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.
