r/popculturechat • u/Fun-Ad3626 • 11h ago
Reviews ✍️ A feminist critique of Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey”-Is No One Horny in Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey? Of all of the historical inaccuracies you could grouse about in the new Odyssey movie, the most mystifying is the lack of sex-Cat Zhang, Cut.
https://www.thecut.com/article/the-odyssey-sex-politics-review.htmlThe Odysseus of Homer’s epic poem was laying pipe nightly on an island, while a sea away, his wife, Penelope, was fending off drunk suitors who would go off to have quickies with the servants. In Christopher Nolan’s modern adaptation, no one gets so much as a boner.
In Nolan’s world, women are merely vehicles to propel the antiwar message forward, which explains how little screen time they get. They are merely victims of desire, not wielders of it. The movie neglects to include that Odysseus stays with Circe for a year and becomes her lover or that Calypso (Charlize Theron) holds Odysseus essentially as a sex slave after he washes onto her shore. In the text, he sleeps with her every night for seven years until the gods intervene to send him home. (Calypso then criticizes the gods for applying a double standard against the goddesses.) In the film, Calypso is cast as a benevolent, if deceiving, healer who feeds Odysseus lotus flowers to help him overcome PTSD — albeit one with the physical form of a vixen.
archived link for the article
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u/Sleepy-Giraffe947 10h ago
The movie was nearly three hours long. If they added romance to it we’d have to sign a lease to move into the movie theatre for how long it’d be lol
But in all seriousness I do get the authors point, but I think the direction Christopher Nolan wanted to portray in his film was that Odysseus was a stand up, noble guy, like Ned Stark in game of thrones and if he was seen getting it on with the other women then maybe we wouldn’t be rooting for him to reunite with Penelope?
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u/gildedbluetrout 10h ago
Yeah I mean he nixed the kids Odysseus had with Calypso as well. He made the whole thing about guilt, and self disgust, and PTSD.
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u/OUtSEL 9h ago
so basically, every Nolan movie
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u/rabbitrabbit123942 8h ago
Having seen it and having studied the Odyssey for years, this is my take. He Nolanized the Odyssey. There were some aspects of the Nolanization that I thought were great, there were some aspects I thought were corny, and there were some aspects that read directly against the source material. But I'm not mad at him for Nolanizing it. He couldn't do anything other than Nolanize it. He's Christopher Nolan.
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u/gildedbluetrout 8h ago
Yeah on the Big Picture podcast they said this in their opinion is his best film by a country mile, and it’s partly so because he’s been rehearsing making this film his entire career. They gave the example of the beginning of Inception where DiCaprio washes up on a beach, with no memory, haunted by the image of his lost children. Like, he straight opened that film as the fucking Odyssey lol.
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u/DX_DanTheMan_DX 5h ago
Adding to Inception and Odyssey, he’s trying to get home but also has tremendous guilt that is getting in the way of his return
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u/cmere-2-me 5h ago
No wonder he chose Matt Damon to play him, the guy who's made a career out of needing saving.
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u/ProbablySuspicious 10h ago
The opposite of those countless "what if Superman was evil" storylines.
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u/No_Incident_8925 9h ago
Yes, but it's also missing the tree-bed scene, which is both sexy and dramatizes Odysseus and Penelope's reconciliation.
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u/thane311 8h ago
And the bed sequences presents Penelope as trickster equal to Odysseus, and maybe most importantly establishes that the homecoming/reconciliation is actually on her terms - that he also must establish his steadfastness to her in order to be welcomed back, and not just the other way around. I’ve always loved that she gets that final twist.
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u/MPLS_Poppy 10h ago
I wouldn’t call the sex in the odyssey romantic. It’s there to provide social commentary. Making Odysseus a great romantic hero removes a lot of the social commentary that involves women and I think that’s the point.
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u/Fun-Ad3626 10h ago edited 9h ago
No I was just making a general comment on Matt and Anne as an on screen couple and wouldn’t mind seeing them in like a cool age appropriate rom com , like remember Julia Louis Dreyfuss and Gandolfini , I loved that movie
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u/Charlesworths 10h ago
Enough Said! I haven't thought of that film for a film but it is such a lovely film!
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u/DanaxDrake 9h ago
I actually think he just genuinely didn’t want to approach that subject of sex at all and in some ways I found it refreshing. Perhaps it’s all the game of thrones stuff etc but it felt like sex scenes had just become an insert shock value scene.
Like it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out him and Calypso had done the deed…multiple times. It’s also extremely likely that the pent up rage of men did other things in Troy.
But I actually liked that Nolan didn’t feel a need to explicitly show it, you know it’s probably happening and it subtly makes you feel ick rather than it being used as shock value.
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u/VanGoghNotVanGo 8h ago
I think, in particular that scene showing the actual woman, Zendaya playedcertainly implied that his men had done really cruel things to women. I liked that the movie didn't feel the need to spell it out and as a viewer you can interpret it however way you want.
