Holy shit, they actually named-checked the Late Bronze Age Collapse. That’s a ballsy move.
And the Sea Peoples!
Is the revelation that Odysseus and other veterans retuning from Troy are the Sea People unique to this telling of the tale?
I believe that is a twist that Nolan came up with.
I don’t believe the “Sea Peoples” or “People of the Sea” were ever mentioned by Homer, at least not by name.
In archaeology, the Sea Peoples were hypothesized invaders who may have caused or at least contributed to the Late Bronze Age collapse of Greek civilization (and much of the Mediterranean region).
No. Because ‘Sea Peoples” as a name was coined by a French archaeologist is the 1800s. During the time these supposed Sea People were up to no good, they were known by nationality or tribal names…
- Peleset: The best-known group, widely identified by historians as the Philistines who settled in Canaan.
- Sherden (or Shardana): Often associated with the early inhabitants of Sardinia, though some served as mercenaries for the Egyptians.
- Denyen: Linked by scholars to the Danuna (mentioned in Hittite texts) and often associated with the Mycenaean Greeks or a tribe in the Levant.
- Tjeker (or Tjekker): A seafaring group that eventually settled along the Canaanite coast at the port city of Dor.
- Lukka: Coastal raiders from western Anatolia, often linked to the classical region of Lycia.
- Ekwesh: Widely believed to represent a group of Bronze Age Greeks (the Achaeans).
- Shekelesh: Generally identified as an early people from Sicily.
- Teresh: Often associated with the Tyrrhenians (Tyrsenoi), ancestors of the Etruscans in Anatolia and Italy.
- Weshesh: A lesser-known group, sometimes linked by historians to the biblical Tribe of Asher or inhabitants of the northern Levant
The 70mm film screenings are so popular here in Vegas (and we have a true 70mm imax film projector at the Brenden Palms) that they added a 1:30am showing. Usually that theater stops starting movies around 11:30, which means they’re keeping staff on hand an extra 2-3 hours just to squeeze in an extra imax screening. And that theater, despite being quite nice, is usually only about 20% full. And the 1:30am screening tonight has sold all but 4 tickets and will likely sell out.
If I recall correctly, they rebuilt their 70mm projector just for this film at great cost - and the tickets run $50 each to recover that investment - and yet showings from 11:30am till 1:30am are practically sold out for at least the next week, so their decision to rebuild their projector apparently paid off. I wonder if this is going to inspire other films to be made in imax 70mm film. My guess is not many - there are just too few 70mm imax film projectors out there in the world. But I’m surprised by the apparent wild success of people crowding in to see this film even at $50 per ticket. I’d love to see Villeneuve make something in true imax.
Wow! Makes the $30 I paid in NYC seem like a bargain!
Box office results are in and the film made $264 million worldwide so far.
I ran into this interesting article-
The Odyssey is a smash hit. Christopher Nolan’s latest big epic brought in over $260 million worldwide over its opening weekend, one of the director’s biggest release hauls ever. It is also the largest opening weekend so far for a live-action movie in 2026. And the film is doing great with critics. The new adaptation is sitting at a 95 on Rotten Tomatoes. Showings are sold out, and with little competition next weekend, The Odyssey is likely to have a massive second weekend at the box office as well.
For normal people, none of this matters. But for conservative commentators, right-wing grifters, and online chuds, Nolan’s Odyssey doing so well, despite them claiming it to be “woke” and filled with “DEI hires,” has sort of broken their brains. Many of them are now latching onto conspiracies to explain the near-unanimous praise, sold-out showings, and big box office numbers.
I despise “review bombing”. especially by those who havent seen it. It occurs for film, TV shows, and even D&D books.
Sounds like the film needs the “Bathroom break” app
I confess the persistence of this reaction sort of surprised me.
I thought the grumbling and whining about casting some BLACK! 
and TRANS! and BROWN! actors was going to be the usual transitory anti-woke sulking, which would be rapidly discarded, as soon as the viewership waves started climbing, in favor of “SEE HOW HUNGRY AUDIENCES ARE FOR THE CLASSIC LIT OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION?!?? HO-MER! HO-MER!! THE OG α-MALES ARE KILLING IT!!!”
“…Next up: Aeneid! WOOOOOT!!!”
But that… hasn’t happened? I suppose it still might, but the anti-woke chuds seem to be running out of time to make their pivot before it becomes too obviously a last-ditch face-saving maneuver.
(If the issue is simply that most of the chuds don’t even realize that the Odyssey is in fact a western-civ classic, that’s just 
.)
There is nothing interesting about that article and whatever “controversy” there is exists in their own heads. They have no relevance and people should stop giving them notice and clicks.
A break that should be called “Meanwhile, back in Ithaca…”
Just came back from the movie. Every woman he saw die in Troy was Zendaya, it wasn’t just one priestess.
Wow, I can’t wait to get a copy of the movie and see this scene again.
Cloning Zendaya must have blown up the budget.
I just saw it again, I didn’t notice that- the other women killed were seen so briefly I couldn’t tell who played them, I did think they looked similar but wasn’t sure, but that makes total sense! With all the mentions of treating strangers as if they might be a god, and Telemachus repeatedly saying that someone has Athena’s eyes, Odysseus seeing Athena in the face of every woman killed by his breaking of Zeus’s Law is a really clever bit of narrative.
Nolan is on record that he was inspired by Emily Wilson’s translation, which is about as anti alpha-male-fist-pumping as you can get from the source material. Murders are murders, rapes are rapes, and the “disloyal maids” are abused girls who were essentially executed by their owner in a particularly horrible fashion.
The Odyssey is a cultural anchor to a world 2700 years old. It takes 10-14 hours to hear it all and you’d need at least that to explain the world and expectations the contemporary audience would all understand to a modern audience. If they would even care to know.
Given that, I enjoyed it and am fine with new takes on ancient literature and find online complaints about ‘cHanGinG HIstoRy’ hilarious. We were already walking into the theatre with our own very concrete ideas about concepts like ‘freedom’ or ‘slavery’ that would be nonsense to them.
This seems like a good thread to relate my journey to viewing this movie (my odyssey, so to speak).
It began last Thursday, when I decided to check out The Odyssey on its opening weekend. Thinking that a translation of a famous piece of literature set in early Greece would have modest expectations for the size of opening weekend audience, I hadn’t tried to book a ticket a week ahead, as I might do for a Marvel release.
It’s a Christopher Nolan joint, so I started looking at AMC IMAX screens within about 30 minutes travel. Friday evening- everything’s sold out! (by sold out, I mean almost no seats and the seats available are neck-breakers up front or seats all the way in the back, and why go to an IMAX showing and sit so far back it’s like watching on TV?) Saturday- everything’s sold out! Sunday- it looks like there are some non-neckbreaking seats for a 2:45 showing (my first mistake- it was actually a 2PM showing, I got the time confused). This is great, I can watch the World Cup final and maybe, if necessary, listen to the end on the radio on the way to the theater.
So I show up at exactly 2:45, get my ticket scanned, walk into the theater. That’s when I notice the movie is already playing (yeah- how could I have kept thinking it was a 2:45 showing?). I hate not watching a movie from the start, so I walk out and head home. Once home, I start looking at opportunities after work during the week. It looks like I can leave work early Monday through Wednesday. Monday- Sold out! Tuesday- Sold out! Wednesday- Sold out! Thursday- A couple of good seats! So I book a Thursday 6PM ticket.
So for some reason, I have it in my mind that I’ve booked a ticket for Wednesday 6PM and set my work calendar up to leave early Wednesday! Come Wednesday afternoon, I leave work, go home to change into more comfortable clothes, pull up my ticket and then notice it is for Thursday! It’s about 5 PM, the theater is about 20-30 minutes away, so I decide to go into the app, select 6 PM on “today” and see if anyone has canceled. I back out and go back in to booking, refreshing the seating, every 5-10 minutes until at 5:25, I spot a seat in a “good spot” the seating for Wednesday. I grab it, then cancel my Thursday booking, drive to the theater, have a moment of panic when I pull up my app and the ticket is for Thursday (because it is still on the cancellation page, which displays the ticket with a tiny cancelled if you scroll down), find the Wednesday ticket and go in and enjoy the (entire) movie.
So, TLDR: Booked three separate tickets in order to see one showing. Total cost: $0.00 (don’t ever ask me if A-List is worth it)
That’s a win in my book!
So you’re the people from the sea!