*Imagine a title is here*

I think I’ve always kind of been fascinated with the tragedy of the changeling child. The idea that there’s this Better Version Of You out there that everyone wants more, the version that everyone insists is the real version, a version that was stolen from them. It wears your face it uses your voice and everyone says “aren’t they better?? Isn’t this the version you were always supposed to be???” But it isn’t a version of you at all. It just isn’t you.

And that kind of mentality has always been rooted in ableism. The concept of the changeling child came from ableism to begin with.

I really love the Izukus in pez because they are living the same horror movie but experiencing it at different speeds.

Izuku goes from Quirkless to having the most powerful quirk in existence. He goes from the bottom of the food chain to the top of the pack and he cannot tell anyone that fact. He has to pretend that he was always on the inside.

For his whole life, he was told that he was inherently worse, inherently lesser because he lacked this one specific thing. You don’t have this and this is why no one can love you. And then he gets that thing. And suddenly the whole fucking world gets together and agrees he’s the best thing since sliced bread. The horror is in the fact that it really was about his Quirklessness. He is the same person as before. He just has a Quirk now. And he still does not understand what about him was so wrong or bad without a Quirk to make everyone treat him that way.

It’s one of the reasons why he drives so hard towards defending Mirio as a Quirkless hero. No one understands why Deku gives a shit about the Quirkless. He has the most fuck off powerful Quirk in existence. Why is he out here trying to draw value from the Quirkless like water from a goddamn rock?

But he’s still Quirkless in his head. He is trying to prove to himself that he was always worth something, and the entire time the world echoes to him that he wasn’t, it’s this version, this new version, this better version that’s the right Izuku. We love you now we love you now we love you now

And then poor fucking Tiny Izuku comes in, still Quirkless, still wrong. And he hears that same goddamn chant. Of course he fucking hates his older self. He just got confirmation that he really was the changeling child, and there’s a better, more real version of him that everyone will goddamn love. He is the worst version of himself and everyone will throw a fucking parade when he’s gone.

The horror is in the agreement. You really were the problem, champ, and thank god you’re gone now. We like the new you so much better.

Shane experiences a similar horror. He has to watch himself be replaced by something that doesn’t have sensory issues or dietary restrictions or boundaries. He’ll go to the club with you he’ll drink during the season he won’t ask to leave the barbecue early and another slice of cake please. He’s more sociable and less awkward and more relaxed and happier calmer better than Shane ever was and he knows that because everyone keeps fucking saying it.

But he’s gone. Everything that made him him was hollowed out. The problem was him as a person. That was apparently the part that they wanted gone.

Things I Liked

the scene where circe is turning the men into pigs. its extremely physical she's shoving her hand down their mouths and violently reshaping their jaws and ears and shoving them down on the floor it's great.

sinon. elliot page did a great job. the opening scene of the movie where he dies to get the trojans to take the horse is great. sets the tone really well, especially knowing odysseus and a bunch of the other greeks are right there inside the horse, and then later when odysseus meets him again in the underworld and he's like why did you lie to me *chef's kiss* THANK YOU ELLIOT PAGE.

AND when he's like 'give antinous back his shame' and gives him the lot (the stick that antinous gave him that made him go to war) then odysseus says 'tell sinon i gave you back your shame' and stuffs the lot in his mouth at the end when he kills antinous GREAT.

Also I can't not mention that as a trans person it meant a lot to me that they cast a trans man actor to play a cis man character. Some people headcanon sinon as trans and that's also a good interpretation. In conclusion more trans actors

Lupita Nyong'o. Killed it as Helen AND Clytemnestra. There's argument I'll get into later about whether it makes sense that both of them were played by Lupita Nyong'o but that wasn't Ms. Nyong'o's fault and her performance was amazing. Honestly might be my favorite performance(s? not sure if it's plural if she played two characters) in the movie over Elliot Page and Robert Pattinson (he's next) and I really liked both of them.

the scene where helen is interupting meneleus and kind of taunting him about how her sister killed his brother. The part where helen hugs Telemachus and tells him to apologize to penelope for her since she was the cause of the war. Clytemnestra's agony when Agamemnon sacrificed their daughter. The scene where Clytemnestra kills Agamemnon. Basically every time she was on screen she stole the show. I wanted more Lupita Nyong'o

Robert Pattinson. He really faded into Antinous and he was such a slimeball coward. I loved hating him and that's the mark of a good villian actor. I might be mistaken but I feel like Robert Pattinson hasn't played a lot of villains, at least until recently (I think he's playing one in dune three, wouldn't really know that's not my thing) and he should get more villain roles because I really loved his performance. no notes.

