I actually quite like it, but it also feels like a reskinned JOKER, trying to emulate the general formula of the first movie to gain a quick and easy sense of prestige. It feels like I’ve already seen it and know the general plot beats.
It’s the best thing to come out of The Odyssey because I want the cinema experience to continue. Flops are always going to be a thing, and there seem to be more than usual these days. But I think people could be getting sick of sitting on the couch and want to get out more. Nothing can beat being excited for a big event film and heading out to the cinema to see it. Nolan leans too wordy and sterile for me at times, but there’s no denying he throws absolutely everything into his work and has a following.
Another review that appreciates Nolan’s efforts yet finds it missing at times…
From Charlotte Higgins’ opinion piece:
Had he cleaved closer to the source material, I’m not sure the movie accountants would be now totting up the money so gleefully. Would modern cinemagoers really queue up to see a row of enslaved women hanged, like doves caught in a trap (says the poem) their feet twitching as they are killed?
Higgins writes that she enjoyed the film and I believe her. Then again, Charlotte Higgins and Mary Beard have a whole podcast series going about the classics and especially the Odyssey - 24 out of 74 episodes cover just the original text, another three episodes concern themselves just with Nolan’s film. So far, that is.
It’s to be expected Higgins would approach the simple fact of there just being an adaptation with a huge number of observations and well-argued criticisms. That it’s Nolan, a master of the art and one of the few directors who actually can pull such a venture without a studio getting cold feet, just adds to the excitement of it all. I have little doubt this will be discussed for some time. Until Nolan tackles his next project.
I just miss the days when people just discussed a version instead of crying out that they had imagined it so very differently or that not every comma was put on the screen.
Quite frankly, I never saw Elijah Wood as Frodo and still enjoyed Jackson‘s adaptation.
He has mentioned that he went for The Odyssey with the first attempt at a whole film in Imax because Oppenheimer did as well as it did critically and financially that it maybe the only time he wouldnt get a hard NO for bringing it up.
Yes - but then again, do you remember the amount of controversial discussion after Petersen’s TROY? Me neither, because that was mainly the noughties staple diet of popcorn fluff, forgotten by the time we left the lobby. I actually prefer that this now has some rough edges where people can get their teeth in. Not everybody, naturally. But it’s at least something that invites further work with the text and its import.
I honestly wouldn’t have thought any studio would go there and invest in a project that’s destined to end up as love labour for a niche audience. Nolan was playing the system and won. This is quite an achievement in our day and age.
The same argument @MrKiddWint already explored is made, that THE ODYSSEY feels like a companion piece to OPPENHEIMER. Nolan doesn’t deny it. Instead, he sees his task as providing a canvas that the audience can - probably should - question and ponder further. With this mindset the question of ‘authenticity’ or lack thereof doesn’t come up. Any relation between the protagonists of these two films exists because we make it, because our reality cannot but pick up the same concerns and fears.
It’s funny that many want to just drag Nolan over the coals because he dared to not make a completely faithful adaptation of the poem.
There are plenty, and I mean plenty, of great films that are terrible adaptations of their source material. Kubrick’s The Shining immediately comes to mind. Seems to me that it’s pretty universally hailed as a masterpiece of cinema, and rightfully so, it’s a fantastic film. I can’t imagine that it’s a closer adaptation to its source material than Nolan’s take on The Odyssey is to Homer’s poem.
Kubrick went into his own direction with SHINING. It’s not so much that he didn’t understand the book but that he only needed it to tell his own story about its themes. King’s book is about a recovering alcoholic, at his core a good guy who is helpless in the presence of a supernatural entity.
Kubrick’s film is a story of domestic violence unfolding in an isolated, remote setting the victims cannot easily escape. The supernatural could just as well be cut without missing a beat - in fact some may prefer the reading of these elements as entirely imaginary, figments of an abused kid’s subconscious struggling to deal with the terror that is an alcoholic parent and a family in codependency.
I didn’t say that he didn’t understand the material. He was an incredibly smart individual, I think his films put that on display. It’s clear that he went his own direction with The Shining. That was kind of the point. At the same time, that makes it a not a particularly good adaptation of King’s source material. In some ways, though Kubrick improves upon the source. In other spots, not so much. But his film is phenomenal.
My point, though, is that it’s hailed, rightly, as a cinematic masterpiece. And it takes great liberties with its source material. Nolan, on the other hand, is criticized because his film is not a 1:1 copy of the poem. There’s so much there in the story of The Odyssey that can make for interesting parallels to today’s time. And that sound like what he’s done, which is perfectly fine, and has no bearing on the quality of the film.
