[00:02] question, is it any good? The answer, yeah, I'd say it's very good. I don't it's Nolan's best film, but it was significantly better than I was expecting, that's for sure. And to pick apart the layers of that onion real
[00:17] quick, I was pretty vocal about how Nolan is one of my favorite directors, but this one was looking like a bit of a miss for me because all the trailers seem to focus on just the heavy hitting names. Look at this A-lister. And I bet
[00:30] And wait a minute, we're going to subvert your expectations. We got thought we didn't have any more A-listers up our sleeves? Yes, we do. More A-listers. So like the trailers to me felt like it was really relying on
[00:42] just star power, which made me feel like it would just be kind of flat and hollow. I don't like when things just rely on the big draw, the big names for bones than that. And I'm happy to report
[00:56] after seeing it, it does not use them as like a crutch to carry a boring or uninspired movie. And many of those large names don't play a big role in the
[01:08] film at all. They were given like I wouldn't say cameos cuz they're like they're characters that you'll know by name if you're familiar with the source material, but they don't have many lines or much screen time. For example, like
[01:21] This is your big spoiler warning. Zendaya. Zendaya, I think has Zendaya. Zendaya, I think has probably less than 10 lines and maybe like eight total scenes, all of which are like really quick. Where she is
[01:38] always sharing the screen with Odysseus, Matt Damon. So Zendaya, while used as like a big name draw to get asses in seats, is not a big presence in this film. Like her character is Athena, obviously a very
[01:53] doesn't like focus on that or anything. So her role here wasn't huge. And that's true for so many of these characters. Like, example, Travis Scott, which was the most eye-opening casting decision to me.
[02:08] Travis Scott actually only has two scenes, yet was prominently featured in the marketing material, so leading people like myself to believe that Travis Scott had like a big role in the film, which he does not. It Again,
[02:23] like this is true for so many uh characters and so many of the big names here. Elliot Page has maybe four scenes total. It like the list goes on and on of all these big names that have caused a big stir leading up to it. And then in
[02:37] the actual film, they're not really in it all that much. But I am left confused wondering why pay the millions upon millions of dollars to get, for example, Zendaya to read eight lines and appear in a handful of scenes. That
[02:53] could have easily just been going to someone else and they save quite a handful of doubloons there for it. But I think the answer is pretty obvious. It's Nolan. Any actor in the [ __ ] world will do backflips for him
[03:08] if he asked, so he could get them and it helps put asses in seats with these big draws. Like I get it. But again, for me, all of the trailers leading into that so heavily made me feel like this might be a Nolan miss.
[03:22] it's a really good movie. I'm going to rip the band-aid off and get my biggest complaint out of the way right out the gate here before really There is one huge problem with this movie and it's one that's plagued
[03:35] Christopher Nolan's I wouldn't say entire career cuz I only more recent films. The sound. The like I don't know maybe Christopher Nolan has some hearing
[03:47] issues or or something, so like it sounds amazing to him. But there are so Oppenheimer where I literally couldn't understand what they were saying cuz their words were drowned out by everything else. There are just so many
[04:00] instances where the sound betrays a really good scene or sequence because it just gets like a jumbled mess or sounds like [ __ ] flatulence through a I don't know. This has been a critique of Nolan's
[04:15] quite a handful of years now. It's something I pointed out in Oppenheimer as well. How does this keep getting through the Christopher Nolan patch through the Christopher Nolan patch notes? How has the sound not been fixed?
[04:27] It is like the most consistent criticism, I feel, for Nolan's work. And out of spite? Like is he doing it on purpose? Is he sitting there giggling like, "Oh, yeah. I'm going to [ __ ] with them again. We're
[04:40] eardrums and make you think you're taking crazy pills." Like I just don't understand because surely someone in the pipeline here would, you know, chirp up this kind of sounds like [ __ ] here. Maybe we should, you know, adjust it a
[04:53] little bit." But it just doesn't seem to be happening. Now, is it the biggest deal in the world? No. Like it's just there are quite a few instances in this movie where it's very
[05:06] where it's very hard to hear what is being said. Like uh and that that's upsetting. It doesn't I scenes. Like I said, it just does take a little bit of
[05:19] sequences when you don't know what the [ __ ] they said. it's I don't love that it's still a problem, but it doesn't by any means Boy, howdy, though, Nolan, if you don't mind me spitballing a little idea here,
[05:35] I'd say you spruce up that sound mixing. It would It would help tremendously in in a lot of instances here. Anyway, though, I really appreciate the spectacle of this film being so grand in scale and they didn't just rely on
[05:51] shitty half-baked CGI to achieve it. They did a lot of on location shooting, practical effects, real sets, real props. Like they really did commit to making this look as like real as possible without just going the very
[06:07] easy, very generic CGI route. Now, of course there is still some CGI in it, but a lot less than you'd expect already know a lot of people are going to get point out as being bad CGI. I can already see it happening. Like the
[06:22] Cyclops, for example. The Cyclops is actually a animatronic puppet that they going to be touch-ups with the CGI, but it is like a physical thing there for like the entire Cyclops sequence. That's very impressive and something
[06:38] that I feel is kind of a lost art in a lot of Hollywood these days because CGI is so much cheaper and faster. So, I really appreciate bucking that trend to be more practical even on something of that size and that caliber. And I think
[06:51] it looks great here. I think the entire sequence with the Cyclops is very tense, very well shot, really builds tension in a very, very unusual way for Nolan to the point where it almost like teeters on like a horror movie scene.