Telemachus. Tom Holland did a good job as telemachus but unlike the three previous actors it wasn't a stand out performance and I feel like Telemachus is also a pretty straightforward character to play. Still, I liked his performance. I enjoy a good coming of age story. I liked seeing him learn to fight and learning about his father. I think Telemachus is an easy character to like. His arc is pretty uncomplicated compared to Odysseus's arc but uncomplicated doesn't mean bad, and I think it was executed well. Unfortunately another instance of Tom Holland being forced to be American (they're greek????) instead of being allowed to use his real accent but that's not a big deal.

the dog. except boooo the dog died. still I did tear up when the dog recognized Odysseus and that was what made Telemachus realize it was actually Odysseus and not a soldier who fought with him sent ahead. the suitors were too mean to the dog. i guess it shows they're really evil but like. :((((( puppy :(((((( no don't hurt him he's a good boy he's waiting for Odysseus to come home.

Eumaeus, the blind servant. I really enjoyed his performance. I liked how he was helping Telemachus learn to fight, I liked when he was like 'too loud, coward' and locked one of the suitors in the armory from the outside so he couldn't get weapons to the other suitors, and I liked the part at the end where the fighting is all done and he goes 'did Odysseus win?' because he can't see. I'm very sad the suitors kept beating him up very rude of the suitors they definitely deserved to get killed

specifically the 'odysseus and his crew were the sea people all along' part and the theme of how breaking hospitality customs was what broke society. like how the trojan horse (which, sidenote, should be called the Greek horse because the greeks made it, just like how helen of troy is actually helen of sparta, like that's the whole thing, why do the trojans keep getting things attributed to them that are textually not theirs) but the trojan horse which sparked the sacking of Troy was one giant breach of zeus's law. that was cool. I have problems with broader themes of the movie but that specific piece resonated with me

The sacking of Troy sequence. Like obviously the actual actions are horrific and I clearly don't condone them it's just that the way we follow Odysseus who is numbly walking through the city after his plan has worked and knowing that he is directly responsible for the violence that has happened as a result. Like this is what breaks society and yeah man I totally buy that. My partner and I saw the movie together and when we were talking about it afterwards we were referring to it as the rape of troy.

speaking of rape my partner and I both thought that the implication of rape through the onscreen violence against women and how the camera keeps cutting away before anything too bad happens was tasteful and the right amount. i'm also thinking now that the cuts away from the violence kind of represent Odysseus himself turning away from what he has caused since he's the POV character.

I just really enjoyed the secondhand Oh Shit feeling you get from Odysseus as he is realizing. yeah this is what was always going to happen when we got into Troy after ten years of brutal, slogging warfare on the beaches. and i'm the one who got us in. the horse was my plan and it worked.

we come right off of the adrenaline of the opening of the gates sequence and when the gates open and all the greeks are cheering and yelling there's this feeling of triumph, and I read it as Odysseus's feeling of triumph, and it very quickly turns to Oh Shit as the fires start and the greeks start murdering civilians and he's just numbly walking through the city not doing anything. he's not participating in it, but he's the reason it's happening. and he's not taking any steps to stop anything from happening even when athena/her preistess begs him to stop his men from executing her.

Things I'm mixed about

Lupita Nyong'o's Amazing Double Role this one is more here because I think the debate is interesting and I haven't really decided what I think rather than any real problem I had but yeah Helen and Clytemnestra being played by the same actress has some implications i'm unsure Nolan intended. It kind of gives the sense that actually Helen's not this uniquely beautiful Most Beautiful Woman In The World Sought By All Men woman, because uh. she has a twin sister with the exact same face. who is married to Agamemnon. On the one hand, some people say this cheapens like. the entire Trojan War. like it makes the Greeks look like stupid assholes for fighting a meaningless war for ten years. Like Agamemnon you have The Most Beautiful Woman In The World at home.

