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Speaker 2: What kind of a show you guys putting on here today?
Speaker 3: You're not interested in armed?
Speaker 2: Now? No, Look, we're going to do this thing. We're
Speaker 2: going to have a conversation.
Speaker 3: Welcome to film Spotting. It's an abbreviated film spotting, what
Speaker 3: we used to call a film spotting fix. Because I'm
Speaker 3: on vacation finally this summer, but we knew we had
Speaker 3: to get to our review of Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey,
Speaker 3: So ahead of vacation, we're doubling up this week, Josh
Speaker 3: and recording the Odyssey. I actually am coming pretty much
Speaker 3: straight from the theater. I've had about three hours to process,
Speaker 3: get some notes on paper.
Speaker 4: We'll see how I do.
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 1: Somewhere in between an immediate still processing and you know,
Speaker 1: the deep days of reflection we like to give movies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't envy you. This is a gargantuan one to
Speaker 1: digest with any sort of time, let alone a couple
Speaker 1: of hours. But that being said, I'm so eager to
Speaker 1: hear what you made of the Odyssey.
Speaker 4: Let's do it.
Speaker 2: Tell me what you remember, well, wife, a son, and
Speaker 2: then we want them more.
Speaker 1: Help me go ahead, Adam. I learned something new while
Speaker 1: preparing for Christopher Nolans The Odyssey. In Emily Wilson's introduction
Speaker 1: to her translation of the Homeric poem, she discusses the
Speaker 1: notion of a rhapsode.
Speaker 4: This is also.
Speaker 1: Translated as a song stitcher, and it refers to performers
Speaker 1: in an ancient oral tradition. Well before the Odyssey was
Speaker 1: set into text, rhapsodes would have spun versions of the
Speaker 1: tale for audiences, weaving in their own improvisational elements to
Speaker 1: the basic pattern of what we now know as the Odyssey.
Speaker 1: Nolan's the Odyssey opens with just such a figure, a
Speaker 1: man with a staff standing on a table in the
Speaker 1: royal dining hall of Penelope, where hungry suitors drool over
Speaker 1: her in the long absence of her husband Odysseus. This
Speaker 1: rhapsode rhythmically pounding his Staff on the Table tells the
Speaker 1: story of quote a man Odysseus himself, news of his
Speaker 1: victory at Troy has come home, but there has been
Speaker 1: no word of what happened to him, after which the
Speaker 1: rest of the movie will unspool. Adam, I would propose
Speaker 1: that Christopher Nolan is a modern rhapsode, taking existing tales
Speaker 1: and legends, Batman, anyone, and remolding them for new audiences
Speaker 1: to his own purposes. It's no wonder he was drawn
Speaker 1: to the potential of Homer's the Odyssey. Then he is
Speaker 1: also stylistically up to the task of fully bringing to
Speaker 1: life this monumental yarn, considering he issues digital imagery as
Speaker 1: much as possible, favors locations over sets, and has chosen
Speaker 1: entirely in the case of The Odyssey to capture images
Speaker 1: with widescreen Imax cameras. As Nolan pounded his staff on
Speaker 1: the table at him, were you wrapped by the telling
Speaker 1: as a song stitcher? What Nolan qualities did he weave
Speaker 1: into the tale? And lastly, what is the one Nolan
Speaker 1: film The Odyssey reminded you of the most?
Speaker 3: I was pretty rapped, I should say, not just any
Speaker 3: man pounding with the staff but Travis Scott is playing
Speaker 3: that man, and Emily Wilson was actually just in Iowa City,
Speaker 3: or well that was November, I should say, and I
Speaker 3: did not attend. I wish I had, especially now having
Speaker 3: just seen the Odyssey film spotting Pa. Sophie Kempanar was
Speaker 3: there in attendance and was greatly educated by it. I
Speaker 3: am remiss that I wasn't there for that talk. Obviously,
Speaker 3: I remember the broad strokes of the Odyssey, which seemed
Speaker 3: to be pretty much in place. But I want to
Speaker 3: provide this disclaimer off the top that the last time
Speaker 3: I read it, Josh was Humanity's one oh one, my
Speaker 3: sophomore year of college. I say that just so people
Speaker 3: know that I'm not going to be a reliable source
Speaker 3: when it comes to breaking down where Nolan is drawing
Speaker 3: ideas from Homer that already match his sensibility versus embellishing
Speaker 3: or manipulating to suit his needs. I suppose one might
Speaker 3: call that adapting. I am, though, going to suggest there's
Speaker 3: one crucial exception, and that modification will also lead me
Speaker 3: to answer your second question. This is such a Christopher
Speaker 3: Nolan film that my initial thought was to tell you
Speaker 3: that there is no single answer. Perhaps only the Odyssey
Speaker 3: could offer Nolan the canvas epic enough for all his obsessions.
Speaker 3: It seems like such an amalgamation to me, and we
Speaker 3: can get into that later. I'll tell you first that
Speaker 3: I didn't expect to be thinking about Oppenheimer as I
Speaker 3: watched The Odyssey, But I'll give you two quotes. First,
Speaker 3: the famous line Oppenheimer says, of course in the film,
Speaker 3: now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds. And
Speaker 3: then the closing conversation between Oppenheimer and Einstein, when Oppenheimer says,
Speaker 3: when I came to you with those calculations, we thought
Speaker 3: we might start a chain reaction that would destroy the
Speaker 3: entire world, and Einstein says, I remember it, what of it?
Speaker 3: And he says, I believe we did. There is a
Speaker 3: clear line connecting Oppenheimer and Odysseus as the men responsible
Speaker 3: for creating the weapons and leading the initiatives to destroy
Speaker 3: Troy slash Hiroshima. As Nolan portrays it, Troy Sacking takes
Speaker 3: on the significance of the atomic bomb dropping. Something inviolate
Speaker 3: has been breached. The moral order of the universe. Zeus's
Speaker 3: Law as they call it here, has been upset and
Speaker 3: humanity may never recover. In both, we have heroes wrestling
Speaker 3: with the fallout of that breach and their choices. But
Speaker 3: it's that last part, Josh, that leads me to my
Speaker 3: real answer. And no, this isn't shameless promotion. I have
Speaker 3: Bilga Abiri and his appearance on our Nolan Movie Deathmatch
Speaker 3: podcast to thank for it, because at one point in
Speaker 3: the Odyssey, Charlie Sterren's Calypso says something do Odysseus that
Speaker 3: set off a bunch of bells in my head. I
Speaker 3: knew it was really familiar, and I don't have the
Speaker 3: exact quote, but she's explaining to him that he will
Speaker 3: have to return home and this is something he both
Speaker 3: wants to do and also doesn't want to do, and
Speaker 3: she both wants him to stay because she loves him
Speaker 3: and knows that he also needs to go, and she
Speaker 3: says to him that it will require a leap of faith.
