Movie Details
| Title: | The Odyssey | |
| Director: | Christopher Nolan | |
| Year: | 2026 | |
| Genre: | Epic | |
| Times Seen: | 1 | |
| Last Seen: | 11.10.26 |
Other Movies Seen By This Director (9)
- Batman Begins
- The Dark Knight
- The Dark Knight Rises
- Dunkirk
- Inception
- Interstellar
- Oppenheimer
- The Prestige
- Tenet
| Date Viewed | Venue | Note |
| 11.10.26 | Internet | This Screening is part of event: DVRfest 2026 Oh shit, did I actually watch a movie? Well hold onto your buts because I'm about to watch a shitload of movies. It's DVRfest 2026! My annual personal film festival commemorating another year of keeping this journal intended to catch up on stuff I've been meaning to watch and clear the (now figurative) DVR of saved movies. I believe this is the 22nd one of these that I've done. This is maybe the longest-running thing... I've ever done? So this year I'm leaning in. I've got... a lot of movies I want to watch, a verrry loose schedule, and took time off work so let's go! Opening night is me catching up on the big summer movies. Just like Barbenheimer, I'm watching two moves with Tom Holland, Zendaya, and Jon Bernthal. Starting with The Odyssey. I didn't really care to see The Odyssey in the theater. Yes, I'm sure the IMAX experience was worthwhile but... my whole thing with new movies sucking these days is the stories are crap. I'm looking for a new story, not the oldest story ever. This movie reeked to me of desperation like the epics from the 50s when Hollywood panicked over TV. Chris Nolan doesn't make movies anymore, he saves the entire movie industry. Long gone is stuff like The Prestige or even Inception because now he has to make a movie big enough to cast every working actor and create FOMO around seeing some cool oceans scenes shot in 70mm. So what's watching this at home like? Well, as expected, it was decent. I'm not gonna sit here and write that it's a bad movie. Objectively, it's a good movie. The production and cinematography are exceptional and (for the most part) score and (for the most part) performances are good. It's long but hey it's an epic right? Epics are supposed to be long. Highlights for me were John Leguizamo and Robert Pattinson. I found it funny that for all the hubbub around Elliot Page and Lupia Nyong'o they're in the movie for like 90 seconds. Agamemnon's in there for 90 seconds, Zendaya's in there for 90 seconds. But you know, it's not called The Side Characters... so it stands to reason that Matt Damon's taking up most of the screen time. Where it fell short of me was where the realistic take on the more fantastical or mythical elements collided. Like I've never thought about the dudes actually in the Trojan horse before... but now that I've seen some shots of people crowded in there it trips my logic detectors big time. Like if people were pissing and shitting in there how come none of the legion of people dragging it into Troy noticed hey this horse smells like shit? Hey how come this fucker's way heavier than it should be? Why's it wobbling around when we try to stand it up? Why's it snoring? Same goes for the cyclops scene. Like big man's gonna eat two rando soldiers then take a nap? Or if he thought they were sheep why did the sheep have helmets? And dude's got an eye, could he not see? Stuff like that reads fine when it's Homer telling his homies a story but if you're trying to make it real and spend all this time talking about a to-scale puppet in the cave (side note: no shit. when it was lying down that body moved super weird and when it was the actor the waves looked too small) and you're asking us to believe it's all real... is a bundle of hay really gonna fool anyone that the clunky armor-wearing soldiers with their metal swords is really a sheep? I'll stop there because I recognize it's a mythical ancient poem so stuff like that, like them getting lost in the not-even-an-ocean is believable because the gods are real and all that. So I won't talk about the 7-feet tall dudes lumbering around like the giants in Terry Gilliam's Lost in La Mancha. But it didn't wholly work on me. And then there's the sound design. I remember Oppenheimer's soundscape being intense but pretty good. This one felt sloppy to me. At least I could hear the dialog (with my headphones on). Ok, I will say. the bow strike sound was very good. The scene where Odysseus strings the bow was very good. And my problems with the mythical treatments was still not terrible. It's just a story I know by osmosis. I saw the Armand Assante mini-series back in the 90s and have been good ever since. Nothing in here was ever going to surprise or thrill me. The next one though.... nope it probably won't surprise me either but I feel like I gotta get through it. These first two really feel close to homework but who knows. Maybe I'm in for a treat? |