Over the years I’ve read some reviews by King fans who kept beating the Kubrick-hasn’t-read/understood The Shining, no doubt also helped by King’s own disappointment with the film. As an adaptation it misses the book’s crucial character arcs. As an interpretation, however, it’s glorious.
The difference to THE ODYSSEY is probably that it’s easier to get away with sampling a few elements from a King book and put your own spin on them than it is to change a culture icon’s text, even if it’s in the service of a greater context with our times. But Nolan knew all that when he started work on his adaptation and the critique doesn’t bother him all that much.
Even what’s missing is telling - as Hemingway knew - and I think the original text is now seeing a renaissance also due to Nolan’s film. That’s certainly a good thing.
I think the view that they have on this is debunked by just how different Kubrick’s version of the story is. As King has noted time and time again, the tones of the two are completely different. Kubrick’s film is quite cold and sterile whereas King’s original is the polar opposite of that. King’s original is the story of a deeply flawed man descending into madness due to the hotel’s influence over him. Kubrick’s take is that Jack is clearly unhinged from the start.
Given how far to the opposite end of the spectrum that Kubrick takes things from King’s original, I think it’s clear that he understood the text. He just wanted to use it as a jumping off point to explore themes that he wanted to explore. And he made a phenomenal film in the process of doing so.
I would agree that it’s different for The Odyssey, given its much longer-standing place in culture. But, at the same time, given that it’s a story that has survived for all of this time at first being passed down orally, where no doubt it accumulated some changes over the years. It probably accumulated more changes once it was finally written down and then even more once it began being translated for other languages and cultures around the world. I think that this is just another step in that process of passing down The Odyssey for future generations. It’s not as if the translated texts won’t still be there. But, it’s not as if we know if anything would be a true, faithful adaptation of the original poem, because we don’t have audio recordings from when it was first being passed along through the spoken word.
What fan service hath wrought. Even here, we often talk about how well (or not) Bond conforms to Fleming’s template. The only criteria is how well a character coheres/exists in the world of the film.
Other examples:
Coppola: THE GODFATHER PART II–APOCALYPSE NOW
Mankiewicz: ALL ABOUT EVE–PEOPLE WILL TALK
Eastwood: UNFORGIVEN–A PERFECT WORLD
Wilder: SUNSET BLVD–ACE IN THE HOLE
Nichols: THE GRADUATE–CATCH-22
Great success allows director to go big. The results are usually fascinating, idiosyncratic, and, sometimes, puzzling.
Another superhero film, yes. But, at the same time, this is a good move by Marvel. Jonsson was fantastic in both The Long Walk and Alien: Romulus. He deserves the chance to headline a major film franchise like this. Good for him.
I seem to be in a weird minority of those who enjoy an adaptation so much more when it brings out new perspectives of the source material instead of just slavishly following it.
In other words: why not read the book again if one does not want to see it changed?
I know there are audiences who want to see Shakespeare as it was brought to the stage during Elizabethan times. But I prefer to see an interpretation of these times.
And in movies it’s the same. Some adaptations don’t work because they are just a repetition of what was already there. Of course, some change things not for the better and fail accordingly. But that’s the game: better reach higher and fall than stay on the ground not moving.
As for King‘s and Kubrick‘s THE SHINING: it is possible to love both for being different from each other. And I even prefer Kubrick‘s version because it is much more unconventional.
I’m with you there. There was a time when I demanded faithfulness from adaptation, but somewhere along the line, I feel that some adaptations become a bit sterile. Watching the movie became an exercise in mentally checking off plot points.
Today, I’m much more open to directors, writers and actors interpreting the material in unexpected ways and bringing something new and surprising to it.
It’s pleasing to see that for all the criticism of authentic casting in this film (which I have not seen*) there must therefore be such a great love of and expertise in poetry. Some of the criticism itself lacks poetry, which is slightly mysterious in such circumstances, perhaps they are having a pentameter off-day, but it still warms the heart that there is so much expertise. I assume this is the reason for criticism of casting. I am reminded of the time everyone was such an expert in hair colour in 2005.
*I will put myself through it once convinced that the actress playing Helen of Troy is someone hatched from an egg whose father was disguised as a swan whilst conceiving her. Otherwise it is NOT MY ODYSSEY, for some reason.
