Basically my review of Nolanās Odyssey is that its really good to look at and is fine if you dont know shit about fuck.
Ignorance is really bliss here, because the movie depends on you being ignorant of a lot for the sake of its narrative. The characters are all very two dimensional and are more like nolanās setpieces than people, with many character interactions feeling more like theyāre reciting scripts at each other than people being in a situation. Much of the cultural context and some scenes that were important to the development of the plot and odysseusā character were cut so that the christian themes would still make sense, and so odysseusā character could seem more ruthless, but it comes at the cost of his cleverness(they just tell you heās clever and dont show any actual cleverness beyond instant solutions to immediate problems). The story itself is not great, but so modern and american that general audiences will have no issues with it. Other than that, the writing is lackluster and is mostly just the vehicle for explaining why we get from one cool looking action scene to the next. Thereās not really a lot of substance in the words spoken so i do wish that there was a cut without dialogue and only sound effects/score, that was when i was able to actually be immersed in the movie. Costumes were Not Great and the casting was equally Dubious at some moments. (Iām looking at iphone face calypso wearing some fuckass beige fishnets). I think many characters were just so Modern that it felt pretty incongruent with everything else going on, but there were several actors who disappeared into their roles and really stunned me with their performances.
All that being said, i did not hate it and i had a good time despite the fact that i took physical damage from it. 7.5/10 , it would have been 8 but it did make me throw up from all the flashing lights and loud noises. Also because i find it very audacious of Nolan to call his clearly personal retelling āTHE ODYSSEYā as if its an adaptation. Even EPIC the musical didnt do that, and itās far more faithful(not just to the poem but to greek culture).
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and I made this within 5 minutes of returning. so I think that sums up my thoughts on it. (though im willing to rant more if ppl want it. cause I have COMPLAINTS)
I saw the Odyssey and I have mixed feelings about it
ā The good
-The sound design is fucking amazing. Iād go watch it again only for the sound design. Masterful, imposing.
- The lighting during night scenes. You see whatās happening, and when you donāt see whatās happening itās on purpose for a reveal. Not a lot of movies have that in todayās world.
- Nolan has masterful composition even when you donāt see it in an IMAX format, he does have a way of making men seem imposing.
-Agamemnon is certainly a highlight, at least Nolanās treatment of him. Had you told me thatās Ares, I would have believed you. Would have been a masterful representation of Ares.
-The body horror of Circe transforming the men into pigs. Itāsā¦graphic, itās 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, Iām sure theyād look more imposing on IMAX, but itās amazing what you can do with a little buff lady and tall buff men.
-The whole underworld scene, itās a very interesting way of doing the whole underworld thing. I actually liked it quite a bit even if I wouldnāt haveā¦particularly done it that way myself.
-In the underworld vein, Elliot Page was great, you kind of start like āwtf? Thatās all heās going to do in the movie?ā And then he reappears and does a great job being dead.
āļøThe bad
- Nolan is just shit at writing women. The women he has in the Odysseyās world revolves around men, literally you donāt 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. Iām 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 ofā¦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 āyou know gos exists because you see the bees and the trees and everything is beautifulā. 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 ātrueā beginning of the Odyssey it just becomes another unfortunate island trip for the crew. It had such a powerful sound design for the cyclopsā sound and could have done such a powerful scene of asking Poseidon for revenge and it was wasted.
-It feels like Nolan doesnāt trust the public, Tiresiasā prophesy isā¦.just telling Odysseus what will happen, and while itās not wrong or inaccurate, is justā¦boring.
-Odysseus doesnāt feel smart? Like, he is smarter than everyone around him, but itās not like everyone around him is particularly smart. He feels incomplete, like Nolan didnāt 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 doesnāt feel like a man built from years of war, he feels like a foot soldier that was lucky to get out alive. Nolanās wanted a cruel streak to be permanently engrained in Odysseus and it just didnāt 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 sheās scared of men, and what men will do, nothing more.
-The whole Calypso thing, it comes back to Nolanās āwomen are too pure, not like men š„ŗā 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 wouldnāt rape and take advantage of a man.
