PEL Presents PMP#227: The Odyssey: Epic Film

0:00This is Pretty Much Pop, a culture podcast weaving the threads to figure out pop culture every episode, but undoing our work every night. Today we're discussing Christopher Nolan's Odyssey. I'm Mark Linton-Meyer, just hanging out in the dung heap till my time comes. This is Al Baker recording today using a special microphone that only 41 people listening to this podcast will be able to experience properly.

0:30I'm Sarah Lynn Bruck, and as much as I really like this movie, they should title any movie that's three hours long, The Odyssey. This is Lawrence Ware, and Christopher Nolan doesn't test audiences, he tests bladders. Well, you saw it four times, or five, how many? Four times. Four times. Saw it four times. Was that because you wanted to see the whole movie, but you also needed to take like two pee breaks? Multiple pee breaks, no. I saw it early on my computer, which is a terrible experience as a critic thing, and

1:01then I went to a critic screening, and then I took my one son to the movie, and then he wanted to go back, and so we went with my other son, with him, and my middle son has seen it at this point five times. Whoa. He enjoys it that much, yeah, but he insists on seeing it only in IMAX, he doesn't want to see it in a regular movie theater, and I think that it's actually, that's a good point for him to do it in that kind of setting, because you watch it on a regular screen, you don't really get the full experience, really.

1:31I was in IMAX, but I was in the second row, so I was looking up. You were way too close, dude. You were in the water. You were literally in the water as you watched that movie. Where's your neck brace, Mark? I've heard that it's a loud movie, but this, I don't really like this theater that has the IMAX, just because the sound is always too loud, no matter what film I'm seeing there, and so this was just, the bass was just constantly, and making it hard to understand some things that were being said. That said, I still found it gripping.

2:02I prepared myself. I did not leave during it at all. I was riveted. Well, I had the same theater experience as you, Mark, except I was in a better row, but it was so loud, and I wasn't sure if this is just IMAX in general or the theater that I go to regularly, but yeah, the bass was way too loud. I'm not glad to hear that it's like that other places, but I was like, is this just like, am I just going to the wrong theater? But I too also really, really liked this movie a lot.

2:33It was not a perfect film for me, but it was classic Nolan, and I'm really glad I saw it, and I'm actually really glad I saw it in IMAX. So I didn't see it in IMAX. I saw it not as Nolan intended, just in a regular big screen cinema. Yeah, it's an incredible movie. As Sarah said, not perfect, and I'm pleased, I was slightly concerned, because we talked about Christopher Nolan relatively recently, and we said some, you know, not mean things, but we didn't completely fall into the hype machine. And I was kind of worried that I would have to, because obviously one thing to say about

3:06this movie is it has had maybe the most amazingly put together press tour of any film that has ever been released. So I've heard a lot of what Christopher Nolan had to say about the making of this film, and I respect him an awful lot as a result. So I was worried that I would have to walk back some of my, you know, less generous criticisms of Christopher Nolan as a filmmaker. However, I think most of them still stand up based on the Odyssey. What it certainly is, is a tremendous achievement in spectacle, and I definitely want to see

3:36it in IMAX. I feel like this is a movie that's going to get released and re-released in IMAX over the years. That is clearly what it was designed to do. A lot of the discussions about the film, I think, have been really interesting too, because so many of the takes seem obviously silly. And having seen the film, I think there are many interesting criticisms of it that I haven't heard aired, which surprised me, because people seem very much either on their this is a five-star perfect movie, or there's some weird political problem with the adaptation that renders the whole thing meaningless.

4:06And clearly, I don't think either of those things are true. There's a lot of white space in between. But the bottom line is, it's a tremendous achievement. And I would say, just in terms of scale and filmmaking technique, Lawrence can pick me off on this if I'm missing an obvious thing in between. But I think the only thing that you can sensibly compare it to is Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy. Hmm. Lawrence of Arabia comes to mind as well. Yeah, I meant since Fellowship of the Ring. Yeah, I think you're probably right. I think you're probably right, honestly. There was something unearthly about this for me.

4:38And granted, again, this is only seeing it once. Maybe it will seem more ordinary as I watch it repeatedly or watch it in my home. But the soundtrack in particular, it was not orchestral a la Lord of the Rings. I mean, it was Syntho, but it wasn't Syntho a la The Mandalorian. It wasn't like fun. It was just this primal, unearthly noises. And I just found it unlike anything that I feel like I've heard. I mean, I'm sure somebody can then, hey, no, have you seen this movie?

5:10This has exactly the same kind of score, but that was a standout for me. And of course, the visual look of the thing. I was meaning to check out other versions of this. You know, we did this kind of short notice. But I did pull up The Return, which was streaming, which is a recent movie. Ray Fiennes, you know, a... Pretty good movie. Yeah. It's not a spectacle like this. It's a pretty good movie. I only got through the first 10 minutes of that. And I was just like, there is no point. After watching, this is... I've just seen this. Yeah. Well, I just felt like seeing Christopher Nolan's unique vision and the cinematography and the

5:44sound, then to see sort of ordinary guys in togas and filming some of the same, I'm sure, Greek ruins. I think it was the same Greek ruins. Yeah. Because if you keep watching The Return, The Return is actually, it's weirdly a lot of male nudity in that movie. But anyway, it's a relatively good movie. I mean, Juliette Binoche is in there. And she does a good job doing what she does as Penelope. And then Ray Fiennes, Ralph Fiennes, Ralph Fiennes, Ralph Fiennes, I forgot his name. It's pronounced Ray, but it's spelled Ralph. Ralph. Well, then he's tricking me.

