Can Nolan’s Odyssey Deliver?

Christopher Nolan is a one of a kind director. He delivers hit after hit, sometimes weird, sometimes completely inaudible, always interesting. Now he’s tackling one of his most difficult projects yet, adapting Homer’s Odyssey. You’d think a story that’s already had so many adaptions should be a walk in the park for the director, but movie fans are cautious of the project. It has bad vibes.

The tone was set when the first trailer showed off the armour, which viewers decided looked cheap, fake, and worst of all, historically inaccurate. The last thing you want while dodging cyclops and beefing with the gods is historical inaccuracy. Agamemnon’s armor, worn by Benny Safdie looked particularly egregious, with some comparing it to batman’s armour.

“There are Mycenaean daggers that are blackened bronze,” Nolan said. “The theory is they probably could have blackened bronze in those days. You take bronze, you add more gold and silver to it and then use sulfur … With Agamemnon, Ellen [Mirojnick], our costume designer, is trying to communicate how elevated he is relative to everyone else. You do that through materials that would be very expensive.”

Personally I think it looks a bit soft. It doesn’t seem metallic. But It’s Nolan’s prerogative to decide how to spend $250 million, and he doesn’t do things willy nilly. For Interstellar he hired a team of scientists to make sure they got the physics right. The end result was a film that ended up creating what we believe to be the most accurate simulation of a black hole ever made.

But the fear for Odyssey is real, despite the initial outrage being based on complete nonsense. Rumour mills and AI slop shorts on Youtube peddled jokes about Elliot Paige taking up the roll of warrior legend Achilles, famously portrayed by Brad Pitt in Troy, a movie that was pretty much completely disregarded as being mid until a few weeks ago. Paige as an ancient super commando definitely beggars belief. But this didn’t seem likely since Achilles would be dead by the time The Odyssey takes place, only appearing when Odysseus goes to hell. It has since been confirmed that Paige plays Sinon, the guy who misleads the Trojans into taking the horse through the city gates. Something someone of Paige’s size would be quite suited for.

The all star cast includes Travis Scott as a bard which has people in knots over the implication there may be rap involved.

“I cast him because I wanted to nod towards the idea that this story has been handed down as oral poetry, which is analogous to rap,” Nolan said.

Much ado has also been made over Lupita Nyong’o who plays both Helen of Troy (the most beautiful woman in the world, worth starting a war over I hear) and her own sister Clytemnestra (not as hot, no wars required). Folk online see the casting decisions as favouring social justice moralizing over attempts to tell an immersive story worthy of the big Imax screen and ticket pricetag.

Whether you see this as bigotry or a genuine scourge, the concerns are real, and will have an impact on ticket sales.

Personally what I’m seeing Nolan make is a classic Swords and sandals epic, with enough practical effects and legion of extras to rival the golden age of cinema. It’s his first film filmed entirely on 70 mm Imax cameras. Dunkirk was fantastic in Imax, so we’ll see.