Let me begin with a few critical observations, some with ethical overtones.
First of all, “The Odyssey” stinks.** It isn’t a massive, A-bomb of a movie, like “Snow White,” but its quality has to be measured in contrast to a) the embarrassing number of critical raves by people who are supposedly watching movies for a living, and b) the movie’s undeserved box office success. Hollywood is excited that Christopher Nolan’s latest over-praised film is getting people to leave their TV screens for the audience experience, and they should be. It is tragic that the draw isn’t a great movie. Or a good one. Or even a meh one.
I went into the theater with a completely open mind. I love both “The Illiad” and “The Odyssey.” I love classic spectacles, and many reviews told me I would see one worthy of the great Cecil B. DeMille. I have no bias against Nolan or for him. I do not understand his critical sanctification.
In full disclosure, I must reveal that I did not see the whole movie. At almost exactly the half-way mark (90 minutes), my female companion, a private tutor who knew Homer’s version well and whom I had invited to see the film after she complained that none of her friends would see it with her, turned to me (I thought she was asleep) and said, “I have to get up early tomorrow, and this is terrible. Let me know how bad it is from here.” And I said: “I’m coming with you.” As a director and performer, I caught several media reviewers publishing full reviews of a show of mine when they had left mid-way and not revealed this in their review. That’s unethical: I got one of them fired for doing it. In this instance, I will issue a disclaimer: It is possible that the second half of “The Odyssey” redeems the first half. If so, out of the hundreds of films I have seen over my life, it would be the first movie that accomplished that feat after such a soporific, pompous, annoying beginning. It would be like “The Terror of Tiny Town” suddenly turning into “High Noon.”
My second point is that, to my surprise, there is nothing overtly political (or “woke”) about Nolan’s film at all, which means that confirmation bias warped the perceptions of both the Left and the Right on a grand scale. All looks yellow to the jaundiced eye. I would add “politics ruins everything” in 2026, but the film hit the screen ruined, and politics isn’t what ruined it.
On to the ethical and quasi-ethical observations…
Ethics Alarms 
Clymenestra is Agamemnon’s wife right?
Right. Not Achilles. Wrong “A.” (Achilles was gay.) %$#@!. Proofed the post twice and missed it both times. FIXED. Thanks.
“Achilles was gay.”
Achilles also had a son and wanted to keep Briseis. He was bi-sexual, if anything.
(Pet Peeve: I hate it when people look at the ancients and think they thought about things the way we did. “Gay” was not really a thing. Closest you come to that is Aristophanes in the Symposium.)
-Jut
I too went with open eyes and hope. I did enjoy the cinematography of the “Aegean”. I agree the dialogue was muddled. What happen to sound technicians?
The hype up about the casting was a nothing burger for me. Both were minor parts with minimum screen time.
I missed what I call the verticalaity of the relationship between Odyseus and the deities. There was none. The horozontal relationship between Odyseus and his men was also lacking . He dismissed them both with one line-“Every man for himself!” ( or something like that, remeber I couldn’t hear the dialogue).
The suitors for Penelope were just stock background characters. Their presence on the screen was irrelevant until the closing bit of action.
I do wish i could find and listen to an independnent sound track. i read that was intersting, but again could not make it out.
Since there were a lot of audio issues in this project and other recent cinema events, I hope Hollywood would give diction and propjection lessons to the stars. If not either provide captioning or a libretto.
We are told that Eliot’s role was the moral center of the entire movie, see, because he symbolizes O’s guilt over what war made him do.
Zendaya, as the O’s protector/consultant Athena, has a frozen face: Can she act?
Her RBF is her whole schtick. I don’t know what’s appealing about her at all, and for some reason she seems to get great movie roles. She plays the same person in everything she does. She’s not particularly pretty. If it wasn’t for Spider-Man, I doubt people would know her at all. To be fair, I hear she’s excellent in Europhia, but I’m not watching that to find out.
Jack: “I will issue a disclaimer: It is possible that the second half of “The Odyssey” redeems the first half. If so, out of the hundreds of films I have seen over my life, it would be the first movie that accomplished that feat after such a soporific, pompous, annoying beginning. It would be like “The Terror of Tiny Town” suddenly turning into “High Noon.””
Closest I could come up with is 2001: A Space Odyssey, but only because the beginning was so slow and self-indulgent, while the ending was a bit less so, and even somewhat interesting.
-Jut
“Closest I could come up with is 2001: A Space Odyssey, but only because the beginning was so slow and self-indulgent“
Only movie during which I fell asleep….I was 13.
PWS