(not that saving a kidnapped woman is meaningless. but like. you get it. not to mention there's debate about whether Helen went with Paris willingly, and in this movie clearly her relationship with Menelaus is Bad given that he seemingly scarred her face, and they clearly don't respect each other at the least. Side note to the side note some people seem to dislike that choice and say Helen and Menelaus canonically have a great relationship and she chose him out of all her suitors but like. you can choose a guy and later he turns out to be an abuser and I think it's interesting to explore the idea that Menelaus values Helen as a prize and not a person).

But on the other hand, some people think that the choice to make the Trojan War meaningless is actually brilliant and very well done (and I'm slightly leaning that way though I have my doubts about whether it was intentional on Nolan's part) because it underscores Agamemnon's character trait of being a dick that nobody liked but everybody had to follow, and supports and is supported by the line about how oh the war is all about trade routes. People also say that it's an interesting parallel to certain current wars that certain western civilizations are embroiled in which I think might be a stretch (and again maybe not intentional) but assuming it's true there is real value in artists, especially big name, big money movie makers like Nolan, standing up against unjustifiable war.

Anyway yeah that's less of a real thing i'm mixed about and more of an interesting discussion I saw people have after the fact. Actually uh i'm gonna make a confession here don't laugh. uh. I did not notice Helen and Clytemnestra were both played by the same actress. I know I know but listen I was more focused on Clytemnestra's hands holding the dagger she killed Agamemnon with Lupita Nyong'o my QUEEN I'm so sorry i didn't recognize you

Penelope. Anne Hathaway did a good job with what she was given, and I thought her being resentful of and angry at Telemachus was an interesting direction to take her character. Like textually in the movie she is not a good mother, or at least a lot of the scenes we see her and Telemachus are moments of bad parenting (in my opinion) but that isn't a bad thing about the character; i think it's interesting texture.

however I do think that there was not enough of Penelope being smart and crafty. Like Athena is her patron goddess, and canonically (to the epic) she is as smart as Odysseus. We are told by Antinous that she is unraveling what she weaves so that her grandfather's shroud will never be finished and she never has to choose a suitor but I'd love to have been shown how smart she is. I mostly got Angry and Sad, which are good emotions for her to have but not the only ones I wanted to see. Give me back the olive tree marriage bed thing. Have her test Odysseus some more. I wasn't entirely satisfied with that scene.

Also she should have been black, and then Telemachus should've been mixed, because Penelope is Helen and Clytemnestra's first cousin, meaning one of each of their parents are siblings, and I don't see how that would really work when Lupita Nyong'o is pretty dark skinned and Anne Hathaway is super pale. And like I've been through the permutations the only thing that works is that Penelope's adopted and I just feel like if you had the opportunity to make Penelope and by extention Telemachus played by people of color you should have taken it. I think Nolan was just scared of the racists and was willing to make Helen and Clytemnestra who, while very important, don't have a ton of screen time black, but not a Penelepe who is both important and has a ton of screen time, and has a son who should also be a person of color. So I guess Penelope's adopted. I just think it's lazy and or cowardly. Make Penelope black. there are a ton of black actresses who could have killed it. Give Lupita Nyong'o an incredible triple role and have her play Penelope too i don't know.

circe generally. don't get me wrong specifically the scene where she physically turns the men into pigs is great but I'm not sure I liked the larger sequence because it almost felt like the implication was that she was being hysterical and the men weren't actually there to rape her. I feel like Eurylochus, Odysseus's second in command, was clearly not intending to hurt her. Like yes he came on strong and absolutely should have approached her without weapons and not grabbed her but at least for me I felt that at the beginning of that scene we were supposed to be sympathizing with him and the men because they were literally out of food and desperate.

i feel like nolan could've made it clearer that Eurylochus and the men, or at least some of the men, were absolutely willing to hurt circe to get her food, because as it is it sort of feels like nolan's trying ot have it both ways: the men are just desperate people who weren't trying to hurt circe and circe is justified in cursing them and I don't think he pulls it off. it mostly just cheapens what is for me the coolest visual sequence in the movie when she actually turns them into pigs.

Also what the fuck was up with her bird sister. and I don't like that odysseus gets her to turn his men back by threatening to hurt her bird sister as opposed to like being crafty. And I would've liked circe to feel more threatening? I feel like she very quickly went from being an extreme badass and shoving her hands down people's throats while she turned them into pigs and clocking that Odysseus had a weapon to being like 'oh i'm just a pitiful helpless woman don't hurt me' but that's just me.

