This Saturday I went and watched Nolan's "Odyssey"... And being both a history and a mythology buff, I couldn't shut up from the sheer number of what here in Italy should be called "troiate". So, what were my issues with the movie? Well...
Let's start with the four things Hollywood always, ALWAYS does wrong: not a single actor is Greek or looks the part (more understandable in the past, not so much in this globalized age), the Phaeacians are skipped (then again, their roles are to provide someone for Odysseus to tell what happened to him after Troy and help him complete the final leg of their journey, and if Odysseus' journey is told in another way then there's no need for him to stop at their island and get their help home), Antinous as the sole leader of the Suitors (the Suitors have THREE leaders, with Antinous being actually overshadowed by Eurymachus, who had convinced Penelope's father and brothers to favor him and seduced Melantho, and Amphinomus, who's the son of the KING OF DULICHIUM and leads the 52 Dulichian suitors that alone form almost half of the 108 suitors. For most of the poem Antinous is merely the one most hostile to Telemachus, and only during the archery contest he shows himself the only one smart enough to understand things were weird, and for that gets immediately killed - and then scapegoated by Eurymachus), and the costumes are based on CLASSICAL Greece rather that MYCENEAN Greece. The latter wouldn't be such a problem due about 2,500 years of the costumes being portrayed the wrong way in spite of almost every weapon that Homer describes being clearly Mycenean (the Shield of Achilles is the exception, but a god made it and they could more or less see the future), except Nolan made a point of dating the film to the Bronze Age Collapse and couldn't be bothered to use the correct costumes and weapons.
First thing to criticize... The pants. Ancient Greeks didn't wear pants, they found them ridiculous. In fact pants didn't exist in the Mediterranean basin, if at all. This is as bad as Polites' glasses in Epic: The Musical...
Second thing, the tagline "defy the gods". Could as well commit suicide, because in Classical Mythology only the worst of the villains did that, and they died a quick and stupid death (see Capaneus who during the War of the Seven Against Thebes shouted he didn't need the gods and was immediately struck by lightning, or Ajax the Lesser that, after breaking Sanctuary during the Fall of Troy got his personal fleet struck by a storm and Poseidon saved his ass, said that he didn't need the help of the gods and was promptly drowned)
Phemius the aidos - that is the singer of poems. This person's job is to SING the poems, using a lyre to accompany his singing - but instead he stomps a stick on the ground and SHOUTS the poems. I had actually mistaken him for Medon, the herald forced to work for the suitors (and who nonetheless exposed their scheme to murder Telemachus) until a guy in Sparta doing the same thing was said to be singing a poem. This is especially bad because Nolan had the composer, Ludwig Göransson, do the film score with as close as Ancient Greek instruments as possible and Göransson actually HAD ANCIENT GREEK LYRES RECONSTRUCTED FOR IT. Why? Just... Why?
Calypso. Her island explicitely looks whatever she wants, so nothing about it... But she doesn't look like the divine being Odysseus had to placate to not give her an excuse to murder Penelope (and in the poem she actually tries to trick Odysseus into claiming Penelope is more beautiful so she has an excuse to kill her), nor she is the yandere that kept him imprisoned for seven years.
Sinon. In this film, he's the son of a shepherd that gets tricked by Antinous into enrolling in the army for the Trojan War, and gets Elpenor's role of being the ghost rebuking Odysseus in Hades (Elpenor was at least hilarious, in that he died because he got drunk, climbed Circe's roof, and then fell, and nobody even knew he died because they thought he was sleeping off the hangover). In The Odyssey... He doesn't exist, because Sinon is a character from THE AENEID. Plus, he's Odysseus' cousin.
Speaking of Sinon, the film's version of the Fall of Troy is based on that from The Aeneid (without Lacoon and the snakes). In The Odyssey, the Horse, that by the way was always described as having wheels, was brought inside because HELEN (who was in fact on the plan, and had turned hostile to the Trojans the moment Paris' death lifted Aphrodite's spell and Priam refused to let her go back home and instead forced her to marry his oldest surviving son Deiphobus) tricked the Trojans into being convinced it was harmless.
