The Odyssey, Written for the Screen by Christopher Nolan

With every adaptation comes change, of course. The Odyssey is one of the longest stories ever written, and at three hours, Nolan’s film is already working within some pretty obvious limitations. It is not a completely faithful recreation of Homer’s poem, but we think it does a good job of bringing the story into the modern era while still preserving the ideas that have allowed it to survive for thousands of years. Myself, Ryan Tyler Hayes, Juan Toledo, and Wesley Tallman, took to the Enzian Theater in Maitland, Florida for their first ever 70mm engagement. The Enzian Theater installed its new 35mm and 70mm reel to reel projection system earlier this July, and we cannot think of a better filmmaker to break it in than Christopher Nolan.

The conversation around IMAX versus other premium formats is honestly a little lost on us. As strong supporters of analog filmmaking here at Zwerg, we do not necessarily care about the aspect ratio nearly as much as we care about the film itself. The grain, the texture, the little imperfections, the dust and scratches all contribute to the experience. It makes a movie feel alive in a way that digital projection simply cannot completely replicate.

As filmmakers and professionals in the industry ourselves, we also understand what an achievement a production of this scale represents. Regardless of how someone feels about the movie itself, the technical and creative ambition behind it is difficult to ignore.

[R.T.H.]: “If there’s an option to watch it in film, I will. I don’t care if I have to miss opening night to do so”

[JUAN]: “I’m happy we watched it on film, it looks great. Film has that feeling of the past, it’s something we associate with good storytelling”

[WESLEY]: “My initial reaction is just, wow. phenomenal”

That reaction was obvious almost immediately, but our thoughts about the movie needed more time to develop. Art, and an understanding of art, does not always happen on impact. Some stories reveal themselves over time. The idea that a piece of art has to prove itself immediately or it has failed does not really hold up, especially with a story as old and familiar as The Odyssey. The themes of The Odyssey have survived because they are universal. We have all seen versions of this story whether we realize it or not. O Brother, Where Art Thou? is an obvious example, and even The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie draws from the same basic structure. A good adaptation does not necessarily need to replace its source material, and it does not need to be completely faithful to it either. Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey carries a different kind of weight because it is approaching a story that has already been adapted and reinterpreted countless times. That makes the discussion surrounding its changes, particularly the conversation about historical accuracy, especially interesting.

Homer’s The Odyssey is one of the foundational stories of Western civilization. It is an extraordinary achievement, not simply because of its age, but because of how much of modern storytelling can be traced back to its ideas. Ideally, if this movie works for you, you walk away wanting to actually read Homer, or reread him if it has been a while. Maybe it even gets someone interested enough to explore mythology, literature, or academia at a deeper level. Where the conversation becomes less productive is when academic tradition becomes so rigid that it prevents people from appreciating what an adaptation is actually trying to accomplish. Christopher Nolan, Hoyte van Hoytema, and the crew of this picture have created something that deserves to be considered on its own terms. We are watching the progression of motion pictures both as an art form and as a technology. That is worth recognizing regardless of whether every creative choice works for every viewer.

No movie is without fault, and this one is no exception. But you do not have to love a movie to respect it, and loving it should not be the standard a film has to meet before it can be considered good. There is a tendency in modern film criticism to treat the visible seams of storytelling as evidence that the storytelling itself has failed. But recognizing how something was constructed does not necessarily mean that the construction failed to affect you. That distinction is part of why we did not want to write this review the night we walked out of the theater. We sat with it. We talked about it. We went back for a second and third viewing before putting any of this to paper. That was less about hedging our opinions and more about giving the film the same patience it asks of its audience. With that in mind, here is where each of us landed individually as our conversation became more nuanced.

[R.T.H.]: I came in understanding a little bit more, I actually do enjoy the Homer’s original poem, I remember my father had a big “study guide” version of “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey” which I used on more than one occasion, as I navigated high school literature and college level mythology, and as someone who appreciates the source material I actually am fine with a lot of the omitted items in the movie. We see in the very beginning superimposed text, “In a time of apparent magic…” that word “apparent” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in the realm of “suspension of disbelief” but I believe it one of the most important elements because Nolan’s Odyssey is grounded more in reality, yes there are still mythical creatures, giants, gods and monsters, but it’s significantly toned down compared to the source material, and I am completely okay with that. These iconic Greek myths have been retold for millennia because of their messages not because of historical accuracy. I don’t need Matt Damon telling a cyclops puns, hiding a big bag of wind from his shipmates, or eating herbs given to him by Hermes There is something fascinating and commendable (in my mind) about adapting a mystical, wonderful, mythical story and presenting it through the language of serious, tragic, 20th-century filmmaking. And that’s ultimately what I believe fiction should do; make us think, while also giving us opportunities to relate to ourselves and to one another. 

[JUAN]:  I admit I’m not necessarily the biggest “epic” guy, but I still walked away impressed. What stuck with me most was the recurring idea of Odysseus continually rebelling against what the gods have foretold, and how that tension gives the story a sense of inevitability without completely removing his agency. 

[WESLEY]:  When I watched it again, I didn’t realize all of the bible references in the movie.