6:15He did a good job in the film, but it's just not a spectacle on this level. And I think that the issue with you, Mark, and you, Sarah, is the theater. Because the theater with the good sound mixing, it should be... Or maybe, I don't know, maybe you're sitting too close to the speakers. Like, the sound mixing should be such that you get a propulsive thing, but it shouldn't be overwhelming. You should be able to hear the dialogue. It shouldn't be that bad. So I'm wondering if it's maybe your theater or something like that, or the sound mixing

6:46in that theater. Because I've been in multiple IMAX theaters on this film, and I've sat beneath the speakers. I sat in the middle. I sat in other places, and it was never that experience. So I wonder if maybe the sound was a little bit too turned up in your theaters. Because I think that part of what's great about this film, and I mean, there's so many technical aspects to... Because I think the editing is legitimately brilliant in this film. Yeah. I think the cinematography is so good. I think the screenwriting is good when he's not doing dialogue.

7:17I have criticism of the dialogue, but I have criticism of all of the Christopher Nolan's dialogue films that he writes. He's not great at dialogue. But the score and the sound is definitely going to get an Oscar nomination, if not a win. And if Ludwig gets another win, that's going to be, what, his third? Or maybe fourth? I mean, so he won for Black Panther. He won for The Odyssey. Like, this dude is on a heater of a run. This is a film that, on the first viewing, I was so immersed in the plotting and wondering what's going to happen next, even though I knew The Odyssey, but wondering what's going

7:49to happen next and all that kind of stuff. It was multiple viewings that helped me to appreciate the characters a great deal more. But I don't want to get too deep into that yet. I want to hear what you guys think about the technical aspects. Because was it your theater or was the sound too loud? Like, what about for you, Al? So they complained about it. Was your sound too loud? No, but it wasn't an IMAX screen, so they didn't, so I probably didn't have the super-powered subwoofers, which are difficult to control. It's surprising that the sound isn't as tightly controlled as so many other elements of an IMAX screening are, because my understanding is that you don't get to screen The Odyssey

8:24unless the production company is going to make sure that you're screening it in the right kind of way. Yeah. But no, it wasn't hard for me to hear. The sound was, like, huge. It was a very big, loud movie, but it was all very, you know, atmospheric. I didn't feel like I missed anything. I was surprised, too. There is a 70-millimeter IMAX theater within the vicinity of Philadelphia, but it is sold out, I think, through September. So we couldn't get a seat. So I was able to get a seat at the other IMAX theater that's not 70-millimeter within

8:55two weeks, which is still saying something. I saw Oppenheimer there, too, and I was kind of struck by the sound. It sounded like the bass was way too loud. And honestly, my husband and daughter, both, we all three had the same complaint. We thought it was just too loud. I could hear the dialogue fine, but I felt like the bass was turned up way too loud. And I do not enjoy the rumbling in my seat. I don't like that. Rumbling in your seat? Were you in 4DX or something like that? Like, what was it like?

9:25I don't know, but my chair, I can feel the sound in my chair. So it's not smell-o-vision. It's not a space-age immersive technique of rumbling your seat. Smell-o-vision.

9:41That I would not have wanted with the Odyssey. So to supplement, Lawrence was referring to Ludwig. It's Ludwig Gorenson. I can't say that dude's name. I cannot say that dude's name. Used 35 varying bronze gongs and other Bronze Age sounds, revived Greek instruments. So yes, there's a reason why it sounded so weird and inappropriate. Visually, some of the action scenes, again, this might have been where I was sitting and stuff. I had a little trouble. Sometimes I feel like this is not terribly uncommon in the theater.

10:11When there's stuff moving really fast, it's like I can almost see images. It doesn't look smooth to me. Something about the way it is projected, which I was kind of surprised that I was having that. But I still could make out the action. It wasn't like Transformers or whatever, where when things are so frenetic that you can't actually tell. How dare you talk negatively about Transformers, sir? How dare you? A masterpiece of filmmaking Transformers. There are some films where the action is so fast that you cannot see what is going on on the screen.

10:42And I did not feel that. But it still had, you know, this sort of dark, grungy thing that I took more as mood rather than, you know, I just can't see what's going on. I noticed that in the final action scene. I assume you don't care about spoilers for a, like, 3,000-year-old story. But, yeah, the final action scene, it did feel too dark for me to properly be able to see the action. A lot of the action that took place indoors felt darker and grimmer than would have been ideal to see the choreography,

11:12which was, I assume, a deliberate choice. But that was one of the things I noted. I definitely noticed the darkness during the final ship sequence whenever, like, all hell is breaking loose. And it's implied that Poseidon is, like, really, or the gods, rather, are really putting it on them. It was really dark and you only saw things because of the flashing of the light. I assume that's a choice, but I didn't love that. I do enjoy seeing the stuff that's happening. Although, I think that maybe he's trying to do, because he really leaned into horror in this film.

11:45Like, there's really horrific stuff with the Cyclops and then, was it Cersei, I think it was? Cersei. Yeah, for sure. Like, he really leaned into the horror elements. And I honestly didn't like that Cersei. Origami sorcery. Yeah, I didn't like that Cersei stuff, because I'm not a big body horror guy. But he really leaned into it, so much so that it made me interested to see what it might do with a elevated horror film, a la, like, The Lighthouse or something like that, because he really leaned into that. And I've never seen him kind of play with that kind of toolbox before, but it's clear he can do it.

12:16Yeah, I thought that the lighting, this is sort of one reason why you do it in IMAX. And you watch it on an IMAX screen and not on, you know, your phone on an airplane. I wasn't bothered by the low lighting, because I could actually make things out, and I could see any details I felt were supposed to be there were there. Was the Cyclops speaking English? Did I just... I know he only sort of goes over the corner and talks to himself a little bit. Was I supposed to understand what he said at all?

