When I left you in Part I, I was cataloguing the incompetence of the movie’s director, who some critics, probably all Batman fans, appear to regard as Orson Welles, John Ford, Stanley Kubrick, Stephen Spielberg and William Wyler rolled up in one.

Upon reflection, I need to mention another example at the risk of exposing my lack of fair reference since I never saw the second half of the movie.

Based on various reviews and analyses, I know that many aspects of the performances (Damon seems depressed and unengaged) and the unfolding story ( Why is Athena so passive?) are allegedly explained or justified by revelations in the film’s last scenes. However, with the exception of gimmick films like “The Sixth Sense,” in which fooling the audience is the central purpose of the movie, that is unconscionable story-telling, especially in a three hour movie. Finding out after Matt Damon has bored you stiff for hours and you’ve been wondering “Where the hell are all the gods?” the answer to the puzzle—“Oh! I see! Odysseus is depressed! Its complex PTSD! Now I realize in retrospect that I really enjoyed his nuanced portrayal of a serious human malady!” and “That’s it! There aren’t any gods, and “Athena” was just the hero’s way of dealing with the girls he saw beheaded!”—is unfair to the audience, to the actors, and to the source material. Rare directors, with the right material, can pull that trick off. If the first half of the movie loses the audience, it’s impossible.

2. Incompetence: The screenplay! The dialogue! Nolan is responsible for both, and shame on him. I don’t know that I have ever watched a major movie with such amateurish, hackneyed, stilted dialogue…when you could hear the dialogue. Here I have to also blame the actors as well. At least the stars have some control over what they say. Damon’s dialogue in particular was awful. He has the juice (so does Hathaway) to pull the director aside and say, “Come on. I can’t say that. Fix it.” This may be another example of how Nolan’s inflated reputation for being a genius harmed the film.

As for the screenplay, whoever got Nolan hooked on “Zeus’s Law” should be stuffed in a barrel filled with fat Lithuanian midgets. The best take-down of this thematic conceit comes from Emily Wilson appropriately enough, the scholar who wrote the translation of Homer that Nolan allegedly adapted for his movie, and who wrote, by far, the most thorough and intelligent review of it as well. (She hated it.)

After noting the obvious, that it’s weird how everyone blathers on about Zeus’s Law but Zeus is nowhere to be seen, and Odysseus doesn’t believe in the gods anyway unless they hang around as surrogates for headless girls, Wilson writes,

(See, Alizia? That’s an ethical “appeal to authority,” the opinion of a Homer scholar who has read the work in Greek and wrote the translation the film she’s critiquing was based on.)

Bingo! The movie, characters and plot as envisioned by Nolan are ethically incoherent. (I had the same complaint about Nolan’s Batman movies.)

Remaining notes: