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Posted on 08/24/2026 4:25:42 AM PDT by nikos1121
As a Greek-American, I went to see The Odyssey three weeks ago with eager anticipation. At the time, the Rotten Tomatoes scores had dropped into the 60s—significantly down from the high 90s where they started.
I ended up walking out after 90 minutes. Two other couples had already bailed around the one-hour mark. Only one guy remained sitting up in high right corner of the theater.
It was clearly the worst movie I have ever seen, and after 70 years of watching movies, that says a lot.
My brother, who still lives in Chicago where we grew up, saw it the day before. He leans left but is a sharp, reliable judge of cinema. He thought it was downright terrible, but to his credit, he didn't say a word about it until I’d seen it for myself.
I was furious and deeply disappointed. I felt like I was eight years old again and someone had just stolen my bike.
I was so moved to speak out that I sat down and took the time to write a thoughtful, honest review for Rotten Tomatoes, giving it a well-deserved 1 star. I posted my piece here, too, and almost everyone in the thread agreed with me. Anyone reading my review would know I’d actually watched the film—I pointed out that the classic Sinbad the Sailor movies of my youth were far better than this snoozefest. In closing, I wrote that if I’m ever on my deathbed with only a few hours left to live, I’m going to pray to God to give me back the time I wasted on The Odyssey, including the drive to and from the theater.
Now, to get to the point: the RT scores have somehow bounced right back up to the mid-90s. I went back to read the recent reviews, and they’re almost entirely one-sentence, 5-star fluff posts.
And guess what? My detailed review was completely scrubbed.
Has this happened to anyone else?
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I believe in reviews by the Critical Drinker!
And he surely didn’t like Nolan’s “Odyssey”.
Of course you can go ahead and review it. Do whatever you want to do. But if you haven’t seen a movie in its entirety, how can you really review it? This is called common sense. Disclaimer: I haven’t seen the movie and I have no desire to.
I’m simply pointing out that your basis for rating Titanic as a bad movie may be in error since there were survivors pulled from the water that night. DiCaprio’s character Jack survived about 15-30 minutes in the water which is in line with the actual victims who succumbed to hypothermia.
For my part, I very much enjoyed a few (though not all) of Nolan’s works.
I very much enjoyed “Dunkirk”. Not at all from a historical perspective, but from a story-telling perspective and how he wound all the threads together into the fabric of the movie. The time shifting aspect was confusing for me, but when I watched it a second time, I enjoyed it more than the first time I watched it.
And he holds (for me) the personal record of perhaps the most bizarre and inventive movie-based storytelling in his work “Memento”. That is a movie I simply cannot recommend to anyone, it is so weird and bizarre that it makes it interesting to me.
I”Inception” impressed me as interesting to watch, and I could recommend that to people. I thought it was an extremely inventive movie.
But I found “Interstellar” to be completely boring. I didn’t enjoy it. And I am a sucker for Sci-Fi. But that was a while ago. Maybe I should watch it again.
And I loved the portrayal of The Joker in “The Dark Knight”. Of course, that was all the actor, but...I give Nolan all the credit for allowing the actor to really push out that part. I thought that was an amazing performance.
As for “Odyssey”, I have never maintained that it would not be popular or make money. I simply took extreme exception to the way it was cast, and the reasons for which it was cast that way...to maximize the chances of “Best Film” by checking off all the boxes and reframing the Odyssey in a Leftist and Feminist perspective. Which Nolan no doubt denies.
I suspect I will watch it when I can do so without paying for it.
You want to really get sick? Just wait. It will, probably, be nominated for an Academy Award.
Highly probable I'd say.
The Odyssey makes $250 million on opening weekened.
“Yeah but it needs to make $500 million to break even.”
The Odyssey makes $730 million after 12 days.
“Yeah but it needs to make $850 million to break even.”
The Odyssey makes $1.35 billion after 3 weeks.
“Yeah but that’s just because of all the presale tickets. Once people have talked about how bad it is, word of mouth will kill it off quickly.
The Odyssey makes $1.45 billion after five weeks and is by far the highest-grossing R rated movie of all time.
“Yeah but millions buy McDonalds stuff every day.”
Yes, Nolan’s Odyssey is as bad as you say, and even worse. Resisting the temptation to bold once that became clear, I settled in and actually began to enjoy it as a sort of extended goofy Mystery Science Theater 3000 skit. However, for all its many shortcomings, it has done good if only it drives more people to read the original, which I hear that it has done.
Then there’s the IMAX issue.
Shooting the movie in that format limited the number of cinemas that could show it, all of which were in or near major metros, and vastly limited the number of seats available.
That created a shortage which likely ramped up interest.
The tickets sold cost around twice the price.
So the movie was being made for the blue bits, marketed to the blue bits.
The gross looks great, but it still might not make much of a profit.
And Nolan’s movie, best I can tell, was seen by far fewer people than who’ve seen the new Spiderman flick.
If Hollyweird thinks that’s a victory, it’s Pyrrhic.
It wasn’t just shown in IMAX theaters. It was shown in regular theaters. You don’t get to open in almost 4,000 theaters and just be IMAX. And at $1.5 billion grosses on $250 million budget it’s DEFINITELY profitable, highly profitable.
Spider-man was also shown in IMAX theaters, and regular.
It’s a victory. And it’s not a Pyrrhic victory.
When I want a hint about a movie I’m thinking of seeing, I read the negative reviews first. They are generally more honest.
I know that wasn't directed to me, but for what it's worth I despised interstellar (because it makes no sense) and I loved The Odyssey, because it is a nice take on one fresh idea, i.e. that Odysseus was suffering from PTSD and that's why he didn't want to go home. I would love to see 10 more Odysseys with 10 more novel takes.
I found it way too long. I kept watching my watch. I went to the restroom twice. Took a turn around the lobby. Came back, and they were still in the same scene. They could easily have cut this in half. I think their budget was so huge, that Nolan used every nickel he could. The actor salaries were baffling.
No it dipped there for awhile. A short while mind you. I think the bad reviews overwhelmed the good ones, and they had to get in there and scrub them.
Short summary of Oppenheimer.
A communist sympathyzing academic felt bad about the A-bomb.
it’s taken in $1.5B and is one of the highest box office performers in history. This focus on audience is just silly. You don’t become the 20th highest grossing film in history without an audience.
I think I’ll wait until it comes on TV.
RT sold out years ago. Many times they post only +++ reviews for movies they support politically. And, this pile of crappola is nothing but woke garbage.
It is kinda like Wikipedia or Mozilla — politics corrupts everything.
There's zero record of this happening outside of this thread.
I saw it with my own eyes. Also, google “RT removed my review on Odyssey”. Also why are all the other movie review sites showing no where near the same results as RT for this movie?
Bottom line, the RT reviews on the movie from critics and public are corrupt.
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