12:46I mean, he was probably speaking Greek, but to the audience who was speaking English, he said the word Poseidon. I need to watch the film with subtitles, because I have no idea what that dude said. I couldn't make that out at all.

12:57He said Poseidon's curse be on you or something like that when they stabbed him in the eye. But here's, like, maybe the first interesting adaptation choice, because this is one of the things I noticed, because one of the famous things about the Cyclops that didn't make it into the adaptation is Odysseus tricking him by telling him that his name is... Nobody, yeah. And then he doesn't... And obviously, we don't see the other Cyclopses, Cyclop... Cyclopades. Cyclopsi? Cyclopsi? Is it? Cyclopsi. You were also around on the island. And it brings me to one of...

13:28I think, you know, lighting notwithstanding, my first kind of major criticism of the film, just as a member of the audience, which was that, ironically, for a two-hour, 45-minute-long epic movie, a lot of it felt kind of rushed to me. I agree, especially that second act. I agree on that point. The few adventure spots that we get in The Returns, so there's the Lystragonians, we get the Cyclops, and we get Cersei. All of these things happen, like, super quickly. They just run off the... They get onto the island, and then, you know, you immediately meet the Cyclops, you immediately meet Cersei.

13:58Everything happens right away. I know that you've got to be quick about it, because you've got a runtime that you have to keep. But it kind of undercuts some of the epic quality of the movie for me. And it's a really difficult choice, and I don't envy Nolan having to make it. But I kind of hoped... I found myself wishing by the end of it that they'd cut one or two things in order to make some of the big set pieces, like, last a bit longer. Give us a couple more, like, Odysseus character moments. And just give a little bit more, like, depth and clarity of meaning to the little adventure snippets.

14:30But in this movie, these vignettes just serve as, like, little adventure vignettes. Yeah. Not many of the... Like, they don't really have a lot of heft behind them in the way that they do in their poem and in some other adaptations. They don't tell us a lot about who Odysseus is in ways that they certainly can do if you take a bit more time with them. All they really do is serve to give Odysseus a lot of horrible things to go through, so that we can understand that he's been properly, like, battered by the time he gets home. Yeah. I noticed that it felt episodic.

15:02But the poem is episodic also. It is. But I wondered if part of it was... Fan service sounds probably too simplistic. But Nolan knows that we all have read this story multiple times. We know it, and we want to see those key set pieces. We want to see that. We want to see the Cyclops. We want to see Cersei. We want to see... We want to see everything. And he just can't possibly put the whole of that poem.

15:35And that includes not just all of the episodes, but also all of the nuances of character, all of the themes. He can't cram that into a movie. That's impossible. So just to reiterate what you just said, Al, I don't envy Nolan. This is a huge undertaking. And actually, is there anybody else but Nolan who could possibly do what we actually saw up there on screen? You know? But there were parts that felt kind of rushed.

16:06But I wondered if he was like, oh, we need to see as much of this story as we can. And maybe that's why some things seem to get kind of short-drifted. The really confusing part about those decisions for me is the inclusion of the Lystragonians, who are not one of the big... They're not the adventure that everyone remembers. Everyone remembers Cyclops and Cersei and Plypso. And I found myself wondering, so like, why make time for the Lystragonians? He probably thought it was cool. Yeah. I think that's it. It's because it's where most of them die.

16:39So... Yeah. A lot of the criticisms I have for the movie, I think I can basically put down to the fact that Christopher Nolan started from, I want to make the Odyssey in IMAX. And most of, or an awful lot of the rest of the choices, some of which have like slightly weird outcomes on screen, can be traced back to the technical limitations that he found himself working in. For instance, the fact that you're shooting in IMAX gives you a really, really hard limit to the length of the film. He did not have an extra 15 minutes to play with because IMAX projectors will only go up to like about as long as the movie was.

17:15Yeah. I mean, maybe have an intermission, maybe have it on two reels like they used to in the old days.

17:22Do you guys really want a longer movie? Like, is that really what we're arguing for? I did want a longer movie. I would have had this in two parts. I think this would have been a better movie in two parts, but maybe that was cost prohibitive. I mean, it's clearly a stupidly expensive movie to make as well. But another technical limitation you can clearly see throughout the movie is something that all the actors talked a lot about in their press tour, which is how long the IMAX cameras let you choose a scene for, which is about two and a half minutes. This, I think, is behind a lot of the slightly clunky dialogue scenes because you don't get to do a long take.

17:54You have to do all of your scenes in two and a half minute chunks. And I'm not sure that anyone but Anne Hathaway has had the chops in that movie to actually work that way. Yeah, I agree. Matt Damon was okay. I mean... He was okay. He was okay, yeah. So he's going to get nominated, honestly, but he was okay, though. This movie is going to get nominated. It's going to be nominated for a lot of stuff. We can get into that later. It's Sarah Lynn Bruck here to talk about OneSkin. I've tried a lot of different brands of skincare, always in search of something that might work better than my current routine. Not only does OneSkin work better, but it actually works differently.

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20:02Please support our show and tell them we sent you. Sarah, there's something that you said that makes me want to move into a little bit other conversation because you said that we've all read the story. We've all read the story multiple times. That is not true. Like, I read this story one time when I was in high school and I barely fucking paid attention when I read the story. I did it because I had to. And I'm shocked. I am legitimately shocked by how many people are so incensed by his choices to make changes to the poem as though, like, they all love the poem and they read the poem yearly and they have altars to the poem in their home.

