Posted on 07/27/2026 6:51:30 PM PDT by nikos1121
I went into Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey expecting a cinematic event. Instead, I saw one of the worst movies ever made. I made it to the 90-minute mark before walking out, but I really should have bailed a half-hour in.
We have been utterly bamboozled. As someone who appreciates a script that actually works, I can tell you this screenplay is nonsensical. Combine that with unwatchable lighting and completely incomprehensible audio, and the whole production just falls apart on screen. Matt Damon is completely miscast and entirely too soft to play Odysseus. Honestly, the campy old Steve Reeves movies or Sinbad the Sailor pack more entertainment value than this bloated mess.
If anyone tells you this film is good, they are lying. It will not win—let alone be nominated for—a single Oscar. Do yourself a favor and see The Devil Wears Prada 2 or Michael instead. I am not exaggerating when I say that when my time comes to sit in a nursing home, my first request to the Almighty will be for a refund on the 90 minutes I lost to this three-hour joke. No one with an ounce of common sense should sit through it.
A friend of mine says, “why read the book when you can watch the movie?”; but I always prefer to read the book.
Wow, what a great lookin’ place! And thanks for the review.
https://search.brave.com/images?q=Vathy%2C+Ithaca
BTW, not that anyone cares, the only film version I’ve liked is this one, I have it on disk, uh, somewhere around here:
https://search.brave.com/videos?q=armand+assante+odyssey
Obviously you've never seen Days of Thunder or Top Gun.
The Devils Wears Prada 2 was bad. It was boring and not funny.
Michael was good.
I wasn’t planning to see the thing anyway ... but all the hoopla reminded me that I never actually read it. So ...
Amazon just delivered, in two volumes, The Iliad and The Odyssey.
God, that is sad.
Sad and lazy.
No intellectual curiosity, just 'this is easier'.
I’m looking forward to you going to the new Supergirl movie.
The movie already is a financial success.
I have heard of another person who walked out, but haven’t heard their exact reasons yet.
Thanks for the good review. I won’t see Nolan’s new movie. Eric Davis says of Odyssy: “it’s the must-see cinematic event of the summer.” I reject anything with Elliot Page.
Hollywood never follows the book completely. Often it is very much changed. Plus you do not see the skill of the writer, the beauty of that writing.
Perfect example is Tolkien’s books. Beautifully written.
Well thats passive aggresive À bit
I think I have seen this marketing script before. When a movie is pure “s**t”, it is hyped before release. Some aspect...cost, cast, relevance. Then when released the “critics” (paid off liars) rave about. Creating an initial buzz gets the curious non-busy to go see it for 2-4 weeks, then the truth hits, and the market share tanks, but they’ll have recouped most of the cost. They edit it for foreign markets, syndicate it, stream, and download it, and then they make a small profit after 5-10 years.
Some aspiring actress told me the movie “1917” was great. Looked like it was filmed with one camera, she said.
Bland,banal movie, tons of CGI. TONS.
The credits for the CGI workers must have been 200-300 names. Mostly Gupta or Patel...producer got CGI done at low cost in India. Probably at slave wages.
Movie lost me when these 2 soldiers are stuck in a booby trapped room with cases of military grade explosives. The explosives go off, the guys survive, only damage was dust on their faces and eyelids. No deafness, no caved in head, no body parts stuck to the walls. Ridiculous. Like Wiley Coyote having a bomb blow up in his face.
You nailed it. This actually could have been a blockbuster if someone had just confiscated Christopher Nolan’s hiking boots. The movie dedicates at least a solid hour just to watching people commute. Matt Damon looks at a hill. We see the top of the hill. We know he’s going to the top of the hill. But instead of just cutting to the next scene, Nolan forces us to physically hike every grueling, miserable inch of the slope with him in real-time. I swear, a solid thirty minutes of this movie is just the audience staring at actors’ backsides as they trudge up and down various inclines.
And the eating! What on earth is with the eating? The aggressively loud chewing sound effects are out of control. I’m convinced Nolan did a secret apprenticeship on a cheap 1960s Spaghetti Western and decided that what Homer’s ancient epic really needed was high-definition mastication.
The script is the worst thing committed to paper since The Waterboy. Somebody with a spine should have screened the early cut, locked the doors, and brought in Clint Eastwood with a giant pair of pruning shears to mercilessly gut 90 minutes of this self-indulgent crap out of the final print.
The Odyssey is not a walking tour! It should be a tight, punchy series of crazy vignettes. You get the Cyclops, you get the Sirens, you hit the whirlpool, you park the Trojan Horse. Bing, bang, boom. Moving on. Instead, what we got is pure, unadulterated cinematic agony.
As someone who writes for the stage, I know firsthand that the entire art of writing is rewriting. I highly doubt whoever drafted this bloated script has ever been introduced to the concept of brevity.
I’ve received 5 private messages from people saying the walked out of the movie. 3 were within the first 30 minutes. AT the 30 minute mark I turned to my gf, and asked her if she liked the movie. She had this weird look on her face, like she didn’t know what to say. So we stuck it out. At around the 60 minute mark it was obvious the movie was bad, and it was not going to get better. I stuck it out another 30 minutes, but I am telling you, at 30 minutes you know it’s a stinker. The script is what perplexes me the most. It is obviously terrible. Surely the actors knew this. Most of the lines are cringe worthy.
The trailers for it looked like shit.
“Mel Gibson is going to reshoot this film.”
I think I read that Gibson is working with Musk to put out another Odyssey. But about “reshoot”, I could be wrong but I understood it’s all AI. So in this day and age, if a movie is AI, is “shoot” even applicable? Maybe “create”? (I’m confused.)
“it will sweep the awards circuit.”
It became a shoo-in for an Emmy the minute they cast coal-black Owanadanadingo as Helen, and the critter who used to be a chick named Ellen as a male character who isn’t even in The Odyssey.
“To each their own.”
Glad you’re on board with the woke pronoun fad. 👏
BTW, she is train wreck in this film. I think the process is like this: Pitch an idea to a bunch of studio execs and tell them you have backing. Hire a noted director and fill it up with some top actors. Then you go out and get as many dumb ass investors out there. People like you and me, who will invest thousands of dollars with the chance to make some money. I think this movie might make some money, maybe. There is no other way to explain the gravy train. The actors were paid millions, the script writer director...millions. It is sheer crap. Nolan knew it too. There is no way anyone working on this film can be proud of it.
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