I am no classical scholar, but I am well aware of some of the Greek myths. The Trojan Horse is one of the best known and there have been some classic movies around those myths. I grew up watching those with the Ray Harryhausen animated monsters. Now we have a fresh take on this from Christopher Nolan who gave us some great Batman movies and Oppenheimer.
Nolan likes to film as much as possible for real rather than relying on CGI effects, but I suspect there are a fair few of those in the nearly three hours of this epic. There is a lot to fit in and he left plenty out. He also changed various things, but that is standard practice as a director will want to make the story flow in a certain way. Apparently the original story had a lot more sex, but we get enough violence. I am tempted to actually read it some time and there are lots of translations out there.
The story jumps around a bit in time, but then it is spanning about twenty years. You can sort of see where you are by how long and grey Matt Damon's beard is. I think he carries the lead role well. It does feel quite episodic as the crew visit various islands with strange inhabitants including a huge cyclops, armoured giants and a witch.
We have a couple of Marvel stars with Tom Holland (Spider Man) and Jon Bernthal (The Punisher). Robert Pattinson plays a bad guy trying to seduce Odysseus's queen Penelope. I think the cast is pretty good. Some period movies of this type can go for English accents, but this goes for American all the way, even with the British actors.
I know there has been some criticism of the casting. It is a mix of cultures, but then it is lacking Greek actors and it is not like they would do it all in ancient Greek with subtitles. It is a myth and so you can take liberties. I would trust Nolan to pick the right actors.
Apparently people flew to London to see this in the big IMAX cinema. There will not be many places you can see it at full quality, but it looked good on the biggest screen of our local cinema. It really did not feel like nearly three hours. I expect it will win some awards.
One of the trailers we saw before the main feature was for Digger featuring a heavily made-up Tom Cruise. That looks totally bonkers with some elements of Dr Strangelove.
Rating: 89/100