Speaker 3: Bilga said a inception a movie, I might add that's
Speaker 3: effectively a film about a husband undertaking a long journey
Speaker 3: who has to overcome a myriad of obstacles, including time dilation,
Speaker 3: to try to reunite with his wife and children. He
Speaker 3: said that it's all a movie about regret. These are
Speaker 3: Bilga's exact words during that podcast. He said, it's a
Speaker 3: film in which, on every level we learn something new
Speaker 3: about how regret works, and specifically about how regret works
Speaker 3: for this character of Cobb. And my theory of the
Speaker 3: hidden inception with Inception is that there is this line
Speaker 3: that's repeated several times at the different intervals in the film.
Speaker 3: It's some variation of do you want to take a
Speaker 3: leap of faith or become an old man filled with
Speaker 3: regret waiting to die alone. The Nolan movie The Odyssey
Speaker 3: is most like is Inception. Nolan's Odysseus didn't get blown
Speaker 3: off course. Here's the modification, unless you can prove me
Speaker 3: wrong because you've read it more recently than I have.
Speaker 3: Nolan's didn't get blown off course and was unable to
Speaker 3: return home for so long because he angered the gods
Speaker 3: or wanted to keep seeking glory or some combination and
Speaker 3: then got trapped by Calypso No, his subconscious invents reasons
Speaker 3: to take the longer path home and to commit acts
Speaker 3: that rile the gods up because he's filled with so
Speaker 3: much regret. He's so traumatized by the horrors that he unleashed,
Speaker 3: that being an old man filled with regret may seem
Speaker 3: like a better alternative than having to face the new world.
Speaker 3: Try trying to forget that that actually may be a
Speaker 3: better alternative than having to face this new world that
Speaker 3: he that he helped to usher in. And in closing, Josh,
Speaker 3: I'll say, I thought, maybe this trauma angle, it's not
Speaker 3: just regret. Maybe this trauma angle is the new spin,
Speaker 3: This this added new thing with with Nolan. We're getting here,
Speaker 3: and this is something he'll explore from here on out,
Speaker 3: because there's so many other aspects of Nolan's work that
Speaker 3: we're getting in this movie. And then I was just
Speaker 3: trying to look up a detail, and I went to
Speaker 3: my Interstellar reviews on Letterboxed, and in my twenty fourteen review,
Speaker 3: I wrote this, Nolan's protagonists have always been obsessed explorers
Speaker 3: of one form or another. Somehow, I don't think I
Speaker 3: realized until now just how much they're driven by loss,
Speaker 3: battling the universe's unbending laws forbidding the undoing of a
Speaker 3: past trauma or mistake. So maybe I should change my
Speaker 3: answer back to there is not just one Nolan movie.
Speaker 3: But if you pin me down, it's all a long
Speaker 3: winded way of saying I think it's inception.
Speaker 1: I think it's insuche What do I love that? I
Speaker 1: love that answer? It absolutely tracks. It fits in with
Speaker 1: what I expected going into the Odyssey was the homegoing
Speaker 1: whether it's it's the husband or the father, which is interstellar, right,
Speaker 1: it's the homegoing quality of the poem that he was
Speaker 1: maybe drawn to and going to emphasize. And of course
Speaker 1: that's still a part of it. That reading of Odysseus,
Speaker 1: I think is valid and I've seen it elsewhere. Also
Speaker 1: that there is some obfuscation on his part that delays
Speaker 1: the journey. I think that's fair. I think the trauma
Speaker 1: element to me is something that isn't maybe entirely new,
Speaker 1: but more emphasized by Nolan, Whereas me personally, I don't
Speaker 1: regard Odysseus as necessarily that self reflective of a character
Speaker 1: in the way we see Matt Damon's Odysseus. And I
Speaker 1: think that's fine. I mean, as I said in my setup,
Speaker 1: you know this is if there's any property that Nolan
Speaker 1: has the right to rework in his own way, it's
Speaker 1: one that's this old that originated in a tradition of reworking.
Speaker 1: So any sort of comparisons I might make to Homer's
Speaker 1: poem itself are not meant to be negative, but points
Speaker 1: of interest to consider where Nolan is. I think conception
Speaker 1: is a good answer. I think your larger point of
Speaker 1: how you see threads of every one of his films
Speaker 1: here is also fair. And this is a movie big enough,
Speaker 1: as you pointed out, to contain all of those I
Speaker 1: landed where you started, though, Adam, and it was Oppenheimer,
Speaker 1: And this again is not a quality that I thought
Speaker 1: about a film I had in my head, even though
Speaker 1: it's his most recent going into the Odyssey. But for me,
Speaker 1: this is Odysseus as Jay Robert Oppenheimer. This is the
Speaker 1: guy you described a wielder of warfare, and how they
Speaker 1: get there is obviously very different, the context is obviously
Speaker 1: very different. But to me, what Nolan is trying to
Speaker 1: do here is take this tale of a fabled warrior
Speaker 1: and mold it into something that's more about a moral awakening,
Speaker 1: an eye opening realization about the ruin of warfare. And
Speaker 1: to me, that totally tracks with Oppenheimer. Right to my mind,
Speaker 1: that's what that film was essentially about, among many other things,
Speaker 1: but that was what it was at its heart, and
Speaker 1: I think that's what this Odyssey is about. And the
Speaker 1: journey I took in how much this movie worked, because
Speaker 1: as a piece of cinema, oh boy, does it work.
Speaker 4: And we're going to get to that, I'm sure.
Speaker 1: But in terms of what Nolan is interested in doing
Speaker 1: with this tale, the journey I took was, boy, he's
Speaker 1: setting himself up for a real challenge here, wanting to
Speaker 1: make And this relates to another new film spotting podcast,
Speaker 1: the Movie Racket, with Michael Phillips, who had guest Michael
Speaker 1: Shannon on recently to conside of the maxim there's no
Speaker 1: such thing as an anti war movie, which a variation
Speaker 1: of you Know can be traced back to an interview
Speaker 1: Gen Cisco did with Truefou And I think what Nolan
Speaker 1: is trying to do here is take one of the
Speaker 1: proto warrior movies and use it to ask us to
Speaker 1: question how what we're willing to sacrifice, to question is
Speaker 1: their a justification for war? And man, I think is
Speaker 1: that tricky because at the same time he wants to
Speaker 1: ask us that question. This is a three hour movie
Speaker 1: of battles and pillaging and not on screen raping, but
Speaker 1: suggesting of rape plundering. And you're right, the sacking of
Speaker 1: Troy is the crucial sequence in this question. It's held
Speaker 1: off for much of the film that we get little snippets,
Speaker 1: as Nolan likes to do, he's jumping around in time.
