Christian Toto reviews it.
I’m still on the fence about going to a theater for it.
[Friday-afternoon update]
Here is Peter Suderman’s review.
[Bumped]
[Saturday-afternoon update]
I just watched Christopher Nolan’s #TheOdyssey and I left the cinema with a deep sense of disappointment.
— Herod Priovolos (@herodpriovolos) July 17, 2026
I entered expecting Homer’s world to breathe: salt in the air, darkness over the sea, gods watching from a distance, and a wounded man struggling to return home. Instead,… pic.twitter.com/qeoryve9b6
[Monday-morning update]
Another review, from John Podhoretz.
[Bumped]
…and another, at Tablet magazine.
Regardless of faithfulness to Homer, it sounds like quite the visual spectacle.
I generally like Nolan’s films but will wait. Maybe if its enjoyable on the small screen, I will reward it with a trip to the theater.
My father used to have a joke about an army’s spear catcher. I think the modern gaming concept is called “tanking”. It is good to see Elliot Page so perfectly portray the role my father described. Otherwise, I have better things to do for 3 hours.
It’s been so long since I was at the movies last. I think it was Oppenheimer. But there are two movies in the theaters right now I want to see: Young Washington and The Odyssey.
I probably would have went to see Greyhound in the theaters, but the Covid shutdown hit. I ended up watching it a few times on Apple TV. I enjoyed that one too…
Oh and I recently rented Hail Mary. I had thought about seeing that one in the theater, but never got around to it. I couldn’t buy the MacGuffin in that one, nor the Interstellar Spaceship that came to be because, well, the MacGuffin! I really had no problem with the casting of Ryan Gosling. He was as convincing in his role as the weak plot would allow.
I think a better movie could have been made from Artemis. In fact some of the tech deployed in Artemis was featured in Hail Mary. (Bubble spacesuits) Weir still has yet to top The Martian IMHO.
Hail Mary was enjoyable. Watched it at home, then the theater, then again at home. Got my niece and nephews to watch it. It didn’t hold their attention in the first part because it was so slow but the third act did.
Sometimes you gotta give it a test run before rewarding it with a trip to the theater.
Young Washington looks good but Angle Studios butchered Animal Farm, so will wait for Young Washington to hit the small screen.
I wanted to see Greyhound, but I went a couple of years not wanting another subscription. We recently finished our home theater room. 7.2.2 surround system with 150” projection. I quickly discovered the cheapest streaming source that could feed my system was an AppleTV unit. I finally watched Greyhound. It was good on a big screen, but I was disappointed in the story.
The book it was based on is much better
I use a Firestick 4k ultra, or whatever, for my projector. The projector is only 1080p but provides great picture quality for the money spent and it can do dolby atmos with the right speakers. I use the free streaming apps (mostly tubi), xfinity stream, and jellyfin for movies and shows.
I have a Valerion Pro 2 projector. It comes with Google OS, but Fandango, which has the majority of my digital content (as they were the first if not only company to allow you to obtain digital by proving you had a hard copy), doesn’t do better than SD when operated via Chrome, which of course Google OS is built upon. Firestick might work, but AppleTV won out for me on operability and support for WiFi 7. I’m able to stream 950mbps to my AppleTV wirelessly.
That is an odd issue. A 4k fire stick would work but you can’t go wrong with apple. Nice projector.
I don’t go to see anything in theaters anymore. Apart from wishing to avoid random contagions, a movie the length of The Odyssey is now completely beyond my ability to sit entirely through without at least one piss break. Theaters, alas, cannot be paused. So I will see The Odyssey when it reaches the streamers for free or at least at an affordable price.
That said, the hoo-raw about casting a black Helen of Troy and of casting Elliot (nee Ellen) Page at all conjured up visions of a woke-fest on the order of Starfleet Academy. That doesn’t seem to be the case based on the cast list.
Which is not to say that the casting is perfect. The choice of Lupita Nyong’o to play Helen is deficient not because she is black but because, capable actress though she be, hers is not a face that could launch a thousand ships.
If the idea was merely to cast a non-white Helen, a perfectly suitable actress was already on the cast list, just in another role. I refer to the so-very lovely Zendaya, who, though not playing Helen, is at least playing a character for which she is physically well-suited, the goddess Athena.
If the idea was to, specifically, cast a black Helen, I would have given the nod to Cynthia Erivo from the Wicked franchise. She has an eminently armada-worthy face and the rest of her is, pun intended, wicked good as well. And if being black wasn’t worth sufficient woke points, Erivo is also bi-sexual.
As nearly as I can determine, the character played by Page is a sort of undercover Greek operative who cajols the Trojans into bringing The Horse inside the city gates. One has to wonder at least a tiny bit whether this bit of casting wasn’t Nolan being subtly arch in filling the role of a person who seems to be one thing and is actually something else with an actor of whom the same can be said.
