Still no name

Part of that is a theme Nolan was entirely uninterested in — at least compared to “war is bad and watching your friends die is sad.” But a huge theme of the Odyssey is foreignness and how can be dangerous, the way to act when facing alien cultures and people who don’t act the way you think they should. Odysseus himself is spurning his own Greek culture and customs at every turn (which is its own massive issue), so of course the movie couldn’t explore this theme, but…it’s such a big focal point.

The Importance of the Phaeacians:

So many books of the Odyssey are spent exploring xenia (which the film calls “Zeus’s law” and also grossly misinterprets, which is its own post). For so long, the formula is “Odysseus and his men arrive on a foreign island, whoever lives there violates xenia in some way, the Ithacans escape but with some casualties.” It’s one of the most formulaic aspects of the story.

Which is why it’s very pointed that he recounts all those awful violations of xenia while he is a guest of the Phaeacians. Who are foreign, whose island is strange to him, but who follow xenia to the point of self-detriment.

Like, it is prophesied that the Phaeacians will someday help a man hated by Poseidon (who is their patron god) and in doing so lose his favor and doom themselves. They know this prophecy. They know that the degree to which they welcome and help foreigners will someday destroy them. They hear Odysseus’ story and realize that Poseidon hates him. And they send him home with an honor guard and a ship full of treasure anyway.

Isn’t that important? That Odysseus tells a story about the danger of people who are different and foreign, only to receive his greatest blessings and ultimate happy ending thanks to the help of people who are foreign, but not actually so different from him after all.

The Importance of Odysseus telling his story to the Phaeacians:

Here’s the thing: the most classic books of the Odyssey, the ones everyone thinks of when they first read it — the Lastrygones and Polyphemus and Circe and Scylla/Charybdis and the cattle — all of those are told in first person by Odysseus.

Wily Odysseus of many tricks and tonuges. Odysseus, known for his many disguises and lies. Odysseus, the least reliable narrator imaginable even before you consider that he has extra incentive to lie to the Phaeacians!

Because Odysseus is their guest. He’s extra incentivized to 1. Guilt the Phaeacians into being nice to him, and 2. Not admit to any of his own wrongdoings when it comes to xenia and his attempts to exercise guest-right.

There’s a ton of classical scholarship investigating Polyphemus the Cyclops especially — because Odysseus outright says “my men wanted to just rob his cave, and boy do I wish I listened instead of doing the proper thing and following xenia!”

That statement sounds so unbelievably suspicious in the original Greek that many scholars feel the intended reading is that they did exactly that. Polyphemus killing the men and refusing to follow xenia may have been partly or completely motivated by the fact the Ithacans broke that pact first by stealing from him. And no, that wouldn’t excuse the cannibalism, but…Odysseus killed the suitors under those exact same circumstances. They ate his food and took his stuff and invaded his home, so he killed them.

But this isn’t even the only case where Odysseus’ words are deeply suspect! For example, with respect to Scylla and Charybdis, he got extensive advice from Circe, and her words as paraphrased by Odysseus are outright contradictory. Circe opens with “I will tell you of both, then make your choice,” but ends by telling him directly “Scylla is the right choice — better to lose six men than all of them.” Circe told him outright “You are treating monsters and gods like mortal warfare — your weapons and wits won’t help you here,” but Odysseus then mentions armoring up to try and fight Scylla anyway. Circe starts telling Odysseus how he might listen to the Sirens if he wishes, then stresses the importance of their knowledge.

It’s possible Circe spoke misleadingly, or that Odysseus ignored her warnings. It’s also possible that he is putting words in her mouth, as part of his story to the Phaeacians, in order to excuse his own actions.

There’s every chance Odysseus lied about a full quarter of the Odyssey’s events. But the film removes that ambiguity, or at least the agency involved in the lies, by instead having Odysseus be slowly regaining his memory after Calypso drugged him with lotus. (Also an insane departure from canon.) And that’s far less interesting and longer to tell than a clear narration with potential for outright lies would’ve been.

The Importance of Odysseus telling his story:

Bards, storytelling and song are also terribly important to the Odyssey as a text. We see how these can be sources of anguish, tools for comfort, or just the way history is remembered and passed on.

The value placed on the oral tradition is why the Odyssey and Iliad survived until the modern day at all! They were so important and beloved that many many people wrote them down during times with little written record.

Which is why it’s insane that bards are barely present at all in the movie. The one in Ithaca I think gets to say less than 20 words in the whole film. (I know Nolan said he was trying to pay tribute to rap/hip-hop, but the issue remains that the bard didn’t get to say anything of substance.) The bards from Sparta are cut altogether. So is the act of poetic recitation by both a Phaeacian bard and by Odysseus himself, because he doesn’t meet the Phaeacians in the film. And it’s not just narratively significant, but culturally too.

It was a widely held belief in Ancient Greece that bards and poets became possessed by the gods when composing and performing their works. That’s how important and holy song and storytelling were to their culture. It was divine. It was worship and celebration and historical record all in one.

There’s a reason the first scene we get on Ithaca is a bard regaling the suitors with tales of the Trojan War! It’s because the stories told by bards are important. You had to do something wonderful to be remembered like that. It’s contrasting Odysseus with both the suitors and with Telemachus, who sit and listen to stories rather than live them.

In conclusion:

Axing the Phaeacians doesn’t just remove a highly important plot point that introduces narrative ambiguity. It undercuts the themes, the viewer’s understanding of events we don’t have factual knowledge of, and undermines a huge part of Ancient Greek culture all in one go.

if a poem that became the symbol of a whole culture and time period is completely changed at its core to be turned into a violent edgy version of today's society and morals, then you're killing that poem, you're stomping over your history and what made you who you are.

I can talk from my perspective as someone whose culture comes from those stories, who has known them since elementary school, who can't put them in a box and treat them like cheap, quick entertainment because they're my fucking roots, they're the foundation of the literature of my country, they're at the core of what my cultural identity is. I have to talk about Homer and his poems every two months in school, because they've inspired tens of generations of artists, and you know what? The Iliad and the Odyssey haven't survived for thousands of years to be butchered by a british guy who feels free to call his movie after a monumental story and then shit on it. it screams sense of superiority, it screams a rather colonialist approach to art and it screams arrogance.

the same arrogance that was Odysseus main vice, and that was completely erased to turn him into a poor victim of his situation and the cruel, terrible times he lived in. the Greece Homer (let's act like he was one (1) real guy who sat down and wrote those two poems on some scroll) sang about was color, and life, magic and religion and wonder. something real, something with meaning and a soul.

So there's an alien research station in space. Humanity's worst attempts to destroy it amount to a bear turning over the trash can. Aliens occasionally abduct people and return them with a clean bill of health and an ankle bracelet. It takes them forever to figure out those bracelets are screwing with their data because humans who carry them are curve-wreckingly popular.

Disaster strikes somewhere, I dunno, Japan, and there's an uptick in abductions, but of people stuck in collapsed buildings, and yeah the giant octopus tree that looks straight out of Call of Cthulhu is scary but it's also using tech you can't even comprehend to find survivors and teleport them out of the rubble. You see humans with absolutely 100% deadly injuries wisked away and a good number of them even return. There is now a new consent form specifying if rescuers can take you to the aliens, because they will probably try to save you but if they can't your family will never get your body back. You decide if your life or your body is more important.

Little by little, pragmatism wins out. The aliens aren't attacking, but they ARE abducting and doing weird tests. But the survivors mostly return unharmed with a Big Mac in hand and a weird piece of tech. There have been less valid excuses to miss school. The aliens are clearly researching humanity just as much as we are researching them, and until communications are established this status quo isn't the worst.

Ofc, then one of them actually attacks. Knocks the statue of liberty clean off. The military starts to deploy fast, and even wounds the attacker a lot, but before they can shoot the second missle it bounces. And it turns on the shooter. Every military person in the attack dies, suddenly and through means you cannot comprehend. The other aliens whisk the attacking one away. Construction materials appear as if in apology, but that's it.

