CinemaCopa

@jondutoit 🙏

A proper negative review. No impotent whining, just a well reasoned perspective plainly stated. Refreshing!

@ShakespeareSolv 🙏

“Nolan's Odysseus is humorless beyond belief” Great and brief review👇

@histdireito I can't watch TDKR anymore. Every rewatch it gets worse and worse. I want to keep it in my memory some semblance of me liking it.

@CopaExMachina OMG, Indeed it is Dark Knight Rises ending... And it is the worst Batman movie of him...

Nolan's The Odyssey isn't Homer's, it's Nolan's. It doesn't bend but breaks the foundation of who Odysseus is. By Nolan taking away Odysseus's hubris and pride, he rewrites the entire moral landscape of the tale. In Homer's poem, Odysseus is suffering from a lethal dose of vanity. The gods, particularly Poseidon, are putting a check on his arrogance. He's a man who much needs learn humility before he can touch his home soil again. Nolan's version is a man broken by a meat grinder war and gets tossed around a cold universe. His story is of endurance. He's just trying to survive. He's a man who believes his own soul is too corrupted to return to civilization. This all flips the entire architecture of Homer's Odyssey. Odysseus greatest triumph, the use of the Trojan Horse, is now his greatest shame in Nolan's Odyssey. It less about the gods punishing him, and his psychological inability to reach Ithaca. This is exactly why Nolan's Odysseus is humorless beyond belief. He can't stand that he can deceive so many so well. Every lie he conjures takes him further away from Ithaca. By centering guilt and unworthiness on Odysseus, Nolan dilutes the character to singular symbol of the guilt-ridden soldier. This characterization of Nolan's Odysseus actually ruins his third act. What did Odysseus learn from being a guilt-ridden, deceitful soldier? Well, it's best to kill 'em all and lie to them before I do it. The ending to Nolan's Odyssey is a relapse, not a resolution. His Odysseus has learned nothing on his journey. Now it's time for him and Penelope to abandon their posts. Cue the Dark Knight Rises theme. Michael Caine nods at the two of them. Roll credits.

@VolleyShiitake Thank you 🙏

@CopaExMachina Great analysis. Well written.

@patmart100 "So what? We some sorta sea people squad?" was quite the bit of dialogue to watch in real time. A lot of depth to how shallow this moment is. But you can also take it for Odysseus deceiving Penelope so he can keep the appearance of a beggar just a bit longer.

@CopaExMachina It's not just Odysseus it's disrespectful to but the Achaeans in general. Unless I'm falling for a hoax, the movie's message is that they're the real Sea Peoples and responsible for the collapse of Greek civilization. That's quite the take! x.com/kunley_drukpa/…

@PlotStrikesBack It's more of spiritual successor to Oppenheimer than it is an adaptation of Homer.

Part of the problem is people never understood Homer’s poem from the beginning, so they’re out of touch with the real truth behind Odysseus and what Homer was portraying. Not to mention Watson’s translation (where Nolan took inspiration from) has more of a feminist tone, so seeing a different and lesser version of Odysseus’ isn’t surprising, but it’s also disappointing.

@OzkanEdis This is the exact moment that sends Odysseus on his journey

@CopaExMachina the whole point is odysseus being petty enough to ruin his own perfect escape

After watching The Odyssey it's painfully obvious Christopher Nolan knew the "nobody" pun would work but he rewrites Odysseus so much that it wouldn't work for his character. His omission of the pun has nothing to do with it translating into modern dialogue. Nolan strips Odysseus of his clinically psychotic hubris and replaces it with trauma™. Can't really stab Polyphemus in the eye and then yell out from the boat, "Sorry I did that to you, bro. I got a lot of mental health issues I'm still working out!"

