The Odyssey (film): It's actually quite a good film

The press this film was getting even long before it was released was a bit of a shit show. People were complaining about it being "woke" and being DEI and what not and they were putting images all over the place and whining as if race-swapping was anything new in Hollywood. They love to do that and have for a long time. I can't imagine that this will change either.

When Christopher Nolan directs a film, I will watch that film. I wasn't excited enough about this one to actually spend money to see it in theaters but as soon as it dropped on streaming I was all over it.

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I think that most people are probably already very familiar with most of the material in this film. For me, I was required to learn about it in high school and actually found it to be quite the boring read. They do that in high school required reading though: we have to suffer through the classics hell or high water and all of us just bought the Cliff Notes to pass the tests anyway.

Still though, the main plotlines of Odysseus (played by Matt Damon) are things that I think most people are at least somewhat familiar with and you already know how this one turns out.

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I never tire of recreations of the sacking of Troy and the Trojan Horse and this part of the film in particular was really well-done.

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There is so much more to this movie that just that though and they mostly don't spend a lot of time on it probably because the movie Troy already covered a lot of that stuff.

There were some scenes in this that I had forgotten about and this is mostly because I didn't pay the book much attention when I was forced to read it as a child. I remembered just enough to pass the tests and then moved on.

Seeing this film has actually inspired me to maybe go back and re-read the book and maybe I will enjoy it a bit more now that I am not being forced to read it.

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I was curious how they would handle the Cyclops and even though that was only about 8 minutes of the film it was a very powerful sequence of events. If you've seen it you probably felt as I did and feel bad for the cyclops... I think that was probably the intent.

Another thing I liked about watching this on streaming is that I was able to walk in and out of the film many times and still be entertained by it. If, like me, you already know the story, it isn't all that necessary to watch it intently. Some times I am in the mood for exactly that.

Should I watch it?

It's Christopher Nolan so yes, you absolutely should. If you are one of the people out there that is outraged by the race-swapping and the fact that there are zero Greek-looking people in the entire cast well I suppose you do kind of have a reasonable point there but if you are protesting it by not watching it I think it is actually you that is missing out here. This is a very well-made film IMO and I think you should definitely watch it.

I enjoyed it even though it was quite long and I believe that most other people will as well.

_{at the moment, the only place you can legally stream this film is by renting it from all the usual suspects like AppleTV, Amazon, and Fandango. This will not be a part of a membership to watch for free until around February of next year}