Is Christopher Nolan's the Odyssey a Big Deal?

It's a movie. How big a deal can it be? The better question is, will it be a success or a flop?

The problem is interference with immersion in the story. The costumes, (Batman at the siege of Troy?), the props (a Viking Longship?) and the dialogue (sounds like a surfing movie) are all going to disrupt the story immersion. 

Maybe we'll get used to all of this in the first 10 minutes and then it won't matter. Or perhaps it will be so bad that audiences will leave the theater not entirely certain what they just watched. I honestly don't know. I'll tell you one thing, if the whole movie is as dismal as the trailer, then it's going to destroy tourism to Greece for decades.

I really don't understand what Nolan is aiming for here. 

My original thought was that none of the online criticism was going to matter all that much, but now, I'm beginning to wonder. 

Still, if I was a betting man, I would still bet on the movie making lots of money unless there are serious flaws that we're not aware of yet. The drop off after the first weekend should tell the tale.

On Translations

 One of the things some people are complaining about with Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey is the translation that he is reportedly relying upon. He is supposedly using Emily Wilson 2017 translation which some people seem to like and others don't like.

I haven't read it so I can't speak from from personal experience. I did watch a video defending the translations and claiming that it was truer to the original text. The example she gave was the word "kynopis" which, apparently, literally means "dog-faced." It is generally considered derogatory and often translated as "shameless." 

Helen of Troy uses the term referring to herself in Book 4 and Emily Wilson has, according to the woman making the video, translated it literally while previous translations have made it into a form of self-condemnation and translating it as Helen criticizing herself as "shameless."

The are three main methods for translating something.

1. Word-for-Word (Formal Equivalence)

This method stays as close to the original text as feasible. This sounds like the path that Wilson took, at least in this example. The problem with a word-for-word translation is that it can leave modern readers scratching their heads when they come across phrases or idioms that are no longer in use. In this example, "dog-faced" would probably be a tad confusing.

2. Thought-for-Thought (Dynamic Equivalence)

This method prioritizes translating the meaning of a passage rather than sticking strictly to individual words. This is what translators are doing in this example when they translate "kynopis" as "shameless." The criticism of this method is that different translators may interpret the meaning of different passages differently.

3. Paraphrase (Free Translation)

Instead of translating directly from the original language, these versions rephrase the text into a conversational, interpretive format. I've always considered this Dynamic Equivalence on steroids and clearly risks loosing the meaning of the text through interpretatikon.

Each of these methods have champions and detractors. So, staying truer to the actual text may, or may not, be a viryue.

Christopher Nolan's Odyssey

 You knew that I couldn't leave this one alone right?

When I first heard that Nolan was creating a movie based upon Homer's "The Odyssey," I thought to myself, that sounds sort of cool. I'll probably watch it when it comes on streaming. I thought the same thing about "Nuremberg" which I thought was so awful that I couldn't even finish it.

Then the rumors started and the first trailers hit the street. Talk about waving a red flag in front of a herd of bulls, the Internet went completely off the rails.

Here are the primary complaints:

(1) The Casting : At the top of the list is the casting of a black woman, Lupita Nyong’o, as Helen of Troy. Talk about throwing raw meat into a pit of hyenas. She will also apparently play Clytemnestra, who in some stories is Helen's twin sister. 

The Internet has been merciless with some people calling her "Helen of DeTroyt" and others "the face that emptied 1,000 theaters." I don't agree with this choice. I find it insulting. I suppose I would find it even more insulting if I was Greek. We all know that Hollywood has a diversity checklist that a movie has to meet if they want to be eligible for awards, but this is not the way to get there.

But it gets worse. Picture Achilles in your mind. I suspect you're thinking bulging biceps and six pack abs. So who gets cast? A five foot transman called Elliot Page that looks like a stiff breeze would blow him away. I'm not even sure what Achilles in doing in the Odyssey unless it's a flashback or dream sequence.

Nolan also decided that what a movie about Bronze Age Greeks REALLY needed was a rapper as narrator. I don't even know what to say about this. I have to assume if this wasn't working out that they would have changed it so, I suppose we'll have to see.

Finally, we're getting Zendaya as Athena. Honestly, this may be the worse choice of all. Athena is almost always described as the "bright-eyed" or "grey-eyed" goddess. Zendaya has dark brown eyes. I would have thought a more majestic actress, with actual breasts, might have been a better choice.

(2) The Costumes: There is a scene in one of the trailers showing Agamemnon in thick black armor that makes him look more like Batman than a Bronze Age Greek warrior. There is also a scene showing the Laestrygonian Giants wearing plate armor which makes absolutely no sense.  Odysseus' ship also looks more like a Viking Longship than a Greek galley.

(3) The Dialogue: Nolan is reportedly basing the movie on a 2017 translation by Emily Wilson which has gotten mixed reviews. I haven't read it so I'm in no position to say anything one way or the other. One thing everyone seems to agree on though is that she uses modern, often informal, phrasing rather than formal language. In the trailer Telemachus refers to Odysseus as "dad." She is also reported to be more sensitive to realistic social dynamics and calling things as they are, especially when in comes to the place of women in ancient Greek society.

There are any number of people writing this movie off and predicting that it will be a massive flop. I'm not so sure. The production budget is reportedly $250 million. Google says that a movie needs a box office typically between 2.5 and 3 times the production budget to break even. That would mean between $625 million and $750 million and I suspect this movie is going to be seriously advertised so it might be closer to $750 million. 