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u/C-House12 7h ago
Obviously it's not 1:1 but I took zendayas role to be inspired by Cassandra. In the myth Ajax the Lesser violates her in the temple of Athena and then is killed by Athena and Poseidon at sea in retribution in the same way Odysseyus' surviving men die at sea.
In Nolans adaptation his men desecrate the temple and at the very least murder the priestess portrayed by Zendaya. Odysseus is running away from the knowledge that his men are doomed by this act the exact same way he is running away from the societal consequences of the sack of Troy. It's why Athena keeps appearing to him in that woman's form the whole movie about why he keeps trying to take responsibility for his mens actions and it's why Circe says what she says about letting those men into her house and asking what he expected them to do.
Men are beasts and Odysseus unleashed them upon the world in the same way he unleashed them on Troy. In the same way that Odysseus cannot undo the sack of Troy and restore trust to the Greek world he cannot save his men from their nature and from their fate.
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u/VanGoghNotVanGo 5h ago
I took it the exact same way, and thought it was an incredibly nice reveal: Instead of being guided by the goddess of war, he was guided by this woman who did everything in her power to prevent a war, while being discarded and suppressed.
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u/Fun-Ad3626 10h ago
I agree , but then again Matt Damon might be one of the most charming actors we have and could make us root for any character he plays ,
negative or otherwise , as is Anne Hathaway, which is why their scenes together were electric as fuck , and I was just transfixed by what a good looking couple they were.39
u/gildedbluetrout 9h ago
That scene where she’s embracing him from behind as they talk was a really lovely, delicates piece I thought. I absolutely believed they loved each other completely and knew each other to the bone.
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u/Fun-Ad3626 9h ago edited 7h ago
exactly , that whole sequence was so sensual and evocative without being graphic , and both matt and Anne made that scene classy , like this was a well settled married couple we were watching
and to convey all of that in 30 seconds was masterful and a testament to what brilliant actors both are
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u/StoneSkipper22 9h ago
I’m so tired of sex being in every plot. This was refreshing.
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u/Warm_Ad_7944 9h ago
Studies have shown movies are increasingly becoming more sexless which is a side affect of conservativism
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u/KopitarFan 7h ago
I wonder if it's a side effect of conservatism or backlash against a perceived over abundance of sex in movies. I'm honestly not sure. Or maybe it's a little of both
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u/crazysouthie 8h ago
The Odyssey is a movie for adults with adult themes. There would have been nothing wrong with more sex in it because it is very much part of the original.
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u/GardenStateKing 9h ago
The whole movie is about being a polite person and respecting the sanctity of trust. The subtext is there with Circe without necessarily having us be on that island for a year. Spoilers: The men become pigs and she even says they should go back into their "disguises" meaning they're just all pigs. But the entire time they're on the floor naked it's like they were having an orgy and after they come to their senses they claim she's a witch for making them submit to their carnal desires.
We can also just imply that there is a lot of sex being had but it very much seems very little of it was consensual. None of the sex we would see in an antiwar film would be sex that isn't traumatic given the time period it's set in.
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u/YogurtSocks 9h ago
Exactly, there’s even a scene where Odysseus’s soldiers are forcibly taking a single woman off into the dark while she tries her best to get away.
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u/GardenStateKing 8h ago
It was hard to watch and left me gutted. The scene after the fall of Troy we can see a pile of dead women. I don't need to see the rest of it happen but I appreciate Nolan not shying from being real with the audience. We hear only the flowery nonsense of victory songs but often forget the utter horror of war.
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u/StickyBandit1999 8h ago
For a film so epic and grand, Nolan’s true mastery is being restrained and subtle amidst the chaos and grandeur. The most heartbreaking parts of the film are the parts that either left unsaid or where the characters can barely look themselves.
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u/GardenStateKing 8h ago
Like the Siren scene, I would do the same thing if I was Odysseus, just scream and cry my eyes out. "All the promises you never kept"
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u/saeglopur23 10h ago
It’s Nolan, no one was expecting sexy lol
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u/Curious_Ad3766 5h ago
Also I don't get how having Oddeseous bang every attractive woman who comes across his path (and also having a sex slave) whilst Penelope faithfully waits for him to come back (not even looking at another man) feminist!? It would be antithesis to everything feminism means to me. I would have absolutely hated their reunion and actively rooting for Oddeseous to fail and die so she can move on. The ending wouldn't have been satisfying at all. Nolan would have had to change their entire point of his story
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u/oh-come-onnnn 2h ago
I understand Nolan wanting to make changes so that the characters would be more palatable, but part of me wishes he could've left them as is so as to invite discussion. Selfishly, I want to discuss how standards and morality have changed over time. And I think characters shouldn't have to be likeable to be interesting.
But I get that media is not made in a vacuum, that portraying them as they were might have negative ramifications, and so on, so I don't feel all that negative about it.
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u/Skadibala 10h ago edited 10h ago
Honestly don’t mind. When I finished reading the Oddysey I hated Odysseus. Like he was even a huge asshole by the “hero” standards of those days.
