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so obviously there were a lot of issues with the movie, many of which kind of went over my head. MY main issue with the movie was: the gods.

the odyssey is, obviously, an ancient greek epic (what, 3000 years old?). this means it had a lot of greek gods in it. particularly Athena, my goat. Athena is super important in the story because odysseus is basically her pet mortal.

when reading the book a couple weeks ago, one thing really stood out to me: human people barely do anything. the gods are ever-present drivers of the action. i cannot stress to you how much the gods do in the story, especially Athena. odysseus meets new people? Athena makes him taller, stronger, and more handsome so they're more likely to aid him. Penelope is crying in her bed? Athena makes her sleepy so she falls asleep. At some point Athena turns odysseus into an old man. Athena is doing a lot of heaving lifting in the story, and it got to a point while i was reading that i was like "what is odysseus even doing ??? athena is basically doing everything for him ???? what kind of hero-?" and maybe that was a bit of an overreaction but you get my point.

anyways that was a story from 3000 years ago. now, we live in a post-humanistic culture (if i'm remembering correctly humanism was a renaissance idea that people could make their own choices and change their fates, the revolutionary mainstream notion that gods did not dictate everything). which means that the common plebe (like me) doesn't really want to read a story where the main character seems almost like a puppet to these higher beings.

nolan must have realized this, and thus decided to give odysseus more agency in his decisions. however, he also realizes that Athena is a huge character and influence in the story, and he can't cut her from the film. so what does he do?

he films two vague scenes of meaningless dialogue between odysseus and Athena, in which Athena does nothing. he films a scene between odysseus and his wife (penelope) in which odysseus recounts the trojan war and reveals that he regrets the carnage he wreaked there (which is actually not characteristic of odysseus at all but whatever), and then for some reason Athena is there, holding his hand and crying. there's a flashback to the pillaging of a temple to athena, where a statue is beheaded and zendaya is also almost beheaded (what does this mean? did they almost kill athena? but thats not possible... so did they behead a random girl in the temple and now the goddess has taken on her visage? why would she do that? and why is she crying?? this doesn't make sense). this scene is confused and nonsensical, and completely disregards the fact that Athena is a GODDESS OF WAR and that the trojan horse and therefore the invasion of troy were HER IDEA. they took a hugely powerful goddess and boiled her down to odysseus' emotional support invisible friend. basically Athena was a completely unnecessary hanger-on in the movie and they depicted her in a way that i honestly think is humiliating and blasphemous.