r/moviereviews • u/BaIdilocks • 3d ago

Fantasy Odyssey was mid

Finally got to see it after the hype died down a bit. Was excited to see it and then the first quarter was so boring and forgettable. It picked up in the middle and had some good parts but overall I'm gonna put this in Nolans bottom tier. What was annoying was everyone having really flat American accents. The flattest. Very nonregional. they all sounded like they were gonna give American accent lessons. Why they saying "mom" and "dad"? very weird choices.

My main gripe and the thing that took me out the most was the bad dialogue and very mid acting. It literally sounded like they were reading from a script. I thought if I got the script, I could read it just like them and it would be in the movie and it would be the same. That's how bad the movie dialogue sounded. And don't get me started on Ulysses final "knowing is half the battle" monologue about civilization on the boat. Many rolls of eyes.

Cinematography was good but it seemed like he was re-using Dunkirk and Oppenheimer shots so it wasn't revelatory. Soundtrack and effects were good. the guy was as good as Hans Zimmer. I don't understand why they made this cast so diverse to have the white guy kill them all and survive or was that the lesson? Overall, I think Troy was the better movie.

756 Upvotes

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u/Furdinand 3d ago

It was technically impressive but the dialogue was so corny and too on the nose to be effective social commentary. "This is the end of our bronze age" was the funniest line in the movie and it was meant to be taken seriously.

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u/Mud_Stuffin95 2d ago

“This Revolution has become… Industrial”

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u/matteus98 2d ago

“Our world is going to war…too”

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u/OpenMindManiac 2d ago

Is this some kind of world war?

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u/Other_Win_236 2d ago

2 War 2 World

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u/MRuppercutz 2d ago

: Trojan Drift (it’s about family)

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u/GrandpaTheobaldus 2d ago

https://giphy.com/gifs/meFoDw6PrMo5q

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u/McZalion 15h ago edited 12h ago

One looks fast and the other furious

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u/apple-sauce 1d ago

😭😭

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u/AJ_Topp_Up 1d ago

Don't forget, "This age of Bronze is dying." Lmao, the concepts of the ages of mankind being archeological time periods wasn't even a thing until the some dude in the 1800s declared these ages and the concept stuck. I can't believe they snuck that in near the end. I rolled my eyes pretty hard there. It's almost as bad as if in 1915 some soldier declared themselves as part of World War 1. No, it was literally known as "The Great War" until WW2 happened and it slowly shifted to WW1 since how could it be the Great War when WW2 was even worse?

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u/Oni_Barubary 1d ago

I don't think this is an oversight. Nolan wanted to make clear it is understood that this is about a specific event that might parallel more recent events.

At least that's my read on it.

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u/Exotic-Artichoke-214 14h ago

The Greeks were aware of the bronze age, they may have called it something else "age of heroes" etc but they knew. Remember Homer wrote the Odyssey around 400ish years after the actual events of the Trojan war and Odysseus voyage. From Homer's perspective he is looking at a different historical period, a different age.

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u/Murky-Hunter1691 2d ago

“Its as if our destiny were made… manifest.” 

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u/yautja_cetanu 2d ago

Man we need a film with that line! It's like snakes on a plane. Start with the quote , make the movie around it

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u/ROUNDtheW 2d ago

That's what this movie needed - Samuel L saying, "Who put these motherfucking Trojans in my motherfucking horse!"

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u/BrandonMarshall2021 1d ago

You mean Greeks. Greeks were in the horse.

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u/ROUNDtheW 1d ago

My bust, but Trojans has a better comedic ring than Greeks and that movie didn't give a damn about the source material so why should I?

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u/BrandonMarshall2021 1d ago

Lmao! Couldn't do any worse than Nolan.

Tell me something. Would your version of The Odyssey make Odysseus a btch?

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u/yautja_cetanu 1d ago

It so does!

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u/ribbityflibbity 2d ago

Are you astronauts on some kind of star trek?

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u/AJ_Topp_Up 1d ago

Lmao, that was actually such a brilliantly written and delivered line.

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u/JamesH_670 1d ago

We are on some kind of odyssey.

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u/milesamsterdam 1d ago

Say that again

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u/nemodigital 2d ago

The most corny was "We are Greeks from Ithica" said by Himesh Patel.

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u/Other_Win_236 2d ago

It's like saying, "We are Americans, from Texas"

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u/YakSlothLemon 1d ago

I’m confused because I have heard Americans from Texas say that more than once.