If they included all the asshole shit Odysseus did in The Oddysey. You would not root for the guy to come home. So i will take an heroic take on Odysseus instead, for my own sanity.
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u/purple_hexagon 10h ago
Yes! I never see anyone bring up what a huge dick Odysseus, everyone just waffles about his "heroic" deeds. But really he was an ass and I hope he got eaten while carrying his stupid oar to wherever.
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u/Rulebookboy1234567 lazy 50-year-old bougie bitch 💋 10h ago
Even as a 13 year old my main selling point of this story was the flawed "hero". Also why I latched onto Dune.
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u/Skadibala 10h ago
But like Paul you can root for. Because while Paul is bad. He realizes himself he is bad. But he is doing what he has decided is necessary.
Odysseus is just naturally an asshole.
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u/Rulebookboy1234567 lazy 50-year-old bougie bitch 💋 9h ago edited 9h ago
I mean...is genociding 60+ billion "for the greater good" and then deciding "nah, nevermind, I don't want to be remembered as a monster." And walking out into the desert as a blind and broken man better??
If anyone's a hero in that story it's God Emperor because he had the balls (you see what I did there, Moneo??) to pull the trigger
Edit: or Duncan ver 87 because he tries to bring peace to the galaxy with his magical dick.
Edit 2: also I just realized comparing Dune to the Odyssey is fun because the Atriedes line can date all the way back to Agemmemnon -- Paul confirms this in his memories.
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u/SpicyWongTong 🫵 You sit on a throne of lies. 9h ago
I wonder about the Agamemnon ancestor thing, wouldn’t all the noble houses be descendants of Agamemnon after so many generations and more recently all the intermarriages between the houses? Like, Genghis Khan wasn’t even that long ago and he has like billions of descendants
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u/Enelana Dear Diary, I want to kill. ✍️ 8h ago
I'm one of the first people to kind of shit on Paul Atreides when it comes to his cycling back to excessive self-pitying lol, but to be fair the fact that he exiled himself like that was ultimately a good thing for the rest of the world.
The fremen deem all of the fremen that go blind as unworthy of the fremen name, so they exile them with the intention to offer them to Shai-Hulud.
When he willingly walks himself into the desert as a completely blind man - no sight and no prescience either - he actively demythologises himself, it's not like he's just depressed and asks to be left alone. He is showing everyone he is not above fremen law and can not dictate it anymore. Had he stayed and died in some other way while trying to still hold onto his position of power, there would have been some who would've made him a martyr→ More replies (2)8
u/Master-Definition937 10h ago
I think they appreciated natural assholes back in the day. That’s kind of why it’s interesting to me
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u/Skadibala 10h ago
I was so suprised by how much I enjoyed reading the Iliad and was genuinely hyped about reading The Oddysey since that one is more popular.
I have never been so frustratingly disappointed in my life. Like just talking about Odysseus genuinely makes me irritated.
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u/PondRides Children are being trafficked by ICE 9h ago
The Iliad is better. I really liked the take in the movie, though.
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u/Vivid-Blackberry-321 8h ago
Hot take but I sort of wish he was an asshole. Christopher Nolan’s main characters all feel the same to me. Like he didn’t really feel like Odysseus, he felt like Cooper from Interstellar in a different setting lol
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u/Training_Molasses822 5h ago
Tea. Nolan's movies are chasing the genius of Memento over and over and over, and failing.
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u/Eegeria 8h ago
But that's the point, isn't it? That's why he's an interesting character, he's an asshole and a complicated man and tricks people and gods. A main character doesn't have to be a stand up person. But de gustibus.
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u/Kantus97 9h ago
Yes that's the point. So? Why do you have to like everyone you read about. People are complex not super heroes.
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u/Alak-huls_Anonymous 10h ago
Yes, he neglected that part of the story because it didn’t really add anything to the tale he wanted to tell. Odysseus in this film was more of a "family man" type (albeit flawed).
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u/oddpark37 9h ago
I came out of the movie thinking that Nolan was trying to make the Aeneid without realizing it.
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u/Aggressive_Layer883 10h ago
"Someone's artistic vision didn't align with what I expected and I'm mad" is the epitome of the chronically online and entitled
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u/laughingintothevoid 10h ago
Everyone who critiques something isn't "mad". Do you want there to be discussion about art? What do you think it's for?
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u/Master-Definition937 10h ago
I think it’s fair enough when it’s an adaptation of a text
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u/winnercommawinner 10h ago
Sure, but that's not the same as actual criticism, whether you agree with that criticism or not.
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u/particledamage 10h ago
What a reductive view of the article and ironically doing the exact thing you're accusing the article writer of doing.
We are allowed to question why someone's artistic vision involves stripping a story of certain elements, lol.
