Reading Fantasy

The Odyssey if the suitors were competent…

(To preface I am not a Christian but I love learning about theology) no, “Zeus’s law” is not the same as something Christian god would decree. Zeus does not “love” humans the way that Christian god is described to love humans. “God”’s commandments are for the benefit of humans and so they love each other, Zeus’s “laws” are basically threats because we are not his children and he doesn’t even like his actual children.

you treat a Christian angel badly in disguise and they might smite you. you treat them well and they’ll reward you.

you treat a god in disguise well and they don’t kill you. you treat them badly and they kill you.

you don’t defy the gods, they are literally everywhere and everything. you don’t live under their rules because they have your best interests at heart, you live staying out of their way and making sacrifices and praying to them for your own safety because at the smallest slight, they will literally create plagues, wars, and whole seasons. Odysseus works with Athena but that is because he is the EXCEPTION not the RULE

in Christian scripture, being good and generous is rewarded. In classical mythology you literally don’t have any other choice but to make yourself useful because the gods didn’t care how many humans died in the titanomachy and they won’t care if they kill one more.

Zeus’s law isn’t a decree or a scripture, it’s a lesson you learn the hard way and you pass onto your children. But that’s also because Zeus’s law isn’t even REAL and Greek hospitality can’t be boiled down to one single aspect of their mythology and culture Mr Nolan I’m looking at you when I say this

EDIT: TL;DR is that anglicizing the concept of Xenia reduces it to essentially the most prominent western societal understanding of religion-based “deity in disguise” generosity, which comes from biblical values. My post is just defining the ways that those two instances of “gods in disguise” differ

I haven’t stopped thinking about Helen’s last line, asking Telemachus to pass along an apology to Penelope, another presumed widow of the Trojan War.

People have already pointed out how Odysseus dodging the guilt and responsibility of the sacking of Troy contrasts to Robert Oppenheimer feeling crushed by the legacy of the bomb. But with Helen, we are given a character whose guilt is not her own.

There’s those who run from it, those who can’t ignore it, and then there’s those who are forced to carry it.

The last line of the movie goes something like “history will forget our flaws.” History will also stain the legacies of the innocent.

but the movie doesnt take these themes and thats fine on a surface level, but instead that make it a movie about the tragedy of war and honestly... THATS A GOOD THEME!!! but then why have the cyclops? circe kinda makes sense as in the movie she showed some kind of trauma, but then why have scylla? charibdys? (i spelled that wrong). the underworld makes sense but then why have him stuck on calypso's island? its only to show that this is a movie about the odyssey, but in my opinion the odyssey was the wrong movie to show this about.

instead they should've went with the iliad which is basically about the tragedy of war to a T. hell it ends with a funeral. its about how the war has gone on so long and has taken so many lives and how they're continuing it because if they don't then they've truly lost. i mean why do you think on of the biggest plot points in the epic is achilles giving hector's body back to priam? why do you think its patroclus dying, and like I said before later ending in hector's funeral? that's about the tragedy of war. not the odyssey.

Aeolus and his wind bag

Odysseus meeting his mother Anticlea in the underworld. It hurts his heart to see she died of grief waiting for him to return.

The horror after Odysseus' men butcher the sun god's cows. The meat starts mooing on the skewers, the cowhides slither along the ground, and the carcasses get up and start moving like live cattle. It would've made for some great horror.

Penelope testing her husband by saying she moved the wedding bed (one of its posts was carved from an olive tree and the whole palace was built around it so you would have to uproot it to move the bed). Odysseus gets irate hearing that it was moved and his reaction is how she knows it's not Zeus in disguise (recall that Zeus is not above shapeshifting into women's husbands)

Telemachus nearly stringing Ody's bow on his first try with no prior knowledge but Ody secretly signals for him to stop

He kidnapped his wife’s host. He violated the sanctity of marriage. Menelaus and Helen welcomed Paris as they would any Greek guest, and in return this foreigner bedded (raped) and stole the warlord King of Sparta’s wife.

This isn’t to say what the Greeks did to the Trojans was justified — on the contrary, both sides of the war, in life and in death, in the Iliad and Odyssey and extended body of spin-off works, lament that there was so much death and destruction on behalf of one woman.

But the war very much wasn’t just about Helen — it was about her kidnapping, and what it represented.

How could the Greeks let such a violation of xenia, such a barbaric act that spurned their most valued customs, go unpunished? They couldn’t. That was why the Trojan War happened. And you can’t ignore that, especially not in a retelling of the Odyssey, which is all about xenia and hubris and what happens when men do things they should not.

So, it changes the setting, casting, plot points and tone and everything else, to send clear and relevant messages. There was already another Odessey adaptation that did that- "O Brother, Where Art Thou". And guess what? It didn't try to claim it was The Odyssey, while making it clear that it was a TAKE on The Odyssey, and its now a classic. It is honest about being a reimagining rather than a page-to-screen depiction. Retellings, reimaginings and general New Takes on old stories aren't anything to be ashamed of, I think the DisneySlopification of the concept of a "reimagined old story" has given the concept an aura of hackiness, fake-woke, and shame that it doesn't deserve. Reimagingings are important and profoundly human. Reimaginings AND accuracy-focused adaptations BOTH are vital to keeping these ancient tales alive and engaging. It would just, imho, be helpful if people knew which to expect when walking into the theatre**

I really think that at least the non-blatantly-racist section of this movie's haters would be enjoying the fuck out of it if it had been more clearly billed as a reimaging/retelling rather than just "The Odyssey The Movie". Maybe that billing existed somewhere, but if so, I never saw it and it seems many others didn't either. If you walk into a coffee shop, order a coffee, and are given an apple cider, its understandable that you'd be upset even if it was the best cider you've ever had.

*too white, to be clear. wayyyyyy too white and too northwest-european. what the fuck is Tom Holland doing here, adapt the Canterbury Tales or something if you want that guy in your movie that bad. ...actually wait hold up, Tom Holland in Chaucer would be awesome????