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Yes, it's filled with anachronisms. The only way you know it's set in the Bronze Age is that at one point Matt Damon turns to the camera and says, "Gosh, it sure does suck that the Bronze Age is Collapsing."
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"We confess our little faults to persuade people that we have no large ones." - François de La Rochefoucauld -
Yes, so I've heard. Also that some characters speak in Ye Olde Style and others speak modern and sometimes they just mix up who speaks which for funsies. In all fairness this is competing for summer blockbuster share with the hideous decaying corpse of the MCU so I really should be cheering the novelty of an apparently wacky adaptation of a book older than most of the Bible. God bless Christopher Nolan for trying, even if I'm over his shtick.Comment
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So finally watched the thing on monday, after my first attempt had turned into an Odyssey of its own: on friday, after ca. 10 minutes the cinema went dark due to a tech problem. Never had this happen before. After some delay and free icecreme the entire thing was cancelled
Got the money back, but not the time.
After watching it I'm somewhat disappointed, but the casting is irrelevant for me in this regard. IMO the movie as a whole doesn't live up to the hype.
It's certainly a "big" event, worthy of a large screen, but it's also at times annoying and has certainly weaker parts. Admittedly some of it is down to personal prefs aka taste.
For example, I'm not a fan of many of the design choices, but oh well, I don't expect Nolan to ask for my permission. I'm still wondering tho how they put the Trojan Horse together with legs and head perfectly sculpted, like Athena's statue on the ancient Akropolis
But despite the sheer, undeniably impressive scale of the movie I wondered sometimes where the heck they spend those 250 million bucks.
Overall, for me the best part was the final act when Oddy went home, as this felt the most tense, coherent "story" after a collection of various war, action, fantasy episodes, mostly well-made, but IMO not revolutionary.
Until then much of the movie had felt, to put it mildly, emotionally distanced. Like there was some fuss from Oddy about "his men", but do we actually care about any of them? I didn't because they hardly play any role in the movie, aside from getting offed in various ways.
During this last stage this kind of emotional distance was finally broken, but mostly between Oddy, his wife and son, plus minor glimpses of those in Oddy's orbit, like the blind guy.
Outright hated the sound design/mix at times, guess that this is now the Nolan-way since Tenet. You get over-the-top sound effects, sometimes in stress-inducing sequences (surely intended), occasionally great (bow > lyra), but often I was glad when it calmed down again.
For comparison Dune felt often super-loud too, weird at times, but mostly cool. This one feels super-loud, weird at times, but often rather annoying, and sometimes drowns out dialogue.
Then again some dialogue was overly heavy and downright clumsy. Making "war is bad, mkay?" points is certainly a valid thing in da arts, but I've seen it done way better elsewhere.
From "recently" I remember particularly "The Northman" (2022) with a plundering sequence that doesn't have Vikings looking sad for the rest of the movie or waste time to tell how bad it all is, but watching it makes anyone with half a brain realize how destructive and traumatic it must have been to those on the receiving end.
The D-Day sequence in "Saving Private Ryan" intro also did a much better job, but it's a completely different kind of movie of course.
OTOH Oddy's "age of bronze" line was rather strange IMO because the movie makes zilch effort to relay what this fabulous bronze age civ/culture which is now going downhill is/was all about.
At least giving folks a 'lil sense that "bronze age civilization" meant certainly more than Greece and Troy might have been nice (Pharaonic Egypt? Levant? Mesopotamia? Far reaching trade links between all those, and beyond, even into Celtic Europe?). But (almost) nada. Yes, that's outside the scope of Homer's Odyssey, but so is the entire "bronze age" comment.
Showing some anonymous village/settlement/whatever (other than Troy) burning or dropping a vague line about trade did not work for me in this regard. Maybe we soon get a 16-hour long director's cut which includes a synopsis of the dev of humankind from the end of the dinos to ca. 1200 BC. Yay!
Long story short, my main takeaways are:
1. Tom Holland was decent, but I'm wondering if Tobey Maguire would have been a better Telemachos.
2. Seeing aged, beardy Damon-Oddy makes me think he'd make a nice Gandalf in a couple yrs. Peter Dinklage could then still chime in as Bilbo Beutlin!
3. The key moral dilemma of the movie did not nearly get enoug screen time: would you leave Charlize Theron for Anne Hathaway? Tough choice!
My cents/Trojan Walls of textBlahComment
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I like Nolan and I more or less liked the movie, but I'm not sure Nolan has ever actually experienced an emotion. He's certainly aware of them as a concept...Originally posted by BeBMan View PostClick here if you're having trouble sleeping.
"We confess our little faults to persuade people that we have no large ones." - François de La RochefoucauldComment
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Liked Inception or his Batman stuff. Found both Dunkirk and Oppy to be good, but heavy movies (fitting for their topics certainly), the latter lacking IMO at least some bit about those ending up on the wrong side of the bomb, but oh well. Disliked Tenet. I'm somewhat split on the Odyssey now.BlahComment
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Curious question - anyone know where Ikaros is ?With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
Steven WeinbergComment
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Presumably his bones are supposed to be somewhere at the bottom of the Mediterranean? Did you mean Ithaka? It's off the NW coast of the Greek peninsula, more or less, as I recall. I googled "Ikaros" and got a Japanese space probe which at some point flew by Venus.Comment
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I couldn't draw all the contours of the Greek peninsula from memory, but I recall Ithaka being an island somewhere off the west coast of Greece, towards the northern end. Looking it up, I think I got it mixed up with Corfu; Ithaka is more centrally located, west of that gulf north of the Peloponnese.
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It's in Madcedonia isn't it?Originally posted by BlackCat View PostLibraries are state sanctioned, so they're technically engaged in privateering. - Felch
I thought we're trying to have a serious discussion? It says serious in the thread title!- Al. B. SureComment
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Nah, not Macedonia - too cold, and not a trap. It was found only some 60 years ago and I think that even our local hellenistic goat/sheep expert can't find i either
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
Steven WeinbergComment
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This one? Didn't know it before, just quick searched for the name
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikaros_(Failaka_Island)
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