20:46Like, I do not understand the cultural outrage. Now, the woke stuff is different. Like, the fact that he made choices to include Black actors, that's a whole different issue. But, like, his decision to make changes to the poem, everyone who adapts anything makes changes. A hundred percent. And this came from the oral tradition, by the way. Which means that absolutely everybody made changes. It has been adapted the entire time. And I do not understand people's, like, you have to be faithful to, for example, Emily Watson, who's actually a friend and I like her quite a bit, but she wrote something.

21:21Emily Wilson. Wilson, sorry. She wrote something that I completely disagree with. Like, why do we have this idea that we need to be very faithful to the source material when everybody makes adaptations? Because there's a lot of stuff in that poem that is just not cinematic. And it's just not easy to put on camera. His decision to relatively sideline the gods, although there's a lot of talk about gods, but he relatively sidelines the gods. I mean, you've got to make choices. And he wanted to make a particular film with a particular narrative, with a particular kind of political idea.

21:57And he made those choices. And I'm willing to allow a filmmaker to do that. And I don't understand the outrage about it. I feel a little ahead of the curve on this in that my last exposure to The Odyssey was interviewing Emily Wilson on The Partially Examined Life about her translation. So other than in undergrad, I had not read this book in full, but I read her version and heard her take on, you know, why she made it more comprehensible American English and things. And so to address the dialogue issue, I feel like this was, it's a balancing act, that it's clunky, it's foreign.

22:33You know, they boldly state things in a way that people now wouldn't state them. How mannered and actorly and theatrical is it going to be? Is it going to sound Shakespearean or is it going to sound sort of like everyday English? Well, it's not going to be either of those, but it has to be somewhere in between. I think he did the best job he could. I don't know how many of his clunky sounding lines were directly. I know he used Emily Wilson's translation, right? So this is the direct line of, but can we blame some of those on her or is it his responsibility in terms of, as you were saying, condensing things down to fit in two minutes or whatever?

23:10Hey, this is Mark inserting a week later when I'm doing the final edit on this episode. And not only had I not read Emily Wilson's scathing take on this film, but there's since been an explosion of press around this. So it was extremely ill-informed of me to imply that Emily Wilson was in any way responsible for even a single line of dialogue that went in here. She said specifically she would be embarrassed if that were the case. Like some of those charges are clearly, like Sidney, as you said, Lawrence, you can't do a word-for-word adaptation of like even American English translation.

23:43But what you can, I think, fairly question are the choices which Nolan left himself room to make given the constraints. So like one of them, which Emily Wilson, her essay, talks about is the lack of sex in the movie, which is a strange choice because Odysseus is seduced by... Multiple people. Yeah, multiple people. By Circe, by Calypso, by, you know, whatever. But because, like, she puts it down to, like, Nolan needs Odysseus to be a faithful husband by modern standards, so we can't have him shagging nymphs.

24:16Another thing that he absolutely had room in his adaptation to do but chose not to was Penelope's trick of Odysseus at the end, the bed thing. In the poem, he asks Odysseus to describe their marital bed as a final test, which is the way that we know that Penelope is not just, you know, a patient, stoic wife. She is also, you know, clever and tricksy and smart and is every bit Odysseus' equal. That feels like a beat that's completely in keeping with Nolan's telling of the story, and I'm really not clear on why they didn't make it in.

24:52Given that Nolan is making the movie that Nolan decided that he wanted to make, that, like, takes a lot of things off the table right away. But even within those constraints, there are some odd choices that I think it's fair to criticise him for. When we were leaving the theatre, Josh and I were talking about the ownership of filmmaking. So, like, Guillermo del Toro will make his version of, and we'll put his name on top of the title of, you know, Frankenstein or something, right? Or Pinocchio. This is not Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey.

25:23It is just The Odyssey. But I think this is very much Christopher Nolan's Odyssey. Very well said. It definitely is. Because his heroes are always, are often, not always, but often they're sort of the great man trope, the great hero trope. Very true. And so his casting of Matt Damon is so specific for this particular Odysseus, which is different than the Odysseus that we get in the poem.

25:53They share some connective tissue, but Matt Damon brings with him a particular set of baggage that we're all familiar with, just as most of us, or many of us, have a passing familiarity with Odysseus. We are not all Emily Wilson-level experts, but I think most of us have read this poem at least once. I consider myself having a passing familiarity with the poem, and I've read it at least three times.

26:23Once in grammar school, once in high school, and again in college. And then I haven't really thought about it much since. When's grammar school? Okay, so... I read this in fourth grade with my class. Really? That's why you're so smart. You're real smart. You're reminding me that in sixth grade, we watched the film version, Ulysses, with... I remember that. Yeah. I'm wondering why that was the case. Like, we must have read some of the poem or something. Like, there's no way that we read the whole thing. We didn't read the whole thing, but we definitely read... I remember winning some sort of art prize for my drawing of the Cyclops, the Cyclops scene.

27:01Not only are you brilliant, you're a wonderful artist as well. This is... No, I am not a wonderful artist. I'm learning so much. But anyway, but it was... I really remember it, and I remember being struck by it. But anyway, but I'm just saying that most of us have a passing familiarity with this story. And we also have a passing familiarity with Matt Damon as a performer. And I think Christopher Nolan knows this so well. And so this is his particular... He is taking an ownership of this story in a very specific way.

27:34That was incredibly well put, because it is Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey. And maybe one of the problematic legacies of this movie is that everyone's going to see this movie, and everyone is now going to take that as the default mode of the story. Right. And it's not. As you say, it's an incredibly timely adaptation. Well, maybe this is a good time to start talking about the specific themes that Nolan explores. So Matt Damon's Odysseus is a very contemporary, modern, not anachronistically modern war hero.