I got a YouTube channel where I'll be doing several videos on The Odyssey (working on the first right now). Give me a follow here and there...or don't. I don't give a shit. @CopaExMachina" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">youtube.com/@CopaExMachina

@anheqiao69 @DamianChavezArt Bud don't take this the wrong way but I don't feel like explaining how this objectively dilutes the character of Odysseus to someone I can tell is going to get monstrously defensive about it.

@CopaExMachina @DamianChavezArt well yeah but you didn't say that. you said it diluted odysseus lol. most of you seem incapable of talking about the movie, and are instead really focused on some imagined ideal that doesn't even sound like a good movie

@anheqiao69 @DamianChavezArt Just because it's a different interpretation of Odysseus doesn't mean I have to agree with it. If I ask you "Do you want pepperoni pizza?" and you say yes but I serve it to you with barbeque sauce instead of tomatoes, you're not required to think it's delicious.

@CopaExMachina @DamianChavezArt i have as well, it's pretty intentionally a different odysseus. what's the issue

@anheqiao69 @DamianChavezArt The same plot check points is there, but this is not the same story of Odysseus. You can go read, I have.

@CopaExMachina @DamianChavezArt dilutes? the original story is still there. you can go read it

@nerdporeallife In terms of "Nolan's movies insisting upon itself" I think Nolan's Odyssey insists upon itself the most.

I was chewing a lot of popcorn because I was bored with the film. You are totally right about the immersion not being there. Like most Nolan films, this one insists upon itself quite a bit. To palate cleanse, I would rather watch the old TV Odyssey with Armand Assante, The Northman, and Hero. I'm done with Nolan for the most part, maybe I will keep Memento.

Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey is not the failure some were hoping it to be. Nor is it the grand, symbol of epic perfection others claim it to be. It doesn't belong on the same shelf of Lawrence of Arabia and Lord of the Rings. So where does that leave it? The Odyssey just is. Do I think it's some piece of woke propaganda trash the marketing threatened it to be. No. As I said in the past I think that's the real Trojan horse here to get people riled up. That said this film consistently breaks your immersion with the casting and dialogue, and then does its damndest to reel back in only to break it again. The good. As a piece of craftmanship there is no denying Nolan is a master. Audiences have been begging for the tactile and real. No CGI fests. No glorified cartoons fights. The practical effects in this is an achievement all on their own. In terms of acting Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, and Tom Holland hit their marks, say their lines with a good delivery. There's no real complaints here. It's not their best performances nor their worst. Most of the other names in this are cameos that might equate to 10 minutes of screen time each. There are two standout performances in the movie. First Samantha Morton’s cameo appearance as Circe is bone chilling. People will talk about the Cyclops being an achievement, but her turning Odysseus’s men into pigs still has me wondering how they did that. While she’s not the Circe we know from the poem, she’s absolutely the most frightening moment of the film. Truly great stuff from her. But really the powerhouse of acting is once again Robert Pattinson. I swear to God someone once told him he couldn't act and then he said, "Oh yeah, watch this!" and acted all over the place. For the last 10 years he's consistently brought something to the table and earns every frame of film he's in. I hear the complaints that it's colorless. Well, that's always been Nolan's style really. I think every movie now has this colorless tone because they're copying what has worked with Nolan. My complaint that everything is center punched. Everything. It seems like it's made for cellphones and the tiktok generation. Stop it! It's like shooting David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia for black and white tube TVs. I really want to go into why shooting in IMAX was a glorified gimmick to boost ticket sales but I will restrain myself from nerding out too much here. It's a bit of strange film in that it has more push and pull to it than the moon controls the tides. As soon finally find yourself immersed in the story, there is always something to break it. You're confronted right away with Travis Scott and Elliott Page immediately telling you this culturally Greek story will be told through a multi-cultural lens and with American accents. Fine. You start getting used to it because MOST of the multiculturalism bullshit is in the background. Then the action starts warming up and the story really gets rolling. You feel the battle of Troy coming on-Oh wait, no, we gotta take time out to be introduced to the suitors. Okay let's now jump back in the timeline again, but now after the Trojan War ended. Let's go met the Cyclops. Now timeline jump to Menelaus telling Telemachus what really happened with the Trojan horse. Okay now flash-forward slightly to when Circe turned Odysseus's men into pigs, but this portion of the story is told by his Odysseus's pov. We'll get back to Troy again later. Christopher Nolan is a master at nonlinear storytelling. Here it serves strictly as a means to keep the wind in sails of the story. The multiple timelines are to make sure you never check your watch or fall into a deeper sleep. Yet, the consistent checking in with the other timelines takes away from what matter most, Odysseus's return home. This also makes the pacing an issue. Sometimes it's pitch perfect, sometimes it slows to a crawl, other times it completely stalls where you're left thinking "get on with it!" I hate bring up source material when it comes to adaptations because artistic license is a thing and he who purchased the license wins above all. Fact remains Homer's The Odyssey is a foundation pillar to western storytelling. We all know it from school and seen some form of it in our lifetime. Whether we know it or not Homer's The Odyssey is ingrained in us as western society as much as we bleed the color red. So as an adaptation it's complete shit. It's a fantastic piece of deconstruction of the character of Odysseus. No longer is he a prideful man, filled hubris. Matt Damon's Bro-dysseus is filled with trauma trauma trauma. Did I mention he's got trauma? The film beat this over your head until it gives you trauma. I'm tried of exploring trauma. Give me something different. He's no longer the master manipulator, "the man who twists and turns." Sure he outthinks some gods and monsters but it's without the hubris. It's all survival mode for him, which doesn't make his character fun. Very serious fellow, this Bro-dysseus, master of American dialect. At the end of the day I think there's enough here to pull general audiences over the finish line like they're dragging around a trojan horse. I also think The Odyssey is going to bring down some real numbers here even though it's no where close to being the definitive adaptation. But when the dust settles and it long out of theaters, I don't think anyone's going to be talking about Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey two years from now. It's like James Cameron's Avatar. It's does beaucoup bucks and disappears from the cultural landscape. I don't know what cinema god Cameron and Nolan pray to but they make the right sacrifices that's for damn sure. You never, EVER, bet against these two. The Odyssey is the movie equivalent to Juicy Fruit gum. Couple bites in and it loses it's flavor. You pop more, the flavor comes back, but really you keep chewing away out of habit.

