and epic and not bound by any real geography.

This is a tale that is about more than just a historical conflict; it’s about what happens when we break with old customs and shatter peace and trade for lust and power. The loudest voices on social media and internet forums decrying this as a “woke” film are doing themselves a disservice. The political statements made in Nolan’s version are the same ones made in Homer’s poem, or at the very least a reasonable interpretation of the anti-war sentiments therein.

I’ve criticized tokenistic diversity casting elsewhere. I’m no ideologue. I don’t think diversity for diversity’s sake is an unfettered good. If you’re going for real historical accuracy, colorblind casting can hurt immersion and realism.

But it in the end it all comes down to vision, and I doubt Homer or the ancient Greeks would bat an eye at the casting in this film. The casting didn’t detract from the film in the slightest. Honestly, having a more colorful cast in some ways fit the Mediterranean feel better. After all, the peoples of the Mediterranean are actually very diverse.

The Movie Is Slow And Long And Glorious To Behold

I can’t answer the question “Is The Odyssey too long?” At just under three hours, it is very long. Long enough that I’ll probably wait awhile before I see it again. If I really, really love a movie I often want to watch it right away regardless of length. I really, really liked The Odyssey, but not enough to see it a second time in theaters unless I can find an IMAX theater because I would love to see it in its natural 70mm format.

I hate to give out scores for movies or games, but in my grading scale I usually put “I went to go see this movie right away a second time” at the very top and “I really enjoyed this movie and think you should go see it” just below that. That’s where The Odyssey falls. (Then there’s “I liked this movie, but you can wait until it comes out on streaming” and “I didn’t like this movie, but you might!” and finally “Please do yourself a favor and watch something else, anything else, and save yourself time and money.”)

I also have a “20 minute rule” for modern cinema which basically states that almost all movies that go over two hours would be better with 20 minutes cut. Maybe that’s true here, but one exception I tend to make is for historical or fantasy epics. These demand long runtimes, and I doubt The Odyssey would benefit from cuts. In fact, it might be better with a few moments more fleshed out and less rushed.

Besides, it’s a gorgeous movie. Yes, it’s dark a lot of the time. Yes, Nolan’s tendency to make the sound editing a bit murky or a bit too loud at times while the dialogue sinks into the sonic muck, all these things are true here. But I could have spent more time lingering on the scenery, on Odysseus in the waves, on the longships sailing. On the battles and the flashbacks and the betrayals. I’m not sure what I’d cut, which means that this movie was probably just about the right length, if not a little short. I’d watch a Director’s Cut for sure.

What About Changes To The Source Material?

There are many omissions, of course. It would be close to impossible to include every stop on Odysseus’s adventure. Some are simply condensed. Others are changed entirely. The cyclops scene is quite different, but leans harder into horror than cunning.

The gods are present but subtle; visions of Athena; terrible storms as punishment for oath-breaking. Nolan makes a compromise here between realism and mythology. But we still have monsters. We still have Circe’s Bavmorda-like pig magic. (Samantha Morton joins Ryan Hurst as two Walking Dead alumni in this picture; they played Alpha and Beta in that TV series. Corey Hawkins is also a former Walking Dead star).

I’m not really concerned with changes to the source material here, either. This isn’t a fantasy published in the 1960s or a beloved comic book. It’s 2700 years old and it has been changed over and over again in the telling and in the countless translations of its countless versions.

This is Nolan’s version. One of many, just like we have so many versions of Shakespeare’s plays. Maybe there are better ones out there. Maybe we lose something important by cutting and condensing, as we so often do in translating the written word to the big screen, but overall I think Nolan made mostly the right choices here. This is a moody, weird, haunting, often beautiful film, punctuated by sudden violence and horror. With just a few moments of levity to pierce the darkness.

I could go over The Odyssey, bone by bone, and pick out some of the things I’d have done differently, but I appreciate it for what it is. Nolan’s vision is distinct, at once grounded and nightmarish, with some big changes but the spirit of the story intact. I found the ending surprisingly poignant. It is not the “big historical epic” of the past, but something new entirely. I’m glad it was made. I think you should see it on the biggest screen you can find.

It’s not a perfect film. I’ll have to think about it more, maybe even see it again, to fully appreciate what Nolan is doing here, and there may be other bones I have to pick with it after a second watch. I should probably read The Odyssey again, also, as it’s been many years and I think I’d likely understand it differently now that I’m older. But it’s a worthwhile film, ambitious and moody. I dug the vibe, no doubt.

My Score: 4/5 Trojan Horses

Movie Theater Movie Rating Scale

5 = I loved this movie so much I’m going back to see it again in theaters and/or I pre-ordered the 4k blu-ray.

4 = I really liked this movie and I absolutely think you should go see it at the movie theater, but I probably won’t see it again until it’s on streaming (or I get the 4k Blu-ray).

3 = I liked this movie, but it would have been just fine to wait for it to come out on streaming.

2= I didn’t really care for this movie, but I can see how other people might enjoy it so maybe go check it out if my review didn’t convince you otherwise.

1 = Don’t see this movie. Please, watch literally anything else. Go outside and get some fresh air. Count flowers on the wall. Play solitaire till dawn with a deck of 51. Smoke cigarettes and watch Captain Kangaroo, but just don’t see this trash.

P.S. I have another piece I’m working on in which I question whether maybe this should actually be 5/5, because I find myself thinking about this movie constantly and I’m trying to get my daughter to go see it with me so I can watch it again (and because I think she’ll like it a lot!) It’s hard to rate movies. Make of it what you will.

Have you seen The Odyssey yet? What did you think? Let me know on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook.

All images courtesy of Universal Pictures. A previous version of this review appeared on my blog at Forbes.