28:05The story deals in PTSD and, you know, multigenerational trauma and all of these kinds of things. And, you know, civilizational niceties, which is kind of the big thesis statement of the movie, is that ultimately civilization rests on people being nice to each other. And as soon as we give that up, then everything burns, which, you know, okay, Chris Nolan, we can talk about that separately. But Matt Damon is a very, very modern kind of Odysseus. And it is only one of the kinds of Odysseus that you could present in a movie like this.

28:36And I think one of the, yeah, one of the problematic legacies of this movie is that people are going to start thinking of Matt Damon's Odysseus as the default mode. But the poem is, like, has lasted this long because it's rich enough to afford all kinds of emphases and different kinds of retellings. And the fact that it is billed as the Odyssey and not Christopher Nolan's specific version of the Odyssey might cause problems in that domain. In exactly the same way that 300 skewed a bunch of impressionable young white men's ideas of what classical warfare looked like. I don't know if I agree with you guys.

29:09It's like, I get what you're saying, that he could have said, this is Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey, whatever. But that's really kind of arrogant on a part. Like, I always kind of bristle at certain directors' choices to put their names above their films. Like, we know it's your film. You directed it. And so I don't know if that is really needed. Because there have been many films about many books, and it's kind of understood that when you make a film that is based on a book, it's going to be the story that you want to take or whatever you found interesting in it.

29:45And very rarely does it really hold close to the text. And sometimes when that happens, it is decent, as has happened before. But oftentimes, it's kind of terrible because there's a difference between a book and a movie. And there are certain kind of choices that you have to make when you're making a movie to make it cinematic and also to make it adhere to the thing that you want to tell. So I don't know. I hear what you're saying, and maybe you're right. But also, it should be understood by anyone who's an intellectually engaged filmgoer that the movie that you're going to get is Martin Scorsese's whatever or Steven Spielberg's whatever.

30:23Not necessarily Odysseus, Homer's The Odyssey. I don't know if that's needed. It's a certain kind of marketing thing, and Nolan doesn't have to do that. Because we know it's his film, yeah. We do. Right, whereas somebody who's a little bit lower tier might want to, you know, it might actually be useful to them. But we'll still be referring to this as Christopher Nolan's Odyssey. Like, it doesn't matter what's on the poster in terms of— Although we don't want to say that Guillermo del Toro is lower tier or anything like that. But yes, I think you're right. No, he's not. Yeah, I think that it's—because it's unspoken, almost that takes up more arrogance.

31:00It's like, we do know who's Odyssey this is. Yeah. It is going to become definitive. There is no other version of the Odyssey that's going to be— I disagree. I disagree. It's going to be the definitive film version. But like, the Odyssey is still the Odyssey. Like, they're still going to teach it in schools. I think that was implied. I mean, you know. Yeah. They're still going to teach—but like, here's—all right, let me put this a clearer way. More people will see this film, then we'll read the poem. Is that true? Yeah, of course it's true. I mean, well, they still teach it in schools, don't they?

31:30Yeah, but people don't read the books that they're assigned in school. That's true. As I just said, I didn't read mine. I'm not sure how useful this debate is. But just to wrap it up in a boat, the only reason that that is important is it makes these specific criticisms of what Nolan did or didn't choose to include kind of bite harder. Because if this is this generation's definitive telling of this story, which I think it probably is, then it's important that audiences are alive to the fact that there is stuff that was left out. This is a very particular take. And other takes are available.

32:02I think that's fair. That's fair. Should we talk about this particular take? Let's. How does he modernize the story? Or how does he make it applicable to now? Okay, here's the place. If you haven't seen the film and you don't want it spoiled, really do stop this. Because I felt like revealing at the end, right, as you said, the editing was masterful. The sequencing things in the script in terms of how are we going to go back and forth between these two main plots. And then within the Odysseus plot, back to his flashbacks, I thought that was all masterful. You never had a question.

32:32I loved it. What was being shown when? Nolan's just good at that. He's just good at that. Yeah. They got the beard length and everything, like, just right. It was so surprising then when it got to the end and, you know, the source of the PTSD that it was the Trojan War itself, that we had flashes of this with the statue head rolling on the ground or whatever. But that was gutting at that moment. And I was really surprised that, given how familiar this story is, that it would have an emotional surprise because the overall, I think it's Christian take, I think I heard that this was maybe Dante's take on the Odyssey, where Dante puts Odysseus in hell.

33:13I heard this on another podcast, I heard this on another podcast, Odysseus in hell. Well, the difference between, though, Dante's Odysseus didn't consider what he did to be wrong, but this is an Odysseus who is taking in Dante's condemnation of him. So, seeing that, like, wow, this thing that I was praised for, that they're singing songs about, of coming up with this awesome horse idea, actually relates directly to the theme that Emily Wilson was so strong on, was so, oh, it's hospitality, hospitality, hospitality.

33:44You can't piss on hospitality. That's a deep cut for people who have seen Troll 2.

33:51Yeah, so to hook that up so directly was amazing in the moment. Yeah, that was done beautifully through the whole film, because right at the beginning you have, like, the invocation of Zeus's lore, and it's very, very carefully drip-fed to the audience through the whole thing. And the turn is really, really brilliantly done. And, yeah, I didn't see it coming either, and yet it hit brilliantly. I mean, I don't know what to say. I mean, I completely agree. I think that that was something that I was not aware of before I saw the film. After I saw the film, I probably listened to the same podcast you did, Mark, and I was made aware of it after the fact.