Also, the army. In Nolan's film, it's assembled by lottery, and Antinous was supposed to join it. In the poem, it was assembled by Odysseus calling up his nobles to provide a core of heroes with heavy armor and chariot and then calling up a levy for smaller infantry, and Antinous and all the suitors were simply too young to join (in fact one of the suitors, Eurynomus son of Aegyptius, is the younger brother of Antiphus, who DID go to Troy, survived the war, and was eaten by Polyphemus).
In the film, Odysseus joined the war because he was scared of Agamemnon's wrath. As much as that's something to be scared of, in myth Odysseus joined the war because he had been a suitor of Helen (as per his father's will, though he used it to instead court Penelope and convince Tyndareus to help in exchange for a method to not start a war over Helen) and thus had sworn to defend her marriage at all costs (and in fact he accompained Menelaus to Troy to try and get her back peacefully, and only after Priam refused Menelaus invoked the oath and Agamemnon started assembling the armies of Greece) and, once Palamedes (who is also skipped) exposed him as sane, was reminded that if he broke his oath the gods would DESTROY him AND his realm.
Agamemnon and Menelaus as villains. In the poem, Menelaus fights because that's his wife that CHOSE him and because without Helen Sparta could well collapse in a civil war (she's got multiple cousins who, in absence of Helen having a husband, could claim the throne), and Agamemnon does that because that's his brother and sacrifices his daughter because the alternative is breaking the oath he gave when helping Menelaus court Helen and the gods would DESTROY him AND his realm for that. Here, they are imperialist villains.
Helen being scarred. In the poem, she and Menelaus are shown to love each other and she's happy to be back in Sparta with him, and he'd never dare to harm her. At least Nolan remembered that Penelope is VERY intelligent and perceptive (one of two people in myth to not only realize a certain being was a deity in disguise, but to recognize the exact deity. The other was Aeneas and the deity his mom, so he's not as notable as Helen), and that she had recognized Telemachus on the spot when he arrived at Sparta.
When Agamemnon's death is mentioned, the identity of Clitemnestra's lover, Aegisthus, Agamemnon's cousin, is omitted. This I cannot blame Nolan for, because Aegisthus' story is beyond fucked up (let's just say that it's more fucked up than Oedipus', if only because in Oedipus' story everyone involved was trying to PREVENT the events without having all information and was suitably appalled while the brothers Atreus and Thyestes did everything ON PURPOSE to fuck with each other. If you want to traumatize yourself, look it up) and just mentioning his name would be worth of banning the film to minors.
The Nobody scene, and its follow where Odysseus reveals his identity, are skipped. They are necessary, the former to set up the latter, the latter because the reason Poseidon has a grudge against Odysseus isn't that he blinded his child, but that he committed Hubris against him by revealing his identity to someone who was OBVIOUSLY protected by the gods if he thought he could get away with breaking Sacred Hospitality and eating people.
Since we've mentioned it, the use of Sacred Hospitality, the Law of Zeus. In myth the Achaians weren't breaking it when they burned down Troy, they were ENFORCING it: Paris broke it by kidnapping Helen and stealing Sparta's treasure and Priam extended the blame to his full people when Menelaus and Odysseus came to demand reparations and he didn't give them Helen, the treasure, and Paris' head on a platter (it says a lot that the FIRST thing Hector and Paris do in The Iliad is to serve the latter to the Achaians to be killed). Also, the same law is why Penelope's suitors HAD to be exterminated: they violated it the moment Penelope asked them to leave her palace and they refused (in fact Odysseus tried to NOT kill one of them, Amphinomus, because he interfered with Antinous and Eurymachus' antics by showing basic human decency, but Athena insured he wouldn't leave before the massacre and he got killed with the rest).
Melantho, the trreacherous handmaiden that exposed Penelope's shroud trick, was for once maintained, though Antinous here was the one that seduced her. On the other hand, in the poem the shroud trick was exposed, and there were no elders demanding she remarried for the simple reason that Penelope has no right to the throne, she's Spartan (the succession line if Odysseus is confirmed dead goes first to Telemachus, then to Odysseus' sister Ctimene and her new husband (because her husband was Eurylochus and he was with Odysseus), and then to whatever cousins and uncles they have).
