it is what it is

The Greeks used the excuse of a woman and the war of gods to wage war with an economic competitor, then showed up on their enemy's shores and broke their own laws of hospitality to win the war and ransacked the city and its people. The story of those actions traveled the world, making everyone afraid of the "people from the sea," even the Greeks who WERE the people from the sea.

The suitors cried about the laws not being upheld for them but were unwilling to uphold them themselves. The same society was terrified of this invisible enemy that would invade because of their lack of morals, unaware that THEY are the ones who broke the laws first. They are their own boogeyman. The fear of foreignors was never about the actions of foreignors but their own actions.

The gods haunt the narrative as an ideal. If they were confirmed real, then this movie becomes a warning against breaking away from "the correct religion." Instead, it is a warning of how mutual care and respect for your fellow man, whether gods exist or not, is the backbone of society, and without it, morality becomes something to twist and fear monger.

The gods couldn't exist in this adaptation, so a lot of the plot points involving the gods had to be changed or left out. "Nobody" only matters if Odysseus doxxes himself for poseidon to punish. (The crew members insisting that they definitely heard the cyclops say posiedon and jumping to the conclusion that he was poseidon's son and they were cursed was a great change in my opinion.) The wind bag can only exist if the gods exist. Athena can only guide Telemechus and Odysseus if the gods exist. ("Athena" potentially only being Odysseus's guilt for the preistess he let die who only shows up in times where his actions in Troy are thematically important was *chef's kiss*.) The Trojan War is only a war sanctioned by the gods if the gods exist. Odysseus being stuck with Calypso for so long needs another reason (the lotus) if it's not by the will of the gods. What would Circe and Calypso be like if they weren't eternal goddesses? Did the crew go to Hades, or did they just perform a spell that raised the dead?

Magic and Monsters can still exist without the gods, and everything else can be explained by superstition, nature, and bad luck. The ideal of the gods haunt the narrative so wonderfully.

I'm not a fan of Nolan's directorial aesthetic, but for the themes he wanted to explore, I think this was a fantastic retelling of the original. Accuracy isn't and shouldn't always be the goal. Sometimes, taking an existing story and making something new in order to speak to a different aspect of humanity is all we can really hope for.

like. we can defy the christian god, in a way, because we can choose to not do what he says we ought to. sure. but we cannot defy greek gods in the same way, because the god is not just an entity that commands you but the very thing you are doing. apollo does not just send plagues, he is plague. you know apollo is real because there is plague. plague is not apollo acting in the world, it is an instance of apollo, in the same way that insight is athena, love is aphrodite, harvest is demeter, storms are zeus. gods are not commanding nature and sending signs and acting upon the world, because signs and nature and human nature are themselves the gods. the gods cannot be absent, because we still get ideas, and harvest, and go to war, and feel desire, and hunt. the gods cannot be defied because you cannot defy "getting ideas" or "harvesting" or "having sex" or "dying." to attempt to is entirely futile. like you cannot defy poseidon because you cannot defy the sea. you cannot defy aphrodite because you cannot defy love and reproduction. nature and human nature are unbeatable, and so the gods are unbeatable, because they are nature and human nature.

Springtime in Oregon