I liked her whispering 'back into your disguises' when she was turning the men back into humans that was funny. And the actual visuals of the men into pigs sequence was so cool that I can't dislike the character fully. thus mixed

the gods situation Uh yeah they are. not there. Like the only god who is played by a human actor is athena and nolan really doesn't give her much to do. Come on man that's Zendaya she's a good actress give her more to do than like what three lines and a bunch of somber looks at Odysseus if you're gonna have her. Athena's a massive part of the original epic, and she's supposed to be helping Telemachus too; apparently in the original epic Mentor is usually Athena in disguise, which would have been cool since Telemachus is constantly talking about gods having wise eyes athena's the goddess of wisdom.

However I see what nolan was going for, or what he could have been going for; i haven't read like actual reviews, I'm not sure what his intentions were. He may have been suggesting by not casting other gods that perhaps there are no gods or that the gods aren't really that interested in Odysseus and maybe Athena is just a manifestation of his remorse and the sea and the storms are just nature, and that's interesting. Like it's not how EYE would adapt the odyssey---I strongly prefer much more faithful adaptations---but I can see why you would do that. You can definitely have a magic and monsters setting without necessarily having divinity. But I do have some issues with how that choice changes some other parts of the movie and the execution/consistency of the choice which I will cover in the dislikes section.

Except I will say here that the relationship Athena had with Odysseus in the epic is changed in a way I don't like and I don't understand why. In the epic she is his patron. They have a close relationship. In the movie he just. has an Athena pin that his wife gave him, and its implied that having an Athena pin is uncommon for a man. Why???? Athena is the god of wisdom and like battle tactics and Odysseus is (supposed to be, we'll get to that) the wisdom and battle tactics guy. That was a good and normal thing for men to be.

It's clear that this is a setting where people do worship the gods/put stock in them even if it's supposed to be implied that they aren't really there, so why not establish that Odysseus does actually put stock in athena before his wife gives him the pin---it could be a moment to showcase how similar Odysseus and Penelope are, as well as a token of her love he can carry with her---and have it be that he maybe lost faith in her as he saw the results of his brilliant plan, which came from the qualities she so prizes. It could have really interesting resonance with the part where they execute athena/her priestess and behead the athena statue, and the rest of the movie could really delve into his relationship with Athena/the concept of Athena.

Things I didn't like

Nolan's Take On Odysseus Like Nolan has A Take, but unfortunately the take is Actually Odysseus Is The Same Guy I, Christopher Nolan, Keep Writing In All My Movies Where The Thing The Character Is Really Good At (in many cases that being Causing A Great Amount Of Death) Causes Them Deep Remorse Because He's Really Such An Honorable Guy Deep Down (Bourne and Oppenheimer being two perfect examples because they're Men Who Are Really Good At Dealing Death; the guy from interstellar (sue me I'm not looking that up) being a less perfect but still relevant example because the thing he's good at that causes remorse is Space, which makes him leave his family) Except I Named The Character Odysseus This Time (instead of. i don't know. Achilles. he should have adapted the illiad) which itself comes off like Nolan doesn't trust his audience to know Odysseus is supposed to be the hero if he's not Honorable And Remorseful and also not basically* (I'll get to it) stripped of his canonical defining features of cunning and pride. This really causes some deep character inconsistencies because at his core the character Nolan has written really isn't. um. Odysseus.

The movie tries really hard to explain away how him Being Honorable This Time Don't Worry About It actually still allows him to be Cunning Odysseus; Oh Don't You See There Are Times Honorable Men Do Dishonorable Things And Can't You See How Much It Kills Them Inside but yeah it didn't work for me um. because um. for some reason Nolan decided that because of his honor and remorse Odysseus Actually Maybe Doesn't Really Want To Go Home????? It seems to be because oh he's changed so much, and maybe the implication is that he thinks he doesn't deserve to go home, or he won't let himself go home?

Like... okay maybe i'm just not an Odysseus scholar and this is super normal and acceptable for Odysseus adaptations (also I totally cop to being a huge hater of When Adaptations Change Things yeah I know I know) but like come on. The Odyssey is the Odysseus Wants To Go Home movie. Odysseus is the I Want To Go Home guy. that's The Thing about Odysseus. (and I'm not saying this specific choice makes the movie bad, I just didn't like it.) Mostly I won't harp on this point because maybe (I say through gritted teeth) the choice to subvert Odysseus's main desire and the driving force of the plot is actually good interesting (and I'm mostly not even being sarcastic) but Boy Do I Have Other Points To Make.

