CristeroCast

The Odyssey (2026) - Cristeros Review

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Nolan’s The Odyssey looks like a throwback to an era when blockbusters still built real worlds, then it hits you with choices that feel aggressively modern. We sit down with our director of tech, Brian Venegas, to argue through what the film nails on a technical level and where it breaks its own spell, from IMAX-scale spectacle and practical effects to the jarring choice of modern American accents and dialogue that keeps pulling us out of ancient Greece.

The conversation turns into a real debate about adaptation and worldview. We talk through why the Cyclops sequence works so well, why the middle of the journey feels rushed and episodic, and why certain historical references land as accidental anachronisms. Then we get into the bigger disagreements: is Nolan filtering Homer through a modern therapeutic lens where everyone is driven by trauma, or does the story still hold room for honor, virtue, vice, pride, and conversion?

We also wrestle with what happens when a myth built on divine presence makes the gods ambiguous. Circe and Calypso aren’t just plot stops; they reshape Odysseus’s moral arc, and we think the film’s changes flatten that growth. Penelope becomes another battleground, raising the question of whether a “strong woman” on screen is actually weaker storytelling. And yet, we still spot surprising Christian motifs, from “Zeus’s law” echoing the golden rule to an ending that feels like surrender, faith, and even baptismal symbolism.

Subscribe for more thoughtful film conversations, share this with a friend who loves Homer or Nolan, and leave a review with your take: does this Odyssey point beyond itself, or is it ultimately a modern myth about meaninglessness?

Banter, Prayer, And Spoiler Warning

SPEAKER_03

I mean this is maybe this is like maybe you're the maybe you're the pessimist and I'm not maybe you're the nihilist. Maybe maybe the nihilist should maybe the the pot should not call the kettle black until you've looked in the in the own mirror. But I I I was thinking, I mean, but then I think a lot of my friends like Father Josh uh always tell me that like you try to make everything a movie about Catholicism and family. So I was like, well, come to Cristero Cast. Today I have with me my colleague, uh Brian Vinegas, who's the director of tech. And uh we are going to be talking about the Odyssey. So not only is Brian the director of tech, he is one of the men that I think has the strongest opinions about things and is ready to express those opinions on the new Odyssey film by Christopher Nolan. Um before we get started though, why don't we uh start off with a prayer? In the name of the Father and the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen. Uh Lord God, please guide our conversation today. Uh please enlighten us and send us your Holy Spirit so that we can share your truth and embrace your uh plan for us in this life. We ask this all to you, through your mother. Amen. Our Lady Guadalupe, pray for us, pray for us. In the name of the Father and the Son and Holy Spirit, amen. Well, Brian, thank you for being here with us today. Uh are you excited to talk about the Odyssey?

SPEAKER_01

Heck yeah. Let's get into it.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, why did you came to me with this idea? Why did you want to talk about the Odyssey so much?

SPEAKER_02

Uh well, it's a hot button topic right now, and employee about it and disagreed with her.

SPEAKER_01

So I wanted to you know put my opinions out.

SPEAKER_03

So she liked Odyssey?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

And you did not like the Odyssey.

SPEAKER_01

No. Well, no. Generally, there's things you like.

SPEAKER_03

I enjoyed it. Yeah, you enjoyed it, but I I disapprove from a display. You disapprove of the Odyssey even though you enjoyed parts of it. Yeah. So and you used to have a Tom Selleck mustache until a few days ago, and you don't anymore. Is that because you were going to be on camera?