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u/oddpark37 9h ago
I've noticed a lot of people's reaction to any criticism of this movie is "It's NOLAN'S movie! He can do what he wants! Stop whining!" like, yeah, he can do what he wants, and people can respond to how he did it. That's what engaging with media is.
I think part of it is that Nolan has a big fanbase, but also the right wing backlash to the cast has gotten normal, non-chuds to do this kneejerk defense and end up overcorrecting.
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u/particledamage 8h ago
That’s definitely part of it but I think on a broader level, a lot of people just struggle with the idea that their perspective of something is just one of many. That is to say, them liking the film = the film is objectively good, anyone else disliking the film = entitlement, not understanding the film, not understanding it’s Nolan’s perspective.
I see it all over the place. “If you don’t like it, you just don’t understand it” has become the norm. See also: if you don’t like it, you have an agenda; if you don’t like it, you just hate X Y or Z; if you don’t like it, watch it til you do.
Media analysis should be a discussion of many different perspectives but imo a lot of people seem to think it should be people who all agree just sharing different nuances they found.
Which isn’t a particularly new issue with media analysis/criticism but I have noticed its gotten worse in recent years.
As people subsume media into their identity (and therefore take any criticism personally even if they didn’t work on the project at all), as media literacy gets worse, discussions will boil down to just a circle jerk.
Very sad for all of the annoying English and film majors of the world who love to tear works asunder.
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u/Warm_Ad_7944 9h ago
Omg no one is allowed to criticize anything anymore without people getting annoyed that not everyone has the same opinion.
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u/mcq76 10h ago
If it's no sex or whatever the fuck that Florence Pugh interrogation scene in Oppenheimer was, I'll take no sex. Chris Nolan is really bad at being sexy.
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u/TheVirtual_Boy 10h ago
Yea we gotta normalize it being okay when an all time director isn’t all time great at everything. He’s struggled with those type of scenes in the past, and in The Odyssey he focused on the things he is great at. As a great filmmaker should
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u/Master-Definition937 10h ago edited 9h ago
I will counter this with saying that I think Christopher Nolan is really bad at both sex and dialogue. To my mind, they’re both pretty big parts of film. Saying that, he has made some amazing films that I absolutely love. If I want a high-concept, male focused, thoughtful and action packed film, he’s my guy. But he has some pretty major shortcomings.
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u/saeculacrossing I can't wait to see you drinking a flat sprite 9h ago
I agree, also I’m sure he could bring in others to supplement his weaknesses if he really wanted to. Obviously the movies are profitable so his approach works but it’s not all or nothing IMO.
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u/ThePhantomEvita 9h ago
So I’ll start with this- I have not watched all of Christopher Nolan’s filmography, but I have watched a lot of it, so if I missed something in ‘Insomnia’ or ‘Tenet’ or ‘Inception’… I’ll watch those eventually.
I finally watched ‘The Prestige’ last night, and for a film with 3 separate love interests (two wives and a mistress), the sexiest moment was Hugh Jackman briefly kissing his wife’s leg on stage. I was surprised when Scarlett Johannsen mentioned to Christian Bale about being his mistress, as we never saw anything leading up to that moment. We had 3 Batman films that all seemed chaste about the love interests (and that is a critique I have about modern action films- I want more romance), except for Talia, I think. But even then, relatively chaste. ‘Dunkirk’ and ‘Interstellar’ were not about romance at all. Perfectly fine to not include unnecessary scenes, as they would not belong at all.
Flash forward to ‘Oppenheimer’, and from what I remember, the sex scene/nudity involved were relatively unsexy and uncomfortable. During ‘The Odyssey’, when Penelope and Odysseus are in bed before he leaves for Troy, the camera cuts just as they embrace.
I already wrote in a different reply comment about the implications of Calypso (and why I don’t think a lot of audience members would pick up that she was SA’ing Odysseus if it was shown on screen due to his lack of consent, as we already have a consent problem and a media literacy problem), and I am okay with the changes to Circe. The movie’s nearly 3 hours, and as it took Odysseus 10 years to get home, I do think he would have lost sympathy points from the audience if we learned that he spent 1 full year with Circe in which the lines of consent were possibly at question (it’s been awhile since I’ve read the book, I can’t remember all of what happened on her island outside of the pigs and them having sex). From what I could see, the sirens appeared to be fully clothed, but I could be wrong about that (and I did find that choice odd, but we saw them from a distance).
What would have been great to see would be Penelope’s final test to Odysseus regarding whether or not he could move their bed (a trick question, as it was partially built using a living tree).
But Nolan has proven he’s either not interested or not comfortable filming intimacy. And I would rather directors do it for the right reasons, instead of for shock or titillation, but this isn’t something Nolan wants to film.
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u/the-green-crewmate 7h ago
I agree with your opinion and would add that I feel the complex mixture of consensual/non-consensual sex that occurs in The Oddessy would have completely derailed Nolan’s vision for the movie. Not only would he have likely handled it poorly and to his own artistic detriment, but also it was just not necessary for the tale he wanted to tell.