The attacker was a hooligan who thought destroying wildlife was fun, and ran into something they can't handle. But even if the bear is perfectly within its rights to defend its territory, the ranger will atill have to shoot it to save the stupid brat, and hope the idiot learned their lesson.

But the bear is still dead. And the forest critters who had just started getting used to the ranger are now having second thoughts.

But the abductions continue. There are no hooligans for a while. And what else can you do? This is your home, but if the invaders really want to take it, what can you do?

So you try to stay out of their way, if you are in some serious trouble and your chances are already less than 50/50, maybe you seek them out. Sometimes they help. Sometimes they don't.

And sometimes the abductees catch glimpses of something that looks like it might have been human once, but eyes and skin all wrong, speaking incomprehensibly, and rubbing its head on the alien's 'knees'.

THE REVIEWS ARE IN!

ル祀ミ育神蟲テニ宮神父羅 (At Rabu Shrine, the insect God is raised and worshipped.)

“O Spirits, why must you test our faith so? The Child Shinchū has absorbed one more of us today, yet she will not transform into a God. The elder priest Tōji says we must keep waiting. That the Child still hungers. That the more she takes in, the more divine she will become. And yet, nineteen people has she taken into itself and her shell will not harden. She only grows larger, hungrier.”

ム慰ヲ神キナケワイニ弦管ガモド侶僧ノ宮神父羅 (The Priests at Rabu Shrine soothe the young God with music.) Priest Sōkū pictured left.

“The older faithful of the shrine still remember the elder siblings of Shinchū, and how simple it was to help them grow. A single soul would often suffice, and the union would transform them into beautiful Gods in the shape of scarabs, butterflies, and bees. Yet the Child refuses her ascension, and our numbers dwindle. Her Father does not guide us, blind as he is in his old age. I fear that life is fading beneath his shell, and his spirit readies to depart.”

神ルケ生ノメタガラ我テニ宮神父羅 (Rabu Shrine's Sacred Father, a God living amongst us.)

“Many of the faithful have left the shrine. They feel fear in their hearts that they will be chosen next, absorbed into the Child fruitlessly; they feel anger towards the young God who will not grow, all the while taking their loved ones. They say the disappearances will cause suspicion, that someone will discover the secret of our shrine and, filled with envy, will kill Shinchū’s young siblings, who are yet unready to ascend.”

リ侍チ育ニカヤ健デ池産ノ宮神父羅ハ子ノ神 (The God Children grow healthy in the Rabu Shrine purification pond.)

“There are only three of us left. Those who lost their faith have reneged their vows and left the temple. The rest of us, who remain devout in our worship, have continued uniting with the Child to no avail. Today, it was Tōji’s turn to read his fortune in the Omikuji, and he was awarded the Great Blessing of becoming one with the Child. But he would not accept it. He attempted to flee, leaving his Omikuji tied in the temple lest fate follow him. It took the three of us to bring him back and force him within Shinchū’s soft shell. We pray he may be the last. The faithful need hope to come back.”

羅父神社の羅父神はきみを御子と共に神になるやう選ばれき 共に生ける神となり御子のうちいづるほどわたりはきみを崇拝せむ (GREAT BLESSING: The Sacred Father of Rabu Shrine has chosen you to become a God with His Child. Together, you will become a Living God and live an eternal blissful life, and the people of Rabu Shrine will worship your new name.)

“I am the last one here. Day after day, the Omikuji spares me of the Great Blessing. I feel weary, and my faith is fading. Is the Shinchū really the God they promised? Or is she a demon, using our faith to trick us into feeding her? The Father has stopped moving, and her younger siblings grow weak without our care. I have found myself alone with her. Watching after her does not comfort me as it once did. I have decided to read only one more Omikuji. Let my fate be decided.”

At the time of its discovery, most of the shrine had fallen into ruin as the wooden beams rotted in the humid climate. A single structure was still standing, containing some of the temple’s statues and treasures. Today, only these documents and several photos from the 1952 survey remain.