[07:06] Granted, not like the best horror movie ever. Like it's nothing like that's, you composition there, but I thought it was still very effective in the way that it was utilized and it made for a very satisfying experience with the Cyclops
[07:18] and watching Odysseus and his men have to navigate that. They go to their next wacky and wild adventure. Like I really appreciate the scale of it and just how great the adventure felt to go on. It's
[07:33] mainly a film about Odysseus and his men trying to get home. Of course, you still have the other elements at play like with his son and what's going on at home with Penelope and the suitors. That's all still there but the bulk is you're
[07:47] following Odysseus and his men after their hard-fought victory in Troy after so long away from home. They now are on this grueling voyage to make it back and along the way keep getting lost and encountering new obstacles, new terror,
[08:02] even magic. And the magic I thought maybe would have come across cheesy or something here but it doesn't. I think they do a great job of keeping it didn't shy away from just having the gods like directly involved in the
[08:16] story. And now it's not to like the same level as in the Odyssey itself like the source material but they are still here. Not just in like name and spirit but like they are present in a couple of instances
[08:29] which I thought added to it. Now I will say since we spend most of this movie experiencing with his men, you're going to get real cozy watching Matt Damon's And I don't think he actually gets a whole
[08:43] lot of flexing of his acting chops until like the last 45 to an hour of this For the bulk of it, I would say he mainly exists in a state of stoicism. He
[08:56] is someone who is like directly communicating with the gods and his ability to keep them alive by all means necessary and he does a good job of showing like how much his men mean to him and how badly he wants to get home.
[09:10] But for the most part he doesn't really have a whole lot of big acting demands. There's a lot of action which is great like the battle in Troy like after the Trojan Horse as well as some of the other encounters that
[09:23] they go through like there's a lot of action that he experiences and then just trying to keep the crew alive and in doing so there's just not a whole lot of you know demand for an extraordinary performance from him. I would actually
[09:38] performance from him. I would actually say his crew had like a lot more to showcase in that regard. And that's not like, you know, a point against Matt Damon or anything cuz I think that's kind of what they
[09:50] were going for. Cuz it's really we are following this journey through his eyes. It's not so much like analyzing Odysseus as much as it is just trying to watch him get him and all of his men home. So, it's not like diving super deep into it
[10:06] until the end. And at the end I think he does a good job with the emotion of trying to get home and then dealing with the conflicted feelings about really not wanting to get home initially because of what his victory in Troy meant for the
[10:19] future of the world symbolically about the abolishing of civilized society because he used a trick, this deception that goes against the morals of men in order to achieve that victory with the Trojan Horse, this gift that turns out
[10:32] to actually be not a gift but their own demise. So, like it I think it tackled some pretty big ideas. And I don't think it really but I think it did it well enough and Matt Damon did a good enough job that I
[10:46] better at the emotional beat of a husband reuniting with his wife after so long and Penelope having gone through so much herself back at home in his absence. So, the point I'm making is even though you
[11:00] follow Matt Damon for most of the film, I don't think anyone's going to be like here because it wasn't really demanding anything beyond him just being a stoic leader.
[11:13] this isn't going to be like an Oppenheimer situation where like the main character we follow is like a [ __ ] like wow, that was unbelievable mention of that because I think following Oppenheimer, people probably
[11:27] don't think that that's what you're going to get and I don't think that's what it was going for, either. Now, that's not to say that the performances definitely are some standouts. And I Like I said, I think Matt Damon did a
[11:39] good job with the role. I I think he did exactly what he needed to for the character. Uh I also think Robert Pattinson did a really great villain here. He's, of course, not the only villain, but him in particular I thought
[11:52] Robert Pattinson fan. I think he really just goes like [ __ ] hog wild trying to put his best foot forward for every role he gets, and it shows. And not just a really good job as Penelope. So, I do think there are good performances here.