34:23But in watching the film the first time—well, it was the second time, actually, when I watched it on IMAX. Watching the film, it was the emotional gut punch. It was so affecting. It made me think of what's happening now in the current world and all the wars that we're involved in, and it really affected me deeply. It hit me in the same way that the scene in Oppenheimer, where he realizes what he has done with the explosion. He realizes what he is responsible for.

34:54And I think this comes back down to Chris Nolan kind of creating these remorseful heroes, in a way. They bear kind of the world's responsibilities on their shoulders for good and for ill. I mean, it also speaks to the heroes, again, their arrogance, and that they feel that they know better. And actually, who better to embody that than a character like Odysseus? Because that's exactly who he is. He thinks he is the smartest man in the room.

35:25He thinks he knows he's the smartest man in the room. And he uses it for good reasons and for bad. And what I loved about this film, and especially with Matt Damon's depiction of this character, is that you really feel that he not only bears that responsibility, but he is sorry for what he has done. That the Trojan War wasn't for good. It was for selfish reasons.

35:56The stories that they were telling their public was a lie. And I really liked that turn at the end. And I loved the way that Christopher Nolan doles that story out for us. But I do think it's interesting how we get two scenes that tell the story of what happened in Troy. And the first scene is a heroic one, because it's told through the lens of Jon Barenthal's character. And so it's a very heroic one. Well, except for the shit that's flowing from the people stacked on top of each other.

36:29Definitely. In the horse. Although, I don't think we... Do we see it? I don't think we see this shit. Anyway. I thought there was definite visual... Did you see some? ...that something was going on and they're pissing all over each other because they're sitting... Oh, my gosh. ...for days. I probably closed my eyes because I don't like that stuff. But then the second one we see through, and it's very important to say, Matt Damon's Odysseus. Because that's not necessarily happening in the actual poem. But we see it through Matt Damon's Odysseus the second time. It's a traumatic experience and it's something that he is viewing, sadly, because he was the author of it.

37:05And I think that's a really brilliant filmmaking choice. And it's something that really resonated with me deeply. And that is the reason why you go to a Christopher Nolan film is because no one else can do it quite like he can do that kind of storytelling. And again, this is the reason why I really bristle at people talking about his choices when it comes to the adaptation. Because he wanted to tell a particular story and he needed to tell it this way. Can we address the Matt Damon issue?

37:36Just, I've heard some other commentators saying, you know, it should have been Christian Bale. It should have been Ralph Fiennes. You know, a better actor. I felt, you know, that he is so relatable that Christian Bale... I agree. ...is somebody who disappears into roles and is hard to just relate to as a person. I agree. Whereas Matt Damon, like, you got that sort of moral clarity. And we have a relationship with him. I mean, you know, like, it's like saying, I want Daniel Day-Lewis to play this role. Yeah, Daniel Day-Lewis would have been even worse in some ways.

38:08Yeah. Because he's so fucking weird. Like, you want someone who is relatable that you have a relationship with? I completely agree. I think there's something in that criticism, but I think the issue is in the script and not in Matt Damon. Like, Mike Damon is more than a good enough actor for this role, and he can do the heroic stuff that somebody like Ralph Fiennes might not have been as good at. But I think a lot of this just comes back to the script. On your point, Lawrence, like, about how Nolan tells this story in a way that foregrounds the trauma and the PTSD and all that kind of stuff, that is a very strong choice.

38:43But there are also places where he could have worked more of that into more of the story. Like, we were talking about rushing through the initial encounters. Maybe there would have been some room in there for Odysseus to be more clever and wily and to show us that, like, his habitual form of command is to outsmart people without a thought for the greater consequences and show him living with that. Instead, what happens is at various points through the film, other characters tell him that he has this or that character trait without us ever really seeing it.

39:18A lot of Odysseus' character is built in flashback, which is fine, but we're grading on, like, god-tier filmmaking here. So there was room for that to be better. No, I agree. I completely agree with that point. I saw a little bit that, you know, he's just a guy, but there's all these myths around him. So some of this, oh, he's so wily. Well, it's because he was smart enough to come up with the horse. Okay, that's, you know, but actually his real genius was in realizing that moral clarity that other people who were engaging in the sacking of Troy could not at the time.

39:53And that, you know, that's put him on this higher intellectual level, not just that he's, I want to say Wile E. Coyote, but it's actually Bugs Bunny who is the trickster. He's not the trickster in this. It's just a different character. It just sort of occurred to me that Odysseus is such a hero character and is a 10 out of 10 on so many different levels that I wonder if you were going to put this on screen, you need to pick someone that the audience can actually relate to. Because if you pick like a Cillian Murphy or if you pick like a Leonardo or Tom Hardy, Tom Hardy would have done a great job, but it's hard.

40:31He can be kind of hard to relate to. I think a Matt Damon character brings a certain amount of warmth and humanity that is basically extending a handout to the audience through the movie screen and telling you come and live my story, experience my story rather than just simply watch it. Guys, we've been talking for over 45 minutes and we haven't mentioned Tom Holland and he's a major part of the film. Is it because we didn't like his performance?

41:03I think he was fine, but it didn't require that much of him in some ways. It just needed like any number of aw shucks, young guy. I mean, I think it showed his acting chops more than anything else that I've seen him. I completely disagree. I wasn't impressed at all. I watched Spider-Man, not the most recent one, but the one with the three Spider-Men in it. What was it called? No Way Home. The other day. He's better in that, like in terms of the actual acting.

41:34And you can really see it in the Odyssey because he's opposite Anne Hathaway, who is, for my money, putting in the best performance in the film. He's just not there. And you can't blame him because also he has, again, we have the script problem. Like I winced when he calls Odysseus his dad, father, please. But, you know, I can live with that choice. But just in general, there's just not enough going on in his sweet little face for me. And I don't think he was in his element. Because the character that he plays is such a little shit in the poem.