Odysseus in the film leaves on his own to stay away from Agamemnon. In the poem he left before him because Ajax the Lesser had broken Sanctuary by raping Cassandra on Athena's altar and various kings had voted to not kill him with rocks when he had the gall to claim Sanctuary at the same altar, and Odysseus, who had suggested that, didn't want to get caught in the splash zone, but he still got caught because he didn't make a sacrifice to Athena to beg for forgiveness for his failure, hence why the storm got him off course right after Ismarus. Menelaus set sail with him and was blown off course to Egypt, where he consulted an oracle and found out what he had to do to return home). Also, Odysseus' fleet in the film is portrayed as one ship and two boats rather than twelve ships, and Nolan's take isn't Mycenean ships or even Classical Greek ships, but VIKING LONGSHIPS with a winch that wouldn't be invented for about a thousand years yet.
Speaking of Odysseus setting sail early, he stops for resupplies at a town where people don't speak Greek and thought he was from the mysterious "Sea People" and was there to attack them. In the poem, Odysseus DID attack the place... Because the CITY of Ismarus was the capital of the Cicones, a Thracian tribe that during the Trojan War sent troops led by Euphemus, son of Troezenus, to defend Troy (Euphemus died to either Achilles, Diomedes, Idomeneus, or the two Ajaxes ganging up on him. What he did to piss off Ajax the Greater he went for a two-on-one fight is unknown), and as much as they spoke a different language from Greek they should have had people capable of understanding the language of their neighbours.
Also, the "Sea People"... Or rather, the Sea PEOPLES. In Nolan's film they are a mysterious group whose identity Odysseus reveals as Greeks from Agamemnon's army that went rogue after sacking Troy (also implying that he and his men took part in at least one sacking)... But in fact that was a generic term the Egyptians used to describe confederations attacking them from the sea before listing every single people, and the chronicles of Rameses III, the ones relevant to this period, lists this group of Sea People as the Lukka (Lycians, that sent troops to reinforce Troy), Peleset (either a Pelasgian group or people from the Cyprian city of Pyla. Better known as the Philistines after the Egyptians forcibly settled their shattered remnants in Canaan, possibly as a counterweight to the recalcitrant Israelites), the Shekelesh (possibly the Sicels from Sicily), the Sherden (the Nuragic people from Sardinia), Weshesh (unidentified), Tjeker (variously identified with a Sicilian tribe, the people from Zakros on Crete, or the Teucrians mentioned by Homer as a generic name for the Trojan coalition), and finally the Ekwesh and Denyen (the Achaians and Danaoi, the latter being another name Homer used for the Greeks. So yes, PART of the Sea Peoples were indeed Mycenean Greeks).
Circe. In the film she's presented as an old witch. In the poem, and generally the Greek myth, she's an incredibly hot goddess with a horrible luck with men (before Hermes gets Odysseus to sleep with her, she's mentioned as having courted Glaucus and Picus, resulting in the former getting his lover Scylla turned into a sea monster for mouthing off and the latter being turned into a woodpecker for the same reason). Also, the poem only speaks of men turned into pigs (though people speculate on that deer), other animals are again from The Aeneid.
About Circe... Eurylochus was smart enough to stay out of her home, and that's how Odysseus knew what happened to the patrol. Eurylochus was also loyal, though stupid enough to convince the others to eat the Cattle of Helios to change the diet (Nolan gave him a better reason here in that he and the crew had given up on life and wanted to eat with a full belly, hence eating the one thing that would get them killed by the gods).
The land of the Lotus Eaters is the first stop after the storm that blew the fleet off course, and in the poem they had no relation with Calypso (a nymph living on an island far in the west).
Polyphemus is presented as a naked savage and the only Cyclops. The poem openly describes him as semi-civilized (he did eat people after all), and one of many Cyclops living in the area. In fact he's compared favorably to the Laestrygonians in that he's more civilized than them.