I don’t care how awesome this movie is in every other respect, I’ll never see it anymore than I would watch a Battle of Britain movie that was 100% accurate in every respect except for portraying Douglas Bader as a black man.
It’s a matter of principle.
We know what Douglas Bader looked like. We really don’t know what Helen looked like. The odds that she was African are pretty low, but I think it’s within the realm of reasonable artistic license to portray her as such.
Victor Davis Hansen doesn’t think Helen was black either, but acknowledges that there are no real descriptions of her in Homer or anywhere else. The idea that she was blonde is backed by nothing in Homer or other ancient sources. VDH also notes that there was no racism by the Mycenaean Greeks anent Africans, pointing to passages in their writings in which Ethiopians were described as noble in appearance and were held in high regard.
Homer described her as fair skinned and blonde.
I guess Sydney Sweeney was busy.
Huh. Why did I think Odysseus was played by Josh Brolin? I like Matt Damon plenty, you’d think I’d have picked up on that. Maybe it’s the beard?
I stopped going to theaters when my wife could no longer go. Since then (16 years now) I’ve been buying DVDs of all the TV shows I missed during the years I was too busy to bother with it. When I moved to Country Estate, I stopping being able to get cable or an over the air signal. I decided not to bother with streaming. I watch stuff on YouTube in a 10-inch tablet, watch rocket launches on my 22-inch graphics workstation monitor.
I will go see it in the local Town theater tomorrow. The seats are extremely comfortable and they would have to be in order for me to sit in them for 3 hours.
There are many “Armada-worthy” (H/T Eagleson) faces out there who can act. Maybe none. I would say, though, that the then-luminous Catherine Zeta Jones of Zorro fame would have been one of them.
I’ll let you all know what I think. But I will say that I immediately identified the Viking ship dolled up as a Greek vessel in the trailer and that is bothersome – it’s all wrong. The armor is all wrong – not even close. So we’ll see if there is anything else that turns me off.
I meant to say there AREN’T many armada-worthy faces who can act.
I see images of the Trojan horse halfway buried in sand, with soldiers with ropes trying to pull it out. I have a hard time believing that the horse would survive the haul.
A lot of nerds will have problems with the costumes and armor. We live in an age where so much is known and there are active reenactment groups. Many people want to see some historical accuracy when it comes to the visuals even if there is some artistic license around the edges and with the story.
As I demonstrated above, I’m one of those nerds – the armor is far too wrong. The armor used in the movie Troy was somewhat better. Not great…but better.
But I also don’t like too much artistic license with the story line.
I also have trouble with modern English usage in a film like this. If I hear someone saying “Okay let’s go” or “What’s the upside?” in a film that takes place in the Bronze Age, my gears grind. BUT, I tell myself that they probably had phrases, back then, that are also shorthand and mean the same thing…just not those.
As far as a black actress portraying Helen is concerned – I don’t care. skin color is irrelevant to me. Unless a character was well described in the original story. In that case they better adhere to the description.
The way I view race in theater is that the race of the actor is unimportant but swapping the race of the character can be a problem.
I agree that language can throw it all off. A “modern” way of speaking can ruin the setting and it is even worse when rules are established with how characters speak and then those rules are broken.
Well I saw it.
It was ok. Not fantastic. Not awful. Entertaining: I knew it was 3 hours long but wasn’t aware that I was seated there for 3 hours.
Particulars:
So I heard the use of the word “ok” a lot. So they were using modern speech. I overlooked it.
Armor all wrong – not even close. Already mentioned above how that is bothersome to me – but that’s a personal preference.
Adhered roughly to the story in terms of events and characters. But details in major events were left out. For example, the focus on intelligence overcoming brute strength was made evident in the scene with the Cyclops. But they left out getting the Cyclops wasted on wine.
The acting was pretty good.
Even though they dolled up a Viking ship replica and used that for a Greek ship, the sailing scenes were really well done. Lots of wave riding.
Budget was $250 million to make this thing. I suspect the box office will cover that. How much profit? Dunno.
In listening to people talk I do think it has sparked an interest in the Originals.
Oh I forgot..the most important point:
You didn’t get all the Odyssian apologia until the end. Up until then he fights so that he and he crew can survive.
Then all of a sudden, at the end, you get this background of guilt. Sure Athena was there all along. But it’s all concentrated at the end. And is, of course, completely antithetical to Homer’s intent.
From the clips I have seen, Zendaya as Athena looks like Odysseus’ therapist?
Behaves like one too.
The sports team of the a high school in the City of Madison are the Spartans, but the mascot is wearing what looks to be a Roman helmet.
I mean, Madison, WI is home to what is supposed to be a world-class University. That we don’t have people in this community who can give the Spartan mascot the correct gear is a stain on the reputation of the University of Wisconsin-Madison as an institution of scholarship.