Does The Odyssey Live Up To The Hype?

Christopher Nolan's Epic Has Moments Of Brilliance, Interspersed With Bad Casting And Slow Pacing.

Written By: Justin K.P.

Note to regular readers: Don’t worry, the Dissident is not becoming a movie review blog, I just wanted to give my thoughts on this much talked about film, but will be back to writing about politics and foreign policy in my next post.

This article contains spoilers for the Odyssey.

Director Christopher Nolan’s take on The Odyssey -officially released in theatres last night- has to be the most hyped up film in years, but is the film worth the hype?

I saw the film in theatres last night, and can say, from my perspective, while there are moments of brilliance in the film, it overall falls flat.

Full disclosure, historical epics are not a film genre I tend to gravitate towards, so that may colour my perception of the film somewhat.

But, aside from some specific brilliant scenes, the film falls flat and drags, something that in my view is caused by poor casting choices and sub par acting.

First I will go over the good in the film.

The Good:

The Cyclops scene was one of the greatest scenes in film history in my opinion, and one of the most intense and gripping scenes I have ever seen in the Theatre.

This scene, in terms of its sound, visuals, and atmosphere genuinely lives up to the hype, and I’m glad to have experienced it in theatres.

Christopher Nolan deserves major props for using practical effects over CGI in the scene.

One of the major reasons I believe older horror films such as John Carpenter’s The Thing from 1982 or Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead series are more effective than many modern horror films is the use of intricate practical effects over CGI.

Christopher Nolan understood this, and the practical effects helped make the Cyclops sequence the brilliant scene that it is.

The Circe sequence was also brilliant, features some genuinely chilling and intense body horror, and a fantastic performance by Samantha Morton, one of the genuinely few featured throughout the movie in my opinion.

Christopher Nolan, with these two sequences, showed that he should transition to making horror movies for his next career move.

If he continues with the potential shown in these two sequences, Nolan has the capability of making a horror film as impactful as The Exorcist was when it first came out.

The movie is also visually stunning and extremely well shot.

There is no denying Nolan’s talent as a filmmaker, enjoy his movies or not.

The Bad:

However, the rest of the movie- to me- fell flat.

For me, this is due to bad casting that relied more on packing the movie with as many big and currently trending stars as possible rather than good, lesser knows actors, and unconvincing performances, which stopped me from being fully submerged in the movie or caring about the characters.

Actor Tom Holland, in my view, was dead wrong for the movie and in no way sold the character of Telemachus.

I also found Matt Damon’s portrayal of Odysseus unconvincing, and I saw him more just as Matt Damon rather than Odysseu throughout the movie.

I was no major fan of Robert Pattinson’s performance as Antinous either, who felt like an over-the-top and stereotypical villain seen in every other Hollywood action movie.

Anne Hathaway’s performance as Penelope was better than the latter three, but still did not blow me away.

The dialogue was not particularly gripping to me either, which tried to stay relevant with a few uses of “fuck off” and other contemporary slang, and yet felt overly dramatic and did not resonate with me, something that was not helped much by the underwhelming performances.

Some of the other action-fantasy sequences that came after the brilliant first two describes in paragraph one, fell flat for me as well.

The Scylla encounter in the film, while a good practical effect, felt completely underwhelming following the phenomenal Cyclops sequence.

Many of the battle scenes felt like generic action movie sequences, just with swords replacing guns, especially during the film’s climax.

The overreliance on popular actors really took me out of the fantasy world the movie was trying to build.

I wasn’t seeing Athena or Calypso, more so thinking “oh, looks, there’s Zendaya, there’s Charlize Theron”, neither of who I thought gave in a particularly compelling performance.

In the end, the bad acting and casting, overreliance on big name stars, and flat dialogue took me out of the fantasy world, and more importantly, made me not care about any of the characters.

When Odysseus defeats Antinous and gives the throne over to Telemachus and goes into exile with Penelope at the end, I had very little reaction because I had almost no investment in the characters throughout the movie.

Outside of the genius Cyclops and Circe scenes, I felt deeply underwhelmed- and frankly often bored- with the movie, meaning save for those two scenes, the film- for me- did not remotely live up to the hype.

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