SPEAKER_01

It's a shaving mishap. Oh no! That is a that's a mishap. Yeah, well, you know, thin mustaches aren't really in style these days.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, so well, good luck next next time. You could grow back. Um, I actually just until two days ago, I looked like Odysseus after he'd been shipwrecked for seven years. Nice. Um and I I I was thinking about this last night. So anybody anybody that's not seen the film yet, just so you know, this is we're gonna be talking extensively about details of it, which will include spoilers. But to be fair, the Odyssey has been around for at least 3,000 years. And if you don't know yet that Odysseus gets back home and kills all the suitors, then I'm I'm sorry, you probably shouldn't know that. It's the that it's been out for a while. Um that ship has selled, as it were. So, but uh, I was thinking about this last night. I was because I I've I noticed that Odysseus's beard was looking a lot, I'm kid I'm not kidding it, it was looking a lot like my beard. Like I had not shaved or trimmed it up for a while, and it was getting like these wispy, gray, like long gray hairs flying in the wind and stuff. And I was like thinking to myself, it's like that looks like a real beard. Like Matt Damon was not sporting like a fake beard, it was a real beard. And I was like, the only way they could have done that is if he grew his beard out for like over a year, and then they film the movie backwards. So they start with him at the end when he has the long beard and he's the beggar, and then they filmed each or each earlier scene in the story, subsequent in filming, uh, then they just trimmed up the beard a little. Because you can't like you you just wouldn't have time with a filming schedule to like keep growing out a beard longer and longer. You have to take months between between shots to do it. And so I just I I thought about that and I looked it up, and that's actually what they did. So Christopher and Olin went to Matt Damon, and I think it was Matt Damon was like, I don't wanna, I don't want to prosthetic beard. He's like, I'm gonna grow it

Reverse Filming And Epic Ambition

SPEAKER_03

out. So like for over a year, he just let his like beard grow as long as it could. And when it came time to film the Odyssey, they they filmed it in reverse order. Dang. So that's like at least commitment to it. So the the story of the Odyssey is uh Odysseus, he's at the at Troy, he invents the Trojan horse, it comes up with the idea of the Trojan horse, they sack Troy, uh you know, which is the the sacking of Troy is is in a lot of literature, um and including Roman literature, right? They fled Troy with their household gods, which led to the founding of Rome, um in Aeneid. So it's it's an epic time for for history, really. Um and Odysseus is the one that came up with the idea of the Trojan horse, and then the Odyssey basically follows his journey uh all the way back to his home of Ithaca, where he is king and his wife Penelope and their son Telemachus is is is supposedly waiting, right? And and a lot happens along the way. And so there have been a lot of depictions of it in film over the years, some better than others. Uh but Christopher Nolan, I guess, have has always really wanted to do like an epic portrayal of Odyssey, and that's what he tried to do here. He got some really big names uh involved in it, and in some ways, I think I think that's what he did. He pulled off like something that he shot it all on IMAX, you know, he really pulled off the massive scale of what that ancient Greek epic poem was. But there were some technical things that that I I didn't like, and I'm sure there were some things you liked and you didn't like. So what did you think about that? Just from like a technical standpoint, what did you think of the Odyssey of the movie? Well, I think You are the director of tech.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

So come on, give us your tech opinion.

SPEAKER_01

Exactly the same. Yeah. Uh yeah, I think they did uh executed a lot of the technical elements really well. There were stylistic decisions which uh some were good, some were bad. For instance, the costumes for a large part of the movie, many of the costumes were historically accurate, like the swords were historically accurate and stuff. Uh, and then they had some really stylized costumes. So if you liked Agamemnon's armor, I I don't think that's exactly historical, but it's a stylistic decision to convey, you know, the the power and whatnot uh in certain circumstances. And I I had fun with that. I thought that was I I I didn't have a problem with that.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, so it's not a bad stylistic choice, just an interesting one to go from like historically accurate to over the top. It's funny you said I never even realized realized that when I watched it, but I think I had an inherent sense of that because um it is kind of striking whenever Agamemnon comes on the scene, he he looks like something more out there's that old movie about the Spartans 300, which is based off of like an epic comic book, which was everything was over the top in in the 300 comic book and movie, and he felt like more like something out of the movie 300, right? Whereas everybody else kind of felt like, no, we're just like, look, we're gritty Greek soldiers, and then yeah, this imposing, like almost superhero figure comes onto the scene.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah, he'll look like Batman. Yeah, he really did, right?