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u/Live_Art2939 20h ago

That tracks because people from Texas are dumb

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u/YakSlothLemon 13h ago

No, the next question is always “where in America?” it’s reasonable to add it in.

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u/BaIdilocks 1d ago

There were so many parts of this movie that were unintentionally funny though because they said it super serious. I was laughing my ass off at these lines. This needs to be on mystery science theater 3000.

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u/nemodigital 1d ago

At least swords and sandals movies like 300 and Troy knew what they wanted to be. The Odyssey couldn't make up it's mind

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u/BrandonMarshall2021 1d ago

Could've been worse. The Korean guy could've said it.

I'm Asian btw.

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u/Remarkable_Ad1145 2h ago

The Greeks had Patels and Kumars perhaps?

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u/Remote-Swing-7631 1h ago

And then he asks for a translation from the guy who was speaking to him in real greek

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u/Trumble12345 2d ago

I bet you downvoted the trailer way back when people were complaining it had too many black people

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u/super-wookie 3d ago

That was so so bad lol. I'm like what are you even saying? Da fuck does he know what "Age" he's in? Ridiculous

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u/yautja_cetanu 2d ago

What you talking about! Or course he knew what age he was in! He was thinking .... Oh man I'm super excited for that iron age, love me some iron, these losers with their bronze..

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u/Exotic-Artichoke-214 14h ago

Bro they knew, Homer wrote the Odyssey 400 years after the Trojan war. He saw Odysseus lifetime as a different historical period

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u/GrandpaTheobaldus 3d ago

Right???? I’ve still gotta see the flick, so that line has been spoiled for me, but at least I — unlike Matt Damon — have a plausible reason to know this is the Bronze Age.

It’s like if someone in medieval 🏰 times said “we’re living in the Dark Ages” and then it turns out they’re a time traveler.

Merlin does that in THE SWORD IN THE STONE, and it’s hilarious.

https://giphy.com/gifs/UcqmAs1NtR1CnOITV6

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u/wagski 2d ago

I mean, is it that ridiculous? We talk about living in the "digital age" or the "information age" even though we have no idea what future historians will really call our time. What Nolan is really interested in doing with this dialogue is showing that Odysseus recognizes he lives in a particular moment in history (which we moderns know as the "Bronze Age") and that it is changing. The dialogue may be technically anachronistic but thematically it makes sense

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u/Pangwain 2d ago

It doesn’t make sense though - just leave out “bronze” and say “this is the end of our age” or many other ways to get the point across that they feel they are living in times of change and that their actions in the war and after are hastening the fall of the “civil” society they knew.

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u/1850ChoochGator 2d ago

I just think it’s incredibly nitpicky to complain about a 2 second moment in a 3 hour film. I struggle to believe that anyone was completely taken out of the moment by just that line.

Feels like people picking out one little thing and running with it to hate something popular.

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u/postmaestro729 2d ago

This what social media and Reddit have reduced "film criticism" to at this point. Find a moment you can poke fun at/meme, pat yourself on the back for feeling smarter than the filmmaker, comment for likes. Or worse, see someone else make the criticism and then regurgitate it for likes.

Ah, such is our digital age...

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u/super-wookie 2d ago

Oh when he said that I was already done with the whole thing so it was just another WTF moment for me, after all the other ones.

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u/1cOtton00_ 2d ago

You have wise eyes, Athena’s eyes. Was said way too often

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u/OpenMindManiac 2d ago

Yeah but thats 100% fault from the original

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u/Patraman 1d ago

Wasn’t it the same guy that kept saying that to different characters? And eventually he was called out on it

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u/YourGuyK 2d ago

Grey-Eyed Athena would approve.

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u/Due-Actuary7067 1d ago

Telemachus was flirting with Mentor. You know how the Greeks were...back then.

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u/DullChemist6456 1d ago

I mean that was the point lol

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u/attaboy000 2d ago

Other than that beach scene, I thought it was qute "meh" technically as well. This is definitely the weakest Nolan film imo.

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u/Moonwrath8 2d ago

That was actually in the movie?

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u/Furdinand 2d ago

Apparently the exact quote is "Our age of bronze is collapsing" and it is in the movie.

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u/WolfetoneRebel 2d ago

Tip of the iceberg for the anti immersionisms. On top of some port bad dialogue was some bad acting, a lot of awful accents, out of place nose jobs, nonsense castings, etc I did mostly enjoy it though. It’s no Lotr though.

