🏛️ The Odyssey, Troy, and the Slippery Nature of Myth

REEL THOUGHTS

The Odyssey vs. Troy ‘Debate’ Misses the Rocks for the Siren Song of Outrage

Beware of Greeks bearing gifts. This timeless bit of wisdom doesn’t technically come down to us from Homer—a version of the phrase first appeared in Virgil’s The Aeneid, a quasi-retelling/sequel to the Trojan Wagladiar and its aftermath written by a Roman more than 700 years after The Iliad and The Odyssey were committed to paper—but its potency remains. When you have reasons to doubt the kindness or intentions of others, maybe keep your perspective when those same folks offer you a proverbial wooden horse to worship.

That should’ve gone for old King Priam of Troy 3,000 years ago, and it definitely applies to anyone taking the bait of online grifters and their ceaseless culture wars today. Enter Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey.

It’s strange days when an epic from not only one of the most popular mainstream directors of the 21st century is considered radical, but also the guy who gave modern film bros touchstones like Inception, Interstellar, and The Dark Knight. Yet here we are. And as with everything from Latina actress Rachel Zegler’s casting in Snow White to the simple fact Marvel made a superhero movie starring a woman after 10 years and more than a dozen male-led flicks, online exploiters of resentment have made The Odyssey the punching bag of the season.

I’ve largely ignored this newest “controversy” over the last few weeks in this newsletter and with general Den of Geek editorial, but after a Time magazine cover story with Nolan discussing The Odyssey published Tuesday, the discourse around the movie has gone supernova within the most annoying corners of the internet. The reason? The article confirmed that Oscar-winner, and undeniably gorgeous, Lupita Nyong’o has been cast as Helen of Troy, the face that launched a thousand ships in Greek mythology. She also, for the record, is playing Helen’s sister Clytemnestra in the film.

A Black woman being cast in what Greek myth tells us is the most beautiful woman in the world, as well as still unconfirmed rumors about the possible casting of Elliot Page as Achilles, the Breaker of Men, has set the usual suspects into an uproar on social media. That includes Twitter-acquirer, and Trump Administration washout, Elon Musk.

On the rebranded X, Musk has posted over a dozen times this week about his disdain for Nolan’s The Odyssey, Nyong’o’s casting, and seemingly Page in general, sharing images and clips of Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy, a 2004 adaptation of The Iliad. “Troy is an epic movie,” Musk posted once under a user who promised they would only rewatch the Petersen film in July instead of The Odyssey. “Christopher Nolan [is stomping] on Homer’s grave,” another user wrote in a post Musk shared with millions via X’s manipulated algorithm.

The irony of all this noise—besides the fact that no one has yet seen Nolan’s Odyssey and is able to judge the filmmaker’s approach—is that all these supposed defenders of Western civilization reveal a complete lack of understanding of those foundational Western texts.

Again, we have not seen Nolan’s The Odyssey and therefore cannot judge any choice he’s made, but for anyone who is a student of Homer and the epic poems credited to that name, there is a lot to be intrigued about, not least of which is that, unlike Troy, Nolan seems to actually be turning to the classics for this story of longing, loss, and delayed homecoming.

For those too young to remember, Troy was welcomed with an arched eyebrow if not outright waves of revulsion from every antiquities, literary, and classics professor in the world circa 2004. Sure, Brad Pitt looked strapping in his (also historically inaccurate) armor, and Diane Kruger made a lovely Helen in her Hollywood debut. But they did so in a film where Achilles is not graced with near invulnerability after being dipped by his ankles in the River Styx, nor is Helen cursed by her beauty because of the fickle whims of gods, including Aphrodite, who according to Greek tradition compels Helen to go with the Trojan Prince Paris as a prize for picking Aphrodite in a contest with other immortals.

Frankly, that aspect of Helen being an unwilling Trojan bride never sat well with me, but giving Helen slightly more agency in her choice is the most minute of sacrileges and heresies in Troy, a film that removed the presence of the Greek gods entirely, reduced the infamously epic 10-year Trojan war to a couple of weeks, and committed to baffling decisions like allowing Paris (Orlando Bloom in that movie) to survive the sacking of Troy and his own cowardice; or Achilles awarded some unearned movie star redemption for his awfulness when he comes back to save his one-time slave girl Briseis (Rose Byrne) from fellow Greeks after Troy is put to the torch. 

In actual Greek tradition—which extends far beyond The Iliad’s ending on the night Achilles slays Hector—Achilles did not save Briseis from Troy’s fall because Achilles was himself already dead, and Briseis was passed from the Greek hero to one of his comrades-in-arms as another piece of property. The spoils of war. This gets to that aforementioned unseemly side about Greeks and their gifts.

Troy was not an adaptation of Homer (who very likely was many people with a multitude of “graves” dug across decades). Rather the film was a Hollywood product trying to cash in on the renewed interest in sword and sandals epics following the success of Gladiator four years prior.

Conversely, Nolan is not trying to jump on a bandwagon with The Odyssey. He, in fact, seems to be chasing his own muses, which the same Time article hints are deeply thought out and researched. We still do not know the full extent of the gods and deities in the film, although we know they’re present, including with Zendaya cast as Athena. Furthermore, trailers have hinted at iconic fantasy elements like the Cyclops. Meanwhile in Time, we’re teased that not only will Matt Damon’s Odysseus be tied to the mast of his ship as it passes by the sirens, but that they will torture him with mind games through song.

Whether the film succeeds or fails, it is clearly drilling down to the primal reasons The Odyssey has endured in the popular imagination for thousands of years: it’s a story of loss and reclamation, and of a broken family made whole. That’s a concept we can trace from Homer to Leonardo DiCaprio trying to get back to his kids in Inception. Or Matthew McConaughey trying to get back to his kids in Interstellar. Or Batman trying to get back to Catwoman so he can have kids in The Dark Knight Rises… You know, I might be sensing a pattern?

The point is: Nolan’s The Odyssey promises to at least attempt a more faithful and thoughtful modernization of Homer than Troy. And if in the process it makes the material more accessible to a modern world, much like Virgil adding proto-Romans in The Aeneid centuries later, then there’s ancient precedent for that too.

— David Crow, Senior Editor

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