That would make it the 5th highest grossing Nolan film. But only "The Dark Night Rises" had as big a budget, and it's his #1 box office success at $1.08 billion, and that was in 2012. Now, 14 years later, I think "The Odyssey" will easily meet the $750 million and might top $1 billion unless there is something else seriously wrong with the movie beyond these three issues.

This will probably be a successful movie thanks to the dumbing down of American education. The vast majority of the people that are going to see this film have probably never read "The Iliad" or "The Odyssey." They won't know that the armor is anachronistic or that Odysseus' ship looks more like a Viking Longship rather than a Greek Galley. They won't know that Athena is always described as the "grey-eyed" or "bright-eyed" goddess. They might notice that Helen shouldn't be black, but I doubt they'll care. The dumbing down of the dialogue might work in Nolan's favor because his target audience probably has a limited vocabulary. As long as the film has spectacle and a strong pace, it will make boatloads of money and all of our criticisms will be forgotten.

Black People Invented Democracy?

 Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a fucking moron. I really do not like her and if she is on the Democratic ticket in 2028 I will either sit out the election or vote Republican depending upon the GOP candidate. If it's Vance, I won't vote for him. If it's Rubio, then I probably would vote for him.

In a podcast interview recently AOC claimed "I think about the civil rights and voting rights movement, and how Black Americans really created democracy in this country... how they literally made something from nothing."

What? I get her point about the importance of civil rights leaders during the 1960s but you can't just throw out a couple of thousand years of history starting in ancient Athens and continuing through the Magna Carta and a little thing called the US Constitution. Granted that rights de jure don't always always translate into rights de facto but give me a break.

Obviously black people didn't invent democracy. However the rights granted in the 14th and 15th Amendments de jure didn't translate into rights de facto everyplace. 

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were primarily aimed at the Southern States where many black people were in fact denied their right to vote through poll taxes and impossible to pass literacy tests. White voters didn't have to worry about those tests because their right to vote was literally grandfathered in. If their grandfathers could vote, then they could vote without having to pass the literacy test. 

Blacks could vote in the South, and elected several black congressmen, prior to the Compromise 0f 1877 which saw the federal government withdraw troops from the South and allowed the Jim Crow era to officially begin. Almost immediately Southern states began instituting poll taxes and literacy tests in order to disenfranchise black voters. Poll taxes were outlawed in Federal Elections by the 24th Amendment in 1964 and in all elections by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1966 case Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections. Literacy tests were banned by the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

So it took almost 100 years to translate the rights guaranteed de jure by the 14th and 15th Amendments into actual rights. But that doesn't mean that black people created Democracy. That's just idiotic.

I Got a Letter from the IRS...

 I got a letter from the IRS telling me that they didn't have a bank account on record for me. That was a bit of a head scratcher because I've been paying my taxes electronically for years. In fact they had just taken $21,000 out of my checking account.

All sorts of red flags went up but the letter looked legitimate. So, I logged into my IRS account (yes, I have an IRS account) and discovered two things. First, the letter was legitimate. I even found a copy of it in my account. Second, there were no bank accounts listed. I suppose they don't keep a copy of the account used to pay taxes due.

After thinking about it for a second or two, I didn't see any harm in providing my checking account so that's what I did. A short while later I got another letter telling me that someone had made changes to my account. Well, yeah, that was me, so no need to do anything. I still didn't know why they needed the account information.

Then a letter appeared a week or two later telling me that they owned me money! Well, that was a first. Apparently my accountant had miscalculated my penalty for not paying estimated tax by $136.19.

The letter said that I could expect to see the $136.19 in six to eight weeks. So now I understood why they wanted the bank account information, but had to wonder why it was going to take six to eight weeks to deposit a whole $136.19.

Today, I found out why is took six to eight weeks. They sent me a paper check. You can't make this stuff up.

Shooting at the White House Correspondent's Dinner

An armed gunman attempted to gain access to the WHCD. His exact objective is unclear but the assumption is that he was either after Trump or some other administration official. Luckily he was captured by the Secret Service before he could cause any harm.

As if that's not crazy enough, an online conspiracy theory almost immediately sprung up that this was all staged by Trump or one of his cronies. That rapidly spread to people claiming that all three failed assassination attempts were staged.

I see no evidence to support that nonsense and a lot of evidence against it. For instance, how do you convince someone to be the fall guy and take the blame for the assassination attempt? If he's not in on it, then how do you find someone stupid enough to be convinced to give it a try?

The Trump Administration

It’s the Clown Cabinet headed by a petulant toddler. The team he sent to negotiate with the Iranians is the Buffoon Brigade. But the really bad news is that 40% of the electorate appear to think that he’s doing a great job. I don’t get it. I really don’t. 

I will now rant for a couple of paragraphs so feel free to ignore me.

During the 2024 election I agreed that we needed to address illegal immigration. I wanted DEI to go away and I was sick and tired of the “woke” bullshit (“woke” = declaring anyone that disagreed with the left as racist, misogynist, homophobic, transphobic or some other nasty name and the constant race swapping in movies and on TV).

Having a degree in Economics, I understood the dynamics of inflation coming out of the pandemic better than most, and understood that the worst was over.

But, I didn’t trust Trump or the Republicans to address immigration and DEI and the “woke” bullshit I could live with. They certainly weren’t a big enough problem to put Trump back in the White House.

I also understood that Trump was lying about bringing down prices on day one. I told everyone I could reach that this was nonsense. We all see how well I did with that.

I am honestly surprised that he was stupid enough to attack Iran. The geography is all in their favor. The world economy is now in a mess thanks to Trump's incompetence.

I get the issue of not wanting Iran to have nukes. But Trump went about it the wrong way and that may be worse than doing nothing.