WARNING: Spoilers ahead…on a story 2.5 millennia old.
Finally got around to watching it this weekend. After the Mt. Everest sized stack of cash it made and all of the glowing reviews, honestly, it was pretty underwhelming.
First thing’s first. The dialogue was AAAAAAAAAWFUL. Seriously? What the hell? It sounded like I was listening to dialogue written by a small team of junior high students. And not the junior high students that take honors English. I was fine with the choice to do American accents, although I would have preferred British accents for a movie like this cuz it just sounds classier. But that wasn’t it. It was the actual words used by the actors to communicate to each other. It was just so dumbed down and sounded so boring and basic. I’m assuming it was a choice made on purpose to maybe connect with as many modern English speakers as possible, but it largely killed the film for me. I was actually kind of shocked how bad the dialogue was in this movie.
Another thing that kind of bothered me, although not nearly to the same degree as the dialogue, was over-acting. I felt like there were some performances that were dialed up a little too much. To the point where it kind of took me out of the film because I felt like I was watching an actor trying to shoot for an oscar a bit too hard. I think the main culprit on this one was Anne Hathaway. Alternatively, I think there was also an issue of under-acting. I’ll get to that below.
Pacing. Despite having 3 hours to tell the story, I kind of felt like some things were skipped over too quickly. Other things that they spent too much time on could have been shortened to allow more time for things I think deserved the time more. Scenes didn’t really punch the way I thought they should. In the book the scene where he comes back after 20 years and his dog is still alive but dies as he touches it and it recognizes him is really impactful, but it was just kind of glossed over in the movie with little to no emotion from Matt Damon. Same with Odysseus finding out Calypso had trapped him on the island for years. Not a lot of emotion there. Actually, I think the only scene Damon really sold was the siren scene. He did the opposite of over-act for most of the movie.
The film looks great. Gotta give it that. The cinematography is solid. And I’m not saying the film was bad (other than the dialogue which was truly awful). I just don’t get the massive hype. Honestly, I still prefer the 90s made for TV version with Armand Assante. I think the dialogue was better. The acting was better. The pacing was better even though it’s almost exactly the same length as this new version. And they did it without the star-studded cast the new film has. Obviously the new version has better special effects, and I do think overall better cinematography. I acknowledge maybe there’s some rose-tinted glasses thing going for me with the 90s version as I grew up with it.
I guess I’d give this new version a B. Just a mid-range B. With a special handwritten in red ink note in the margins that the dialogue is an F.
Ok, crucify me now.
EDIT: You know what, I’d like to add a few things I did like, beyond the cinematography. I liked Odysseus’ monologue about the siren’s song. I liked his monologue about his point of view of his role in the war when he’s talking to his wife. I liked that Athena ended up being a ghost of someone he watched get murdered at Troy (although I do not like Zendaya as an actress).
Sure movies don’t have to be realistic, but they have to be entertaining.
Having era authentic production can be a part of what appeals to people.
He’s not complaining about that. The movie has straight up some atrocious on the face dialogue. It has little subtext and leaves little for the mind to imagine. Good dialogue is the opposite. People like to infer what the character is saying over what they actually mean.
And from what I can tell, if it was trying to emulate the illiad’s style of prose, it fails at it.
Nolan has some really good movies, but I’d get his brother or another writer to edit his writing for the big screen.
Era authentic?
It’s the Odyssey, which era? The era when the Trojan war was supposed to have occurred? Homer wrote his version? When his version was translated to English? And which translation?
Neither the Iliad or Odyssey are historiography. So any film based on them in inherently incapable of authenticity. They’re fiction, written so long ago that it’s hard to be certain when the events of the story are supposed to be from. Homer, if he was the actual author and stuck with some kind of accurate oral writ, would have been writing through the lens of time as much as Nolan did. Homeric descriptions of combat were, and I’m saying this as someone that’s trained in fighting of various sorts, laughable. They’re absolutely not more accurate than any movie based on Greek mythology I’ve ever seen.
Well there’s evidence the siege of Troy actually happened in the bronze age. Homers illiad and odyssey are also definitely refering to the bronze age era.
My point being - It should been at least interesting. I found it boring to see the same greek armor being used for everything, when we know they were a diverse bunch, let alone for something that supposedly took place thousands of years before. You wouldn’t have complained if Nolan used era authentic armor, but it would have added to the charm.
Yeah, it’s a myth. To be honest it fails in my eyes there as well. It’s not a very epic myth, everything feels so small. I wanted to see a grand Troy being seiged by hundreds of thousands of people. I get that it’s trying to be more grounded, but I thought it wasn’t supposed to be realistic.
If you are going to represent an epic, why not go all the way? Why is it grounded in only some places but doesnt care to be grounded in history?