The film also skipped on the encounter with Aeolus, that almost brought the fleet home only for the crew to open the wind bag and get everyone in Laestrygonia.
The Laestrygonians are shown in what can only be described as 15th century European plate armor. The kind that could shrug off the famed English longbow and even take shots from early firearms.
The bows in the film are all shown as recurve... When it's a plot point in the poem that the only recurve bow in Ithaca was Odysseus' (and in fact it was a gift to him from a master archer from Euboea, an island close to the Hittite lands were bows WERE recurve).
The Twelve Axes. I should have listed it up among the things that Hollywood never gets right, but it gets a special mention here because the interpretation is the stupidest ever, and the feat of shooting an arrow through them isn't anywhere as difficult as shooting an arrow through the "eye of the axes". This is even worse because in the film some of the weapons hidden in the armory by the servants are epsilon axes, that is THE KIND OF AXE MENTIONED IN THE POEM.
Archery in general. It's horrible, and I could write a lot... But everyone's favorite arrow bard @blumineck already did this more extensively than myself, please go watch his video on his blog, or on his YouTube channel here to give him some revenue.
The Sirens in Greek myth are bird women, not mermaids. I could forgive the error from a Romance language speaker because said languages, for some reason, use the same word for both and many aren't aware there's a difference (I too, Italian, didn't know of it until adulthood), but last I checked Nolan is a Brit.
Also, there was an entire crew that heard the Sirens' song and lived to tell the tale thanks to them being the Argonauts, whose numbers included Orpheus, who just sang BETTER. Possibly twice, because the Argonauts are confirmed to have met the Sirens on their way to Colchis in the Black Sea but later visited Circe and would have had to pass close to this other flock. And Odysseus should have known, because his dad was with the Argonauts (and pulling off what his father did WITHOUT Orpheus could have been a good motivation for him).
When the Sun God is mentioned, his name is give as Apollo. Incorrectly: the Sun God is Helios (whose name is literally Greek for "Sun"), Apollo's identification with the sun only started in the 5th century BC.
When Telemachus goes to Sparta he only visits Pilos when coming back, and only for the temple of Athena, supposedly the oldest in existence. In the poem Telemachus visits Pilos before Sparta because that's the city of Nestor, one of the kings that went to Troy and came back, and skips visiting his palace because he's in a hurry to go back to Ithaca and knows that if Nestor spots him he'll have to stay for another day and banquet, and the oldest temple of Athena is, guess where, in Athens, as she was originally the personification of the city (pretty much every Mycenean city had a similar deiy, Athena just got lucky in that she had other aspects and was worshipped in other places).
Finally, the locations. The FUCKING LOCATIONS. Because aside for Aeolia (that just floated on the sea and didn't have a fixed location) and Ogygia (Calypso's island, that we know was far away in the west and looked whatever Calypso wanted it to look), we know EXACTLY where Odysseus stopped. Ismarus was close to modern day Lake Mitrikon in Thrace (the city is confirmed to have existed, though the Bronze Age site still has to be found), the island of the Lotus Eaters is identified by Polybius as Djerba, Polyphemus lived in Sicily at the feet of Mount Etna, Laestrygonia is almost certainly Gallura in Sardinia (that not only mirrors Homer's description, it was historically inhabited by a tribe called the Lestriconi, a single letter away from their Latin name), Circe's island of Eea is either Ponza or the aptly named Circeo (now a promontory, but once separated from the mainland by marshes), the entrance to the Underworld is this beautiful place near Lake Avernus (no offense to Iceland, but it's not hellish enough for this role), the Sirens' place is identified as either Siren's Rock near modern day Sorrento or on the coast of modern day Vibo Valentia), Scylla and Charybdis are in the Strait of Messina (in fact, this picture actually shows Charybdis' whirpool. Yes, it exists. Italy is just like this), and Thrinacria, the island where the crew found the Cattle of the Sun God, is Sicily.
Seriously, Nolan, why? WHY?!