@LaurieABanta True, might I add Nolan's Odysseus is humorless as well.

@CopaExMachina 🦄It doesn't translate because it is not Homer's Odyssey that Nolan is recounting -- its Nolan's Odyssey, and Nolan's Odysseus is neither very cunning nor audacious. He's kind of feckless and pathetic.

@KeithYatsuhashi The scenes with Calypso were pretty vibrant too

@CopaExMachina I loved it unequivocally. As for color, I mostly agree, but that whirlpool was a gorgeous blue.

@MultiHyphenArt SSRIs are their Communion.

@CopaExMachina Nolan centering trauma in his reimagining of a foundational myth makes sense, because therapy is the secular religion. Trauma is the sole remaining path to righteousness. Damon/Odysseus’ pain and guilt give him moral authority—in that respect, he’s exactly like Batman.

I mean the Cyclops is already alien because you never see anything like him leading up to his scene. You're right, it wouldn't fit the tone of this Odysseus because Nolan's stripped him of his original character defining flaw of hubris and pride. At that point the pun would be there just to be funny and not the damning event the real punchline is.

@CopaExMachina My take is that he wanted the Cyclops to be as alien and inhuman as possible, hence why it barely speaks - and even then it's barely a word. The Nobody pun wouldn't really fit with the tone of the film, IMO.

@DamianChavezArt Agreed. It's a massive overreach. Completely dilutes the character of Odysseus.

@CopaExMachina Then the film is hubris.

@Muenster_Kunst 🙏

@CopaExMachina 👍👍👍