The word “hero” gets tossed around all too much these days—it should be reserved for people who jump on hand grenades to save their buddies, who rush into a burning orphanage to save the children, and for those of us who go see “The Odyssey” so they could review it for you, Townhall VIPs. There went three hours of my life I’m not going to get back, and my ears are still ringing like I was at a 1978 Who concert. Of course, the big difference is that a Who concert is fun and watching “The Odyssey” is a painful duty. Still, millions of Americans undertook that duty last weekend, proving that they will get fooled again by Hollywood.
This critical review gives me no pleasure. I want to support non-woke art (like my new novel, “American Warlord,” which you should pre-order now). Nolan has a rep for being non-woke. I didn’t go to the movie looking for things to criticize. I went because I hoped it was good. A lot of people I respect think that it’s good; a lot of other people have some serious problems with it. I’m in the latter camp. Here’s the big problem with the movie. It’s boring. And it’s miserable. And it makes no sense. And, astonishingly for its budget, it looks pretty cheesy. Actually, that’s a lot of problems.
Another is the woke stuff. One big objection to “The Odyssey” among conservatives is the woke stunt casting, and it is woke stunt casting. First, you’ve got Ellen Page butching it up as the least butch Greek warrior in the history of Greek warriors. Why her? There are a million actors out there who could have taken on the role of a penis-bearing hoplite, so what’s the rationale for shoehorning in this famously trans and famously disturbed young woman? It’s obviously a stunt, but we’re not supposed to point out that it’s a stunt. We’re not supposed to acknowledge what everybody knows—he picked her to make a statement. Well, the statement is stupid. Right at the beginning of the movie, and a couple of times during the middle, her character appears—it’s only a few minutes total—and the first thing you do is feel pity for this poor soul who has mutilated her body by carving herself into an unconvincing simulacrum of a man. You want to be swept into the world of ancient Greek warriors, and Ellen Page yanks you right out. Maybe it’s irony, or some kind of joke, but Christopher Nolan displays absolutely no sense of humor throughout this film, so it’s some kind of statement, and I still have no idea what or why.
And the same with the ethnic casting. Of course, they have a black woman as Helen of Troy, and you see her, and the first thing you think is, “Well, that’s a black woman.” We also think that about the Indian, the various Asians, and the black dude with dreads. Is it just cowardice, a fear of being persecuted for not being diverse for the sake of diversity, or a calculation designed to make this movie eligible for a Best Picture Oscar?
It's annoying because you feel like he's preaching at you, and it's distracting. These characters are supposed to be Greeks. The Greek identity is central to the whole movie because it’s specifically about Greek culture, including its social norms and etiquette. This isn’t something like having Denzel Washington play Macbeth. I’d watch Denzel Washington in a Wendy’s commercial. But “Macbeth” is not specifically about Scottish culture the way “The Odyssey” is about ancient Hellenics.
And while Christopher Nolan has a lot of fans who insist he’s conservative, or at least right-leaning, or at least not a communist, to the extent you can divine some sort of ideological orientation to this movie, it’s best described as therapeutic feministy boomerslop. All the chicks whine about men; even the evil ones are sympathetically portrayed. The men get it much worse. Odysseus, as portrayed by a crusty Matt Damon—when did he get old?—is torn and tormented about pretty much everything, often in contradictory ways, but certainly about his cunning plan to win the war against Troy. OK, there are a lot of things to say about the ancient Greeks, but being sad about winning a war is not one of them. And where does this PTSD stuff come from? It’s like Nolan can’t make a hero who is just a hero—you see the same thing with his version of Batman, who’s conflicted about fighting evil for some reason. That’s the worst part of those movies; you should be unequivocally glad to defeat bad people.
Now, there are lots of movies that are otherwise good that we can nitpick about, but if they’re fun, then it really doesn’t matter that much in terms of whether you enjoy that particular movie. But here’s the thing about “The Odyssey.” It’s about as much fun as a root canal. Damon’s Odysseus is a whiny, boring Eeyore. Odysseus is supposed to be this cunning, clever trickster. But here he doesn’t trick anybody. There’s no cunning. He comes up with the Trojan horse thing, which he’s racked with guilt about for the whole flick, and then stumbles from tiresome disaster to disaster to disaster. That’s different from how he travels in the poem, because then it’s adventure after adventure after adventure. But there’s no adventure here. There’s no excitement. Instead, it’s a slog, a three-hour slog with an occasionally poorly rendered CGI monster popping up here and there to chase him and his dwindling crew back to their ships. We don’t even hear the Cyclops’s name, much less watch the famous trick Odysseus plays on him. The monster just shows up, eats a couple of guys, and then they pretend to be sheep, and it’s done. On another island, huge guys in anachronistic plate armor appear and chase his guys back to their ships. Who are they? Why are they chasing the crew? What do they want? How did they go 3,000 years into the future to get plate armor?
There’s not a hint of comic relief; everything is ponderously serious. The movie is dark, apparently shot within a fog bank—but hey, if you love lingering shots of an ugly, stormy ocean, this is the flick for you. Plus, the sound mix is grunge band muddy and loud. It’s just relentlessly unpleasant, but the real crime is that it is so relentlessly boring. Yes, you have to establish that Matt Damon and Anne Hathaway, who plays his long-suffering and long-waiting wife back home in Ithaca, miss each other. OK. You don’t need to keep doing it over and over. That’s the thing about Christopher Nolan. He feels he has to beat you over the head with everything, but you can put up with it for a great action set piece like he has shown us in his other movies. How about that opening scene where the Joker robs a bank, or where Bane turns the tables on the guys in the plane who have him in custody, or even in the incomprehensible "Tenet" when they raid that big auditorium full of terrorists? These are great set pieces that you’ll never forget, but there’s nothing like that here. You’ll walk out of the theater, and you’ll forget everything you’ve seen. Do you want to have a good time at the movies? Go watch "The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad," which steals heavily from Homer right down to the cyclops. Oh, and “Seventh Voyage” has a fantastic and unforgettable score; I couldn’t ID the score from this one with a .38 to my temple.
“The Odyssey” is one of those nouveau grim movies we see far too many of today, all dark, with a slowly moving camera, discordant music, and a tiresome hero who spends far too little time swinging a sword and too much moaning about his fate. Sometimes it works, like in the "Dune" movies—though, like this film, they suffer from the inexplicable presence of Zendaya.
Again, I didn’t want to not like “The Odyssey,” and if I seem harsh, it’s both because the movie deserves harsh criticism—I think Christopher Nolan has entered that dangerous stage where everyone’s afraid to tell him he’s wrong—and because I’m so disappointed. A lot of people are going to like this movie, but a lot are going to wonder what the hell all the fuss is about. You don’t walk out of this movie smiling. You walk out of it exhausted. And it doesn’t help that the theater-going experience has depreciated significantly. When she scanned my ticket, the nose-ringed usher informed us the theater was to the right and, leveraging her unionized California public school education, pointed to the left. The stale popcorn gave me a stomachache, and what Irina saw in the restroom was unspeakable and much scarier than the movie.
I want to go to the movies regularly again. Back 25 years ago, I saw a couple of movies a week. I want Hollywood to keep swinging for the fences, and I realize that they’re not all going to be home runs. But how about making movies less of an endurance contest and more of a joyous celebration? Odysseus could’ve been the coolest character ever, and instead we got this moping, unshaven clod who suddenly, at the end, for no apparent reason, becomes a master hand-to-hand combat guy for some reason. Ugh.
I will say this about “The Odyssey,” though: at least, unlike in “Oppenheimer,” we didn’t have to behold naked Florence Pugh.
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