WARNING: Spoilers ahead…on a story 2.5 millennia old.
Finally got around to watching it this weekend. After the Mt. Everest sized stack of cash it made and all of the glowing reviews, honestly, it was pretty underwhelming.
First thing’s first. The dialogue was AAAAAAAAAWFUL. Seriously? What the hell? It sounded like I was listening to dialogue written by a small team of junior high students. And not the junior high students that take honors English. I was fine with the choice to do American accents, although I would have preferred British accents for a movie like this cuz it just sounds classier. But that wasn’t it. It was the actual words used by the actors to communicate to each other. It was just so dumbed down and sounded so boring and basic. I’m assuming it was a choice made on purpose to maybe connect with as many modern English speakers as possible, but it largely killed the film for me. I was actually kind of shocked how bad the dialogue was in this movie.
Another thing that kind of bothered me, although not nearly to the same degree as the dialogue, was over-acting. I felt like there were some performances that were dialed up a little too much. To the point where it kind of took me out of the film because I felt like I was watching an actor trying to shoot for an oscar a bit too hard. I think the main culprit on this one was Anne Hathaway. Alternatively, I think there was also an issue of under-acting. I’ll get to that below.
Pacing. Despite having 3 hours to tell the story, I kind of felt like some things were skipped over too quickly. Other things that they spent too much time on could have been shortened to allow more time for things I think deserved the time more. Scenes didn’t really punch the way I thought they should. In the book the scene where he comes back after 20 years and his dog is still alive but dies as he touches it and it recognizes him is really impactful, but it was just kind of glossed over in the movie with little to no emotion from Matt Damon. Same with Odysseus finding out Calypso had trapped him on the island for years. Not a lot of emotion there. Actually, I think the only scene Damon really sold was the siren scene. He did the opposite of over-act for most of the movie.
The film looks great. Gotta give it that. The cinematography is solid. And I’m not saying the film was bad (other than the dialogue which was truly awful). I just don’t get the massive hype. Honestly, I still prefer the 90s made for TV version with Armand Assante. I think the dialogue was better. The acting was better. The pacing was better even though it’s almost exactly the same length as this new version. And they did it without the star-studded cast the new film has. Obviously the new version has better special effects, and I do think overall better cinematography. I acknowledge maybe there’s some rose-tinted glasses thing going for me with the 90s version as I grew up with it.
I guess I’d give this new version a B. Just a mid-range B. With a special handwritten in red ink note in the margins that the dialogue is an F.
Ok, crucify me now.
EDIT: You know what, I’d like to add a few things I did like, beyond the cinematography. I liked Odysseus’ monologue about the siren’s song. I liked his monologue about his point of view of his role in the war when he’s talking to his wife. I liked that Athena ended up being a ghost of someone he watched get murdered at Troy (although I do not like Zendaya as an actress).
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Honestly, I still prefer the 90s made for TV version with Armand Assante
I have always loved that one.
The part that killed it for me right at the start, even more than American accents was the casual use of the words Mom and Dad, not mother and father.
If they all had British accents I would have thrown up all over the theater
If you want to watch the Odyssey, May I reccomend O’ Brother, Where Art Thou, or The Warriors.
Come out and plaaaaay aaaaaaaay.
Warriors is based on the Anabasis.
Christopher Nolan is incredibly overrated IMHO. Wooden characters, thin script, over reliance of gimmicks of editing and bombastic music. I can’t see why anybody likes his films all that much.
I particularly enjoyed the reveal that the mighty walls of Troy, which the entire Greek coalition spent 10 years camped outside, was a 15 foot mud brick partition which could have been breached by two tall men and a running jump.
People give the movie Troy shit but at least they did justice to the city in that one.
Tom Holland as incapable 35 year old weak man-boy, spec-ops archer firefights and the “bronze shower” of weapons being dropped through the floor were just the icing on an increasingly ridiculous adaptation.
The fact that someone thought it’s intereating, fun or even somewhat “realistic” that a dude fighs 40 guys in a small room with bow and arrow says a lot about the movie. It was supposed to be the climax of an already pretty slow and not very interesting movie, but then they had to cut away a lot, because, i don’t know how he would fight all these people. The whole bit where he pretends to be a beggar reminded me more of that office acene where Andy pretended to be a janitor for way too long than an actual movie that tries to be taken serious. Tge only thing i liked about the movie, really was Robert Pattinson’s performance. He is a sleazy douche and you buy that. Tom holland was annoying as hell at some point and Matt Damon was just some guy with a glued on beard for most of the time.
Tom Holland and Zendaya have 0 range. Every single movie they play the same people. Especially Tom Holland ruined the immersion for me. He sounds like a GenZ teenager.
He’s also felt way too old for the role. I know his characters age isn’t a hard fact so he could be the “real” age of the character but he was written like a child. They needed an actor with a baby face on the younger side or to write Telemachus more like a high born young adult who was well spoken. If they’re going to have tom play a character his age, write the character for that age.
I find the movie mid myself. I agree wholeheartedly about the acting, Robert Pattinson and Spider Man were the two worst for me, especially the scene where spider man shouts “DAD!” like, call him father at least come on… I actually like Anne Hathaway more than most everyone else, she is intense the way a woman would have to be to resist society the way she did for so long. I agree Matt was just Matt doing Matt the whole time, I usually love the guy but I think he was miscast. Honestly everyone being an A list start was a big part of why I found it hard to get into, aside from the bad acting and dumbed down dialogue. I didn’t find the movie to look that good though, were the cameras high quality? Sure but it was just such a bland movie, flat, colorless, drab, you have such beautiful nature in that part of the world, you have literal magical goddesses and Demi goddesses, they definitely had some idea of what people were expecting when you look at Agamemnon’s armor, they just didn’t stylize any other part of the movie, at all? I also agree the pacing was bad, the entire last 3rd of the movie felt like it was dragging it just kept going and going… the long part of the story is the voyage, the pacing was bad. Generally I found it stale, boring, and disappointing, worth a watch once in theaters but I didn’t like it and wouldn’t recommend it.
