'The Odyssey' Review, Plus What Christopher Nolan Got Right and Wrong About Homer's Epic

13:45Ryan Lattanzio:We are in a more earthly realm. Yeah, no, I think that's a great question. And just like backing up a little bit before I dive into all of that, I think like it's important to think a little bit about what the goals of the film are and like how much it matters that it is accurate or true to a poem that was written somewhere between the 8th and 7th centuries BCE. like the only people for whom it truly matters that Nolan captured all of the bits are high school students who have not read the Odyssey, but are about to be tested on it. And so they're watching the film. They might get some of it wrong.

14:22Yeah, exactly. And those poor teachers who are going to have to read about Odysseus going to Pilos to save Telemachus from Bandon.

14:30Anne Thompson:That's completely new, right? Yeah. No, that was completely made up. When we started talking about this, I sent Ryan a pretty long email about like, here are all the things that are different. Here are all the additions that are just coming from Christopher Nolan. And I think at the end of every bullet point, I was like, but Nolan isn't interested in that. But Nolan has a different project. When you look at like, where are all the gods, I would point you to every other Christopher Nolan film ever made. He is absolutely uninterested in, you know, having Zeus and Poseidon and Hera and Athena, except in the sort of small and psychologically grounded way that Zendaya is presented in the film.

15:10He's interested in human agency and the sort of genius and monstrosity of the human mind. And I think I personally am happy that he didn't try, you know, to go for gods and goddesses and sort of told the story through the facet of his own interests. But it does mean that the film changes. I think the character of Odysseus is pretty different in Nolan's conception of him than if you were to just read a translation of the poem. He's a little bit more of a compulsive liar and a shit ass and just getting in his own way and not quite as kind and noble as good old Matt Damon is.

15:51Ryan Lattanzio:He's definitely sanded down in this and made more sympathetic to a degree, particularly with regards to adultery and a lot of pitiless mass killings that he orchestrates throughout the poem. And here he's seen as a little bit more of a dignified problem solver.

16:06Anne Thompson:He still experiences a good deal of hubris. He makes mistakes. And he's flawed. He makes serious judgments, errors in judgment that cost the lives of his men. Yeah.

16:17Ryan Lattanzio:I mean, there could even be a dialogue here to be had with parallels to like Ryan Gosling's character in Project Hail Mary and his problem solving in the Age of Hope Corps. Not that I'm saying that Nolan's Odyssey is that hopeful, as obviously it's very much about the consequences of the Trojan War through the rest of civilization.

16:34Anne Thompson:So what about the Sea People, Sarah? I don't remember Sea People at all. That's an interesting point. That's not in the poem at all. The Sea people is Nolan drawing from ancient history more than myth or poetry. The Odyssey kind of depicts mythic events at the ends of the Bronze Age, and that through like a lot of climate catastrophe and probably civil war and all sorts of goings on, there were a set of civilizations in the Mediterranean that collapsed around 1200, 1100 BCE. And the Odyssey, written much later, is kind of a memory of that collapse. But there are a couple mentions in Egypt which survived of them fighting, quote unquote, the sea people and sort of driving them off.

17:22Who are the sea people is a question historians have been asking ever since. What Nolan is drawing on is ideas of like, okay, the Mycenaean Greek civilizations that were built around these warrior kings raiding the way that the kings in the elite and the odyssey do. After that system collapsed, you still have all these guys with ships and swords. And so that probably they go somewhere. You mean they're sort of like pirates? Yeah, exactly. But like large scale raiders who are either trying to migrate or raid to survive. In Egypt, they get called the Sea Peoples. And so when Nolan is drawing on like maybe we are the Sea Peoples, the Greeks who sacked Troy, he's drawing on sort of those ideas that there was this uptick in pirate and raiding culture probably coming from Mycenaean Greeks, as well as from other places.

18:11Anne Thompson:So I know there's been a lot of debate online. I think it's stupid. I think that the MAGA world has gone after this movie for being woke because of the casting. We've had these issues before. God forbid people imagine a movie with white people in it and then people see black people in it. And I just I reject it and it's done enough. It's not important. What do you think? I agree with that completely. These are usually people who have decided to care about an ancient Greek text precisely 4.2 seconds after seeing that Lupita Nyong 'o has been cast. These are usually people who have not read or engaged with the text or the history.

18:52And if they had, they would understand that this takes place in the Mediterranean context, a context that includes Africa, you guys.

18:59Anne Thompson:I also was a little bit confused by the idea that Clytemnestra and Helen of Troy were twins. That wasn't true, was it? Yes, it kind of depends because their mother is Leda, who very memorably has sex with Zeus when Zeus is a swan and she hatches some eggs. So, you know, in some versions of the myth, Helen and Clytemnestra are half sisters who come out of different eggs. In some, they're twins. It just kind of depends which version of the myth that you're reading. That makes more sense to me, half sisters. But I understand now. Yeah, thank you for explaining that. No, of course. Thank you, Sarah, for coming on.

19:40Anne Thompson:I think that was great. I appreciate it. No, my pleasure.