42:06Was it him or was it the character? Because I want to be generous. The character was bad and underwritten. I thought that arc, that whole arc, I didn't feel like it really earned its keep in the film. Because, like, so much of it is Telemachus having to break away, go and have this scene in Sparta, and then come back. And that's all for the sake of us getting a second POV on Troy, really. And then the other bit, which is a null invention of Odysseus coming to rescue Telemachus from the bandits, which doesn't happen in the poem.

42:38I wasn't sure that any of that really earned its keep. But my problem with Telemachus' character was just more that I didn't really get it. There was a lot of emotionality available there, and it just didn't feel like it was coming through, either in the script or in the performance. I feel like the strategy was the same as for Matt Damon. Like, get somebody that is a likable presence. Imagine if young Mark Hamill had done it. Like, you would find it way more annoying. Right. I want to go to Tashi Station to pick up some pro converters. What if Robert Pattinson and Tom Holland are twitch roles? Because Robert Pattinson put in a cracking performance.

43:11Oh, my gosh. He was so good. He was so good. Oh, my God. Yeah, if he'd just been a little younger, then he would have been great for that role. I thought Tom Holland was fine, but I couldn't help. Every time he came onto the screen, I couldn't help but think, like, oh, there's Peter Parker. Whereas everybody else, we've got, like, A-list star after A-list star. And I wasn't going, oh, that's Zendaya. Oh, that's Samantha Morton. That's, you know, Robert Pattinson. Like, I wasn't doing that the entire time.

43:41Whereas with Tom Holland, I just, I couldn't help it. And I don't know if it was just his performance or the fact that he was playing kind of a young kid again. And he was maybe, you know, reaching into the same toolbox that he always has. I have no idea. But everybody else's performance. I mean, can we talk a little bit about Cersei, that scene? I thought she was, she just stole the show for me. I thought her performance was, holy fuckballs, great. Wow. Holy fuckballs.

44:13Wow. Again, I think slightly underwritten. The scene, like, she was a terrific anchor for that scene. Yes. But I wasn't sure why it ended the way it did or, like, how Odysseus actually won that day. It felt like you had the big, brilliant, I mean, obviously fantastic special effect moment and just really, like, great gruesome stuff. Although that was one of the things that was spoiled a little bit for me by being overhyped in the marketing. Because, like, loads of people and the actors all said, wait, you know, wait for the Cersei scene. So I was hyped up to have this amazing thing.

44:44And it's a really terrific, like, practical special effects scene. And it wasn't the most incredible thing I've ever seen on camera. So I think the hype spoiled it a little bit for me. But back to Sarah's actual question. Yeah, the performance was fantastic. But the scene felt rushed and it felt like they needed to, like, we'd done the cool bit. Now let's get, let's move on. The thematic unity. Like, this is not something I think was in the poem at all. But, like, focusing on the grossness of his men and how hungry they were. And juxtaposing that with the suitors at his house and how they were behaving like that.

45:20That was such an obvious shove-in-your-face parallel that, you know, I would never have gotten from the poem. That's a very good point. And it also brought home when we were able to see Odysseus' perspective of the Trojan War, how men treat women. And it was not necessarily on the page. It wasn't, those weren't words on the page, but the way that Samantha Morton played that character, we understood her trauma. We absolutely understood where she was coming from. I hope that she gets nominated for something because she was amazing.

45:53I would have enjoyed her performance more if we got to spend more time with it. Like, I agree with Al. It felt a bit rushed. Like, she did a lot with the limited screen time that she got. But that was so rushed because, gosh, I hate I'm about to do this. Ah, I'm about to do this. Fine, I'll do it. In the poem, he spends a lot of time with her. You know, it's an extended period. And it was just, it felt a little rushed. Like, she did a really good job. And I do hope she gets nominated for something for this performance.

46:24But it just felt so rushed because there's a lot there to kind of dig into that he just didn't have the time to dig into because he was interested in other things. Nolan, that is. I'm going to squish your bird if you don't let me go.

46:39But honestly, the performance for me is Robert Pattinson. That's the one that really stands out. Because I remember the first time I was introduced to Robert Pattinson was when those terrible Twilight movies. Yeah. And I was like, this little shit is never going to amount to anything. And he is, he has an incredible range. He's Batman. He was incredible in The Lighthouse. He was incredible in this. He's made a lot of really interesting choices with his career that has really stretched him. And I was really taken back by how wonderful and sniveling his performance was.

47:14Because I always think about the end of it whenever the actual big battle scene is happening. He's like hiding and get the shields and get the this and get that. He wants nothing to do with the actual battle. That is an Oscar-worthy performance right there. And I was really surprised by it because I've never seen anything on this level from that guy. Sure. Mickey 17, he got to show a variety of things. Yeah. Even though that was a pretty silly film. Actually, I loved him in that movie. I really loved him in that part. I didn't like that movie enough.

47:44Honestly, maybe I need to watch it again. I didn't like it very much. Yeah, you'd be surprised that John Barenthal wouldn't bug you as being too John Barenthal. But Sarah, you're right that despite the recognizability of so many of these people, you bought it. In fact, I kind of saw this as a window to a fictional universe. And I really wanted the Agamemnon story delivered in exactly this style. I want it to be presented as a sequel to this. I want it to be the same length because it's three plays.

