Not going to lie, I’m already a bit bummed about one of the changes he’s made to the story.
Not enough to not see it or to think it any less of the masterpiece I’m sure that it is, of course. Just a slight disappointment, but on the other hand, I’m glad I know about it now rather than feeling disappointed in the theater and having that take me out of the film for a couple of minutes.
Hoping to see it towards the end of the month at a small local theater that I’ve found doesn’t have much in the way of audience problems.
I must have watched Pattinson’s first outing a couple of times, still I can only recall very little about it. I admit I’m only a casual Batman fan but also wonder whether this isn’t a more general response. Is there really a bigger demand for another Batman film outside the fanbase?* Is Pattinson even on the public radar as playing Batman? Whenever I read about Pattinson in the media his various roles are listed, that vampire vehicle, THE LIGHTHOUSE, MICKEY17, TENET and yes, also THE BATMAN - but rather in an ‘also ran’ tone that suggests the almost three hours of runtime didn’t anything to define his career. Maybe Pattinson’s Batman needs a second outing, but the wider public appears indifferent about it.
*And being in a conciliatory mood I am also aware the same question can be asked about Bond.
The film will be Nolan’s use of the story to depict humans as he envisions them–post-ancient world mentality and as contemporary psychological beings. In some ways it will be OPPENHEIMER REDUX–great man ridden by guilt and trauma. Oppenheimer made the bomb. Odysseus crafted the Trojan Horse. A soupcon of Bruce Wayne thrown in for god measure.
I doubt we are going to get the sacking of Cicones, the killing of its men, and the taking of the city’s women as spoils. As for killing all the women who slept with Penelope’s suitors and the numerous animal sacrifices to the gods? Big question marks there as well.
The film will be a period piece in modern psychological dress.
Sounds lovely. I will let everyone know next week what THE ODYSSEY on 42nd Street is like.
Possibly. Probably even, given how the reviews emphasise parallels to ptsd and the plights of the homecoming warrior. Then again, it has to, no? Since 2001 we - figuratively for ‘the west’ - are living in a constant state of interstate hostilities in various degrees of international law.
A whole generation has now known nothing but this strange twilight of undeclared - this way you can never lose one - but de facto war that’s engraved ever deeper into our social fabric. Notwithstanding how democracies and totalitarian rulers alike do their best to cover the fact and isolate their subjects from the worst fallout of this quarter century of conflict, it’s no doubt now a fact of our lives.
The obvious parallel with the Trojan war and the subsequent odyssey has to interest any director tackling this subject in our time. We literally are Odysseus as a society, unable to reach our home, subject to the vulgar tastes and caprices of envious, cruel deities and struggling between ratio and pseudo religious deliverance by simply wishing us back to Elysium. The Odyssey is highly relatable, relevant to us in various all too modern, all too classic ways of our human comedy.
I wouldn’t be at all disappointed if Nolan’s version turned out quite topical.
the way in which he defeats the cyclops. Always thought that was a great moment in the story. Granted, smaller in the grand scheme of things, but still a great moment nonetheless.
Apparantly he couldn’t make it work. He tried a few different ways as he loved that moment too, but the narrative style of the film was making it impossible.
Agreed. I am just thinking about all the naysayers (not @dalton) who will carp that the film is not faithful to the poem (complaints started before release). While such fidelity might be achievable (and I say might), is it necessary or valuable?
We need an Aeneas! I say this since I am reading the new translation of The Aeneid by Scott McGill and Susannah Wright which is sublime. They have chosen iambic pentameter to represent Virgil’s dactylic hexameter, and I find it successful. The language is elevated and poetic, and the narrative flows beautifully. Their version also makes it perfectly plausible that gods and mortals interact, and that Juno just cannot get over what happened at Troy. But I am taken to a different world every night in my quiet, darkened bedroom, as I travel back in time on the page. Another reason why I think that Nolan was wise to excise most of the gods and much of the violence/sacrifice in his version. These poems are bloody, visceral affairs, with much blood spilled on the ground–both combatively and sacrificially.
Understood. I think Nolan will need to change a lot to make a 21st century movie version work.
As it is my pet peeve I repeat it once again: adaptation to another medium means change. Audiences expecting a word for word visualization of their favourite text do not understand the different methods of different media.
Sure, some adaptations depart so much from the original text that one wonders why, apart from the IP marketing value, a source was bought for the adaptation at all. But desperate attempts at filming every comma only lead to tedious results which still cannot fulfill those audiences‘ expectations.
Exactly. Imagine filmmakers adapting a novel where the only thing they keep is the name of the villain and a passing reference to the fact that he plays bridge.
Just to play devil’s advocate on this, I think there is some value in a faithful adaptation. There is a reason that we’re still talking about this story some 3,000+ years after it was written and, for a lot of the people who encounter the story today, they do so in various abridged versions found in school textbooks. Seeing the entire thing faithfully told on the screen would have value in bringing the entire story to a modern audience who, as I heard someone describe it on a news program not too long ago, has entered something of a post-reading (or post-book, I can’t remember exactly what the phrasing was) and the point of it was that the reading of actual books and other things (articles, magazines, etc.) that weren’t short bursts on a digital screen was way down. A faithful telling, in that context, I think has tremendous value, so that the story can be further preserved in a way that future audiences will be able to digest.
All that said, the only change that I’m aware of (and I don’t want to know any more prior to seeing it) is the one I mentioned in the spoiler tag above, although I’m sure there are more, and that’s completely fine as long as the film is great. The fact that I’m even considering going to a theater to see it at all should be indicative of how excited I am for this particular film, and that’s coming from someone who isn’t nearly as big of a follower of Nolan as most are.
This is the main takeaway for me: here’s a director willing to take a plunge with a cultural icon - that is, in its original form now highly unaccessible for many - and we’re having a rare campfire moment of discussion and debate about it. On a much wider basis and range than many other more topical, more contemporary films.
Whatever one makes of Nolan, the film or the original, it shows this is such a deeply resonant strand of our cultural heritage for a reason - and it’s brilliant a film can still interest people in so many different ways. This is quite extraordinary.
I agree, but I doubt it can be done. People today just do not think the way people in Homer’s time did. We conceive of the world in a different way. The story/plot/action may stay the same, but the killing of the female slaves and the hiding of the weapons would strike a contemporary audience as plain wrong, and I cannot see how a film could contextualize it. When reading the poem, one can pause/reflect/consider, and appreciate the chasm between our present moment and the past. A film just sweeps one along from one incident to the next. This is where my doubts come in.
I think the film will be fine, but it will be Nolan’s telling of the tale–his Odysseus, just as Shakespeare has his Odysseus in Troilus and Cressida. The movie will need to be critiqued on its own aesthetic terms, and not if it has been faithful to its source.
@MrHinx Cruel, Mr. Hinx. Cruel. Like Juno, I call upon King Aeolus to release the winds upon your fleet.
