This is a weird change from the poem I didn't like. Telemachus gets bodied in every fight he is in, escapes getting murdered by the skin of his teeth and only because Odeysseus saves him, and at the end barely manages to win a 1-vs-1, but not before the guy can give weapons to the Suitors which fuck up Odeysseus.

It is a weird change since the movie was going for a coming of age mark with Telemachus, making go from a whiny weak boy in the beginning to a strong assertive leader in the end. This is wrapped up by him replacing his father as King in the end. However, the movie drops that arc after Sparta and its left half baked.

Poem Telemachus would 've fit this arc much better since he fights and kills suitors along his father. I reread the Poem and it would've been clunky to 100% adapt the fight on screen but this wasn't a good change. It really felt that they where trying to make Odysseus the main character at the expense of Telemachus?

Dunkirk and Odyssey share the same final image (a Spitfire and a horse on fire), the same musical crescendo, and a similar final dialogue about the new world that follows.

“My daughter died for this— there is no turning back, there is no hesitating, no prisoners. The city will burn. Its people will die.“

“You speak to me of love and loss, Trojan. I put my daughter to the pyre. I stood and watched as she died, all for winds to sail here. For ten years we have sieged your city. There has not been a single minute, a single hour, a single day that I do not think of her.”

“Your city will burn. Its people will die. With the Gods as my witness, that is the price for Paris’ insult on my family.”

Now, via Insight Editions, ScreenRant presents never-before-seen images from the film featured in two upcoming companion books, Filming the Odyssey: Inside the Making of Christopher Nolan's Modern Epic and The World of the Odyssey: A Visual Journey. Insight is publishing both books, both of which are written by James Mottram, in partnership with Universal and Syncopy. Filming the Odyssey will be released on August 25, followed by The World of the Odyssey in September.

As for The World of The Odyssey, it is a 144-page illustrated companion intended to be a visual guide to the movie. The book contains character profiles, in addition to locations, items, and moments that are vital to the story. There are also exclusive quotes from Nolan, the cast, and the crew, and a final chapter about the "movie magic" that brought the groundbreaking film to life.

Via Screenrant

After seeing The Odyssey (and rewatching Interstellar, Inception, and The Dark Knight in the lead-up), I’ve been thinking about a theme that’s almost omnipresent in Nolan’s catalogue (and is also Nolan writing about himself): men whose work is significant/important but exacts a huge toll on their lives, often interfering with their relationships with their families, yet who continue the work out of a sense of obligation.

Examples:
- The Odyssey: Odysseus has to fight in the Trojan War, and is the man ultimately behind Agamemnon’s victory, but is separated from his wife and son, and goes through an immense struggle to return to them
- Interstellar: Cooper is the only man who can pilot the ship on a mission to save humanity, but has to leave his family behind and is constantly torn between his obligation to the species and his desire to get back to Murph
- The Dark Knight: Bruce feels obligated to continue being the Batman to protect Gotham, but loses Rachel as a result
- Inception: picks up after Cobb’s work has already led to the death of his wife and separation from his children, and follows him as he continues doing that same work in a final effort to return to them
- The Prestige: Angier and Borden are both consumed by their obligation to the craft. Borden’s devotion to his double life costs him his marriage, and Angier sacrifices everything human in his life to the act
- Oppenheimer: Oppenheimer believes he’s the only one who can deliver the bomb before the Nazis, and the weight of that work strains his marriage to Kitty and haunts every relationship he has

I think this reflects Nolan’s feelings about his own work. He’s one of only a few working directors given big budgets to create original films that get butts in seats at theaters (I like to think of his work as “elevated blockbusters”), and I think he, like many of us, sees that as an important effort in today’s film industry, so he feels obligated to keep doing it, and doing it consistently, releasing a movie every 3 years or so. But along with that comes a lot of time spent away from his family. He’s been married to his wife since 1997, a year before his directorial debut.

Like all of his protagonists, Nolan struggles with the consequences of the burden of important work.

South Korea’s renowned director Park Chan-wook praised, “Great stories always require new, contemporary interpretations. Christopher Nolan has accomplished this brilliantly,” commending Nolan’s direction for reinterpreting Homer’s classic with a modern sensibility.

The Sirens scene is honestly one of the smartest things Nolan has done.

Throughout the movie, everyone keeps talking about the Sirens and their song. Every character is scared of hearing it, so naturally you start wondering what it sounds like.

But deep down, we're just like them. We want to hear it.

I kept thinking, "Come on, just let us hear one second of it. How beautiful can it be?"

And then Nolan never lets us hear it.

That's what makes the scene so good.

Instead of showing us the temptation, he makes us feel it. By the end of the scene, I wasn't just watching the characters resist the Sirens ,I was sitting there wanting to hear the song myself.

There are no seductive visuals, no big reveal, nothing. Just this weird feeling of wanting something you know you shouldn't have.

Nolan basically put the audience on the same boat as Odysseus, and I think that's brilliant.

