A quick review below.
I'm not sure if I even have the strength to review this movie. It's a 170 minute lesson in tedium. You watch Nolan vandalise a great story and smear his shitty "war is bad, humans are bad, gods don't care and the world is ending" diatribe across the screen while spoonfeeding you the abomination that his senile mind spat out.
This movie is not The Odyssey, it only wears the flayed skin of the story it pretends to be. It prances around in the theatre, blood of ancient Greek culture spilling across the boards, and expects you to clap like a fucking seal. And a lot of people did!
It's boring. There are like forty minutes that are enjoyable, the rest are spent on dull shots of people talking. And it's no Game of Thrones, trust me. These dialogues are bad. The plot, hacked apart and glued together into some bizzare effigy to doomerism and modern intersectionalism, makes little sense and is far less interesting.
It's dreary. Nolan took a beautiful area of the world, a very colorful even kitche period of fashion, and decided to just either remove the period accurate, vibrant clothes, or simply put some depressing filter on the camera. Seriously Nolan, this is film school freshman level of cinematic failure. If I wanted to see a cold, dark, depressing puddle, I'd drive to the beaches of the Baltic Sea.
It's nonsensical. Nolan cut out a lot of story elements, like the whole "I am nobody" trick with the cyclops - and by the way all other cyclops, the children, the friends, the wives, everyone - and the guidance of Athena, thus creating a lot of needless plot holes.
It contains a lot of progressive propaganda, and it's not a story about the bronze age. It's a bunch of people dressing up in hideous costumes ordered from Temu and parading around, pretending to be Greeks. There are very few Greeks, by the way, it's the fucking Downtown LA we all live in today. Why are there asians amongst the Spartans? Hm? Is that some exotic Nubian slave bought from Semite slave traders, sitting next to Menelaos- Oh wait, that's Helen. Helen of DeTROYt. Why is Athena some vaguely muslim little girl? Where is her shield, her spear, her helmet? Is that black man in Odysseus' crew some Berber mercenary? What do you mean Agamemnon married some barbarian from the deserts instead of an achaian princess? Why is Jango attempting to marry into a Greek family? Why is Circe, a dazzlingly beautiful nymph that lived in a palace, now an unattractive old woman living in a dirt hut? She had to be stunning to make the soldiers drop their guard... What in the holy fuck are these people wearing? Did Jeff Bezos sell off some of the crap that his crew bought for Rings of Power to Nolan? Why are there no real bronze weapons and armor pieces in this movie? Why are there no slingers, which were far more common than archers in that area? Why are the women wearing some rags instead of dazzling dresses and why are their heads not heavy with intricate golden jewelry? Why are these people, living in a very hot climate, wearing these kinds of heavy clothes? Who let discount Darth Vader onto the set of this movie about ancient Greece? Why does Penelope act like a feminist, complaining about not being able to rule due to being a woman, when she realistically should not have the cultural means to even form this complaint? Why is a woman pretending to be a hardened warrior (delivering the news that the horse is a gift from Athena) that spent ten years besieging a city? Wait, say that again? It's a man? You must be joking, no way that, uh, person could run around in all this armor, let alone hold a shield and thrust a spear. Don't tell me Nolan made his movie a trans affirmation exercise. Anyway, why is Telemach such a wimp? He is the son of a king, he would be raised as such, in reality he would be devoured by his rivals before he aged 12. And why did he pretend to not be a prince when he visited Menelaos? Where do all the kings and leaders have their color guard? Why did Odysseus lay on some random stairs in Troy and why did nobody take notice that a victorious king is crawling in the dirt? Anyway, why did the Greeks set fire to Troy before plundering it? And why did they go killing women willy nilly, if we all know what happened to women - ie they were assaulted and taken as slaves, which was normal in this age? Why did Odysseus become so distressed by the fall of Troy? This kind of destruction was considered the victors' right, something good and correct, especially that the Trojans were dishonorable. Why is there so much atheism-adjecent talk in this movie about a war that had as much to do with humans as with gods, and that had a significant religious element to it? Oh right we removed gods. But we did not remove the monsters because then this clearly not Odyssey could not pretend to be the Odyssey to lure in victims- I mean viewers.
Oh and they deleted or changed all the powerful female characters. Athena barely exists, Penelope is an emotionally incontinent pushover, Calypso is no longer loving but understanding, Circe has been degraded to the lowest rung of the socioeconomic ladder.
But! We made Agamemnon's wife black, and her sister too, so now we can have the evil white man sacrificing the poor, defenceless black woman to pagan gods, and then be rightfully killed by an opressed black woman! Aren't you happy?! I swear to god, Nolan had to have gotten a lobotomy to make this shit. In the original Odyssey, when describing the Cyclops, Homer calls them scummy bandits, mentioning explicitly that the Cyclops place themselves in peakside caves and command their women and children "like masters", uncaring of the others?
By the way, I nearly died of laughter when Penelope said "are we the sea peoples?". No, love, no we're not. We're Itacans for once, and two, sea peoples are real people, not a metaphore. We have met them countless times by this point, and we also did NOT call them the "sea peoples", that's a moder designation, we called them by their names. Like the Tyrrhenians. Or just pirates, barbarians and raiders, which they were. So in short, if I stepped into Nolan's movie, I could geniuinely confuse it for feces.
Okay, just to sweeten the review. Did you know that Mycean women not only had a lot and I mean a lot of jewelry, but also rarely covered their chests? Such was the fashion of the time, something considered completely normal, more, correct. Ah, to live in such times. And men were often running around naked, or just barely covered too, so it's not like the eye treats were reserved for just one side.
Oh and if we need black people in this movie not about black people, how about, instead of killing the 108 bastards harassing his wife alone, Odysseus bursts into the halls of his palace with 50 mercenary Berber peltasts and proceed to massacre the traitors mercilessly? And we could have them wear green as an homage to Rome Total War. If we need asians in this movie not about asians, then we can have a scene with chinese traders, maybe in Sparta.
