I saw the Odyssey movie today and when I got home I started to cry because that just wasn’t the Odyssey, to me. They captured the broad strokes and some main events, but they’ve been hacked up and reassembled into a nightmarish Hollywood gore fest (there were so many brutal fight scenes and I know the Odyssey is a violent tale but it felt excessive at some points and was a bit dull after some quite repetitive combat exchanges near the end), and whilst it was well-written and well-acted, it wasn’t quite right. I have to be honest, I’m still incredibly angry for reasons that I can’t fully articulate even to myself right now, but these are the main differences I noticed whilst I was watching:
There was no mention of Odysseus’s feigned insanity to escape having to fight in the Trojan War which resulted in infant Telemachus being set in front of his plough (I found this an interesting omission as they included Agamemnon’s sacrifice of his young daughter which eventually led to his death)
Prince Hector’s infant son is not seen, let alone thrown from a wall
Polyphemus is not referred to by name and rarely speaks aside from in pained yells
Odysseus does not refer to himself as ‘Nobody’ or fall prey to hubris by declaring his true identity to Polyphemus as they sail away, leading to the Cyclops cursing him and directly invoking his father Poseidon’s wrath (Polyphemus does call out Poseidon’s name in the movie but it isn’t especially focused on aside from one comment from a crew member before the storm at sea hits)
The gods are not present apart from the two storms and brief visions of Athena
Hermes does not appear at all so he does not give Odysseus moly or help him to finally break free from Calypso
The crew spend only one night with Circe instead of a year, and the transformation into pigs is much more hands-on and grotesque than it is described in the original text
Aeolus is not present, there is no bag of winds that sends the crew veering off-course
The sun god that Tiresias refers to in his prophecy regarding the cattle is Apollo, not Helios (that especially irritated me because it’s a simple name that they could’ve consulted a historian or classicist about 😅)
Odysseus spends his seven years with Calypso in a lotus flower induced amnesiac state instead of in bitter grief
Odysseus sails on his raft straight to Ithaca instead of briefly staying with the Phaecians, so he tells his tale to Calypso instead of them
The law of Xenia is only ever referred to as ‘Zeus’s law’, it’s not inaccurate but it made me cringe when they just never said the word
Penelope doesn’t test Odysseus by asking him to move their marriage bed (an impossible task since it was carved from the olive tree where the couple first met)
Don’t let my criticisms put you off, the movie was beautifully shot and, as I said, both well-acted and well-written if you don’t take it as a proper adaptation of the Odyssey, but speaking as someone who studied the Odyssey last year in college and now genuinely loves the story, it just broke my heart a little bit. I’m sorry if this all sounds bitter.