Let's talk about the bow strumming thing. That's a signalling of What An Honorable Guy This Guy Is. Like okay yeah it was interesting and honestly had really good payoff when he strings his bow and strums it in the reveal scene but the whole idea that Odysseus strums his bow because he wants a fair fight when he's hunting is anathema to his character in my mind. in what world is one of Odysseus's main character traits that he's honorable instead of that he's cunning.

Like it's not that Odysseus can't be honorable, it's just that above anything else he's cunning and he's prideful. It doesn't make sense to me that the reason he strums his bow is that he's so honorable he doesn't want to kill animals before they have a chance to run or fight. Like I don't even want to bring up my issue about adaptations that are not faithful again here because there's problems with character consistency with things that are established in the Nolan Odyssey anyway. You're telling me This Guy---the guy that broke zeus's law so hard with the EXTREMELY CUNNING trojan horse plan IN THIS VERY MOVIE NOT TEN MINUTES AGO that he broke society---is honorable above all?

And it can't be that he didn't realize it would break zeus's law; the first ten minutes of the movie is people telling Telemachus (and the movie Telling Us) just how smart Odysseus is. It makes zero sense he wouldn't understand that his plan would break Zeus's law. Why not have him strum his bow because he wants to show off how good he is at hunting that even when he gives the animals a chance he can still catch them? Then we get the cool thing and we're not being weirdly inconsistent within the Nolan movie.

The other main trait Odysseus has is his remorse, which is a major change, even if the honor isn't. That's not the problem I have. It's fine, good even (unironically I know i'm an Adaptation Changing Things Hater but I enjoy a good remorseful character. I liked Oppenheimer a lot). It can be interesting to examine a character who is very unremorseful in the original canon and make him extremely remorseful in the adaptation. But you do have to execute the concept well, and I don't think they did. Odysseus's original character traits of his cunning and pride is that they drive the story, and Nolan's Odysseus's honor and remorse just don't.

Here's an example of something canonically driven by his pride (that Nolan's Odysseus doesn't really have) that Nolan actually kept. Why didn't Odysseus go home the way everybody else was going home? Well, because he wanted to go the way nobody's gone before. Why would he do that if he's not prideful? It certainly isn't driven by remorse, or honor. If he was so honorable, wouldn't he want to get his men home as quickly and safely as possible? Where's the honor in a gamble on his men's lives? And then there's a second question. Why didn't he bring provisions with him from Troy? Nolan tries to drive this choice with his honor and remorse, having Odysseus say 'We've already taken enough from Troy' and that's a good reason, but honor and remorse alone don't explain the other terrible choice to gamble on the unknown way being faster and there being ports to restock at along the way. Now, it's also not very cunning of him, but that's explained in canon because his cunning and his pride exist in tension with each other, which makes for a much more interesting character.

Here's a second example of the plot not having a driving force without his cunning and pride:

Uhhh no Nobody???? The scene as Nolan wrote it without the Nobody trick really suffers from confusion in what's driving it. It seems like Nolan was confused about. uh. the point of the scene? Because the only part of any interview about this movie I've seen (and only through tumblr, so take it with a grain of salt) was that Nolan said he couldn't include the Nobody scene because it was a pun that couldn't translate. My immediate thought upon reading that was, 'What the fuck is he talking about? Nobody isn't a pun.'

That's apparently because I'm American and only read the odyssey in graphic novel form in english and not a real classicist's full translation of the epic, because I gather that the greek word Odysseus used for Nobody sounded like Odysseus? So it is in fact a pun, good job Nolan for knowing that, you get ten points. Except you lose like a hundred points for seemingly not knowing---given that it is Not Mentioned in the interview---that the pun is not the point of the Nobody trick, it's the cherry on top of an already excellent sundae, and the sundae is that Odysseus causes All Of His Own Problems after the Trojan War is over because his fatal flaw is hubris---deadly pride. The Nobody trick, or more specifically, what comes directly after, is the best example I can think of of a character being hoisted on their own petard.