-Athena, he forgot of Athenaās domain, what made her close to Odysseus in the first place. War, he made Athena a smartā¦but notā¦.in a strategist way. A wise, merciful princess instead of a wise warrior. If Odysseus hadnāt mentioned sheās Athena I wouldnāt have known, Iād think she was a ghost of Odysseus guilt and nothing more. Not Athena taking the form of a priestess that died in the war. Whichā¦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.
āThe meh
-Telemachusā¦.heās useless. Even with Mentor teaching him (no Athena) he is useless from beginning of the movie to end. He doesnāt get killed, soā¦thatās a plus? I donāt know if Telemachus is bland af or Tom Holland needs a bit more experience with more serious roles.
-Some of the actressesā¦they are great actresses, but they got such meh roles with such meh writing (Mia Goth, Zendaya and Charlize Theron)
ā ļøThe 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 Agamemnonās dick at one point. 10/10 (Nolan, not Odysseus, itās a very straight movie)
- the choices he made for the āunderworldā.
-Hellen of Troy/Sparta Lupita looks so fucking good, yes, sheās a great actress. She is interesting in an unexpected way? Likeā¦.shes on screen for 5 minutes and has 3 lines. Itās interesting they fucked up her face? It doesnāt imply it being a punishment, could have happened in Troy, but it isā¦an interesting choice.
Overall a 4/10 āļø
Nolan is not the right man to direct any movie that needs whimsy, color and a certain connection to magic and gods.
-I canāt shake the feeling he just wanted a Viking movie and couldnāt find a story that he found interesting like he found the Odyssey.
-He desperately needs historian and anthropologist advisors. Or just one Greek personās input.
-Straight men will be fucking unbearable with the āZeus lawā shit and the whole āthe world isnāt as it once wasā and theyāll take it to a āwe should follow godās law because thatās what made Greece fall into chaos š„ŗā
-A boring straight man made an action movie for straight men. And theyāll larp the fuck out of being Odysseus, or Agamemnon, youāll fucking see.
-The movie feels 3 hours and is 3 hours, doesnāt feel shorter, doesnāt feel longer.
-if anyone got here and is āyou didnāt say shit about the storm that killed Odysseus crewā no, I went to pee, I had a coke and itās a 3 hour movie, give me a break.
-Nolan is a great director for war, action, grey movies, for straight men. The Odyssey was probably not the best story for him to do.
Something I did forget to add was that dumb fucking āyou have the eyes of Athenaā when you have to think a man is smart. They donāt show it, they just tell you āsee? Heās smart because he has Athenaās eyesā. Dumb fucking thing to do.
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I saw the Odyssey and I have mixed feelings about it
ā The good
-The sound design is fucking amazing. Iād go watch it again only for the sound design. Masterful, imposing.
- The lighting during night scenes. You see whatās happening, and when you donāt see whatās happening itās on purpose for a reveal. Not a lot of movies have that in todayās world.
- Nolan has masterful composition even when you donāt see it in an IMAX format, he does have a way of making men seem imposing.
-Agamemnon is certainly a highlight, at least Nolanās treatment of him. Had you told me thatās Ares, I would have believed you. Would have been a masterful representation of Ares.
-The body horror of Circe transforming the men into pigs. Itāsā¦graphic, itās 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, Iām sure theyād look more imposing on IMAX, but itās amazing what you can do with a little buff lady and tall buff men.
-The whole underworld scene, itās a very interesting way of doing the whole underworld thing. I actually liked it quite a bit even if I wouldnāt haveā¦particularly done it that way myself.
-In the underworld vein, Elliot Page was great, you kind of start like āwtf? Thatās all heās going to do in the movie?ā And then he reappears and does a great job being dead.
āļøThe bad
- Nolan is just shit at writing women. The women he has in the Odysseyās world revolves around men, literally you donāt 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. Iām 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 ofā¦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 āyou know gos exists because you see the bees and the trees and everything is beautifulā. 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 ātrueā beginning of the Odyssey it just becomes another unfortunate island trip for the crew. It had such a powerful sound design for the cyclopsā sound and could have done such a powerful scene of asking Poseidon for revenge and it was wasted.
-It feels like Nolan doesnāt trust the public, Tiresiasā prophesy isā¦.just telling Odysseus what will happen, and while itās not wrong or inaccurate, is justā¦boring.