I really liked it. Before it came out I was convinced that you can’t do a good adaption and was mostly curious what Nolan wanted to achieve with it. Having seen it, I think Nolan succeeded in getting his idea of the themes on the screen but I wouldn’t say it is for everyone.
try the 1997 version
I’m on board with everything here except:
The cinematography is solid
It was utter garbage lol, and I’m glad I didn’t drive several hours to a real IMAX theater when the lieMAX theater already showed how awful the cinematography was.
The scope and framing was crap, the lighting was dogwater, the color grading was dogshit, the scenery and setting was ass, the CGI was blatantly noticeable but at least not as awful as the Avatar sequels, and the audio was nothing special and just earrape in the theater I was in (could be film, could be MJR).
I got MJR’s Tuesday special and I still want a refund for the 3 hours wasted on this film lol.
I could go on a much, much, much longer rant about how awful this film was but the takeaway here is that:
- A lot of these problems are generic to Hollywood, so this film is a B/C but it would have rated a solid F even 20+ years ago.
- The Odyssey’s connection to human society is archaic and a relic of the past (8th century BCE, Greek) which is why modern authors jokingly refer to it as a long winded story with no real meaning, as if Homer was just an old dude telling a never ending story. Hence why it’s almost pointless to make a film version of the story without significant adaptation or changes, which Nolan chose to do in the worst way possible (wtf is Zeus’s law? where tf is Poseidon, the dude actually responsible for the plot?).
- Go watch O Brother, where art thou? instead.
wtf is Zeus’s law?
Hospitality towards strangers and travellers, because they might be a god in disguise:
Yeah, the movie actually explained that well enough.
There’s TWO scenes where the focus is off I noticed them in real time on the first (and only) watches how bad it was. It was also so drab! I really was hoping for a beautiful movie dancing on the knife’s edge of myth and magic and got a brown, gray, murky blue brown mess and almost no magic beyond some gross body horror.
I went to this movie for three things: the spectacle, the cool sounds, and watching serious actors act seriously. It delivered on all those fronts when I watched it.
What spectacle?
The big boats being rocked by big waves, the big armored guys’ attack in the forest, Polyphemus. The pillage of Troy. It looked cool.
The Big armoured guy attack was the most confusing and jump-cut happy five seconds I’ve seen yet. That was a big boat, not even a ship by today’s standards. It wasn’t that impressive. I desperately want to get my hands on the IMAX resolution cut of the movie to ‘get’ what Nolan was trying to say.
What serious acting? Serious over acting maybe
I had a similar reaction to Oppenheimer. It felt like a 3 hour long trailer. Every scene felt like a cut scene, with no real sense of progression. It was amazing visually, but that was pretty much it. I was simultaneously over stimulated and bored by the end, if that’s even possible.
All my friends were surprised that I preferred Barbie to it. (We did the double feature Barbenheimer thing.)
“It felt like a 3 hour long trailer.” I was having a hard time explaining how I felt after watching it but this pretty much describes my reaction perfectly. So much happened with so little depth, it was the quickest three hour movie I’ve ever watched. I generally like Nolan films but I hated this one, was just waiting for it to end. Also, the acting felt so bland, like everyone was just reading script for the first time.
I think it’s the style Nolan has developed and stuck with / become trapped by; a vignette scene to reveal a carefully crafted shot/moment, followed by a link to the next vignette scene building to another moment. Almost all his scenes end that way, with a full stop at a moment of impact, all careful and curated and never freewheeling or chaotic.
I think it robs his films of organic feeling, and it feels to me like being sheparded towards a catharsis he designed rather than acheiving any real trancendence. It’s no surprise given his start with Memento, a film hinged around the vignette-reveal-repeat rhythm, but he could never pull off something as frenetic as Black Swan, Good Time, Birdman, etc. That would stretch outside his “what if they don’t get it” architecture.
Visually it was great.
The acting was wooden and underwhelming.
The sound was poorly mixed, being both too loud and not loud enough.
That’s 2.5 hours and $10 I’m never getting back.
You guys go to the cinema for only 10$ ? I spent 35$ equivalent 😭
The sound was poorly mixed, being both too loud and not loud enough.
Also known as the Chris Nolan Special
Also known as mixing for dynamic range
Of a fucking multi-million IMAX theater! I don’t have that kind of gear lying about! Mix the sound for normal people, or even rich people, sound systems! Hell, mix it for non-IMAX theaters! Other movies do it fine, why not his?
He’s got some deluded fucking zealotry about the purity of the experience, keeping IMAX standards throughout to the detriment of more casual viewing experiences.
From the man who makes Batman movies.
That’s exactly the problem with this whole movie. His ego takes higher priority over the art.
Sums up most Nolan movies for me. Look good but that’s about it. Actually screw that they don’t even look that good, mostly grey and washed out.
Sounds like most big budget movies these days.
I liked the acting but I can understand why some people would think that way.
Someone should do a classy British dub where all the characters have the thickest Geordy, Glaswegian, Scouse and Norn Irish accents.
This is Welsh erasure, and it will not stand.
The Cornish are pissed off too, but fuck 'em.
I don’t think the Cornish can be pissed, most chill people on earth.
Go down there and tell them that pasties are just shitty pies. That’ll get 'em riled up.
