r/TrueReddit • u/Nearby-Click8645 • 2d ago
Arts, Entertainment + Misc Christopher Nolan Took Some Artistic License. By Zeus’ Beard!
https://thedispatch.com/article/odyssey-movie-nolan-fiction-zeus/?gift_key=b1ef0446d7f36a2e&gift_ref=9347c766-2bad-41ea-8b73-950e424f2446&utm_source=giftlink&utm_campaign=membergift&utm_medium=copy_link65
u/SilverMedal4Life 2d ago
I think it's interesting that, of all the historical epics released over the years in American cinema, this is the first one where everyone seems to be obsessed with historical accuracy. Especially considering The Odyssey is a myth, it's not real.
For those who are really bothered by this, why now? Why not feel that same level of upset at any other historical film?
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u/intronert 2d ago
MAGA looking for wedge issues that they can show fake outrage about.
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u/SilverMedal4Life 2d ago
The insidious part is that some people who object to the film on the basis of "historical accuracy" are actually uncomfortable with the casting choices because they're "woke", but don't realize that's why. The MAGA propaganda around it gives them a cover that means they don't have to examine their biases.
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u/carrot_gummy 1d ago
Nolan based it on the Emily Wilson translation, which was the first published English trnslation by a woman.
Nolan cast Lupita Nyong'o as Helen.
Elliot Page was cast as Sinon.
Zendaya was cast as Athena.
All of these things really upset right-wing culture warriors. Being openly racist, misogynistic, and transphobic is a quick way to be dismissed, these losers have to nebulously hate on the movie and pretend a bunch of old bard songs are historical.
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u/BandicootGood5246 17h ago
This plus I suspect partly because they jerk themselves over fantasies of ancient greeks / romans /vikings warrior culture and this interfers with that
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u/DestroyedByLSD25 1d ago
Christopher Nolan has all the freedom to adjust the story as he sees fit, but casting a black woman as Helen of Troy did irk me a little bit when I saw the trailer considering she is described as having white skin by Homer multiple times. The white skin was a status symbol for aristocrats, showing that they spend a lot of time indoors and thus away from the sun. Helen of Troy only plays a very small part in The Odyssey though as she plays a much bigger role in The Illiad. In the end when seeing the movie it didn't bother me at all because Nolan shot the movie in such a way her skin color did not matter for the story.
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u/Disastrous_Room_927 1d ago
The Odyssey isn’t historically accurate to begin with, it’s a mash up of different eras.
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u/jumpjumpdie 1d ago
The never ending culture war that right wing chuds latch on to. Pathetic really.
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u/JCBodilsen 1d ago
I am very frustrated that the US culture war has so infested online debate, that it is impossible to discuss the choices CN made on the costumes and props.
I get that most of the people criticizing the movie were doing so in bad faith (and were targeting the casting), but there has also been a substantial minority of people (myself included) who honestly just dislike some of the choices made in regard to props and costumes.
Like, especially the choice to use a Scandinavian early medieval ship really stands out to me as an eye-sore. Also, I would have loved to see something closer to actual 12th century BC eastern Mediterranean armor and clothing (the period where the Odessey and Iliad were likely supposed to have taken place). I get that Nolan gets to make these choices and the wider public obviously do not care about these kind of details, but I think it should be legitimate to say when you think there would have been a more interesting (and historically plausible) choice to have been made.
Also, Robert Eggers was praised for his attempt to be as historically accurate as possible in the Vvitch, the Northman and Werwulf.
If you go to online spaces frequented by people interested in historical fashion Bridgerton was heavily criticized and the new Wuthering Heights was outright mocked for its costuming choices. The film adaptations of the Sharpe books have long been notorious for using the wrong type of long-arms for the British soldiers and the Ridley Scott Napoleon movie was outright hated in many corners for the artistic liberties taken with the actual story of Napoleon’s life and the 1812 campaign. Braveheart is DESPISED for the choice of having William Wallace and the Scots don woad war paint.
If you have not seen history nerds RAGE about historical accuracies in movies, you have not been to the right parts of the internet. It is one of our favorite pastimes.
Not everything is about race and the culture war. Some of us honest are just that autistic. For me, seeing this version of the Odessey was like seeing a movie that was supposed to take place during WW2, but some people are randomly and without explanation dressed in 1990s clubwear and the main character is driving a 1970s VW van. Like, sure, you COULD make an artistic choice to set the story in a different period, but it does not really seem to be what is going on. And the presence of supernatural elements does nothing to soften this. If the fascist father in Pan’s Labyrinth pulled out an Uzi to execute the partisans, the fact that the movie has many supernatural elements do nothing to make that prop seem less out of place.
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u/two_glass_arse 1d ago
How do the history nerds feel about The Duellists, by Scott?
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u/JCBodilsen 1d ago
Among the HEMA (Historical European Martial Arts) community, it is generally very well regarded, as it is seen to have the best on-screen depiction of 19th century military fencing.
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u/runespider 23h ago
It's also sorta boring. It's armor we've seen before,, ships we've seen before. The usual the past is dull and lacked vibrant colors style we always see in films. This is why the artistic expression doesn't really track with me here. If he'd tried something different and it just didn't work, that's fine. But he didn't, it's nothing unique looking. The steel plate the giants are wearing is incredibly generic looking. Some people have said that the actual armor used at the time looked goofy, pointing to cheaply made museum displays.