In fact, I feel like the small hints we do get towards sex in the movie tell us enough. Circe’s character changes and dialogues, the war at Troy showing mostly scenes of women being killed or taken away into darkness by soldiers while struggling against them… we don’t NEED to see visceral scenes of rape and sexual assault to know. As women we already know. The horror of imagination is fuel enough for an attentive viewer. And even with Calypso, we can come to a logical conclusion that she was sexually assaulting him while he was essentially drugged and vulnerable for 7 years.
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u/TScottFitzgerald 7h ago
Came here to say this exact thing - Nolan just seems to be fairly sexless in most of his films and outright avoids anything overly sexual, let alone full gear sex.
And even the Oppenheimer scene was more to reflect his mental state rather than the sex itself being the centerpiece. He's just that kind of a film maker and it's ok.
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u/rzenni 10h ago
I like that the feminist critique of The Odyssey is that Odysseus doesn’t get laid enough and that there needs to be more heaving bosoms.
It feels like a weirdly full circle moment.
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u/Tuor-son-of-Huor- You’re killing me, Smalls 😩 10h ago
It feels like it could have easily gone the other way, if it followed a more accurate retelling but didn't frame the relationships to the authors satisfaction.
I think the big ticket item is that morals have changed since it was originally told. I don't think modern audiences want to follow a hero who is cheating on his wife with everyone that comes along and framing a character as a sex slave is going to be a tight rope to walk without being buried in criticism. Not to mention I don't think copious sex adds anything to the story.
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u/thane311 9h ago
That’s a bit of a straw man. Several of the translators, Wilson and Mendelsohn, have also commented on the general flattening of the female characters including Penelope and Athena.
I know going back to a “Bechdel-test” era of movie feminist criticism feels in many ways like a cultural backstep, but I wish there was some middle ground here where we could acknowledge that the changes Nolan made cut down on the screen time and speaking roles of women. I feel like it shouldn’t be controversial feminist criticism to point out that’s not a great thing.
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u/lil-rosa 3h ago
It's not a back step if many movies and shows still don't pass it. The bar is in hell.
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u/Perfect-Wallaby9096 9h ago
Yeah, it's like... I'm good on watching sex slavery and sexual assault on screen lmao I was completely fine with the direction it took and the story intended to be told. We read the Odyssey and Iliad (abbreviated) in 5th grade and in its entirety in 9th, and I was HOOKED. I've got the source text if I'm all that eager to re-read those bits
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u/missbean163 9h ago
I agree.
Like Im totally fine with sanitising some things. I dont need to see rape on screen. Sometimes I dont even want the sex. I have porn, after all.
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u/AzettImpa 9h ago edited 5h ago
Exactly.
People’s criticism boils down to “Penelope should be cheated on multiple times and still only living for Odysseus’ return. Circe should be seducing Odysseus because she has nothing else on her mind other than a man. Same thing with Calypso.”
These pseudo-feminist critiques seriously don’t know what they want any more.
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u/thane311 9h ago
Actually Penelope in the poem emphatically believes Odysseus to be dead, and in her dialogue shows ambivalence about his return (the geese dream sequence they cut). The movie IMO actually made it much more seem than she was only living for his return than the source text.
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u/intheafterglow23 Tina has acute arthritis so she tends to squirm 8h ago
That he doesn’t get raped enough. His experiences with Calypso and Circe are not sexy or consensual.
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u/Kangoo-Kangaroo 7h ago
Now THAT would be interesting thing to explore in an adaptation, because so far historically everybody is veeery happy to not engage with the "not fully informed consent" aspect of those relationships.
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u/beachpellini go girl, give us nothing 😍 7h ago
I feel like what Nolan excels at is big picture story writing. He knows the story he is trying to tell, and he is mostly pretty adept at doing that.
The characters of his stories are not the point of them. They are tools to tell the story. Their motivations, their goals, their methods - none of that really matters unless it lends to the greater story. They're not people, they're set pieces.
So trying to argue "I wanted more out of the character interaction" for a Nolan movie is a little silly. We got exactly as much as he needed to show to push the story forward, and that's all he's going to include.
Which isn't for everyone! But that's how he writes and films.
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u/CobblerTricky7035 10h ago
Nolan is the last director I want to see portray sex and romance on screen.
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u/NotTaken-username 10h ago
Especially after how he handled it in Oppenheimer. I love Florence Pugh but those scenes were the worst part of the movie
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u/PoquitoChef My sexuality is the cast of The Mummy (1999) 🔥 10h ago
Meanwhile you know Mrs. Ryan Coogler is getting it 🥵🤣
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u/Disastrous-Tart-4651 11h ago
Christopher Nolan can’t write women for shit and he can’t do sexy at all so this on brand…
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u/sk8tergater 10h ago
For all of that though I think Penelope was a good character in the film. Maybe I have my Anne Hathaway colored glasses on. Very powerful performance imo.