48:15Even though it's a completely different author from a completely different time period. Centuries later. But I think you could adapt it. I wanted the same actors. I want this to become like the Marvel Universe. This is so, you know, because it seems so much more gritty and historically real, you know, related to history than like the Marvel Universe. That to me, this opened up something in the imagination. You're not going to have an Oppenheimer sequel, right? It should be a one shot. It is the mark of something that is kind of cheesy that is giving me this feeling that it is.

48:49But yet I want to run with it. I want four more. I want the Aeneid. I want several more ethics. If not by him, then by people consulting with him. Nolan. Like working in this style. Yes. No, I mean, it does. It absolutely leaves you wanting more. And again, part of the feeling that the story was rushed is exactly you get like two second flashbacks to Clytemnestra murdering Agamemnon. And you get like little hints of all of these stories in the great classic tradition.

49:20And why on earth couldn't you do a prestige drama telling all these stories properly, leisurely and at pace? Presumably because it would previously have been too expensive and you wouldn't have been guaranteed an audience for it. But now we know the audience is there. Well, and there was a little bit of bringing in outside worlds with, is it Sinan, who was brought in from another Greek story and that he became the sort of moral linchpin. Is he in the Iliad? Is that, I mean, obviously an Iliad would be the next one, not these other things I mentioned.

49:50But I think Sinan's from the Iliad, if I remember. Yeah. Okay, you're right. It's from the Iliad. Yeah. I hear you. But isn't that a sign of a great movie that we enjoyed the movie and it left us wanting more? And if we actually get that more, I don't know how much we'll like it once we get it. Yeah. Yeah. It'll be a letdown. Yeah. I mean, because the audience is there for Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey. I don't know if the audience is there for nameless showrunners, The Iliad or whatever. Right? So this speaks to me that maybe he did what he needed to do and he knocked it out the park.

50:24That we want more. We're not, I hope we don't get more. I don't want to. I saw Troy the other day, Wolfgang Peterson's Troy. It's a nice prequel to this. It's not on this level. It's just not. And so if Christopher Nolan makes a decision to return to this world, I'll go watch that movie. Anyone else who tries to play in this to sandbox, I'm not messing with their stuff. I'm done. I'm good with it. Is there even anything to say about the nonsense woke controversy that was not aimed at the movie at all?

50:57It's so stupid. I think it's all been said. I mean, I wrote a piece and I'm still getting a hate mail about this piece, but I wrote a piece that said, oh my gosh, I'm getting a lot of hate mail over this piece. I wrote a piece that said they're mad about a movie that they didn't get. And it's the movie that they imagined in their mind. And Christopher Nolan, yes, he has black characters. Travis Scott, who I was completely underwhelmed by, is in the film, whatever. But the black characters that he included gotten very minimal screen time.

51:28Christopher Nolan has always been a white filmmaker who makes essentially white movies. And this one's a little bit more diverse, but it's essentially a movie about a great white man. They're all serving a white character. Yeah. And so the woke controversy was silly and I'm happy that it's been debunked. And they're still mad. Like they're still making videos and doing all this other kind of stuff. And I was surprised that Ben Shapiro, of all people, went and did a podcast and said, you know what?

51:58It wasn't that bad at all. And so it's silly. I don't even know what else there is to say about that stuff. I, for one, look forward to the remake that Grok is going to do. And we can review that. I will not watch that. I will watch it only because it's going to be so cheaply made. That's what I'm going to watch. We got to say something about John Legg was on well before we leave. Amazing. He should be nominated. He should be nominated. He's the goat. He's so great. He was so good in that part. He's never had a chance to act on this level before.

52:31And he did an amazing job. Like he was a side character in John Wick. He did a good job in Son of Sam, but he's never really been able to act on this level. He did it here and he knocked it out the park. I really hope he gets a nomination. Absolutely. Absolutely. Also, isn't his name, isn't his character's name Mentor? Isn't he like the beginning of Mentors? Yes. He did a great job of being a good mentor. Eumaeus is the name of the character. But it's Mentor, I think it is. Yeah, I think it's Mentor. So I guess in conclusion, you should see this film.

53:04It's pretty good. I know you probably hadn't thought about whether you were going to see it or not. Good luck getting a ticket in IMAX. Yeah, good luck. Exactly. Go to the cheap theater. Go there, because you're not getting an IMAX one. Should people see it for the fourth time? That's the question. Obviously, they should see it once, but should they see it four times, Lauren? I say, honestly, you need to watch at least twice, honestly, to really appreciate all of it. Because the first time is such a spectacle that you get caught up in the story. You go back and you start picking up on the character beat moments. This is a movie that people are going to watch at Christmas for decades to come.

53:38Why Christmas? Because Christmas is the time you put the epic movie on to fall asleep in front of with the family, right? It's when Lawrence of Arabia would have come on previously. No, you don't. You put on Home Alone. You don't put on The Odyssey. The day after Christmas. We're all resting and there's murdering on the screen. We haven't said very much about this, but I'm really impressed by the box office. It's been two weeks and it's at 600 plus million. That is amazing.

54:09Yeah. It's incredible. It's an R-rated movie. And almost three hours. Yeah, but I'm very surprised by how much money it's making. It's already surpassed Superman of last year. It's really impressive. What the hell is Christopher Nolan? Because Christopher Nolan has now saved cinema a few times. Yes, he's going to get to do whatever he wants for the rest of his life. So I wonder what the hell he's going to do next. He can continue doing whatever the hell he wants. I think he's been doing whatever the hell he wants for quite some time now. Since Batman, yeah. All right. I have a few snarky comments, but I'm going to save them for the aftertalk at patreon.com slash prettymuchpops.

54:44So you have to come to the aftertalk if you want to hear Mark B. Snarky. There you go. Thanks, everybody. So long. Bye-bye. Thank you. Bye. Bye, guys.