Speaker 1: We get little snippets of it early, but the full
Speaker 1: sequence is meant to be Odysseus, the scales falling from
Speaker 1: his eyes. And I'm still somewhat wrestling though I admire
Speaker 1: what Nolan's attempting to do, and I think for this
Speaker 1: year in twenty twenty six, I think it's worth doing
Speaker 1: is asking these ques questions. But I'm still a little
Speaker 1: bit wrestling with how it fits when mapped onto Odysseus's story,
Speaker 1: which post sacking, post scales falling, post epiphany, there's a
Speaker 1: whole lot of bloodshed.
Speaker 4: Still, yes, I want to go there too, and we can.
Speaker 1: It's distinct, right, the actions and the reasons for taking
Speaker 1: those actions are somewhat distinct between Troy and the murder
Speaker 1: of the Suitors is the climax of the film. But
Speaker 1: it's just tricky to me if you're going to if
Speaker 1: I'm reading the intent of the movie, which is again
Speaker 1: to be similar to Oppenheimer, what have we done? What
Speaker 1: with the power we hold? Yes, especially in regard to
Speaker 1: the taking of lives, the organized, systematic, planned taking of lives,
Speaker 1: If you're going to make a movie that means to
Speaker 1: question that is a warrior king who still employs violence
Speaker 1: to ultimately rea store his kingship the tail to do it?
Speaker 1: Does Nolan thread that needle for me? He does, and
Speaker 1: it's largely due to the artistry he uses to do it,
Speaker 1: and also because I'm just grateful for a movie that's
Speaker 1: raising these sorts of questions in a year where we've
Speaker 1: seen organized, systematic, planned war mongering across the globe more
Speaker 1: so than in how many years. So I think this
Speaker 1: is a time for the question Nolan poses. I think
Speaker 1: he mostly manages to pull it off, even though he
Speaker 1: used really challenging material to do it.
Speaker 3: I think that's correct. He mostly pulls it off. But
Speaker 3: there is this tension, there is this conflict, and I
Speaker 3: felt an attention. I felt it as well, and I
Speaker 3: want to get to that by way of saying that
Speaker 3: this is the first time with any of his films
Speaker 3: that I have noticed the criticism that some have lobbed
Speaker 3: at his movies, including you, Josh, with some of his
Speaker 3: movies that sometimes they are overwritten and a little bit
Speaker 3: too talkie. This for me was the film where I
Speaker 3: was very aware of all of the exposition that was
Speaker 3: taking place. And now as we get into Odysseus specifically
Speaker 3: and the writing, the more I process the film and
Speaker 3: realized what I really thought it was about and what
Speaker 3: I thought the character arc was for Odysseus. It's on
Speaker 3: me to rewatch the film through that lens and see
Speaker 3: how all of this comes into play. But I do
Speaker 3: think there's some redundancy to all of the conversations happening
Speaker 3: about and between and with the suitors back home at Ithaca.
Speaker 3: I think there's some redundancy to some of the set
Speaker 3: pieces involving Odysseus and his men, and all of the battles,
Speaker 3: as brilliantly staged as they are. But his character arc
Speaker 3: everything I described in answer to your question, that arc
Speaker 3: is what I'm most invested in, and it does take
Speaker 3: forever in this movie to meet him, and I'm not
Speaker 3: sure that we do. To your point about how self
Speaker 3: reflective he is, I'm not sure that we on this
Speaker 3: first viewing, I'm not sure that we have enough of
Speaker 3: a sense of his trauma. I think the work that
Speaker 3: the cuts to those nonlinear the way we're moving around,
Speaker 3: the cuts to his conversations with Calypso the work I
Speaker 3: think that's supposed to be doing reflecting his misgivings about
Speaker 3: the things he's done in his past. I think that's
Speaker 3: obviously supposed to be doing that work. But on the whole,
Speaker 3: it seems like he's really only self reflective at the end,
Speaker 3: and that comes in what the form of a very long.
Speaker 4: Speech where he says it. He just lays all of it.
Speaker 3: He lays this theme all out on the table for
Speaker 3: the audience. But then that's the other point, Josh you
Speaker 3: said it is that if this is about a reckoning
Speaker 3: with the idea of regret and regret at the choices
Speaker 3: you made to usher in a new order to the
Speaker 3: world in which the old the old rules don't seem
Speaker 3: to apply, and you are you are traumatized, You aren't
Speaker 3: sure you can return to the home that you once
Speaker 3: had because you're not the same man that you once were,
Speaker 3: Then how do we reconcile the fact that he seems
Speaker 3: comfortable carrying out the vengeance that needs to be carried
Speaker 3: out on all of those suitors. If if he really
Speaker 3: is the the Odysseus that that he seems to be
Speaker 3: post this this epiphany, having gone through this entire process
Speaker 3: that he goes through over the course of this movie,
Speaker 3: then does he need to for the sake of consistency,
Speaker 3: does he need to come up with some other way
Speaker 3: to get through to get through these suitors, which of
Speaker 3: course he can't do because it's the Odyssey and you
Speaker 3: can't end it any other way, right, So it's completely
Speaker 3: at odds with the source. It's it's perfectly in keeping
Speaker 3: with the source material. It's that it's that adjustment that
Speaker 3: he makes really up until that ending.
Speaker 2: I think you're a man who needs to control his fate,
Speaker 2: but he cannot control this. That world is gone.
Speaker 3: Josh, I know you've seen them, but if any listeners
Speaker 3: out there haven't caught up with two movies that made
Speaker 3: my recent top five films of the year so far,
Speaker 3: you can see them at regal cinemas now and why
Speaker 3: not see them there on the big screen, Toy Story
Speaker 3: five and the horror hit Obsession. But the movie that
Speaker 3: I'm recommending this week is the one I am most
Speaker 3: eager to finally get out to see on the big screen.
Speaker 3: It was your number four I believe film of the
Speaker 3: year so far, the film that everybody's buzzing about. Saw
Speaker 3: the trailer for it actually just today before the Odyssey,
Speaker 3: and it's just still killing me that I haven't seen it.
Speaker 3: It is the Invite with Seth Rogan, Olivia Wilde, Penelope Cruz,
Speaker 3: and Edward Norton.
Speaker 4: I want to see it, and.
Speaker 3: I want to see it for free, something I can
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Speaker 4: To get your disco.
Speaker 1: Real quickly, I'll just add that after that, and I
Speaker 1: won't give the details away. Nolan does and this differently
Speaker 1: than the poem ends and distinctly to address that. I
Speaker 1: feel also, and I think it works in the context
Speaker 1: of this movie. Again, I'm not criticizing. I think there's
Speaker 1: a choice made by Odysseus there that is closer to
Speaker 1: the main right, but agree, you're right the killing happens beforehand.