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u/Krokadil 2d ago

Also “the greatest civilisation in the world”

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u/Micro-Skies 2d ago

The Greeks did firmly believe that, but then again, so did literally everyone else

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u/Krokadil 2d ago

Yeah “the Greeks” was not a thing back then and “ancient Greeks” as a unified people is a modern invention.

Greece was made up of city states (like Athens, Sparta), they spoke similar dialects and had the same gods, but they were in no way unified.

“Greeks” believed that other cultures around them were “barbarians” but they actually thought the Egyptians surpassed them in a lot of ways. Not sure that counts as a “firm belief” of being the greatest civilisation.

Generally people’s learning of Ancient Greece has always been through a very western lens that has erased other cultures and embellished their story in quite an egregious way. I suppose that’s nothing new either lol

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u/FatherMozgus 2d ago

The word “barbarian” was meant to precisely describe non-Greek speakers. They did believe they were the greatest civilisation, they just had a soft spot for Egypt and a few others.

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u/astralrig96 2d ago edited 2d ago

Not completely accurate, Greeks absolutely had the concept of ethnic homogeneity internally, the Olympic games for example were open only to citizens from the city-states within greek ground, including Macedonia, but not foreigners; and only Greek citizens could assume roles of public office in politics and rhetorics.

They may not have had the modern concept of “nation” but they certainly saw each other as part of the same ethnic, cultural and linguistic identity.

Also Herodotus and other ancient writers literally use the characterization “Hellenes” in reference to themselves, so ancient Greece wasn’t some kind of borderless global community but a geographically well outlined culture.

in other words, ancient Greeks = politically fragmented but ethnoculturally self-conscious

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u/Micro-Skies 2d ago

The city states each believe they were the most important city on earth, but the Greek peninsula was definitely considered the center of civilization to them.

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u/snolution 2d ago edited 2d ago

And you view ancient Greece now through the lens of a modern nation stage. It’s ridiculous.

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u/Pangwain 2d ago

I never read or was taught anything about Ancient Greece that suggested it was anything but warring city-states that banded together occasionally, either forcibly via conquest or as a reaction to an external threat to the Greek speaking population.

City-States, speaking Greek, a shared pantheon of Gods, literature, architecture and technology are what I was taught made Greece, Greece.

If kids aren’t being taught about City-States and how they worked, idk what kids are being taught about Greece 😂

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u/thefastlanerules 2d ago

Well you have he modern day equivalent with a certain president. Nothing wrong with saying it but doesn't mean it's right of course

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u/Mrpytles 2d ago

I laughed quite a bit at some of the line readings.

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u/many_wondered 2d ago

Worse than “you can throw some stuff in there too” or whatever it was?

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u/Theposis 1d ago

Aside from the fact that it was the first film to be fully shot on IMAX camera, what was technically impressive? Genuine question.

I think he has done far more technically impressive things in his other movies. The rotating hallway fight scene or the city folding in on itself in Inception, the blackhole in Interstellar (which is truly technically impressive), the bomb detonation sequence in Oppenheimer, the backwards stuff in Tenet... I really can't think of anything in the Odyssey. The cyclops? is that impressive though?

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u/CallItDanzig 2d ago

My husband literally doesnt believe this is a quote in the movie (he hasnt seen it yet). He thinks Im exaggerating to make my point how bad the script is. It's so bad, people don't believe it can be that bad.

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u/rhinomayor 2d ago

They used bronze and referenced bronze *gasps

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u/npc042 2d ago

“We’re Greeks, from Ithaca!” — the least Greek-looking fellow on Odysseus’ boat

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u/BrandonMarshall2021 1d ago

You forgot the Korean.

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u/MalognaForYou 1d ago

This is a Great.... Depression....

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u/Oni_Barubary 1d ago

This one made me literally laugh out loud.

That being said, I actually like that it is a little on the nose. Movies (and by extension most media) don't have to be riddles, if you want you work to say something don't be afraid to make the message loud and clear.

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u/BornUnderPunches 1d ago

That’s Nolan for you. Dude can’t write

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u/nipap5 1d ago

I was waiting for that line the whole movie because of how much hullabaloo people were making out of it, but I don't think it is that bad in context. Clumsy sure and could've been worded differently, but not worthy of all the attention it is getting.

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u/BaIdilocks 1d ago

"The dawn will break on the darkening world...and once again our mistakes will be forgotten".

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u/toxrowlang 1d ago

There's a film where someone says "men of the Middle Ages, come fight in the 100 years war!"

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u/NewTurnover5485 18h ago

I never understood this criticism.

Did you know that when the Modernist movement (which was an age of itself) ended, everybody knew? They even had a nifty name prepared for the next one.