19:43Ryan Lattanzio:Thank you so much.

19:45Anne Thompson:All right. So Ryan, did you look at the Digger trailer?

19:48Ryan Lattanzio:Of course I did. I'm a professional. Yes. Every established filmmaker who's earned their vainglory has a moment where they think, it's time for me to do my Kubrick movie. And so this is obviously some kind of a take on Dr. Strangelove, but perhaps with a more Yorgos Lanthimos-esque, fisheye lens-y kind of take with a lot of screaming and pounding fists on tables and prostheses. You have Tom Cruise as an oil tycoon amid the brink of some kind of global ecological collapse. John Goodman's in there. There's already Oscar talks swirling around him based on a trailer, which I'll never understand that, but all right.

20:25Ryan Lattanzio:And once again, we have Inyoritu working with his cinematographer, Chivo, who won Oscars for The Revenant and Birdman and Cuaron's Gravity. But this trailer, I wondered, was this not color corrected? It looks a bit desaturated. And if I'm being honest, it didn't look great. And I hope we're not heading into the world of another languorous, indulgent bardo. I don't know. Can Tom Cruise open this movie? You are a bigger Inyoritu fan than me. I love the original Inuritu, Amaro Sparrow's 21 Grams, Babel even. And I have become more disillusioned from him as the years go on.

21:01Anne Thompson:I like Birdman. I like Birdman. That's the one where he won the Oscar. No one talks about that movie anymore.

21:08Ryan Lattanzio:This could be Birdman.

21:08Anne Thompson:This could be Birdman in a good way. Here's what you see in a trailer like this. It could go either way. This is risky. This is over the top. Are people going to buy Cruise? I mean, when he did Tropic Thunder, that was a supporting role. Magnolia, that was a great role. And he delivered that and he was rewarded for that. But it isn't like he made it into a huge hit. Cruise, outside of his franchises, doesn't always open movies, especially when he's in character like this. So I'm not looking for any kind of box office for this. They're chasing Oscars. And that's always a dangerous game, I would suggest.

21:48Anne Thompson:But again, I am a big Inuritu fan. And I expect this to be a great movie. It's just a question. I honestly can't imagine that it's a commercial movie.

21:57Ryan Lattanzio:No, I agree. And there was another trailer this week for Behemoth. You're a really big Tony Gilroy fan. Also, you followed Andor. You've interviewed him many times. You must be excited about that one.

22:08Anne Thompson:I'm very excited about Behemoth. He talked about it and told me about it. And I got excited at the time. And I'm a big Pedro Pascal fan. I saw an interview with Pascal where he really admitted that this was the first time he felt like he was really carrying a movie by himself. He had to learn how to play the cello. So Gilroy is entering a world that we've never really been shown before, which is the behind the scenes world of music for movies in Hollywood, orchestras. But it also promises Pedro, you know, having relationships and, you know, it looks like a comedic drama. I trust Gilroy. I actually do.

22:46Anne Thompson:He's a great writer. He knows what he's doing. He's coming to this subject with love. And I trust Pedro too. So I'm pretty excited.

22:54Ryan Lattanzio:Is this is Behemoth possibly a tar for men? I don't know that it looks quite as scathing as Todd Fields movie, which really took us

23:02Anne Thompson:It feels more accessible. And you know, this is a man who made Michael Clayton, you know, Gilroy is is interested in reaching audiences. He says so he loves to make his his material. you know, this is Andor and everything else that he's done. He likes to make his material accessible to people. So I expect this to play.

23:21Ryan Lattanzio:Yeah, it's heartening to see him back in a mid budget drama for adults mode. Michael Clayton is one of the best movies of the 21st century. And it is beautifully. I rewatch that movie all the time. And you're right. It's great to see Ava Victor, who was the sorry baby breakout writer, director star, as maybe some kind of romantic lead here. You see them kissing quite amorously at one point. This is a Searchlight Pictures film and very curious about that.

23:47Anne Thompson:They could use a breakout right now.

23:48Ryan Lattanzio:They're a little bit in the

23:50Anne Thompson:dumps.

23:50Ryan Lattanzio:Last year kind of died. Didn't play out for them. No. You had rental family, Ann Lee, none of that traveled.

23:58Anne Thompson:No, they shouldn't have picked up Ann Lee. That was a mistake.

24:01Ryan Lattanzio:So in other big news, Ann, what's your take on what's going to happen with all these state lawsuits against the Paramount-Warner merger.

24:08Anne Thompson:The Paramount people managed to demand that the district, U.S. District Judge P. Casey Pitts, love this name, P. Casey Pitts gets recused and they succeeded. So there's a new judge who's going to be in charge of this. The question is whether this judge will delay the merger. California Attorney General Rob Bonta signed, got 12 states to go to court to stop Paramount's$111 billion takeover of Warner Brothers' discovery. And the 37-page suit alleges that the merger violates antitrust laws and consolidation will cause harm to Hollywood. And the trick here is they want to win a restraining order. And the U.S.