[R.T.H.]: Well, The Odyssey predates Christianity by centuries, but the story’s ideas surrounding faith, sacrifice, temptation, judgment, morality, and overall just the idea of man can resonate with audiences familiar with Biblical storytelling, and that connection isn’t a mistake by any means, I think Nolan has a soft spot for Christianity, he mirrors biblical stories, motifs, themes in his films all the time. I wonder how much (if any) actually inspired him.

 

[WESLEY]: I thought it was interesting. At the beginning of the movie Zendaya’s monolog to Odysseus was straight from the *“Book of Job” *

[R.T.H.]: And there are a lot of parallels between Odysseus and Job

[WESLEY]: Sure.

[R.T.H.]: and I appreciate the film’s relationship with its source material. We all know The Odyssey, whether we’ve actually read it or not (It is that influential), However I can look at both independently and enjoy or critique different sections, art, in any form, should not be a mirror. It should be taken as the way it is presented. Funny enough, the discourse over this film mimics, in some way, the aspects and themes of Odysseus’ character.  Treated almost like a god, he is described as powerful, lucky, larger than life; an idealized version of a man. And yet Odysseus doesn’t necessarily see himself in that way. This is a several millennia-long critique on how a person sees themselves vs. how the world sees them, a dynamic that has appeared throughout
art and literature in different forms. 

[JUAN]: I need to do my own research. But I feel like the juxtaposition of what was reality and what was mythical was done in a good way. Monsters feel uncanny, the atmosphere is interesting, almost scary sometimes. There’s no denying that Nolan knows how to make one feel larger than life.

[R.T.H.]: Well The audience already knows what is coming because this is something they’ve seen before through hundreds, or thousands of stories, that knowledge gives each sequence an almost anti-climactic feeling, We know Odysseus is going to win, because he has to, but we are still as engaged as ever. “The Hero’s Journey” still rings true, and it is still celebrated by humanity, even if it is the same story over and over again.

[JUAN]: Right, the performances were solid across the board. Nobody was particularly bad, but there also wasn’t a performance that completely took me by surprise.

[WESLEY]: Right, I found the relationship between Odysseus and his son interesting.

[R.T.H.]: I don’t know, maybe it’s just because it’s Tom Holland but, and I understand it needs to exist, it gives Odysseus another reason to fight, but I didn’t necessarily feel that their relationship reached a deeply emotional or heartbreaking level that the film told me it did.

[WESLEY]: Right but that last fight scene was great, I thought it was going to be something dumb and he (Odysseus) was going to forgive them, but I was happy it was a fight, justice being served. 

[R.T.H.]: the standout sequence for me was Odysseus’ final voyage with his men. When the ship breaks apart, I felt a strange emotional response. It felt almost like the end of Halo 3. This lost hero adrift. Needing to be found.

 

[WESLEY]: That’s funny I thought the exact same thing. 

As the three of us continued talking, we kept circling back to what could really be boiled down to the movie’s most controversial additions. There is a genuinely strange gap between how loud the internet conversation became and what was actually in the movie, especially considering how successful the film ultimately was. There was a narrative online that the movie had somehow “just gotten lucky,” but that explanation does not really hold up. The Odyssey is simply a good movie, and its success suggests that audiences were willing to engage with Nolan’s interpretation on its own terms. Nolan’s deviations from the text should have been expected. It is easy to focus so heavily on accuracy that the discussion begins to overshadow the artistry of adaptation itself. This is a three hour movie. It was always going to omit a considerable amount of material from the poem.

An adaptation’s job is not to become a checklist. When criticism becomes entirely focused on whether every individual event happened exactly as it did in the source, it can lose sight of what adaptation actually means. Nolan’s story is a new point of view on an old story. That is not necessarily a problem. In fact, it is arguably the entire purpose of adapting something that has already been told. Exaggeration and deviation can be meaningful because they allow an artist to communicate what they believe matters most. The question is not always, “Did this happen exactly this way?” Sometimes the more interesting question is, “What does this change mean?” A fixation on realism can create a divide between the source material and the adaptation that does not necessarily need to exist. The moment we treat historical accuracy as more important than meaning, we risk losing the very reason these stories survived for thousands of years in the first place.

The real question at the forefront of your mind is, “Is the outrage warranted?” Our answer is no. That is ultimately the note we want to leave this on. Somewhere between three viewings and however many hours we spent discussing the movie afterward, the outrage simply stopped being very interesting to us. Not because it does not exist. It clearly does. But because much of that conversation seemed to be about a version of the movie that existed long before any of us actually sat down in the theater. It was assembled from trailer clips, casting announcements, speculation, headlines, and other people’s reactions. That version of the movie never had to survive three hours of actual film. Ours did. We are not going to sit here and tell you that this is a perfect film. We have spent this entire piece pointing out where some of its choices did not completely work for us. But perfection was never really the assignment. Homer was not perfect either. The poem contains contradictions, draws from older stories, leaves certain threads unresolved, and even the historical existence of Homer himself remains uncertain. This was never about getting the story exactly right. It was about someone caring enough to tell it again. Nolan cared. Audiences clearly cared too. We would call that a fair trade. Bring someone who has never read a page of Homer, and someone who has read it three times. Argue about it afterward. That is the whole point.