The Odyssey

That was a movie, eh? Christopher Nolan might be overly dour, but there’s no denying he can craft a good movie, and he can pull off spectacle. The scenes with the cyclops and Circe had me squirming.¹ The Trojan Horse was cool, as was the sacking of Troy, and the scene at the end with the suitors was cathartic, if a little too long.

(I gotta point out: the one actor who looked like he was having a great time in the movie was Robert Pattinson as one of the suitors. He was delightfully slimy. The triangle between him, Odysseus, and Sinon is the emotional core of the movie, moreso than Odysseus wanting to return to Penelope.)

Near the end, Odysseus (in disguise) tells Penelope his version of Troy. It snaps the rest of the movie into focus, and explains the tension between him and everyone—his soldiers, fellow Greeks, and himself. I’d enjoy rewatching the movie with that in mind, and I don’t often say that about a movie nearly three hours long.²

One last thing. I tweeted thusly:

The Odyssey: this is only half-thought through, but that sure was a film about the end of the American Empire, eh?

Spoilers from here on, obviously.

Odysseus fights in an overseas war because it’s his duty, not because he wants to or thinks it’s wise, and the movie connects the sacking of Troy with the downfall of Mycenaean civilization. There are real “the empire overextended, suffered a Pyrrhic victory, and went into inescapable decline” vibes to it, along with a litany of weather disasters. They couldn’t have known what was going to happen, but it’s a real 2026 film.