SPEAKER_03

Like, can't see his face, like like,

Scale, Costumes, And Visual Style

SPEAKER_03

oh yeah, Megaminon.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah. So I I I had fun with that. Uh Telemachus, his costume in the last scene was dumb looking. So I think it was hit or miss on some of those like costumes.

SPEAKER_03

I really liked him as an actor, though. I thought he did a really good job. Oh yeah. I still wanted him to become Spider-Man at some point in the movie, but no, I thought I thought he did the I thought he did a pretty good job as because Telemachus is supposed to be kind of young and naive. Yeah. And I thought he played that well.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think I was put off at the beginning of the film by his by him, but that's probably primarily because they gave him the American accent and bad dialogue.

SPEAKER_03

Which is another technical thing. So talk about that. So in the movie, they talk with they all talk with American accents. They like slip into like instead of saying like father and mother, as you might be used to when you're watching a movie that takes place far in the past, you know, they try to kind of formalize the dialogue. They try to use not like a modern uh dialogue because then you feel like you're just watching modern people on screen, right? They try to there used to be a thing called the transatlantic accent, which was like neither British nor uh can you see in a lot of like breakfast at Tiffany's and stuff like that, which was like not really an accent for any people, but they like to use it in movies to like kind of set set it apart from any one people. And in here they almost went the exact opposite, like, okay, we're gonna use the accent, the modern accent of the primary audience of this of this film.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah. And you know, that's putting aside that some of the actors are like Tom Holland's British.

SPEAKER_03

Is British, yeah. No, I had that same thought. I was like, I was like, he's actually having to try to effectuate an American accent. Yeah. I mean, I almost think they would have just been better everybody using their own accents. Like, okay, you're British, use a British accent, you're American, use an American accent.

SPEAKER_01

Right, right. Maybe. Yeah, yeah, I think I miss the accents being a little bit more formalized. Yeah, there's some kind of there's a transatlantic, but then there's something that they do for plays. Uh formal and detached.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, so you're not saying they should have been like I mean, you know, some people like didn't Mel Gibson do a movie where he did okay, he did two movies, uh, Passion of the Christ and the one about the ancient indigenous people. And I think in both of those movies, he used the actual language of the time, like Aramaic and indigenous language, and with just subtitles. So you're not saying try they should have just they all should have been speaking ancient Greece with subtitles.

SPEAKER_01

Well, I mean, Mel Gibson did it really well. So maybe they should have.

SPEAKER_03

But yeah, I mean, but if you're not willing to go that far.

SPEAKER_01

But you're really in the, you know, you enter into you're you're not brought out of it at all when it's in the subtitles of Mel Gibson's films. That's true. So and you are pretty brought out of the film by the dialogue and by the accents.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, I I didn't notice that there was times where you guys like I felt myself getting really drawn into the movie. It's almost like a jarring, like, oh why'd you just call him dad and mom? Like, why like you could have said father and mother, and I would have felt some guy down the street just just uh up there on on the screen. Right.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Yeah, so I think the dialogue, there's a lot of issues there. There's uh issues there are issues with the writing being bad at some point. Yeah. Such as uh referencing the Bronze Age while within it and saying it's coming to an end, which is pretty silly condition.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, very clearly not well read on history, some of the the writers of the screenplay. Right. I mean, yeah, same thing talking about like, well, they're that it's at the very end of the movie, and they're talking about like, well, you know, they won't remember how to read, so we can't write this down, we can only sing it, which is a reference to the fact that the Iliad and the Odyssey were sung poems. Right. But that was an artistic choice even of the Greeks back then. Um it didn't mean that they didn't know how to write, right? And and uh and I don't think the Greeks ever lost the ability to write things down. In fact, I think much of our Western tradition comes from all the things that the Greeks wrote down from Homer's time all the way through uh well well after uh Christ came, even.

