Merry Green Land

American Girl Catalogue

2000

Found on toysandcollectiblesmuseum.org

my unruly ass:

I mean if you just want to take, "There are no sex scenes, and all the food looks horrible." This line makes me laugh every time I see it, it rules. And it has nothing to do with Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey (2026).

Presumably it's coming from the same complaint well as the majority of Wilson's piece: that while the Homeric poem is a celebration of fucking around and feasting, this movie is not. But in just saying, "it's not this" and nothing more, she's not discussing or even acknowledging how sex and food are actually used in this retelling. Both are tied together in what has been widely praised among audiences as one of the most indelible sequences: Samantha Morton's scene as the witch Circe. In it, the threat of sexual violence and act of eating are linked in a commentary on warmongering rapaciousness writ large, as a part of Nolan's intently laid out thesis of the Trojan horse as a kind of atomic bomb xenia violation whose nuclear winter the whole Mediterranean is now living under. And yes the food does look horrible, because it's horror food! It's difficult to describe in words, but it's like the stew Odysseus's men are eating is turning into gristly tentacles in their mouths, the sounds of their eating ghastly and so disgusting, while Morton transforms them through....something I will not even try to describe, I've just never seen anything quite like it onscreen. Largely practical effects too, astonishing.

Not a bit of that is in that line, of course. Great line, but isn't about the movie, it's about the author.

And honestly, the author is a bit out on a limb with much of how she has actually interpreted The Odyssey (film) itself, must also be said! And not just by me, or by film critics naturally, but also other classics scholars:

I mean when early on she summarily defined the work of cinema as "light and noise" and moved on, it was pretty clear that Wilson just doesn't have a ton of respect or feeling for epic scale movies in general. Which is fine! Everyone has types of art that they don't jibe with. But you don't go to the person who's not keen on dance for a good assessment of the new ballet, negative or positive.

He basically made Oppenheimer again lol

Take a shot every time someone says "people from the sea" or "sea people." Your liver will give out during the first half of the movie. At one point, Penelope says it like five times in a single conversation

Nolan basically says that the sea people were the refugees/returning armies of Troy, who plundered the lands because they broke xenia by deceiving the Trojans with the horse and thus are no longer bound to any moral laws. This creates the Bronze Age collapse

The Trojan war was Agamemnon wanting to control trade in the area, and Helen's kidnapping was an excuse to destroy Troy to do that.

One day, Nolan will figure out how to write women who do things other than just state exposition at the camera.

You see Clytemnestra kill Agamemnon, and she doesn't use an axe :(

Odysseus in the movie is pretty much nothing like Odysseus in the poems. The only thing they have in common is he goes on an Odyssey.

Odysseus breaks through the walls of Troy, and then spends the whole fall of Troy looking sad and traumatized because people are dying.

You never see any Olympians. Zendaya plays Athena, but then it's revealed that she was a Trojan woman who Odysseus saw killed in the temple of Athena in Troy as it was destroyed, and her appearances are a manifestation of his guilt and PTSD that he associates with Athena

Circe and Calypso do have magic powers, though.

Polyphemus is mute the entire time. We don't get the "nobody" scene. Odysseus assumes that he's just a brutish monster, pokes out his eye after he eats some of Odysseus' crew. Polyphemus starts talking to himself in a corner, and Odysseus' men say he said the name "Poseidon," which they take to mean that he is the son of Poseidon who has cursed them.

Nolan does that thing where the gods COULD be real, or it could be coincidental natural disasters. But, like, there is magic and monsters.

Odysseus the least complicated man in the story. It's all very straightforward. He doesn't do any real trickery other than the Trojan horse (which he immediately regrets) and disguise himself when he gets to Ithaca

Odysseus pets Argus (I like this change) and there's only one maid who gets killed, and she's shown as actively helping the suitors to try and assassinate Telemachus. I liked this change as well.

The movie ends with Odysseus allowing Telemachus to become king of Ithaca, and him sailing west, because he promised the shades in Hades that he would travel there to honor the men who died and could not receive proper burials

He talks about how their civilization will collapse, and that all that will remain are songs

I don't know if this is on purpose, but it kind of implies that Odysseus is gonna function as Aeneas? It is a bit of a stretch, but west is Italy, and he talks about a new civilization rising. I think this is very funny if on purpose, given how the ancient Romans felt about Odysseus lmao

Nolan does not deserve such good actors.

a) young children tend to do a lot of copying the behaviors around them, and

b) most of the people hanging around them are taking care of kids (them)

a lot of little kids REALLY want to take care of slightly littler kids. Today a toddler barely over a year old kissed a baby a couple months younger than him, tried to wipe his nose, and tried to feed him a toy apple. A couple kids older than Him then started trying to put him in a toy shopping cart to take him shopping. There's a 3yo who always tries to steal the babies' milk bottles to feed them. A 4yo tried to give a baby his own bottle once. A toddler too young to know any words yet will shush me if any of the little babies are laying down to sleep.