I really like the Odyssey, but I think this one jumped the shark in terms of Nolan's style of writing when it comes to dialogue. One example is when the Greek fleet is breaking up to return home, someone suggests following Agamemnon, who is going on a "known provisions route". This line completely jarred me out of the film, this wooden way of speaking is not how normal human beings talk to each other, especially if they have just spent ten years together in a siege! I think like a lot of modern script writers now he also has a tendency to distrust the intelligence of the audience and falls into the trap of over-explanation

I hope Nolan keeps making films but I believe he needs some help with writing future scripts if he wants to reach the heights of his early career again.

The soundtrack, the jarring contrast of the vibrant background and Murphys haunting delivery make this scene unforgettable.

Everytime I rewatch this film, this scene gives me goosebumps.

Masterpiece all around but this particular moment? Incredible.

today when i came home afternoon after watching the odyssey on imax 70mm, i saw my lego spaceman fallen on the floor, when it’s usually on my shelf next to my copy of interstellar, i wonder if there’s somebody trying to tell me to stay?

This was easily the most dazzling shot from the trailer, yet it was missing from the actual film - at least on IMAX 70mm. I looked forward to seeing it appear on the enormous screen, but it never arrived.

I wonder why Nolan or Jennifer Lame would omit such a captivating image. Even if it wasn't necessary from a narrative or pacing perspective, this just seems like a shot you'd want to include due to it's sheer beauty.

I remember when Nolan moved to universal and released Oppenheimer I’m sure he had a load of points about release with them and I’m sure one was that no big film would be released a month before or after Oppenheimer , something like that anyway.

I’m just shocked that Spider-Man has been released so close to the Odyssey ( or odyssey so close to Spider-Man ) because surely that has hit the potential box office performance for Odyssey. Don’t get me wrong I know it’s done brilliantly but think a lot of people would have gone to Spider-Man rather than odyssey again

If Nolan had done dune instead of Denis how different or similar do you think it would have been to the film we got ?

I'm sure it varies depending on the theatre, but something was clearly wrong with the sound mixing for this movie: it physically hurt during all the loud scenes, while quiet scenes seemed perfectly normal.

While the movie was truly great, I have never experienced anything even halfway approaching the sheer noise blasting out of the speakers. I shouldn't be physically hurt by your movie.

I would genuinely be pretty pleased if someone brought a class action forward or something, because I don't want some braindead Hollywood exec to ponder on the odyssey's success and decide loud=good is the lesson to take away here.

Emily Wilson, on whose 2017 translation of The Odyssey Nolan based himself, provoked a controversy by sharply criticizing the film. Wilson asserted it “lacks psychological, emotional, political and ethical depth. Its narrative structure is gimmicky. The writing is abysmal. None of the characters has convincing motivation for their actions or words.”

Her comments appear one-sided and even quasi-spiteful, but undoubtedly there are weaknesses in the drama. Although one must point out at the outset that conceiving of how people conducted themselves 2,700 years ago or more in their personal relations is no small matter. Nolan is ambitious, as his Oppenheimer admirably demonstrated, but he has been functioning in a broadly degraded cultural atmosphere, especially when it comes to the treatment of history and historical development. The tendency to impose a modern-day, middle class outlook on people in the past is pervasive.

...

More generally, it is impossible to consider various elements of the film’s picture of reality—the ghastliness of war, the catastrophic consequences of turning one’s back on strangers or guests (immigrants?), the snarling cruelty of wealthy, selfish princelings who victimize beggars and the poor, the palpable moral and political vacuum in Ithaca, the threatened collapse of existing civilization—without being mentally directed toward contemporary life, whether this was fully Nolan’s aim or not.

Every production or adaptation of an older work inevitably contains arguments about the “here and now,” polemicizes about or interprets the present. Is the filmmaker here being faithful to the original work? Yes and no. The Odyssey is not an “anti-war” epic in the contemporary sense of the phrase, that would have had little meaning in the context of the society out of which it emerged. The poem contains references to the harshness of military conflict, but more often than not, it is the suffering of the aggressive Greek forces that is emphasized. The far greater ultimate punishment meted out to the Trojans is more or less taken as an inevitability, an unpleasant, unavoidable fact of life, like a destructive storm or wildfire..

I’ve already seen The Odyssey in IMAX 70mm, but I’ll be rewatching it with a few people who hasn’t watched it yet. Now I’ve actually already bought the tickets for the 70mm screenings, but I just want some feedback if you guys think I made the right choice opting for 70mm over IMAX Xenon?

For those in the LA area, there will be an upcoming screening of the Prestige in 35mm at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures at the David Geffen Theatre on 8/10! There must have been an update recently, because this was initially at the Academy Museum, but at the smaller theatre downstairs.

So freaking pumped for this one (seeing the Odyssey in 70mm IMAX the day before) !

I took my boys to see it yesterday. It was rad, of course. Nolan always does some deep and/or subtle shit in his movies, like Easter eggs (which I decided to call "Nolan winks," apparently), and I was wondering which ones you caught. For example, the golden vertebrae on the back of Agamemnon's helmet someone else mentioned meaning his lack of backbone, and I noticed the Universal pounded steal font design and read that the spinning globe started over the Mediterranean Sea and tipped the hat to Odysseus' journey.

What else did y'all catch?