He has an excellent plan that means that when Polyphemus calls out to the other cyclopes 'Nobody is hurting me' they think he's fine and don't come to his aid, and he knows there's other cyclopes because he's talked to Polyphemus, because Odysseus in the epic is not The Best Fighter Ever---that's Achilles. And where's Achilles now? Dead. Odysseus is not supposed to be the best and most strongest fighter ever, he's a brillliant tactician. He's brain over brawn. He's cunning. He knows he can't fight the cyclops, so he has to talk to it so he can get information to trick it.

And when his plan works, he's so prideful that after he's already escaped and is absolutely scot free he taunts Polyphemus and then tells him it wasn't nobody who tricked him, it was him, Odysseus, the King of Ithaca, because he can't bear not to take credit for his excellent trick. And so Polyphemus is able to tell his father poseidon exactly who to punish, which KICKS OF THE ENTIRE REST OF THE PLOT. If Poseidon wasn't attempting to kill Odysseus for hurting Polyphemus, he wouldn't've been blown off course and to meet all the obstacles he did. His cunning and his pride drive the plot.

Without the Nobody trick, the scene we get is... weird. They haven't eaten any of Polyphemus's sheep yet, although Odysseus has sampled his food, and Polyphemus---though he's never even named (put a pin in that)---comes in, closes the cave, and starts chowing down on greeks, even though he has sheep there and he didn't even see Odysseus eat that one bite of his food, so I guess he's just a random monster who enjoys eating humans (put a pin in that redux). They make a run for it when he opens the cave next morning, he kills and eats more of them, and they eventually realize they have to blind him. Once they do, he starts mumbling to himself and they recognize it as language (another pin please), and one of the men is like whoa it can talk should we try talking and Odysseus says no, it's too late for that, which, yeah, fair, you did just blind him. Then they tie hay to their backs to trick Polyphemus into thinking they are sheep (pin time) and run out. Then, Odysseus, for NO REASON, when they have ALREADY ESCAPED, shoots Polyphemus with an arrow, so he chases the greeks into their boats, and one of the men says he heard (or maybe only thinks he heard? I can't remember) the cyclops say he was a son of poseidon (or maybe just say the word poseidon) so now poseidon will surely curse them. (one more pin.)

Okay. So now we can get to our pins, including the one from the mixed section way back when about the messy implications of gods not being real and the poor execution thereof that I said we're getting to later. it's later now. So first, making Polyphemus not a fully intelligent, sentient being is super weird, because it makes the men thinking that Poseidon has cursed them really weak? and if it's supposed to be weak because maybe the gods aren't supposed to be real, that's really not clear to me, so it's a place where the execution is bad. It would be clearer if Polyphemus was a fully sentient guy that can fully talk.

But wait, I hear you say, Polyphemus is a fully sentient guy who can talk, and they mention it and decide it's too late for talking! Okay, second pin time---that would be way more clear if Nolan ever named him; that would really humanize him. Sentientize. whatever. Either way, now we're pulling out the third pin and saying yeah that's true he can talk but it is mumbling and not really full sentences; i don't even remember if we're supposed to be able to undersand what he says because I forget if I understood what he was saying when I watched the movie, it was a few weeks ago, but that means it probably wasn't plot relevant, and if this is the moment we find out Polyphemus can actually talk and therefore make the gods thing less messy it should be much clearer that Polyphemus is like. Smart and able to talk coherently. it could even bolster the remorse thing, because they blinded a sentient being they could've talked to. also call him polyphemus goddamn. Like maybe one of the men (or odysseus because he's so fucking smart you Told us that for ten minutes already) has heard of Polyphemus and names him. Or he fucking introduces himself when he taunts them.

Now we pull out the fourth pin and add that by changing the hanging under the sheep thing to putting hay under their backs, maybe for logistical reasons like the actors couldn't figure out how to do that (skill issue hire stuntpeople who can specifically do that this was like a hundred billion dollar blockbuster and you're christopher nolan) Nolan also perhaps unintentionally tells us that actually Polyphemus can't tell the difference between hay and sheep, even though he seems to be in the nolan movie canonically a shepherd so actually he is incredibly stupid after all and so gods aren't real.

Building on that, our last lonely pin reminds us that uh Odysseus literally never says his name so how the fuck does Polyphemus tell Poseidon who to curse? I guess the gods really aren't real after all, glad we settled that! Except the very next thing that happens is their ships are blown off course to the island of the man-eating giants (who are supposed to be the Lastrygonians and therefore are descendants of poseidon) which, based on the basic editing theory that two ideas' proximity relates them to each other, tells the audience that actually yeah textually they have been cursed by poseidon, and nothing ever refutes that theory, and in fact later on Calypso says to Odysseus that he has to let Poseidon punish him and don't worry zeus won't let him die and so he does that and she's right, he doesn't die.