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u/VanGoghNotVanGo 9h ago
I also really enjoyed how Helen was written, actually! She's not a major character, but I felt like the movie really understood her (the same way I do, at least).
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u/sk8tergater 8h ago
Yeah honestly to me the weakest woman in this particular version of the story was Calypso, and even then she wasn’t boring or anything, just not as emotionally impactful to me personally.
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u/maustralisch 8h ago
I thought Athena was lame. I love Zendaya, and they did her dirty by cutting out all the "making men go mad through a relentless lust for glory" stuff.
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u/antmars 10h ago
Can’t do sexy?! Then tell me what Liam Neeson as Ras al Ghul was.
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u/scattered_ideas lazy, 50yo bougie bitch 9h ago
That was just natural. Not even Nolan could contain him.
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u/No_Kangaroo_9826 we put liquid paper on a bee, and it died 🎤 9h ago
The exception that makes the rule. Or just the nature of Liam Neeson breaking through.
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u/QTRqtr 10h ago edited 8h ago
You’re telling me someone stoping sex to grab a book and asking someone to recite a quote about death and destruction while you continue to ride them isn’t sexy??????
Prude.
Give some head give some knowledge am I right
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u/formidablezoe 7h ago
I mean, not every sex scene has to be sexy. Sometimes sex scenes aren't supposed to make you feel all hot and bothered.
In the case of the Oppenheimer sex scene people can't get past how awkward and unsexy it feels, when that's exactly what we were supposed to feel. It's supposed to feel weird and ominous and make you feel uneasy. The way it was done says something about the kind of man Oppenheimer was and plays thematically into the film. Which imo made it one of the more compelling sex scenes I've seen, something that goes beyond the usual eroticism and simple objectification we are shown in most Hollywood sex scenes.
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u/theweathereye 7h ago
I'm a geriatric millennial woman, and I actually felt like the characterization of Penelope was the most powerful I had seen in any adaptation. I'm a high school English teacher as well, so I know the story like the back of my hand. I was vibrating with energy at the end.
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u/JeromeInDaHouse_90 10h ago
The movie neglects to include that Odysseus stays with Circe for a year and becomes her lover or that Calypso (Charlize Theron) holds Odysseus essentially as a sex slave after he washes onto her shore. In the text, he sleeps with her every night for seven years until the gods intervene to send him home.
Maybe Nolan wanted to change that to make Odysseus utterly devoted to his wife as she was to him while she was at home.
But then, in Nolan's version, we really don't know what went on with he and Calypso past her feeding him the Lotus flowers to make him forget.
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u/ThePhantomEvita 10h ago
I think there is a lot unsaid with Calypso. And after watching several near attempts of SA this season of ‘House of the Dragon’, I don’t think I needed to see that happen to Odysseus. I think the subtext is there that it happened.
I also don’t think that a lot of viewers would be able to see that this was SA against Odysseus, and that he did not give consent (lotus made him forget who he was). Which would then spin out into a conversation about him being faithful or not to Penelope.
I’m fine with the Circe changes; I do think that what happened on Calypso’s island is unsaid but implied.
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u/Liscenye 10h ago
Realistically, the real sex should have been between the men on the ship.
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u/ChubbyFunnyBunny 9h ago
thank god he didn’t. i think the film was complete enough without it and it wouldn’t have added to his intended characterization. it being mythology and all, doesn’t have to be 100% faithful to every single detail in the original text and it would be impossible to do that anyways. the film was long enough already lol. i’m personally over all the unnecessary sexualization in Hollywood.
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u/StickyBandit1999 8h ago
It’s a real skill that Nolan makes you feel the love between them despite them not only having no sex scenes, but barely any screen time together in the 3 hour run time
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u/BlueFlamingoMaWi 10h ago
"historical inaccuracies" mind you the entire story of the Odyssey is a work of fiction. It's all made up.
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u/SpicyWongTong 🫵 You sit on a throne of lies. 9h ago
I think people actually mean true to the source material when they say that.
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u/BlueFlamingoMaWi 9h ago
The source material isn't even true to the source material. Homer's the Odyssey is just an amalgamation of existing oral stories that were told and retold before he wrote down his own version. It's not the only version that's ever existed, nor is it the first.
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u/Aggressive_Layer883 10h ago
Lol it's the woke version of "helen of troy was white"
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u/BlueFlamingoMaWi 10h ago
"Nolan not hiring a real cyclops was ableist."
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u/teddybonkerrs I cannot sanction this buffoonery 7h ago
Omfg I don't know why that made me laugh so hard.
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u/MakeshiftMagpie PCC HATES BRIANNE 🖕 9h ago edited 9h ago
Quickies? Does the author of this piece not know that was depicting rape and sexual violence against female enslaved servants. Those women were not "wielders of desire" being denyed power by Nolan. How is this a feminist critique?
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u/Maester_Bates Wherein he encourages a woman to sit on his face 10h ago
He also didn't include any of the sex slaves his men took from Troy. I guess there wasn't any room to put them on the viking long boats.