Speaker 1: I will also say, and the reason I think I'm saying, like, okay,
Speaker 1: it works is related to what you reference this notion
Speaker 1: of Zeus's law, which is, you know, I thought you
Speaker 1: were going to mention that when you talked about this
Speaker 1: movie being too talky, because I think Zeus's Law is
Speaker 1: invoked about once every twenty minutes.
Speaker 4: Okay, but this is praise for me.
Speaker 1: I'm going to get well, well, let me let me
Speaker 1: just quickly say in regard to the slaughter of the
Speaker 1: suitors that my sense is that is how the distinction
Speaker 1: the movie wants to make between Troy is that Odysseus's
Speaker 1: shame about Troy is that they used subterfuge in the
Speaker 1: Trojan Horse to sneak inside and take the city, and
Speaker 1: that is in his mind, a breaking of Zeus's law,
Speaker 1: which is in the movie. Is this strange combination of
Speaker 1: like the goal something that is in the poem hospitality
Speaker 1: and generosity and welcoming strangers into your palace, and and
Speaker 1: that's all in the poem and you root it, I'm
Speaker 1: sure in like in ancient actual tradition. The movie puts
Speaker 1: a spin on it. Penelope says something that it's like
Speaker 1: treating others how you want to be treated, which is
Speaker 1: jumping out ahead a little bit to pull from the Bible.
Speaker 1: But we've got we've got this Zeus's law that is
Speaker 1: held up as a governing principle, right, And now going
Speaker 1: back to the suitors and the slaughter that Odysseus takes,
Speaker 1: you know, engages in, they violate Zeus's law right by
Speaker 1: invading essentially his palace while he's gone disrespecting his wife
Speaker 1: and his son. And so I think in the world
Speaker 1: in the line this movie is trying to straddle, you
Speaker 1: could say, if not justification, that is why Odysseus, even
Speaker 1: though he was a quote unquote new man, still chose
Speaker 1: that path of vengeance. In that context, it's an out
Speaker 1: that I see, whether or not, you know, it's enough
Speaker 1: for most audiences. Is definitely out for debate.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's not an out that that is satisfying for me,
Speaker 3: and without we've probably to some listeners it probably seems
Speaker 3: like we've we've spoiled too much, But it's the odyssey.
Speaker 4: I don't know how much we can spoil of this.
Speaker 3: Ancient I didn't give away the end the ultimately, but
Speaker 3: this coda, which I won't get into the details of,
Speaker 3: I will agree with you that it seems like there
Speaker 3: is a coda there that is Nolan's acknowledgment that we
Speaker 3: need something maybe a little bit more melancholy, that is
Speaker 3: our reconciliation of this tension that we're describing. At the
Speaker 3: same time, I will also tell you that I thought
Speaker 3: it felt abrupt, and I thought it felt to quote
Speaker 3: you from our last show, the Top five Films of
Speaker 3: twenty twenty six, I thought it felt unconn convincingly optimistic
Speaker 3: as well. Nothing about the writing there worked, and I
Speaker 3: thought it felt shoehorned in to actually send me. Unless
Speaker 3: I misinterpreted it, Josh, I felt like it it sent
Speaker 3: me out of the theater with a sense of hope
Speaker 3: for humanity that that the movie at that point really
Speaker 3: hadn't earned and I and and so that was another
Speaker 3: that was another tension point for me, certainly as I
Speaker 3: as I was leaving and thinking about the movie. But
Speaker 3: I want to say about Zeus's law. Yeah, and the
Speaker 3: Trojan Horse. This is this is an aspect I like
Speaker 3: because it fits, It fits into my read of the
Speaker 3: movie and it being fundamentally about his regret and his
Speaker 3: trauma and how he's processing that. First, I will say
Speaker 3: that I do I do give Nolan and his entire
Speaker 3: crew a lot of credit because the Trojan Horse incredible.
Speaker 3: It should not work on any level. This is this
Speaker 3: is magical realism. It should be anyway. It should be
Speaker 3: like Jonah in the Whale. This isn't something we actually
Speaker 3: believe happened in any universe. Did did this army get
Speaker 3: inside a wooden horse and it got dragged inside the gates?
Speaker 3: And yet maybe we have to suspend disbelief a little bit,
Speaker 3: as we always do with movies, but not that much.
Speaker 3: The way it's filmed, the practical nature of it, the
Speaker 3: the grittiness of it, and and also the the horror
Speaker 3: of it that that speaks to it. The way we
Speaker 3: understand that people are suffering. From Odysseus's point of view,
Speaker 3: it it does feel real in a way that you
Speaker 3: kind of can't believe they they pulled off, So that
Speaker 3: that's part of it. But then what I do like
Speaker 3: about whether whether it's said too many times or not,
Speaker 3: isn't really the point for me, But I love this
Speaker 3: idea that it's it's making that whole thing, this idea
Speaker 3: of you you have to treat strangers a certain way.
Speaker 3: It makes that concrete, tying it to the Trojan horse,
Speaker 3: which then helps explain why the fracture is so significant
Speaker 3: for Odysseus. What I'm saying, Josh is it's not just,
Speaker 3: of course, that he did something sneaky or sort of dishonorable.
Speaker 3: It's it's it's really I wouldn't even say that it
Speaker 3: was dishonorable, and I'm not suggesting that you are either,
Speaker 3: but I wouldn't use that term. It's that if you've
Speaker 3: been operating your entire life according to Zeus's law, you've
Speaker 3: been living according to a certain rule about how to
Speaker 3: treat people, and then you commit atrocities that scar you
Speaker 3: and change you so much that you're not sure you
Speaker 3: can even return home. And the trigger for that the
Speaker 3: trigger for those atrocities was you coming up with something,
Speaker 3: and that thing you came up with actually is rooted
Speaker 3: in the law that you've been living by previously. It's
Speaker 3: because it's a gift. It's because it's it's it's something
Speaker 3: that when you're welcomed in the door, right that the
Speaker 3: fact that the fact that what he did wasn't just horrifying,
Speaker 3: it's that he was able to do it by offering
Speaker 3: a gift, and so that whether or not that matters
Speaker 3: to the universe, to the gods, it's more that it's
Speaker 3: like personally scarring in a way that he may not
Speaker 3: even fully be able to process. It's on a subconscious
Speaker 3: level that that drove his entire life. And then and
Speaker 3: then he did something awful and the way he did
Speaker 3: it violated his previous principle. That to me, the way
Speaker 3: that Nolan, from a script standpoint, tied that together, I
Speaker 3: thought was brilliant.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's helpful to me because there's a gap in
Speaker 1: this movie in terms of the role of the gods
Speaker 1: and Odysseus's relationship to them that I think is one
Speaker 1: of the things, despite it being almost three hours, that
Speaker 1: the movie misses misses out on. But if it's more
Speaker 1: that Zeus's law represents a personal moral code for Odysseus
Speaker 1: in the way you describe that he violates, that does
Speaker 1: make sense to me. And we see in flashback flashbacks
Speaker 1: to his time before Troy, where he is very much
Speaker 1: depicted as a benevolent warrior king to his subjects. He
Speaker 1: cares about them, he's in conversation with them. So that
Speaker 1: tracks with what you're saying in that the actions he
Speaker 1: takes at Troy are in violation of that, because otherwise
Speaker 1: they're obviously he's talking to Calypso it's not that he
Speaker 1: doesn't believe in the gods, but he seems somewhat annoyed
Speaker 1: by them or disinterested in them. And the gods are
Speaker 1: somewhat set aside in this movie, even though we do
Speaker 1: meet a lot of them. Athena will get to the performances,
Speaker 1: but Zendeia as Athena is almost an afterthought, which I
Speaker 1: think is a mistake, both because you cast Sandea and Athena.
