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PaperclipPerfector  7d ago (text post)   2099 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for July 10, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I have watched the Odyssey, and whilst you can make a Culture War thingamajig about some of the casting decisions (which I'm negative on but not like '-100000 points, 3woke5me') I'm giving it a 6.5/10. Some fun spectacles but it didn't really hang together well.

Felt the pacing was a bit overlong, they could easily have cut out certain parts or merged certain 'trials' without losing much. I feel like swapping about 10 minutes worth of the 'final battle' which goes for ages, culling some of the 'ZendayAthena gives meaningful looks' scenes, the cannibal ambush, the temple ambush and some of the girlboss moments for Helen and Penelope for a bit more pre-sacking Troy character establishment would have gone a long way. Cyclops scene having no direct Odysseus-Polyphemus dialogue is insane when it's like his big moment.

Random complaints from this point.

The Cannibal ambush being generic Dark Souls miniboss guys did nothing for me. There was this general air of 'Movie is telling me Odysseus is a super smart genius but he's never really shown giving any thought to anything and it's like a highlight reel of Odysseus moments half of which feel unearned or kinda-random in the scope of this movie'. There's a repeat flashback to a young Elliott Page and Robin Pattinson where Pattinson is played by a de-aged CGI version of himself and Elliott Page is like some random generic looking chubby young male which feels super incongruous since Page Junior looks literally nothing like Page senior. The way they keep using the word 'Collapse' to try and push through some sort of 'The Trojan Horse killed the norms-based political system of the Aegean and Odysseus is the Sea People who everybody is scared of' take is like... okay but Nolan really harps on it. Using a bunch of MCU B-listers in the cast took me out of it, even when reasonably racially-appropriate.

I also feel like the movie should have made a stronger choice between being agnostic (since the gods rather pointedly are never shown clearly) and being supernatural. The Lotus Eater plot device makes it super easy to use flashbacks of dubious veracity in order to contain all the supernatural elements of the movie and introduce an element of unreliable narrator where Odysseus has essentially spent 10 years in an Opium den. Trying to deny the existence of the gods when there's cyclopses and giants and undead and tentacle monsters feels a bit offkilter.

This week's thread went live recently, you might want to post this there as well.

I have no interest in seeing The Odyssey, as I've long felt that Nolan is an overrated writer-director. With each passing year it seems the shine is starting to come off for more and more people, and his limitations are becoming more obvious.

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