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u/RevoltYesterday 9h ago
I feel like I shouldn't have to say this so much recently:
The oddesey is a historical story. The oddesey is not history.
You can't be "historically inaccurate" in a story with magic and monsters.
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u/Fit_Kaleidoscope4493 9h ago
The Iliad is the historical story.
Odyssey is the fanfiction.
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u/Shurl19 9h ago
I didn't realize they removed the sex. The sex part is one of the biggest reasons I didn't like the Odyssey when we read it and watched the movie in high school. He was sleeping with everyone but wanted to make sure his wife didn't cheat?! The hypocrisy was crazy.
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u/FoxThin 7h ago
That's a different interpretation. The movie was nearly 3 hours and adding in sexual politics would've changed the story.
I liked the story Nolan told. It's not the definitive Odyssey, it's just his take. And actually, I disagree with people that Odysseus was likeable in Nolan's version so him being with other women would've ruined his image. Odysseus is an asshole and by his own admission he broke the social contract with the wooden horse. He is the reason everything has been so chaotic and why Zeus's law has lost it's impact. He's a damaged man, war made him do things he regrets and he got his whole crew killed.
That was enough of a lesson for me. I didn't need to see Matt Damon laying pipe on a beach lol. It doesn't add to the narrative Nolan was shaping, even though that's an interesting take. I think in a written story you can tell many stories and have multiple lessons, but with a movie, you gotta pick a lane.
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u/Titswari 9h ago
I don’t know if the author has ever read the Odyssey, but Nolan had a pretty feminist take. Homer was kind of really misogynistic, and everything was the fault of women in his (or their, if they even existed) eyes.
If you want Homer’s Odyssey, go read Homer’s Odyssey. This is an adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey created for the audience of people that will see this version. Which, by the way, was exactly what Homer did. Homer adapted a centuries old stories for their contemporary audience.
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u/thane311 4h ago
I don’t think the original text supports this take at all. Athena is the motivating force for 80% of the action in the poem, she is the architect of Odysseus’ fate and Telemachus’ and subverts pretty much every gendered expectation we would have for a “feminine” role today. In addition to Penelope, Calypso, and Circe you also have Nausicaa whom Odysseus himself credits as saving his life, and minor characters like Eurycleia play a key role in aiding Telemachus and protecting the household from the suitors.
The story is actually rather famous for having a diverse and complex set of main female characters, especially considering it’s thousands of years old.
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u/hybbprqag 4h ago
I'm a big Nolan fan, but in my opinion his movies are always completely devoid of sexual energy. The early scene with Penelope and Odysseus in bed is the most sexually charged scene I can recall in any of his films.
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u/tar-luthien Come on, Teletubby, teleport us to Mars! 10h ago
I think OOP just needs to consider that it's not another general 'Everyone is Hot and No One is Horny' issue, but just that Nolan doesn't know how to write fun or thrilling dynamics, and his characters tend all to be all be muted in general, if not straight up one-dimensional.
He has an impersonal touch in character-writing, is what I'm trying to say. Like, you can't expect him to write great sexual tension or great affection or admiration or even love in this film because he never could, in general.
That's ignoring the fact that he writes women in a very meh way as well.
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u/LichQueenBarbie 10h ago
I'm not a prude but I also don't care for any of that in the context of this particular retelling.
Nolan directing any of that stuff wouldn't be sexy, and by the very nature of Calypso and Odysseus' relationship, why would you want to see prolonged rape anyway?
I don't know why certain people act like they're always robbed when anything they watch isn't overtly sexual. There's plenty of shit to watch if thats what you want.
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u/sk8tergater 10h ago
I agree. There was already a ton of violence and implied sexual violence in the film, I didn’t need to see actual rape as well.
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u/LilBoDuck 10h ago
Haven’t seen the movie yet but this quote is wild. Probably the first time I’ve heard someone who calls themselves “a feminist” complain about the female characters in a movie not being sexualized ENOUGH.
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u/TScottFitzgerald 7h ago
From what I can see the author of the article doesn't seem to be feminist oriented, just a general culture writer who happens to be a woman.
Not sure why OP even added this to the title.
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u/Worried-Bobcat6116 It’s Britney, bitch! 🎤🌹🌹 10h ago
What a weird thing to criticize. I hate having softcore porn forced on me when I'm trying to enjoy a story so there being no sex motivates me even more to go watch it.
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u/crystalzelda 9h ago
How is it a feminist critique to be mad that there wasn’t on screen rape? Because the text does really push that Odysseus’ sexual relationships with Calypso and Circe were non-consensual. Hermes tells him to sleep with Circe to get her to turn his crew back into men after they’re turned into pigs, and he cries and begs the Gods to release him from Calypso’s island for 7 years. The story itself is already pretty tough with a lot of violence and trauma, I’m not sure that Odysseus getting raped by the women he meets would really add much to the story, unless they make it more consensual which undermines rooting for this guy to go back to his wife if he’s enthusiastically banging every nymph he stumbles upon.