Speaker 1: You know is is a central figure in this tale.
Speaker 1: So at any rate, maybe we'll return to that in
Speaker 1: the discussing.
Speaker 3: Let me just say I think I think that he
Speaker 3: My read of it is is that he believes in
Speaker 3: the gods. Yeah, previously and then post Troy. He is
Speaker 3: someone who understands that the gods seem to still govern this,
Speaker 3: that that there they exist in the same capricious Yes,
Speaker 3: they're capricious, they exist, but he is willing to challenge
Speaker 3: them and is in fact constantly seeking to challenge them
Speaker 3: in a way he wasn't before. And that is driven
Speaker 3: by this trauma. It's driven by yeah, what previously, what
Speaker 3: previously occurred, and in fact what he did. And for me, Josh,
Speaker 3: it's not only that. It's not just that he's scarred
Speaker 3: and so he's behaving differently. I do think he's actually
Speaker 3: subconsciously looking for reasons to not go home, and that
Speaker 3: means challenging the gods, even if it means going way
Speaker 3: off course and potentially die in the presure.
Speaker 1: To your earlier point, I think he talks about this
Speaker 1: more than we actually see those encounters or those challenges,
Speaker 1: or sense the presence of the gods. But but we
Speaker 1: sense enough in this movie, because this is such a
Speaker 1: sensory movie. I love what you said about the Trojan Horse.
Speaker 1: It should not work on any level so much of
Speaker 1: this tale, Adam, should not work on any level. I
Speaker 1: think if you had made this primarily with CGI imagery,
Speaker 1: it may have quote unquote worked, but in the way
Speaker 1: that nothing digital often means anything works. You know, yes,
Speaker 1: it's there on the screen, but we don't believe it
Speaker 1: at all. I believed everything save maybe one shot that
Speaker 1: I won't maybe get into because I want to praise
Speaker 1: the filmmaking here. I believe everything else I see on
Speaker 1: the screen wholeheartedly, and I believe it with my whole body.
Speaker 1: I don't just believe it with my eyes. I believe
Speaker 1: it with my ears. Do this sound design and the
Speaker 1: score and yeah, even more techtilely than that, And that
Speaker 1: is what you're describing. The Trojan horse is absolutely one
Speaker 1: of those elements, just that it's introduced, that is, it
Speaker 1: is something we know we could be on that beach
Speaker 1: and touch ourselves and it's giant, right, And that works
Speaker 1: because when we see the horrifying shots of the men
Speaker 1: squeezed in the interior, we believe, I mean, here's where
Speaker 1: we're like in Dunkirk, we're in a sinking one of
Speaker 1: the sinking boats right again, and we believe that those
Speaker 1: men fit in there like that it helps the way Hoytman, Hoytma,
Speaker 1: he's working this cinematographer again, the way they just establish
Speaker 1: at once a mythical and a rooted in reality sensibility.
Speaker 1: So the deep blue of the seas here, and then
Speaker 1: they offer these red sails on Odysseus's ship to punctuate
Speaker 1: the blue. That just sets the stage where it's it's something.
Speaker 1: It's a boat, it's a historical boat, ancient boat that's
Speaker 1: familiar even to us. But there's something about the colors
Speaker 1: and the framing of it that makes it feel mythical.
Speaker 1: I think an opening title describes this as a time
Speaker 1: of apparent magic, right, And maybe they don't. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: love that. Maybe they don't push that for me enough
Speaker 1: with the gods, but they do in every frame, you
Speaker 1: feel the parent magic. I'm very eager to hear what
Speaker 1: your favorite sequence in terms of this quality. It should
Speaker 1: not work on any level you describe it. Maybe it
Speaker 1: is the Trojan Horse. For me it was actually Cyclops,
Speaker 1: which because it's the degree of difficulty. Adam, it's the
Speaker 1: same thing you were describing. We've heard about the Trojan
Speaker 1: Horse our whole lives. We've heard about Cyclops our whole lives.
Speaker 1: We've seen how many iterations of each How in the
Speaker 1: world are we going to be convinced of these things again?
Speaker 1: In twenty twenty six, I tried to find out how
Speaker 1: they did the Cyclops. I have a few details that
Speaker 1: I'll share, but still nothing that explained exactly how I
Speaker 1: fully believed this giant creature with a single eye is
Speaker 1: in the same frame with Matt Damon's Odysseus and his men.
Speaker 1: I know they filmed it in an actual cave, and
Speaker 1: that certainly helps. I know that Bill Irwin, who provided
Speaker 1: the voice, and I think some of the movements for
Speaker 1: the Robots and Interstellar, Bill Irwin is actually performing as Cyclops,
Speaker 1: So to me, that added this incredibly creepy. Again. I
Speaker 1: know there's a body there. I know it's not really
Speaker 1: that big, and you know, I know its face doesn't
Speaker 1: look like that. I almost don't want to describe what
Speaker 1: they do with Cyclops's face because it's a simple choice
Speaker 1: that maybe another iteration has done before, but I've never
Speaker 1: seen it like this, and it made it so ghoulish
Speaker 1: and like a different abomination than I'd seen before. But
Speaker 1: I think it's to me, it's a lot about Erwin's performance,
Speaker 1: the physicality of that and the managing of the scale,
Speaker 1: whether it's you know, camera fakery, positions, however they did it.
Speaker 1: I just thought that was to me as like, oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, like he's actually figured out a way to
Speaker 1: do this. And I think it's those sorts of that
Speaker 1: sort of artistry that makes this movie just feel like
Speaker 1: one it's a world you've never seen, that's never existed
Speaker 1: to your point.
Speaker 4: Yet it's there, but it's there, so how it's there?
Speaker 1: And Yeah, that's like the incredible achievement of the Odyssey
Speaker 1: for me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just like with the Trojan Horse, there's a tactility
Speaker 3: to it. And I do mean the hand of the Cyclops.