[12:06] you know, all the A-listers here phoned it in, cuz I just don't think they did. lackluster here, and it's something that I think was pretty obvious from the trailers, the writing. Some of the lines just feel super out of
[12:19] first and foremost, I've said this from the very beginning, I don't care if the armor's not time period accurate where Agamemnon has like [ __ ] He's got like Terminator [ __ ] going on. Like, that's something you'd see as like a high-level
[12:32] armor piece in like an anime. Like, it is obviously not realistic by much because this is based on a fictional story. This is not real events
[12:44] Odysseus that [ __ ] fought a cyclops or anything. If you are bothered by it not being like historically accurate, that opinion. It doesn't That That's totally fine. For me personally, I
[12:59] to make like a [ __ ] documentary on Odysseus, the real guy who lived, or anything like that. It is just about a fictional story. So, I don't mind him terms of the visuals and like the armor that they were wearing or the ships they
[13:14] embarking on. That didn't bother me. But, what did bother me is the way he chose to write these characters. I think the dialogue in many instances holds a lot of this film back. Like, and what do I mean by that? It's very
[13:29] jarring when you're watching Tom Holland talk about his dad to, you know, the people around him. Like, "Where's dad at? Where is dad? I want to know my dad." I don't know. Like, that does jump out in the context
[13:43] Holland, that's just the most notable example. Every character talking like with modern sentences just conflicts [clears throat] with the tone the movie sets and where it exists. Now, I'm not saying it needed
[13:57] to go like to old-timey, you know, Finnegans Wake type [ __ ] but at least giving it something that feels more powerful. So, when you're having lines or intense moments and then you hear a character say something just very modern
[14:11] in it, it just I don't know. It doesn't It doesn't feel right. It doesn't sit something that I think, like I said, holds it back in a few cases. I don't emotional investment, especially at the end of the film. I think they do a good
[14:26] I think a lot of this would have been improved if they didn't marry themselves to just "We're doing modern English in this time period. [ __ ] it." I just think it would have hit harder because a lot of the lines in
[14:39] here and some of the dialogue I just don't think works super well. And it's because of that jarring juxtaposition of the time period and what we're watching and what we know from the Odyssey versus what we're hearing with
[14:53] make a mention of is the action cuz I think the action in this film is done really well. And I think there's a good amount of action. A- About as much as I would have expected for an adaptation of the Odyssey. A lot of this is spent in
[15:08] more of a dramatic exploration of this journey with the Odysseus and his men, with the suitors. But, like, there is still action. And I do think when it's there, it's done well. But,
[15:21] I saw in some of the interviews they really they they were blowing a lot of smoke up people's ass about the size of the battles and such. So, like I think it was Matt Damon talking about
[15:36] screen, that means there was really a thousand people there. But there's no battles like that in this film. Like there's there's nothing to that level. Like when they're in Troy, you know, brutalizing the people of
[15:51] Troy, like there's a lot of people there, but it's maybe like 20 at most on screen at any given time throughout all of the action sequences here. The biggest action sequence is like when they go to one of the islands
[16:05] and they encounter that man-eating giant race that's decked out in [ __ ] what looks to be crystal armor from Runescape. That is by far the biggest scale of an encounter a skirmish. And even then, I think it
[16:22] doesn't get more than like probably like 30 to 50, somewhere in that ballpark. And that's also where that trailer scene that everyone picked apart where Matt Damon says, "Let's go." comes
[16:34] from. In the context there, he's he's not giving like a rallying charge, "Let's go!" or anything like that. He's telling his men, "We got to get the [ __ ] They're running away from the man-eating giants.
[16:46] And that's the biggest fight. And I think it's a great fight. Like I I I genuinely think they did a great job showing that battle and just how outmatched, outnumbered, and out just outclassed they were.
[17:01] I think with the interviews they maybe got a little too lost in the sauce with screen, maybe it was different in person, but on screen, it's definitely not a thousand, it's probably not a hundred either. It is still big, but not
[17:19] to that level. So, I wanted to just set the record straight on that. But yeah, much longer here. Overall, I think it's a very good film that is held back by a handful of things that prevent it from being a great masterpiece tier movie.
[17:35] know that this movie's already cemented itself in the online internet discourse, the drama. People have already made their minds up to hate it for a variety of reasons, but that's entirely up to you. You're
[17:50] make the movie. I don't care if you see it or not. I think the movie is good, and it does what a lot of people say they want in movies more often, mentioning when it comes to like Hollywood blockbusters. It goes for
[18:06] practical effects. It goes for real on-location filming, which is a very old-school way of delivering big spectacle films that just feels lost in
[18:18] the modern day and age. So, that was a breath of fresh air that they were willing to do these big puppets like the Cyclops or the ships. Even if you don't like the ships not fitting into the actual historically accurate period, the
[18:32] ships, the physical location, and doing so much practically, I think is just admirable, and I think it looks great in the film. And it's something that this industry desperately needs more of instead of just endless [ __ ] CGI
[18:45] instead of just endless [ __ ] CGI slopfest garbage. So, yeah, anyway, slopfest garbage. So, yeah, anyway, that's really about it. So,