If I tell you this is a horror dance number it still won't prepare you. That last move was so terrifying even the judge was like "Let go! Let go!" If you told me they're actually possessed I'd believe you.

The music is a remix of the song Mere Dholna from the Bollywood movie Bhool Bhulaiyya, a remake of the classic Malayalam horror-comedy Manichitrathazhu. It's about a young bride that seemingly becomes possessed of Manjulika, a dancer of the ancient royal court whose tragic death has turned her into a vengeful spirit, one who evokes the wrath of the goddess Durga Kali. In the iconic scene that is repeated across remakes, the groom and his family discover his bride dancing in the dead of night in a manic, disassociative fugue, wearing a moth-eaten dancer's costume and a face smeared in kohl, ash and vermilion. She's hallucinating that she's Manjulika dancing carefree for the court with her lover. The upbeat music is deliberately incongruous with the pathos and creepiness of the scene in reality, especially as it crescendos in the bride's head to the moment when the king decapitates Manjulika's beloved in a fit of jealous rage.

This specific number is by the all-male troupe B Unique, performed for the Indian reality talent contest Hunabaarz. It's a modern fusion based on Bharatnatyam that turns up the creep factor by 200% and is basically a showcase of contortionism and synchronicity. One of the most perfectly choreographed and executed dances I have ever seen. Truly incredible!

yknow when you wake up in the middle of the night & anxiously check on the person next to you to make sure they didn't randomly die in their sleep

When your boss sends you north to discreetly check on his younger brother Ulric who went silent in replying to his messages. Discreetly.

HELLO you are asking questions that literature and poetry THROUGHOUT the middle ages has asked, and it is from this questioning that we derive things like the Codes of Chivalry (which is not "how to treat a noble lady really nice" but is actually "how to be an ethical person when you're rich and you own a horse" and includes such things as "don't run people over with your horse")

In fact I daresay you already know instinctively just from cultural osmosis what a good boss -- a good liege lord -- is and does based on the tropes that have survived to the current day and the kinds of things that get Hugely Praised in things like legends of King Arthur.

A good boss (liege lord) is:

Merciful. He is not having his peasants killed for things like poaching rabbits during a famine. In fact, he is working to mitigate famine. During times of individual hardship, he might negotiate with a peasant for a payment plan on their annual rent.

Patient. He is not impulsive, he does not lose his temper.

Prudent. He makes choices that are thoughtful, considered, conservative (in the sense of not needlessly risky--he's not investing his entire fortune in having everyone plant an unproven crop). He is making sure local infrastructure like roads and public buildings are maintained and kept in good nick.

Gentle. He doesn't haul off and slap a servant or a tenant for breaking a dish or making a mistake. He doesn't abuse animals, his wife or children, or his employees. He doesn't rape the servants.

Generous (both in money and in spirit). He is not extorting the peasants for an amount of rent that is beyond their means, he is not raising taxes every year to cover his own lavish lifestyle. He is paying his servants a living wage (or, if wages are low, he's giving them room/board/clothing to make up the difference). If someone in a tenant's family dies, the lord is sending a gift of condolence, or helping to pay for the funeral, or possibly even ATTENDING the funeral and speaking a few kind words about the deceased, ESPECIALLY if they were a really upstanding and important member of the community. If one of his tenants is gravely sick, the lord is sending a basket of food or paying for a doctor. He is giving charitably (generally this will be, like, a bequest to the church so that they can run a hospital or an orphanage or a school for the local village children).

Pious. This classically means "goes to church, submits with humility to God" but to me this quality is subtextually standing in for "maintaining an ongoing sense of Perspective that HE'S not god, that there are higher powers he is Accountable to, that he too can be Judged, etc, so that he doesn't end up going on a weird fucked up power trip"

Humble. One of the most admiring things you hear about a lord doing in literature and epic poetry is, "He ate off of wooden plates while his followers ate off of gold and silver." Humility isn't about being meek, it's just about not thinking so much of yourself that you turn your nose up and sneer at what "lesser" people do. In other words: Don't be a fucking diva. If your carriage gets stuck in the mud, climb out and help everybody else push, you're not gonna die from getting mud on your shoes.