Speaker 3: You feel in the theater like there is no doubt
Speaker 3: that hand is going to reach down and potentially grab Odysseus.
Speaker 3: The way that hand is dangling and he's trying to
Speaker 3: get underneath it, you and the theater almost want at
Speaker 3: least I almost wanted to duck myself. It was that
Speaker 3: it was that scary and it felt that real. I
Speaker 3: also think the way you described why that sequence is
Speaker 3: so effective, I think on a much smaller scale, I
Speaker 3: think it all applies to the Circe sequence with Samantha
Speaker 3: Morton to and the fleshy exactly transforming the men into pigs.
Speaker 3: And that will allow me to transition back to when
Speaker 3: I said, there are so many Nolan themes here that
Speaker 3: it feels like like this amalgamation. Of course, how many
Speaker 3: of Nolan's movies are about deception, characters who lie to
Speaker 3: others and most importantly themselves. I've already articulated Odysseus's self
Speaker 3: deception or tried to, and his self awareness being the
Speaker 3: primary character arc. But look at all the other characters.
Speaker 3: Of course, all of Pattinson's Actinus right is just duplicity personified.
Speaker 3: But Penelope and Hathaway, that little touch of her undoing
Speaker 3: her work each night. I love Calypso playing her part
Speaker 3: in keeping Odysseus there with her miagoths made we learn about.
Speaker 3: Of course, Samantha Morton searcy Is is also doing some
Speaker 3: shady business. Agamemnon's justification. I want to talk about Agamemnon too,
Speaker 3: Agamemnon's justification for war with Troy Clytemnestra's betrayal, and then
Speaker 3: with with the the Elliott Page character Simon right, the
Speaker 3: the way that is described. That that sequence, which I
Speaker 3: think is really effective in Hades, reminded me Josh of
Speaker 3: a lot of the conversations we get in the Batman trilogy,
Speaker 3: where the conversation revolves around this idea of needing to
Speaker 3: believe that that you have to actually with your whole
Speaker 3: heart believe in something. Yeah, and and and it and
Speaker 3: it will only work whatever it is. And it's very
Speaker 3: different in this film from the Batman films, but it
Speaker 3: will only work if you if you buy into whatever
Speaker 3: the myth is. Of course, time we've talked about nonlinear,
Speaker 3: the nonlinear approach and the flashbacks here, but of course
Speaker 3: the Greeks losing ten years away from their families on
Speaker 3: the on the beach before they even have the battle,
Speaker 3: and then the seven years with with Calypso and not
Speaker 3: having really any sense of how much time he's really losing.
Speaker 3: But those are those are the very very obvious ones.
Speaker 3: I want to throw this one at you. It's it's
Speaker 3: not something. It may be there now I want to
Speaker 3: retrofit and we need another overview, and I'm sure we
Speaker 3: can find it in all of his movies, but it's
Speaker 3: not something I would have connected until we saw Tenet,
Speaker 3: and you think about the John David Washington character and
Speaker 3: how he's not given a proper name, you know, how
Speaker 3: he's only referred to including in.
Speaker 4: The credits as the protagonist.
Speaker 3: Yep Odysseus is the first major Greek literary hero. And
Speaker 3: is there any character in any story book or movie
Speaker 3: where you feel like the entire world revolves around them
Speaker 3: more than Odysseus, And certainly the way Nolan frames this movie,
Speaker 3: it seems that way they lead. He leads everything, he
Speaker 3: communicates with the gods, he seems to determine. He seems to,
Speaker 3: through his own will, determine his own fate. And I
Speaker 3: think that's really the key point is is Nolan is
Speaker 3: very interested in this idea of this meta aspect of
Speaker 3: being the protagonist. Are you able to write your own narrative,
Speaker 3: this idea of free will versus fate? Have the gods
Speaker 3: determined the path that you're going to take? Has your
Speaker 3: story already been written? Or can you determ and Odysseus
Speaker 3: is hubris on screen certainly is that he always believes
Speaker 3: that he's in control, that he's he's writing his story
Speaker 3: and it does not matter what what else is occurring
Speaker 3: around him, and that that that made me think of
Speaker 3: Tenant certainly as I watched this film.
Speaker 1: Tenant is. I mean, we've both said we need to
Speaker 1: rewatch Tenant, but that is the one coming out of
Speaker 1: the Odyssey. I really want to take a look at
Speaker 1: and connect some of those threads because it's a puzzling
Speaker 1: film purposely in so many ways disappointing for both of us.
Speaker 1: But I do think, you know, the more films we
Speaker 1: get from him since may help unlock that one more
Speaker 1: And of course the second viewing would just do the same.
Speaker 1: So saying all that about Odysseus, what do you think
Speaker 1: of Damon?
Speaker 2: No one could stand between me and home.
Speaker 3: And even in the God I have always been happy
Speaker 3: with Damon performances. I think it's a very good Damon performance.
Speaker 3: It's not one of the performances Josh that I that
Speaker 3: I had notes about.
Speaker 4: Let's put it that way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there are there are supporting performances that stood out
Speaker 3: for their for their strengths. There are supporting performances that
Speaker 3: stood out for weaknesses. I do think Damon does exactly
Speaker 3: what he has to do. I think he anchors this film,
Speaker 3: and I think he anchors it very well. I think
Speaker 3: that's probably a very boring take. He's a very good actor,
Speaker 3: and he's very good in this role of Odysseus. Do
Speaker 3: you have a better take than I do?
Speaker 1: I mean, I think anchors the right word. There's you know,
Speaker 1: at this stage in his life and his career, he
Speaker 1: has let's say, a grizzled stoutness that fits for this part.
Speaker 1: I think Damon Damon is interesting to me because he
Speaker 1: can have and often does, this unforced integrity to him,
Speaker 1: and I think that's the quality. Not that Nolan only
Speaker 1: wants Odysseus to be that, but I think he wants
Speaker 1: that to be who this man is at heart and has,
Speaker 1: despite that, made terrible decisions. Right. What's interesting about Damon
Speaker 1: and surprised me about the performance is that the Odysseus
Speaker 1: of the poem is you mentioned his self deception. He's
Speaker 1: much more of a conniving deceiver, you know, troublemaker beyond
Speaker 1: how he's deceiving himself. And again I'm not pointing that
Speaker 1: out to say that that's exactly who Nolan's Odysseus had
Speaker 1: to be. What's interesting to me is my favorite Damien
Speaker 1: performances that departed the informant are when, like Leonardo DiCaprio,
Speaker 1: he embraces it inner weasel and just knowing that in
Speaker 1: literary tradition there's a weasel, weaselliness to Odysseus, I feel
Speaker 1: like that's been extinguished from him largely here, even though
Speaker 1: there is that self introspection you've mentioned, there's definitely that,
Speaker 1: and so it's just a trade off where for me
Speaker 1: it doesn't. You know, I've already seen some early heralding
Speaker 1: about Damon's career performance, and I just think he's done
Speaker 1: more interesting work. Even though he's very good as the Odysseus,
Speaker 1: this movie wants him to be the two I think
Speaker 1: the two parts that I really enjoyed the most and
Speaker 1: one surprised me, But I did not this one. You know,
Speaker 1: Anne Hathaway, I think is is quite good and most
Speaker 1: things she does and I do, I did appreciate the
Speaker 1: ferocity she brings to this Penelope how she you know,
Speaker 1: she lets Tom Hollands, you know, her son, have it
Speaker 1: a couple of times and reams him out. She brings
Speaker 1: a passionate ferocity to the flashback scenes with Odysseus, which
Speaker 1: I think help provide that foundation for their relationship. I
Speaker 1: thought she was quite good, and I got to say,
Speaker 1: I don't think it was until his third scene I
Speaker 1: realized that was John as Umaeus, Odysseus's loyal servant. And
Speaker 1: you know, he's got white hair here and one of
Speaker 1: his eyes is cloudy. He's plating older than in his age.