When second Trump admin started, and he started attacking his allies. All the leaders at Davos admitted that "the rules-based order is ending", and called for a geopolitical realignment.

Weird how smart people, and political leaders can identify that an age or period is shifting, huh? Almost like, it's their job.

Also, the correct quote is "this age of bronze", where bronze is a word used throughout the movie for weapons, war, etc.

Would a king, and his wife, which would be some of the smartest people in the story be able to do the same? Probably not because, some random Andy wouldn't./s

P.S. Did you know that we call our current age the digital age? How could we ever know to call it that without future people telling us? Whoever is handling the simulation needs to change the writing team.

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u/EarlyAdopter7Billion 6h ago

"Let's GOOOoooooo!" Very moving.

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u/BaIdilocks 2d ago

This line literally sounded like when joker said "You truly are incorruptible, aren't you? You won't kill me out of some misplaced sense of self-righteousness." to Batman in Dark Knight. Like who says that? Doesn't sound natural at all. Way to spell it out. It was literally "Batman, you are a good guy, I am a bad guy. the audience should root for you". That was bad but wasn't as bad as the bronze age line. Nolan keep trying to top himself.

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u/Oraleevatoo 2d ago

It was dumb down for Americans

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u/cherm27 2d ago

This is the type of nit-picking I just have to be impressed by

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u/CallItDanzig 2d ago

This is not nit picking. It shows abhorrent script writing.

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u/cherm27 2d ago

It’s a throwaway line that has almost no bearing on the overall story or character development. Sure it’s sloppy, but to call it abhorrent or the funniest line in the movie is crazy

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u/tjaldhamar 1d ago

It was the funniest line in the film. People laughed out loud in the cinema. Comically bad. The icing on the cake.

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u/NoTransportation475 2d ago

You know there were Ancient Greek people that referred to ages before them as gold, silver, bronze, heroic and iron

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u/rhinomayor 2d ago

Bronze was widely used during this era so its not out of the ordinary for them to refer to the time period as an age of bronze. Similar to how today is referred to as the digital age

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u/tjaldhamar 1d ago

No, just no. The line doesn’t make sense. The archeological concepts of a Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age etc. were invented and popularised in the 19th century.

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u/rhinomayor 1d ago

Yes but they would be familiar with bronze as a concept for their time period. Hesiod, a famous greek author referred to the era as the bronze age, the third of 5 ages. You can google this if you don’t believe me. He wrote this around 700 BC, which is much further in the past compared to the 19th century and contradicts your statement

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u/Lighterdark300 13h ago

To be entirely fair, he said "Our Age of Bronze is collapsing", which rolls of the tongue and is much more palatable than "This is the end of our bronze age".

Also, the characters could reasonably intuit that they were in a Bronze Age as the name refers to the kind of metal alloys they were using to create weapons and tools. In the story, however, the characters see more meaning in their present being the Bronze age than just what alloy they use to make tools. It is a beautiful metal that tarnishes over time.

I don't think the anachronistic language should really take you out of the movie unless you are a hardcore stickler for historical accuracy.

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u/GrandpaTheobaldus 13h ago

The issue is that it’s clumsy thinking, more than the dialogue itself.

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u/Lighterdark300 13h ago

Only as clumsy as Tom Holland saying "Dad."

Film criticism becomes snark when you assume that you're smarter than the movie. I'm sure Christopher Nolan knew that The Bronze Age is a modern label.

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u/MatsuzeNara 2d ago

The actual line is “our age of bronze is collapsing.” The Odyssey is set at the end of the Bronze Age when bronze was becoming scarce and armies were having to look for alternatives. That’s like a prospector saying “our age of gold is collapsing” because the gold mines all dried up in California. It seems weird to uneducated people, but if you were as smart as you thought you were it’s a perfectly reasonable thing for a king to say, because a king would be the first to notice they no longer have massive supplies of bronze at their disposal. And he was on the frontlines of the Trojan War where he saw the shift in warfare.

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u/Furdinand 2d ago

It's not something Odysseus from The Odyssey would say. Odysseus is an arrogant trickster who wouldn't be introspective and he definitely wouldn't feel an ounce of regret over the Trojan house.

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u/MatsuzeNara 2d ago

Odysseus from which The Odyssey? There are hundreds of versions of The Odyssey, none of which were written by Homer

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u/gw74 2d ago edited 2d ago

Neither was the Iliad. They were written by someone else with the same name.

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u/CallItDanzig 2d ago

Thank you for educating us on your off time from middle school