This summer’s number one blockbuster, a movie preceded by casting controversies that prove completely irrelevant upon watching it, is a popcorn hit wrapped in the unmistakable, heavy-tinted aroma of Christopher Nolan. I have always found it easy enough to admire and enjoy Nolan’s work, even as I accept that every entry in his filmography is flawed to one degree or another.
What struck me with this one, is how much it resembles the themes and characters of Dune, even if it they have a different kind of gravitas. I would have imagined that source material from thousands of years ago would play differently, but after the Nolan treatment, the distance between them shrinks considerably.
Adding to that surreal parallel is the casting. There is something profoundly bizarre about watching Zendaya inhabit the role of Athena, looking and acting for all the world like an existential extension of Chani.
Anyway, I digress, and I get a sense that I could keep digressing for a long time without saying much about the film itself. Don’t even get me going on the “importance” of watching it in the “right” format.
We are treated with a fractured retelling of Odysseus’s arduous return to Ithaca after the Trojan wars. The story unfolds through shifting perspectives, offering tales so deeply woven into our modern cultural DNA that they feel instantly recognizable – almost as recognizable as the endless parade of familiar Hollywood faces vying for screen time. Our lead, Matt Damon, stands out by how much he must have trained for the movie, with almost everyone but Himesh Patel looking like they want to significantly elevate male fitness and beauty standards.
The narrative pendulum swings from confrontation with mythical horrors to the cold realities of man-made atrocities, honing in on the fractured morality of the modern world. Throughout it all, Odysseus wrestles with two heavy burdens: the personal transformation he cannot undo, and the very fabric of the world he helped unravel. The undercurrents here feel less classical and almost biblical.
Yet, for all its grand existential musings, the script delivers moments of incisive, poetic clarity. Following his survival of the Siren song, our hero delivers a speech containing the film’s finest line: “It told you what you most want is what you most can’t have and that the most you can’t have is what you already had and lost.”
The Odyssey has such moments where it truly feels philosophical, but it also goes through motions that allow it to end like a John Wick story.
That said, I did enjoy it – the scale and the unrelenting showmanship. But long after the credits roll and the thunderous score fades, the singular thought that will truly haunt me isn’t the existential dread of the gods.
It’s the sheer, unspeakable logistical nightmare of men surviving inside a “wooden” horse for days on end. 8
tributary stu 
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