Speaker 1: And finally I was like, you know what, Actually, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna I'm not I'm gonna stop there because for our
Speaker 1: family members film spoting family members, we were about to
Speaker 1: record a bonus show for July our favorite performances of
Speaker 1: twenty twenty six so far, and spoiler, Leguizamo's on my list.
Speaker 1: I will talk more about him there, But those were
Speaker 1: two standouts for me. Actually, Hathaway on Leguizamo.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, let's keep it there because I'm I'm definitely
Speaker 3: with you.
Speaker 4: I do always appreciate Hathaway as well. She does.
Speaker 3: She leans into some of those scenes. There's no doubt
Speaker 3: about it when she is taking it works when she's
Speaker 3: taking Tom Holland to task. And I think it worked
Speaker 3: because I can accept this Penelope at her wits end
Speaker 3: at this point, and also being a a queen who
Speaker 3: feels very much like she is a ruler and can
Speaker 3: be the ruler, and she she has a line at
Speaker 3: one point where she acknowledges that that she only can't
Speaker 3: lead because of whatever laws dictate that she needs a king.
Speaker 3: Of course, Agamemnon. I want to say this before I
Speaker 3: talk about performances that are not going to make the
Speaker 3: Bogus Show for favorite performances of the year. The way
Speaker 3: van Heutema and Nolan decide to shoot Agamemnon, never showing
Speaker 3: him that armor, that dark armor, The way he looks
Speaker 3: so gigantic, that that air of mystery about him that
Speaker 3: makes him seen like a ruler like that needs to
Speaker 3: especially when he is because of his whims all of
Speaker 3: this is occurring. He needs to seem divine.
Speaker 1: But he also essentially commanded Odysseus for those that's familiar
Speaker 1: with the poem to go on this camp that's right, yeah.
Speaker 3: But he also needs it, almost needs to feel Josh
Speaker 3: like the armor is a bit too much, like that
Speaker 3: he's too regal, because it's it's over compensating for the
Speaker 3: fact that, of course he's just a mortal man, and
Speaker 3: and not only that he's he may not even be
Speaker 3: that much of a man, and That's why I like,
Speaker 3: I'm not even gonna reveal who the actor is because
Speaker 3: I had to look it up later. You you don't know,
Speaker 3: I won't reveal it. I like though when we finally
Speaker 3: get a glimpse of his face, I certainly didn't recognize
Speaker 3: who the actor was just from we don't really glimpse
Speaker 3: his face is just through the helmet. It's not until
Speaker 3: later that we see any part of his face and
Speaker 3: hear his voice. But you can tell that there is
Speaker 3: a there is a certain boyishness about him that comes through.
Speaker 3: That's in contrast to someone like Damon's Odysseus in this film,
Speaker 3: and it is in contrast to this armor and the
Speaker 3: way he presents himself. And every time he walked on screen,
Speaker 3: I was in awe of him, the way you understood
Speaker 3: that every one of those men needed to be in
Speaker 3: awe of him. And it's also these are flashbacks from
Speaker 3: Odysseus's point of view, right, so it makes sense that
Speaker 3: he would see him that way. And also when Agamemnon's
Speaker 3: telling stories, you can understand perhaps I'd have to go
Speaker 3: back and watch them to see if this is totally consistent,
Speaker 3: but that we would get these shots where everything he's seeing,
Speaker 3: we don't see his face because it's what he's seeing
Speaker 3: coming at him.
Speaker 1: So his presence is incredible and again very tactile. The costuming.
Speaker 1: They way overshot that dynamic you're describing because when that
Speaker 1: actor is revealed and this is in Haiti, So this
Speaker 1: is you know, a sequence where Agamemnon and his men
Speaker 1: they're dead and they're in Haites. Incredible production design. These
Speaker 1: soldiers emerge from the black soil and again everything is
Speaker 1: that you can you could pick that soil up and
Speaker 1: let it run through your own hands, you know it.
Speaker 1: And then we get this squeaky weenie Agamemnon and it's
Speaker 1: so good. They overshot it way too far. You need
Speaker 1: a hint, a hint of the gravity.
Speaker 3: It's funny, hint is what I felt, Josh, I gotta
Speaker 3: be Oh gosh.
Speaker 1: No, it was maybe the worst moment because it took
Speaker 1: me so out of the scene as like, who who
Speaker 1: is this person? And I understood intellectually what they were
Speaker 1: trying to do. He's been he's been ultimately humiliated. I
Speaker 1: just felt like they overshot how to depict that in
Speaker 1: okay or maybe the performance diad.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well so incredible actress, but Lupita Neango as as
Speaker 3: Helen and then also her twin sister in Flashbacks, Clyde Minestra,
Speaker 3: is just lost here among totally the throng of characters
Speaker 3: and does not get to do any real acting work,
Speaker 3: which is sad. Similarly, you already said it. Zendael is
Speaker 3: just back to being what she is in the Dune movies,
Speaker 3: which is and I don't appreciate her performances there, which
Speaker 3: is worse than that. It is worse than that, But
Speaker 3: it's it's similar, which is an oracle presence who who
Speaker 3: mostly not even mostly, who just all the time scrunches
Speaker 3: up her face and looks on disapprovingly.
Speaker 4: There.
Speaker 3: There is no performance going on there. She is so
Speaker 3: much better in a film like the Drama, where she
Speaker 3: actually gets to be a person.
Speaker 4: I understand that she's.
Speaker 3: A god here, but I still need something more substantial
Speaker 3: to hold on to than that scrunched up face looking
Speaker 3: on disapprovingly. It just it it, it's it's a waste
Speaker 3: of her talents.
Speaker 1: I'm an ad a third. I'm ann add a third,
Speaker 1: and then I have a let's say the name three
Speaker 1: two to one Robert Pattinson.
Speaker 3: No, Tom Holland, Okay, mister ZENDEYA, Okay, go ahead, you
Speaker 3: go first. I mean, I'm never going to besmirch Robert Pattinson,
Speaker 3: even if this is very much a variation on a
Speaker 3: lot of on a lot of weasels he he seems
Speaker 3: to have played recently. But I still saw shades in
Speaker 3: him that I felt like I haven't seen in some
Speaker 3: of those other weasels. I'm I I hate to say
Speaker 3: this because it sounds I just fear that it may
Speaker 3: come off like I've got some issue with him as
Speaker 3: an actor. And I can see the talent in him.
Speaker 3: He's obviously so clearly a talented performer, but I'm not.
Speaker 3: And I've seen other movies. I've given him a chance.
Speaker 3: I'm just not sold on Holland in anything other than
Speaker 3: Spider Man. And and I think his stature here and
Speaker 3: his sensitivity, his innate sensitivity, should work more or less
Speaker 3: for Telemachus, someone who's striving so hard and and failing
Speaker 3: really to lead and to be his his father. And
Speaker 3: he and Damon do have a nice moment together, but
Speaker 3: but overall, I do think he's he is too sensitive,
Speaker 3: he's emoting too hard, and when he's he's in a
Speaker 3: scene with a with a force like John burnhal he
Speaker 3: he shrinks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's fair for me. Two things. I
Speaker 1: actually have only seen him as Spider Man, so I
Speaker 1: have no other context where you know, I think we
Speaker 1: both have said he's pretty much perfect for that part.
Speaker 1: And I think it's a close enough part to hear
Speaker 1: that he's supposed to shrink. It's kind of the whole,
Speaker 1: you know, point of this character, until you know, we
Speaker 1: get to the end. I don't think he stands out.
Speaker 1: I understand that sort of eager boyishness is why he
Speaker 1: was cast, and from what I've seen of him, he
Speaker 1: can do that quite well. Pattinson, I'm not saying he's bad.
Speaker 1: I think you're right. You know, he's done more interesting
Speaker 1: variations on this. I think there's a repetition to his
Speaker 1: scenes that are bad every time. The redundancy. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: that scene he's doing the same thing, especially in the
Speaker 1: Slaughter of the Suitors, where it almost became comical, where
Speaker 1: a series of weapons are provided to the suitors and
Speaker 1: every time we have to cut to him and he
Speaker 1: has to yell, get the black get it. At one
Speaker 1: point I was like don't cut it the first two times,
Speaker 1: don't don't say it, and we do so. But here's
Speaker 1: my question. Think, in the case of Pattinson, Nyango and Zendeya,
Speaker 1: is there such a thing as overcasting, because I think
Speaker 1: our issues. In other words, if it was an unknown
Speaker 1: in each of those parts who had delivered something slightly differently,
Speaker 1: might we be sitting here saying, you know who, I
Speaker 1: can't wait to see more of so and so as
Speaker 1: Athena And now, obviously the writing is a part of
Speaker 1: this too, what is being provided. But I do think
Speaker 1: in this case it almost it's not going to work
Speaker 1: against you. You're going to get so many more people
Speaker 1: to see this movie because Zendea isn't it right. They
Speaker 1: may be quite angry that she's not in it more
Speaker 1: and there may be a backlash. So obviously I get
Speaker 1: the strategic reasons for casting them, beyond the fact that
Speaker 1: I have the talent, But I almost feel like, if
Speaker 1: the part is this small in terms of the movie
Speaker 1: as a whole, do you think you could be doing
Speaker 1: yourself a disservice by bringing in a talent like that.
Speaker 3: It's an interesting thought, because you're right, the cast is
Speaker 3: is so filled out with these faces and and maybe
Speaker 3: part part of the fun would would be discovering new
Speaker 3: faces and then wanting to to see more of them
Speaker 3: like Heimish Patel right.
Speaker 4: Or Coreog that's and they're good and really seeing.
Speaker 3: Them in other in other movies, but we're not so
Speaker 3: familiar with them and when they pop up on screen,
Speaker 3: we go, oh, I really like those performers, and they're
Speaker 3: really good in their parts. Sadly, Charlie's Theron is another
Speaker 3: woman we can say who does not does not get
Speaker 3: enough to do, and who seems to simply through her presence.
Speaker 3: Her presence has to just carry the weight of her
Speaker 3: character Calypso, but only there and it didn't have to
Speaker 3: be that way right now. The the one exception in
Speaker 3: terms of the cast members. I really did like that
Speaker 3: Circe sequence a lot, and I think I think Morton,
Speaker 3: I think Morton gets to she gets to dig into
Speaker 3: something in that scene that works.
Speaker 1: She really does. It's it's almost its own short film
Speaker 1: within the entire movie. It is she takes command of
Speaker 1: and yeah, and is an instance that contradicts what I
Speaker 1: said earlier about the gods not getting a lot of attention. Well,
Speaker 1: you could point to that and say, well, they gave Circe,
Speaker 1: you know, her own short film, so you do you
Speaker 1: do get that in that sequence for sure?
Speaker 4: Any closing thoughts, Josh, or did we do the see justice?
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I mentioned this score in passing
Speaker 1: Ludwig Gornson. The one thing if when I see it again,
Speaker 1: I want to pay more attention to this. It seemed
Speaker 1: to me, and this speaks to the short film quality
Speaker 1: I was talking about. There probably is a recurring motif throughout,
Speaker 1: but it almost seemed to me that each section he
Speaker 1: came up with something new so that we got a
Speaker 1: score for like this twenty minutes or something. And it
Speaker 1: was also at once both Again, if I was more
Speaker 1: of a musician, I could point to some instrumentation or something,
Speaker 1: but different somehow it seemed to be using sounds or
Speaker 1: instruments that we associate with being ancient, but also modern
Speaker 1: techniques or rhythms.
Speaker 4: That's well said.
Speaker 1: There's a combination of eras to this that is obviously
Speaker 1: entirely appropriate, So I think that's worth highlighting. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I think we've I think for a somewhat
Speaker 1: processing review for you, and it's only been a couple
Speaker 1: of days for me. I think we covered a lot
Speaker 1: of good stuff. It's probably one I will hope to
Speaker 1: see again at some point and see what more might
Speaker 1: be there. And maybe I'll squeeze in a tenant revisit
Speaker 1: before that to help me out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that sounds ambitious. I'd like to join you. I
Speaker 3: definitely would like to see the Odyssey again. If you've
Speaker 3: seen the audio see once or twice, we would love
Speaker 3: to hear your thoughts about it. You can email us
Speaker 3: feedback at film spotting dot net.
Speaker 2: This conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Good Bye,