So removing the Nobody trick leaves the scene extremely messy in terms of themes, and removes the best way to show the audience Odysseus's canonical and most well known in pop culture traits of cunning and pride, but let's circle back to the fact that Nolan removing the driving themes of cunning and pride in that scene leaves the scene with. nothing? driving it?

Nolan is emphasizing honor and remorse in this adaptation, but he didn't use them to drive that scene. I can't decide whether or not to ding the fact that Nolan makes a point to show Odysseus dishonorably leaving the corpses behind and not doing proper funeral rites, something he has to fix later by going to the west, because I can't decide whether this breach of honor that causes remorse pays for itself by leaning into the other trait that's supposed to drive the movie or not.

Either way, Odysseus is not remorseful about the thing the does that is the least cunning thing he does in the entire movie: shooting Polyphemus for no goddamn reason. Like all his men are like 'what the fuck dude' and he's just like 'i'm angry grr he killed so many of my men revenge grr i'm a man' like w h a t do you mean. Why did you do that. You're supposed to be smart. You're the smart guy, everybody's been telling us that (but not showing). It doesn't come from pride, it doesn't come from honor, and it certainly doesn't come from remorse.

This is a problem the whole movie has that the Nobody trick is emblematic of.

The Plot Doesn't Feel Driven By Odysseus Because in the original epic Odysseus's cunning and pride and desire to go home drive the plot, and Nolan has mostly excised those in favor of emphasizing honor and remorse, it really begins to feel like Odysseus has no agency, and instead of driving the plot, the plot is just happening to him and his men because the world is cruel, or at best some karmic retribution for the sacking of troy and being the sea people. But to me, karma is a boring driver of the plot, or at least in this movie it is/would be (don't want to affirmatively ascribe that intention to Nolan because it might not have been, though if it wasn't... hmm. thought Nolan was a better writer than that) because the actions don't seem to connect to each other, except for Odysseus's choice to have them gamble on an unknown route back to Ithaca and not take food from Troy in the first place.

But the thing about that is that it's implied after they're blown off course by the storm after they escape Polyphemus's island (which is itself implied to be because of a curse from Poseidon Polyphemus asked him to lay on them, and I've already explained at length why I think that doesn't work, but I'll just add that IF NOLAN HAD USED THE NOBODY TRICK IT WOULD HAVE BEEN ESTABLISHED THAT POSEIDON'S CURSE WAS ONE HUNDRED PERCENT HIS FAULT PROVIDING ODYSSEUS MUCH NEEDED AGENCY i promise i'm not angry it's just a movie deep breaths) that they would have been fine if they kept going on the course they set out on. Actually i think it's not even an implication; I think Circe might straight up say that they're super fucking lost now in the scene where she tells Odysseus how to get to the land of the dead.

Then his men all dying, six to scylla (put a pin in that) and the rest because they eat one of the sun god's cattle is prophecied by one of the dead, and not related to anything Odysseus did---I think in the original epic the fate of his men is more related to a choice he makes, but either way, his men all dying being seemingly unpreventably further strips Odysseus of agency. There is an argument to be made that Odysseus's unpopular choices made his men not want to listen to him anymore, and that is supported by the fact that his men do mutiny or at least come close earlier in the movie, I think before Circe's island.

However, the problem with that is that the stated reason the men eat a cow is 'we decided we'd rather drown than starve' (which side note I found immersion breaking because how did they know the punishment was going to be drowning? like they're right but it's the Sun God's cattle, not Zeus's or Poseidon's, so I assumed he was gonna like. burn them up with the power of the sun. I guess it's more 'maybe the gods aren't real' but in this case that's stupid there is a literal prophecy that they die because they ate the sun god's cattle and I don't accept the argument that the prophecy is real and true except for the part about the sun god). So actually its not related to anything Odysseus did at all. So what the fuck.

