Schrodinger’sBuddie

✅ The good

-The sound design is fucking amazing. I’d go watch it again only for the sound design. Masterful, imposing.

- The lighting during night scenes. You see what’s happening, and when you don’t see what’s happening it’s on purpose for a reveal. Not a lot of movies have that in today’s world.

- Nolan has masterful composition even when you don’t see it in an IMAX format, he does have a way of making men seem imposing.

-Agamemnon is certainly a highlight, at least Nolan’s treatment of him. Had you told me that’s Ares, I would have believed you. Would have been a masterful representation of Ares.

-The body horror of Circe transforming the men into pigs. It’s…graphic, it’s amazing, I loved it.

-Robert Pattinson is amazing, you loathe that piece of shit, but see how people can see him as cunning and charming.

-The practical effects with the laestrygonians, I’m sure they’d look more imposing on IMAX, but it’s amazing what you can do with a little buff lady and tall buff men.

-The whole underworld scene, it’s a very interesting way of doing the whole underworld thing. I actually liked it quite a bit even if I wouldn’t have…particularly done it that way myself.

-In the underworld vein, Elliot Page was great, you kind of start like “wtf? That’s all he’s going to do in the movie?” And then he reappears and does a great job being dead.

⛔️The bad

- Nolan is just shit at writing women. The women he has in the Odyssey’s world revolves around men, literally you don’t have a single woman acting out of empowerment? Self reliance? They just feel shallow, like they exist to me little points in Odysseus life and then just evaporate into nothing. He had wonderful actresses in amazing roles and I think every single one of them went to waste, they did good, their character is just bland and shallow.

- He made the Mediterranean look like the North Sea. He seems to have preferred if the Odyssey was actually about Vikings. I’m sure he was dying to get furs and deep snow into the mix. The whole Greek thing seems to have been more an afterthought in the aesthetics he wanted to present, it feels like a bunch of actors from the series Vikings moved into the ruins of…a city that at one point tried to resemble something greek.

-He gave a very Christian treatment to the Greek gods, they are all mighty, and so far away from humans. Like he struggles to conceptualize a world where the magical and the sacred is something of everyday life? So he ends up with gods that are very far a way in a story mainly driven by the gods actions and humanity. He has various conversations with Zendaya about how he has to find Zeus in the sound of thunder and the clouds. Feels very “you know gos exists because you see the bees and the trees and everything is beautiful”. Kind of a boring way of seeing the Greek gods.

-The cyclops is boring. His design is boring, the battle is boring, and instead of being the “true” beginning of the Odyssey it just becomes another unfortunate island trip for the crew. It had such a powerful sound design for the cyclops’ sound and could have done such a powerful scene of asking Poseidon for revenge and it was wasted.

-It feels like Nolan doesn’t trust the public, Tiresias’ prophesy is….just telling Odysseus what will happen, and while it’s not wrong or inaccurate, is just…boring.

-Odysseus doesn’t feel smart? Like, he is smarter than everyone around him, but it’s not like everyone around him is particularly smart. He feels incomplete, like Nolan didn’t have a clear image of what he wanted to tell with Odysseus. We never see the brutal side that got him and his men out of Troy alive, it seems like he never wanted the horse to be successful and feels like a man that saw war for the first time in Troy, even while being a general. He doesn’t feel like a man built from years of war, he feels like a foot soldier that was lucky to get out alive. Nolan’s wanted a cruel streak to be permanently engrained in Odysseus and it just didn’t work?

-He fucked up Circe badly, it was so easy to give Circe a storyline of power and might, and he took it away, he made Circe a scared old woman on the top of a mountain, living in the remains of something bigger that existed before her. Truly what drives her is that she’s scared of men, and what men will do, nothing more.

-The whole Calypso thing, it comes back to Nolan’s “women are too pure, not like men 🥺” kind of misogyny? Where he 1. Is too afraid to make a man be completely vulnerable in no uncertain ways and 2. He thinks women wouldn’t rape and take advantage of a man.

-Athena, he forgot of Athena’s domain, what made her close to Odysseus in the first place. War, he made Athena a smart…but not….in a strategist way. A wise, merciful princess instead of a wise warrior. If Odysseus hadn’t mentioned she’s Athena I wouldn’t have known, I’d think she was a ghost of Odysseus guilt and nothing more. Not Athena taking the form of a priestess that died in the war. Which…why?

-Odysseus has a true lack of connection to other men. The only man to man connection in the movie that is explored to any depth is father-son relationships. With the servant and Telemachus. Nothing between crew and captain that fought together for 10 years. Nothing even with Eurylochus.

❔The meh

-Telemachus….he’s useless. Even with Mentor teaching him (no Athena) he is useless from beginning of the movie to end. He doesn’t get killed, so…that’s a plus? I don’t know if Telemachus is bland af or Tom Holland needs a bit more experience with more serious roles.

-Some of the actresses…they are great actresses, but they got such meh roles with such meh writing (Mia Goth, Zendaya and Charlize Theron)

⚠️The interesting

-The non chronological order of putting the pieces of Odysseus story together. It was a very interesting choice, I quite like. It made the story move in an interesting way.

-The choices he made for Agamemnon, they are fascinating. Kinda feels like he would have liked to suck Agamemnon’s dick at one point. 10/10 (Nolan, not Odysseus, it’s a very straight movie)

- the choices he made for the “underworld”.

-Hellen of Troy/Sparta Lupita looks so fucking good, yes, she’s a great actress. She is interesting in an unexpected way? Like….shes on screen for 5 minutes and has 3 lines. It’s interesting they fucked up her face? It doesn’t imply it being a punishment, could have happened in Troy, but it is…an interesting choice.

Overall a 4/10 ⭐️

Nolan is not the right man to direct any movie that needs whimsy, color and a certain connection to magic and gods.

-I can’t shake the feeling he just wanted a Viking movie and couldn’t find a story that he found interesting like he found the Odyssey.

-He desperately needs historian and anthropologist advisors. Or just one Greek person’s input.

-Straight men will be fucking unbearable with the “Zeus law” shit and the whole “the world isn’t as it once was” and they’ll take it to a “we should follow god’s law because that’s what made Greece fall into chaos 🥺”

-A boring straight man made an action movie for straight men. And they’ll larp the fuck out of being Odysseus, or Agamemnon, you’ll fucking see.

-The movie feels 3 hours and is 3 hours, doesn’t feel shorter, doesn’t feel longer.

-if anyone got here and is “you didn’t say shit about the storm that killed Odysseus crew” no, I went to pee, I had a coke and it’s a 3 hour movie, give me a break.