"we will never be here again."

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❝ i felt my existence was tainted in some subtle but essential way ❞ - donna tartt

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it's a solid 7/10 movie. i think if i went into the movie without knowing what would happen, or if it was original and the idea of the odyssey didn't already exist, i would have liked it better. however, it IS an adaptation of a homeric epic, so that is what i'll compare it to.

first i'd like to say that the movie did odysseus dirty. he was shown to be a generic, morally upright hero who just wanted to go home. where's his selfishness?? the hubris that is the reason polyphemus knows who he is? and on top of that, they also removed the "nobody" scene, which i feel like is a massive part of odysseus' characterization. they completely changed this guy.

that aside, i also didn't really like the movie's version of what happened on aeaea with circe. i think circe could've looked younger since she's a goddess, no idea why she's depicted to look wayy older. also like why did she live in a dilapidated hut? i always kind of imagined her to live in a mansion with nymphs like how it's normally described. i was also kind of excited to see her whip out a magic wand and start hocus pocusing the men into pigs like in the book, but she kind of just? manually altered their features? aside from that though i think the horror of the men being turned into pigs was cool af.

the time skips were also kind of weird; i'm guessing nolan wanted everything that happened before calypso to be retold as odysseus' memories (although he didn't actually eat lotus in homer's odyssey). they definitely could have done better with calypso in the movie and her lore with odysseus as well.

additionally, like where is the representation of the gods? there's athena, but the rest are only mentioned. what about aeolus and the wind bag? hermes?? or literally any of the other gods? like what

i think scylla could've been scarier and explained more, because it kind of just looked like a massive octopus (or, well, hexapus) attacked the ship for ten seconds and then left without any explanation.

my favorite character in this adaption was definitely eumaeus. love that he's in the movie and not ignored like some other characters (cough, cough, nausicaa and arete)

i also just want to say that it's fucking hilarious how robert pattinson looks like he's gonna kiss tom holland whenever they talk in the movie lmao.

ok explain this pose then

this actually shows a lot about the differences in the characterization of odysseus. like in epic, this decision really highlights his selfishness in that he chose for his crew to die so that he could return to ithaca.