(This is off topic but getting back to that scylla pin I thought it was unnecessary and honestly stupid and dishonorable for Odysseus not to tell his men 'hey you guys I got a prophecy in the land of the dead that you guys are all gonna die, either all to charybdis or six to scylla and the rest because you ate the sun god's cattle.' like he does tell them the sun god's cattle part afterword when he's pressed and it doesn't work but it against the honor that Nolan established for Odysseus to not give his men all the information. Maybe you can argue Odysseus is tired of honor at that point in the movie, but in that case at what point in the movie is he supposed to have held on to his honor? Literally just the bow strumming and not wanting to go home? Come on Nolan if you take away the character traits he canonically has then you gotta at least commit to the replacement character traits.)

Also nothing happens on Calypso's island. It seems like it exists solely to give the movie a place where Nolan can have flashbacks in order to preserve the pacing of the movie, which I actually thought was good and worked well (the pacing, not nothing happening on calypso's island) and also because not enough time has passed, which might be okay but it would be way better if anything interesting happens there. The common interpretations of what happens on Calypso's island for Odysseus to stay there for seven years is that 1) he falls in love with her and is conflicted about leaving for seven years before finally deciding to be loyal to Penelope, and/or 2) she falls in love with him and keeps him there for seven years before he finally is able to escape. I can mostly understand why Nolan didn't want to go for either of those because the second one is just the tired and misogynistic temptress trope, and the first one might make Odysseus too complicated a character you coward Nolan Odysseus should cheat on his wife it would be interesting and actually give weight to the absurd choice to make him stay on Calypso's island for so long because he made this dishonorable choice to cheat on his wife and now out of remorse he feels he can't face her. Literally I could write Nolan's Odyssey better.

So Nolan doesn't choose either of those, which is okay in general, good even! It's good for stories to do new things, even I, the Adaptations Making Changes Hater can acknowledge this. However in this case the reason he actually chose for Odysseus staying on Calypso's island for seven years is that Calypso has been feeding him lotus flower which made him forget everything but don't worry it's not because she's evil she needed to to heal him but then oopsie he just loved the lotus flower So Much that she just HAD to keep letting him eat it because she fell in love with him, but not because she wanted to keep him there, just because she wanted him to be happy. Which feels disingenuous, as you may be able to tell from my tone, but it also feels like actually Nolan wanted to choose the evil temptress route but chickened out because he didn't want to look like a misogynist so it resulted in Calypso looking like maybe she did it on purpose to keep him there but she's lying about it? Which is. worse.

Yeah the interesting choice here would have been to make Odysseus cheat on Penelope. Honor's already kind of out the window but he does get a lot of mileage out of remorse. Not. like. enough mileage. but he's committed to it more than honor. It would have been a way more interesting choice, and it wouldn't have accidentally (?) villified calypso/been the chickenshit and boring choice of nobody's at fault uwu it just happened. Also it would've given Odysseus agency; let his own choice drive why he stayed on Calypso's island for seven years, and also given Penelope an interesting reason to maybe reject Odysseus when he makes his 'oh I'm so different now' speech which to me had no tension in it because obviously she was going to take him back she's Penelope the I Miss My Husband character. Like obviously she still would but it would have been interesting. Christopher Nolan hire me as your ghostwriter.

The Behind-The-Scenes Fuckery I'm gonna be way briefer about this stuff because other people have said it better than I could and I don't have extensive thoughts on this stuff I just can't not mention it because what the fuck Nolan

No Greeks cast in the Greek movie set in Greece? What the fuck Nolan. Like Matt Damon was not necessary to this movie you could've cast a greek. Movies don't need to be all famous actors all the time it would've been nice to see a more unknown actor as the lead in such a big movie. or you probably could have found a well known greek actor i'm sure he exists

I've been hearing Zendaya and maybe other actresses were wearing earrings that were looted from Iran I'm not sure at what point but like whether it was antiquity or recent that's. uh. bad. what the fuck Nolan

Dumping props???? into the sea???? WHAT THE FUCK NOLAN

Conclusion

I know I've spent a lot more time on what I didn't like about the movie than what I did like, but I actually do think this movie is worth watching. Do I think it's a good adaptation of the Odyssey? No, but somebody else might, and that's their prerogative. Do I think the movie was fun to watch in the moment? Yes, actually! Most of this stuff didn't bother me right away. In the moment the film works. My immediate impression was just all the stuff I liked a lot, which is a huge point in favor of the movie. It wasn't until I took a closer, more critical look at the movie that I decided it didn't really hang together because some of the choices Nolan makes pose inherent structural problems for the movie, and the execution of some of Nolan's choices leaves much to be desired.