-Odysseus doesnāt feel smart? Like, he is smarter than everyone around him, but itās not like everyone around him is particularly smart. He feels incomplete, like Nolan didnāt 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 doesnāt feel like a man built from years of war, he feels like a foot soldier that was lucky to get out alive. Nolanās wanted a cruel streak to be permanently engrained in Odysseus and it just didnāt 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 sheās scared of men, and what men will do, nothing more.
-The whole Calypso thing, it comes back to Nolanās āwomen are too pure, not like men š„ŗā 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 wouldnāt rape and take advantage of a man.
-Athena, he forgot of Athenaās domain, what made her close to Odysseus in the first place. War, he made Athena a smartā¦but notā¦.in a strategist way. A wise, merciful princess instead of a wise warrior. If Odysseus hadnāt mentioned sheās Athena I wouldnāt have known, Iād think she was a ghost of Odysseus guilt and nothing more. Not Athena taking the form of a priestess that died in the war. Whichā¦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.
āThe meh
-Telemachusā¦.heās useless. Even with Mentor teaching him (no Athena) he is useless from beginning of the movie to end. He doesnāt get killed, soā¦thatās a plus? I donāt know if Telemachus is bland af or Tom Holland needs a bit more experience with more serious roles.
-Some of the actressesā¦they are great actresses, but they got such meh roles with such meh writing (Mia Goth, Zendaya and Charlize Theron)
ā ļøThe 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 Agamemnonās dick at one point. 10/10 (Nolan, not Odysseus, itās a very straight movie)
- the choices he made for the āunderworldā.
-Hellen of Troy/Sparta Lupita looks so fucking good, yes, sheās a great actress. She is interesting in an unexpected way? Likeā¦.shes on screen for 5 minutes and has 3 lines. Itās interesting they fucked up her face? It doesnāt imply it being a punishment, could have happened in Troy, but it isā¦an interesting choice.
Overall a 4/10 āļø
Nolan is not the right man to direct any movie that needs whimsy, color and a certain connection to magic and gods.
-I canāt shake the feeling he just wanted a Viking movie and couldnāt find a story that he found interesting like he found the Odyssey.
-He desperately needs historian and anthropologist advisors. Or just one Greek personās input.
-Straight men will be fucking unbearable with the āZeus lawā shit and the whole āthe world isnāt as it once wasā and theyāll take it to a āwe should follow godās law because thatās what made Greece fall into chaos š„ŗā
-A boring straight man made an action movie for straight men. And theyāll larp the fuck out of being Odysseus, or Agamemnon, youāll fucking see.
-The movie feels 3 hours and is 3 hours, doesnāt feel shorter, doesnāt feel longer.
-if anyone got here and is āyou didnāt say shit about the storm that killed Odysseus crewā no, I went to pee, I had a coke and itās a 3 hour movie, give me a break.
-Nolan is a great director for war, action, grey movies, for straight men. The Odyssey was probably not the best story for him to do.
During the festival the film Danse Macabre was shown and received with hate, people walked out of the screening and others stayed to boo and share their opinions on the making of the short. Why? The director, Hisko Hulsing used AI to light and texture the scenes, having the rest of the pipeline be human animators.
The movie is based on his own oil paintings, and the subject is, according to him ā deal with terror, war, panic, and fear in a more universal way. Right now, many people on this planet are living through this nightmare: bombings, shootings, or the loss of loved ones in cruel attacks. Danse Macabre is about this constantly evolving apocalyptic nightmare, this assault on humanity that seems rooted in an endless historical cycle.ā
In the interviews he has mentioned it being a production that has been made with profound love and hope that it will make an impact on the people that watch it.
If he hired human animators, when was the AI used?
During the illumination and texturing process, Stable diffusion was used to ātransferā the lighting and textures from his paintings to the film.
Is it an ethical use of AI?
The directive team of the short keep claiming it was an ethical use of AI, using the paintings Hisko consensually provided the program and not replacing as many humans in the pipeline as it could.
To determine this, what we should look at is the program more than the team of the film itself. Stable diffusion is a generative ai model described as ādeep learningā and uses the ādiffusionā model created by Stability.ai, for this type of learning the program is fed billions of images and the company has been sued for its improper handling of IP.