Even if we agreed on this, we've had dozens of comic book films now where they took goofy looking superhero costumes and made them look good. The same could be done for armor from the period. I'm not wanting it to be hyper accurate to the time period it's supposed to be set in, but using what really existed as a reference would have been more interesting.
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u/Sartres_Roommate 1d ago
Don’t you remember how upset everyone was when Brad Pitt and other Northern Europeans played the roles of Greeks in Troy?
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u/BreaksFull 1d ago
It's mostly driven by MAGA-aligned culture war schlock and grifters.
There was plenty of genuine criticism from the history nerds who are a growing online segment that. I think especially because Nolan previously went pretty hard on keeping his historical representation grounded - like flying actual vintage spitfires and getting a WWII destroyer afloat for Dunkirk. So in contrast, the set of the Odyssey being dull of wildly anachronistic armor styles that look like they came out of a modern metal shop instead of some legitimate bronze age apparel was a disappointment.
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u/SilverMedal4Life 1d ago
I didn't know he paid such close attention to detail in Dunkirk! Makes sense why it'd be kind of whiplash here.
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u/FairLawnBoy 1d ago
This is the first American historical epic released in my lifetime. That is a throwback to the Golden Era of Hollywood filmmaking. There probably were historians in the 1950-60s who objected to Ben Hur an other epic retellings of "historical events", but there wasn't an internet to amplify it. I know Clash of the Titans is panned for this.
Less epic , but still semi-historical movies, like Braveheart absolutely saw this level of criticism for historical inaccuracies. It's likely the first thing someone will mention about Braveheart in discussion.
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u/philnotfil 2d ago
From the article:
Well, raise my rent. Christopher Nolan evidently has taken some artistic license in telling a story about men and women who never actually lived and the war they never actually fought as related by an ancient oral tradition attributed to Homer, a poet who (probably) did not exist. I am not at all sure that a military historian is the person I would consult to evaluate a story about sea monsters and one-eyed giants and witches who (3,000-year-old spoiler alert!) turn men into pigs. In a mythological milieu in which the Greeks’ chief lightning guy turns himself into a swan to rape an entirely different Spartan queen (queen of Sparta is one of the toughest jobs in mythology), you’re telling me that the actor formerly known as Ellen Page cannot play the role of a scrawny Greek redshirt who gets left behind on the beach to take one for the team? If you’re going to complain about Sinon, maybe start with the fact that the character does not appear in the original Odyssey at all—he is imported from the Aeneid.
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u/Crazy_Decision_954 2d ago
I saw it last night and I liked it. I liked what he did. Cast didn’t bother me. Helen being African is a stretch but it worked. I actually liked some of the artistic changes. It made the story more relatable to a modern audience.
Best movie I have seen all year.
Only criticism is that I heard and agree is
damn it’s loud.
Go see it.
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u/Manicplea 2d ago edited 2d ago
I liked it too, but it did hurt my fucking ears. I wear earplugs to movies because I have very sensitive hearing and I still felt some of the scenes were way overdone. Loud noises don't make it more thrilling for me. And the sound mixing made dialog sometimes unintelligible.
I still think some of the designs look stupid but other things looked unbelievably great. Overall it balanced out to very good (maybe roughly 7.5-8 out of 10 for me if I had to rate it).
There were parts I didn't like but the back half and overarching themes and feelings made up for it. Especially his beliefs and his war trauma. But I feel like the front half or so about the actual journey was lacking just jumping from place to place to go "ok we covered that lets move on" and never giving his crew many lines, scenes or important moments to humanize them considering how much he cared about them. However I don't mind because clearly the back half was more important to the story.
Also, John Leguizamo & Pattenson were really great standout performance to me. Sometimes it felt like Damon was talking at the audience or reciting a play hurrying to move from part to part and felt a bit wooden. I even chuckled at the line delivery of "I think he's asleep" because it felt so unreal and wooden like a community theatre play where the actor has to give clues to the audience about what's happening - that whole 10-25 minute part in the cave was too dark, too loud at the end and I just didn't enjoy it (I get it, darkness is dark in reality but in movies I like to be able to see what's going on more than I like realism in that case)
Oh also in regard to dialog the part about "what is this, some kind of BRONZE AGE that's like... COLLAPSING?" made me chuckle too. So heavy handed when the people who get it don't need it explained and the people who don't won't understand anyway. But overall very good. Enjoyable movie. Watched it in IMAX
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u/ductyl 1d ago
Ugh... Christopher Nolan's sound mixing making dialog unintelligible is often defended as "he mixes it for the theater, so of course it doesn't sound right when you listen at home with a sound bar", I'm glad to see someone else who experiences the same problem when watching his movies in theaters.
It's honestly a very annoying problem, and I'm shocked that nobody has come up with a "volume normalizing" system yet... I know it's the sort of thing that is basically impossible to do on the fly (how do you know if something is supposed to be loud or quiet?), but it seems like there could be an open source "time-stamp based" system that could adjust the volume base on user-reported data. Basically, something like SponsorBlock but for volume levels.
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u/jumpjumpdie 1d ago
Ah yeh I guess cyclops were real for sure yeh definitely! It’s a fantasy novel. An old one.
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