Condescending. This word has changed wildly in meaning/tone over the last couple centuries -- it's now a rude thing to do (because we've done away with legal social hierarchies, so someone acting like they're lowering themselves to your level IS insulting), but in older times, a high-ranking person "condescending" to a servant was worthy of praise and admiration: it means they were setting aside rank and privilege to speak to them with the easygoing, friendly respect and compassion they'd give a peer. This is things like... Treats those beneath him with courtesy and respect (ie: listens soberly and attentively when one of his servants or tenants comes to complain about a problem). Having a sense of humor and kindness about it when the lord and a servant both come around a corner at the same time and run into each other and the servant gets knocked to the ground and starts babbling apologies--the condescending (positive) lord helps them to their feet with his own hands and cracks a joke to show them that it's ok (as opposed to just walking off without a word or insulting/scolding them). This is also things like trusting a farmer, woodcutter, or artisan to speak with expertise about their own livelihood and taking their advice into consideration if they tell the lord that one of his ideas won't work.

Good boundaries. The ethical liege lord knows that it's normal for the staff to probably be softly bitching about him in private (even with a really good boss, we all grumble from time to time). He's not eavesdropping on them, he's not going into the staff areas where they should reasonably expect to have a degree of privacy, etc.

Righteous and protective of "the weak". The "weak" here doesn't necessarily mean physically weak, this is often used in the sense of someone politically or socially weak, aka The Marginalized -- the poor, the disabled, women, children, the elderly, etc. If a lord sees someone like this being mistreated or abused, he's supposed to step in and put a stop to that.

Committed to reciprocity. In a highly hierarchical system like feudalism, every person (from the lowest peasant all the way up to the crown prince) legally OWES their liege lord certain things (taxes, labor, service, loyalty, etc). A good liege remembers and takes very seriously the idea that this should be a balanced and reciprocal relationship -- in other words, he owes something BACK. Feudalism is modeled very strongly on the family system: If children owe their parents obedience and service, then parents owe their children care and protection. This still applies when the "child" is a farmer and the "parent" is a local baron. Or when the "child" is a duke and the "parent" is the king.

Basically, we get so caught up in the aesthetics of nobility that we forget that it literally is a managerial position that comes with responsibilities that were... very similar back in the day to the same ones we have now. Humans have not changed all that much. At the end of the day, a really good boss in the 1400s versus in one from the 2020s displays most of the same qualities of personality, even if the details of execution are different.

The next question is, of course, "well, but this theoretical liege lord is HIGHLY idealized -- how often did that actually HAPPEN? Wasn't it more likely that everyone was exploited all the time?" and to that I say: Well, maybe. But again, I don't think humans have changed all that much. Just like the bosses of today, there's a SPECTRUM: A really really good boss is rare and precious and one that you tell stories about for years after you've left that job, but a truly, genuinely, homicidally nightmarish boss is also pretty rare. Most bosses are sort of meh -- they have their good moments, they have their shitty moments, but they're tolerable and you can get along with them well enough to do your job, and then you roll your eyes at them behind their back. Generally, humans don't take outright exploitation lying down. Being a bad boss in the historical period is how you get peasant uprisings and revolts, and you know that to be true because your parents raised you with that knowledge, so unless you are very stupid or inbred or an egomaniac, there is literal personal incentive to at minimum be a Tolerable liege lord. And that means hitting at least SOME of the above bullet points.

TL;DR: In the words of Honore de Balzac, "Everything I have just told you can be summarized by an old word: noblesse oblige!"

Most of the critical complaints have been about the tone; in a review from 2005, Professor Victoria of Spagonia University said, "The constant self-aggrandizement undercuts the idea that its subject ought to be taken seriously. Also, wasn't the 'feminist' line from the Sonic Heroes manual a mistranslation of 'womanizer'?"

warning: blood, and Grace frying the ever-loving heck out of his arm