24:55Anne Thompson:Justice Department has already approved the merger with the support of President Trump, who wants to control CNN. And David Ellison is trying to close the deal by September to avoid punitive payouts to Warner Brothers Discovery shareholders, as well as rising legal fees. Paramount, among others, argues against the state's case because prosecutors focused on blockbuster theatrical and cable markets and not the burgeoning streaming market, so that even a combined Paramount Warner Brothers would fall behind Google's YouTube, Netflix, Disney, and Amazon in streaming views.

25:32Ryan Lattanzio:Meanwhile, you've got key regulators all over the world in Canada, Australia, China, Saudi Arabia, even Ukraine, who have cleared the paramount deal. But the European Commission and Britain's media and culture minister are still trying to assess the impact of the merger. But earlier this week on Tuesday, you had the WGA, which sued in federal court to stop the merger, arguing, as many have, that it's going to lead to fewer jobs and lower pay for writers. And at that town hall, the California Attorney General Bonta, he dismissed the Ellison's claims that the combined Paramount-Warners merger would release 30 titles a year.

26:07Ryan Lattanzio:We have also dismissed those claims on this podcast or queried them, saying we give a little credit to the claims of David Ellison. But now you have Judge Pitts, a Biden-y pointee who was attacked by Paramount's lawyers who wanted him recused because of his prior legal work from the WGA. So now you have the Northern District of California judge Araceli Martinez-Alguin, who's now going to oversee this very high-profile antitrust case. But also there, I did see there's a semaphore report that said that Paramount could just move all of its operations out of California to evade the lawsuits, which is very scary to think when this merger is purporting to bring back great many jobs to the local industry.

26:47Anne Thompson:He, Ellison, rattled the cage, you know, right on the verge of this announcement that they might go to Tennessee. I think this is just saber rattling. You know, I don't think it's real. I don't think it's true. I don't think it'll happen. And the bad faith that would follow, I mean, forget about it. It would be incredibly bad for the industry. And just in terms of his own claims that he's going to try to support Hollywood. So I've talked to some people about this, and they believe that there will be a delay. And they believe that there may be some back and forth. In order to proceed, people will figure out how to appease some of the people.

27:31Anne Thompson:And that would include, you know, promising to do 30 movies. Everybody does not believe that 30 movies is possible. But there are ways that you could do 15 high profile movies and 15 Jason Blum movies, you know? And so everybody I talk to, I have to say with heavy heart that I believe that even if the restraining order goes through, so will the deal. The deal will go through.

28:00Ryan Lattanzio:No, it's going through.

28:01Anne Thompson:And CNN can't be separated from the other cable assets. The attorneys general are not talking about CNN, but it's not in the 37-page suit. They're not dealing with the politics. They chose not to do that. So that's what's going on. It'll be very interesting to follow. It'll be dramatic. So Ryan, what's your recommendation this week?

28:25Ryan Lattanzio:Before I launch into what I'll recommend, obviously, I'm just going to recommend The Odyssey. I don't have much else for this week. If you can get a ticket, definitely see it. And also, So if you're listening to this podcast, you probably already were going to see it. We're not changing hearts and minds. Yeah. No.

28:40Anne Thompson:By the way, they have 3 a.m., 7 a.m. showings.

28:44Ryan Lattanzio:I was playing 24 hours at the ANC's in Manhattan for sure. I did want to tell you, Anne, that I'm on episode six of Slow Horses season one. I'm finally watching it.

28:55Anne Thompson:I binged that. I actually binged four seasons. And I think there was a season five. You're going to enjoy that. I totally, I'm delighted that you're doing that. I watched Little House on the Prairie, okay? And to the extent that I was a classics fan, I was also a Laura Ingalls Wilder fan. I read all those books over and over. And I know it's for girls. I get that. But it's a very powerful survival pioneer. It's like the, you know, the Oregon Trail or something, you know, it's one of those things where these people they get scarlet fever they get locusts you know so so this this version of it we haven't gotten to the locusts yet is cleaned up and sanitized and and it doesn't get into the survival stuff all that much but the kids are good and the parents are good and they built a town and so they use it everything is social everything is about going into the town and being in the house.

29:56Anne Thompson:They have this little house they built that is, you know, right out of some kind of catalog. It's so beautiful. I sound negative, but I watched the whole thing. I recommend Little House on the Prairie for people who are fans of that material. And, you know, because I love it so much, I would have rejected it immediately if it was tacky or cheesy or awful. And that said, though, I still have issues with some of, there's a lot of shots of the husband and wife kissing and the husband and wife hugging the girls. They wouldn't have been doing that, right?

30:30Ryan Lattanzio:No. I didn't grow up on Little House on the Prairie. What would be the parallel for boys even? I went straight into - The Hardy Boys? Yeah, I didn't do any of that. I mean, I'm born in 1990, but I went straight into like Stephen King. And then later, like in college, I went back to Jane Austen and so forth. All right, Anne, I will talk to you next week when we'll have a little bit more to talk about with the Venice Film Festival lineup coming out and more TIFF announcements. So we'll have another substantive episode.