Feeding this AI 200 (made up big number) of your paintings in a consensual way will not minimize or undo the fact that the thing was fed billions of non consensual images in order to know how to translate parts of your paintings into the film. The art was already stolen.
My opinion
There is no ethical use of a generative AI program that has already been trained with billions of images, adding to the environmental impact data centers have, and the loss of jobs that it has caused, no self respecting artist would truly use it in any part of their creative process, even if it affects the final outcome, and makes the film not look like you would have wanted it to look.
It kills creativity in a way that is hard to even comprehend, youāre telling me you couldnāt take a moment to figure out how to make it look the way you wanted it to look without AI? We have had people paint on glass, hand paint each model, add 2D effects after. Thereās just so many ways in animation to avoid the use of AI and you decided to ignore them.
Adding to this whole mess some of the filmās team has complained about the AI scandal taking from the āanti-warā themes of the movie. The AI industry is one of the biggest participants of war, and you will do a movie about the horrors of war with it? What even was the thought process behind that?
One shouldnāt just hate AI for taking jobs from animators, itās not the āthe new cameraā and we are the cavemen too afraid of it, itās a program that has taken from artists, is killing the planet and the war mongering most of the AI moguls are involved in.
Generative AI has no reason of being other than soothing the bruised egos of people that wonāt take the time to learn how to draw or write or learn any form of expressing their ideas and making them a reality. Most of the AI bros have no clue what actually goes into film making, irl or animation, and want to come in and pretend only the visual result is important. They donāt know how much care and detail goes into every single piece of a scene.
Having an artist use it in this way is disappointing, especially not thinking about how AI has participated in the industry you are criticizing.
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Finally watched Earwig and the Witch. I have thoughts.
I think it was an interesting bet to take. During the first scene they do a wonderful job adapting āusualā Ghibli magic to 3D, but as the movie advances the less Ghibli it feels. Which I, personally, donāt think itās a big issue other than maybe being too big a change too soon, making people react badly.
My main issues with it are the writing more than anything visual.
While a lot Ghibli movies are child friendly, this movie seems to take a full dive into making it a childrenās movie. It is short (89 minutes while other movies round the 130 minute mark), shiny, a kind of Coraline with a happy ending with the other parents.
Earwig is not a classic protagonist youād have in Ghibli, she is smart, but thereās no lesson to be learned? She does what she wants and she gets what she wants. Thereās no real growth, other than her getting to meet the people she now lives with more.
I donāt think itās a story that fits the brand Ghibli has built at all, the book itās based on should have been a basic premise to build from, adapt it into something more complex that diverges from the usual narrative, while keeping some semblance of the ideals usually promoted by the studioās movies.
This drives us to the second part.
Ghibli has a very set style that will be so hard to break from, and this is the result. When you see Ghibli you expect a 2D animation that makes nature feel ethereal and soft, makes food look delicious, towns ambiguously a mix of every European country or a small Japanese town in the middle of a forest.
All of that is not translated well to the 3D choices they made. The food looks meh, the nature looks meh, and the town is distinctly modern-ish England.
I believe many people would have not complained as much had it been 2D, even if the story defers from Ghibliās usual narratives.
Thereās a certain magic that is hard to replicate with 3D, especially when it comes to nature. I believe there was a lack of boldness in the 3D art style that makes it look too real in a plastic kind of way.
I think its main mistake is moving too fast from the studioās usual style. You have a shorter movie made completely for children, with little to no themes usually talked about in the other movies, and you make it look so different to the usual aesthetic, people that are expecting a Ghibli movie, will be disappointed.
Goro certainly has a very hard road ahead, his dad has a super strong voice, drawing and narrative wise. And taking the mantle will cause backlash, especially if he wants to find the movies he wants to make, that obviously will differ from the stories his dad would want to make.
Maybe it would be wise to get bolder with certain changes, and have an even shorter format to experiment who he is as a director without being in his dadās shadow.
A 9/10 if you donāt judge it as a Ghibli movie. Itās a childrenās movie, and thereās no real issue with it if you reduce it to that. Itās good 3D animation, and shiny and nice. Even if I deducted a point because of the writing, thereās no real growth from her, sheās still a manipulative little witch at the end.
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