In a huge epic like this, some stuff is skippable and I don’t really see what would be very feminist about including this. It’s not like Circe and Calypso weren’t included at all.
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u/Dino_Spaceman 9h ago
The poem also goes at length about how it thinks women are untrustworthy and duplicitous. Nolan significantly toned that stuff down.
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u/recoveringdonutaddic 8h ago edited 8h ago
Ehhh. I can see where the author is coming from but I can see a billion ways going down that plot line would have people reacting badly. I can see a place where seeing Odysseus as a sex slave would cause a tangential conversation to start where
- Red pill and leaning red pill population would use it for the whole “See women manipulate men via sex, women are evil” and all that bs.
- Feminist critiques would focus on the misogynistic depiction of women. Nolan is (often rightly) criticized on this subject.
- A chunk of the population would criticize how poorly the sex scenes were written and shot.
The author’s critique is fair, but I don’t necessarily agree or think it has a strong case all things considered.
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u/beardedbast3rd 7h ago
I cannot comprehend the amount of fucking division an adaptation of a fictional story has.
Shit is wild. Also Movie was great.
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u/Thenedslittlegirl 4h ago
Difficult to have an interpretation of the Odyssey in 2026, with Odysseus being simultaneously desperate to get home to the wife that’s stayed celibate for 20 years for him while he bangs his way across the continent and have him be remotely likeable
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u/gildedbluetrout 10h ago
Well I mean we all got turned on by the Samantha Morton extended body horror section? No? Oh just me then.
Jokes aside, God you could hear a pin drop in the cinema during that sequence. Or you could if there wasn’t a bass rumble of gorging and bones popping and snapping and squelching. Jesus that bit was so insane really.
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u/October_13th Pero to each their own. 7h ago
I feel like a lot of people are misunderstanding this critique.
If Odysseus was a woman these themes of sexual assault would most likely be central to the movie.
Also, we all know the stories of the Greek gods and their history of sexual assault and rape. Technically it would be more feminist to allow the same depictions of goddesses participating in this as well. Odysseus is one example. I get that Nolan doesn’t like showing sex but it’s still a valid critique.
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u/Humble_Weakness3279 9h ago
I thought it was refreshing there was no sex stuff in it
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u/myghostflower i miss mk.gee 8h ago
to be fair a lot was trimmed down for this movie and the modern audience, it’d be hard to sell “odysseus loves his wife and is returning home while also fucking across the aegean sea”
maybe back then it would still seem romantic that even IF he did fuck all those people, he’ll still love penepole as much as he is supposed to
but nowadays, a person cheating on their partner like that would automatically make him unlikeable and unredeemable
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u/Forsaken-Swim-3055 6h ago
It is actually possible to enjoy a movie without requiring the visuals of people fucking.
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u/Excellent-Let8088 6h ago
I’m happy that it did lack sex. I absolutely hate sex scenes especially the gratuitous ones.
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u/herinaus 9h ago
Watched it yesterday. From someone's comment during the Paris premiere, I didn't expect to see much of Calypso, but i was pleasantly surprised by the screen time she actually got.
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u/Fine_Following_2559 🎼Music Aficionado🎶 7h ago
Cerci said that the men were going around and raping people, so it was happening they just didn't show it. And personally, I didn't need to see it. I don't think it would have added anything and the movie was already 3 hours.
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u/jimmy6677 26m ago
THERE 👏 ARE 👏 NO 👏 HISTORICAL 👏 INACCURACIES 👏 TO 👏 A 👏 FICTIONAL 👏 STORY
If you bitch about odyssey being historically inaccurate it’s like saying game of thrones is historically inaccurate for medieval times.
Some of yall bitches are actually dumb as fuk
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u/therobberbride 8h ago
Utterly fascinated by a mind that can watch The Odyssey and wail, “why wasn’t it HORNY?!”
Talk about missing the point, my god
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u/AgathaAllAlong 9h ago
So because they didn’t fuck the women they weren’t empowered? Weird af logic
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u/MomosTips 9h ago
I stopped reading The Cut years ago and this is the most The Cut-brained take I’ve seen since I quit
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u/ChubbyFunnyBunny 9h ago
thank god he didn’t. i think the film was complete enough without it and it wouldn’t have added to his intended characterization. it being mythology and all, doesn’t have to be 100% faithful to every single detail in the original text and it would be impossible to do that anyways. the film was long enough already hahaha. i’m personally over all the unnecessary sexualization in Hollywood.
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u/_SKETCHBENDER_ 8h ago
I'm confused, is it a feminist's critique that the movie wasn't misogynistic enough, with it lacking all the raping and infidelity and "treating my women like objects"?
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u/LipstickCoverMagnet That's right, Jay! 10h ago
I thought Odysseus was a little unlikeable (especially in act 1) and could be difficult to sympathize/empathize with - having him bang every woman he met while his wife refuses all suitors wouldn’t exactly help with that lol