Do you ever think of how utterly insane film criticism is?

Christopher Nolan is number four in the list of highest grossing directors worldwide. Think about that for a second. There are three people (well, technically four), IN THE WORLD, who can claim they know how to make a movie that sells more tickets than him. That’s wild. Who am I to say “Listen, if I were Chris Nolan, here’s what I’d do?”

On the other hand, there is a skill for making a film lots of people want to see in the theater, and it’s different from the skill for making a beautiful film that touches your soul. The two skills could overlap, but they don’t have to.

(I would argue that they typically don’t — simply because a touching movie is only touching to a subset of the audience, whereas a “cool” or “exciting” movie can reach a much wider audience)

STILL! I’m going to engage in some Film Criticism and tell Mr. Nolan exactly what I think of his film!

So how’s the movie?

It is a good action movie (as an action movie) and a sub-par adaptation of the source material (as an adaptation). But I think the second point is excusable — and might even be in the tradition of the source material (more on that in a minute).

Should I watch it?

Yes, you should go watch it on a giant IMAX screen! That’s what it was designed for!

And therein lies the rub.

What do you mean “the rub”?

Oh, that’s a phrase originally popularized by Shakespeare to mean “the difficulty” or “conflict,” but that’s not important right now.

Everyone from myself to Christopher Nolan have indicated that you should watch The Odyssey in the biggest IMAX screen you can find (preferably one with 70 MM film). This implies that a key part of the experience of watching this film is the spectacle. That if you watch it on a smaller screen (or *shudder* your phone in several months), or even just the wrong type of projector, you are missing something of the intended experience.

Nolan loves his practical effects and stunts. He loves his film. And he loves really, REALLY loud music. But doesn’t it support the argument of those who call modern action films “roller coasters” to say you are really only seeing the film the right way if you’re losing your hearing in the process?

Let’s look at this a different way. Imagine that someone created criteria for which elements of a film directly lead to the most enjoyment. The list might look like this:

• Acting
• Writing
• Editing
• Special Effects
• Cinematography
• Stunt work

You get the idea. I mean, it’s essentially just the categories for Academy Awards. Now take a film, and rank how those things contribute to your enjoyment of the film. Let’s take a look at one of my favorites: Hot Fuzz! Here’s how I would rank how these categories influence my enjoyment, from most influential to least:

1. Writing
2. Acting
3. Editing
4. Cinematography
5. Special Effects
6. Stunt Work

(don’t take any of this too seriously, this is all just to illustrate a point)

Looking at my top three there (Writing, acting, editing), makes it seem like this film could be enjoyed in a theater, OR it could be enjoyed at home on a regular TV with relatively little decrease in one’s enjoyment of the experience. Now let’s rank those same things for the Odyssey (again, for illustrative purposes):

1. Special Effects
2. Cinematography
3. Stunt Work
4. Editing
5. Acting
6. Writing

You could easily argue that you got more enjoyment form the acting than that and I wouldn’t fight you too hard, but you can see how this film is the inversion of a comedy or drama (even a relatively stunt-heavy one like Hot Fuzz).

The writing in this isn’t great (I’ve long argued that Nolan should’ve kept working with his brother on the writing side), but it’s not distractingly bad either. The acting is good, but it’s overshadowed by everything else (I mean, for much of the film you can’t see the actors faces anyway, due to lighting, armor, or both).

By saying this I’m not saying “This is the wrong way to make a film and everything should be more like Hot Fuzz” (although it wouldn’t be bad if more things were more like Hot Fuzz). What I’m saying is that this is a film designed to take full advantage of IMAX, so you should see it in IMAX, but because of this it is also a little less enjoyable watching it other ways. And that kind of seems like a bummer, doesn’t it?

So yes, as an action film, it’s pretty good.

How is it as an adaptation?

Remember a few months ago when I wrote about my own adaptation of this story? As someone who has read The Odyssey multiple times (some parts LOTS of times) I have some thoughts about this film as an adaptation.

But before we get into that, I am going to spend a maximum of three paragraphs (promise) on what makes a good adaptation.

In general, The Lord of the Rings is considered an excellent adaptation, largely because it takes what is on the page does the best it can to bring that exact thing to life exactly as written and, because it was all made in one go, it brings a level of consistency to an epic story that is extremely difficult to maintain over the years these things typically take.

(for example, this doesn’t count as one of my three paragraphs, compare that to the Harry Potter films, which are all over the place as they cycled through directors, or even the later Hobbit films)

But there is another adaptation that I think is just as good, but doesn’t bring the exact story to the screen: The Bourne Identity. The film is based on a 1980 novel by Robert Ludlum that is fantastic, but is VERY different from the movie. The reason it’s a good adaptation is twofold:

1. It is a good film all on its own
2. It maintains the heart of the story

In the end Ludlum’s Bourne is quite different — (spoilers) we find out he wasn’t a real assassin, he was just taking credit for assassinations performed by someone else to draw THAT assassin out of hiding so he could take him out. Matt Damon’s Bourne WAS an assassin, however when called on to kill people he finds himself conflicted and eventually refuses. In both questions the inner battle is the same — Bourne thinks he is an assassin and worries if he even wants his memories, but later find out that he isn’t who he feared he was (to a certain extent) — in both cases aided by a romantic interest who sees the good person they are on the inside and believes in them more than they believe in themselves. In other words, they maintain the heart of the story.

(that last one was a stretch but I’m going to call that three paragraphs. Boo ya!)

So is Nolan’s Odyssey a “good adaptation?” If we’re using our two criteria rubric above, well …

1. Is it a good film all on its own? YES
2. Does it maintain the heart of the story? WWWWEEEEeeeellllllll

Number two is where you start to get arguments, mainly because Nolan does two things that don’t align with the original work. First, he makes the plot revolve around the “sea people” which was a thing around the time (potentially) but wasn’t a part of Homer’s Odyssey.

Second, he modifies the character of Odysseus, and the plot as a whole, to align it with modern morals. Some people are VERY angry about this. Am I angry about it? I mean, not to the extent Emily Wilson is, but it does seem a disservice to Homer (and/or the other people that had a hand in creating the tale).

BUT! The Odyssey is a story that stretches back thousands of years, likely originally composed hundreds of years before it was written down.

Isn’t that an insane thing to think about? People just … told each other this story, year after year, decade after decade, even century after century, before someone wrote it down. How many times was it told? How many minor, or major changes? Over that hundreds of years between composition and recording, did society change? Was the original message updated to reflect the desires of those recording it when they finally wrote it down?

We don’t know for sure, but I would guess yes. The Odyssey has been used hundreds or even thousands of times as the basis of stories, and generally the authors (or adaptors) inject some of themselves into the story as they tell it their own way.

That, too, is part of the tradition of the Odyssey. In that sense, Nolan isn’t doing anything new. In fact, he’s probably just the most recent in a long line of people who have used the Odyssey to make their own point that stretches back literally, LITERALLY, thousands of years.

I wish Nolan were a little more graceful, a little more nuanced in his message. Essentially coming out and going “We’re all politically polarized because we aren’t nice to each other anymore” is the kind of obvious message that works best on a bumper sticker. But maybe it’s the message we need right now, and not necessarily the one we deserve.