SPEAKER_01

Right, right. Yeah. Yeah, some of those references are pretty, pretty poor. Uh other than that, I think artistically, it like it does really well in some places. Yeah, like what did you like artistically about it? The uh practical effects for the Cyclops and the Series scene were both excellently done. The seed didn't really appear to be CGI. That seemed that seemed practical.

SPEAKER_03

No, that was something that I really appreciated about the movie is I feel like it's been a long time since I've been in a movie and I didn't feel like I was in a video game. I felt like, man, those waves are hitting. Those that ocean is is real, that water is is real. And and yeah, the the side I didn't even know this when I watched it that the Cyclops was actually a life-size puppet of the cyclone. I mean, that was he definitely he definitely went extra steps there that really I think did have a strong impact. It made it fun to go to a a movie on a big screen, right? Like you really wanted to be there and see it on a big screen.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah, yeah. They executed those really well. Yeah. I think the city of Troy was all practical.

SPEAKER_02

Really? I think so.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, it looked good. It looked really good. So some of that was a little bit disappointing. I don't think it really matches with our usual conceptions of Troy, like the walls didn't look that big. I don't know.

SPEAKER_03

But um try probably more I if being honest, it's probably more historically accurate that the walls weren't that big than Yeah, it might be. I mean, I don't know. I mean, I don't think I could be wrong,

Accents, Dialogue, And History Problems

SPEAKER_03

but I feel like back in that ancient times, like what would be considered a massive also people were a lot shorter back then, Brian. Well, so maybe um no, I yeah, that's it, it is interesting, and it was a mix. I mean, you know, it's still a movie, so it's a lot of it was artistic choices. Right. But I enjoyed it, I really did enjoy it. Um, a friend of mine that I was with a priest for actually Father Josh, who has been on this podcast before, he felt like the early on it felt too montage-y, like like there's just too many flashbacks. It's like, oh yeah, montage, montage, montage just to kind of get you up. Um, and I could see that sometimes there was a lot of like flashbacks and forth, but I thought definitely after like maybe the first 45 minutes or an hour, it really got going. And and it was I was getting into it, I enjoyed it.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah, it was a lot of fun. I think it did kind of rush through the middle part. The second act was a little bit episodic and rushed. Like it seemed like they kept landing somewhere, getting off their boat, and then five minutes late five minutes later being chased off the boat, off the Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

I mean, it is interesting, right? There's so much spent. I did I had that same thought was this is the Odyssey. Like the Odyssey is almost like goal versus travels, like your encounter with each of the people along the way is the story. I mean, you have the overarching story of trying to get home, but so much was spent on sometimes the poorly written dialogue of Penelope and and others that you actually kind of wish you saw more of like the land, like the party. And then there's some stuff that you're just kind of confused about. Uh like you said, like they get on an island, girl screams, gets chased off the island, but most of his men are murdered. And like Yeah, that was fine, but it could have been drawn out a little more, maybe.

SPEAKER_01

It was very that scene with the giant cannibals was very confusing and quick.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, I didn't just kind of out of nowhere. I honestly didn't even remember it. I know it's been 20 years plus since I've read the Odyssey. I did not remember that from the Odyssey. I had to go back and look it up. I was like, oh, there was a I do remember the giants throwing boulders and sinking the ships. I didn't realize that that was that scene. Right. Um, that was that was interesting. I mean, I think for me, the Cyclops scene was so well done. And it was actually really great. Uh that they I was like, are they gonna do because then it's kind of silly, like they tie themselves to the bottom, they pretend to be the sheep, right, in the book or the poem. And you're like, how are they gonna even pull it? And they actually pulled it off in a realistic enough way that you felt like, okay, that's actually like you're kind of like trying to you're portraying this with a straight face. I wish they I mean, this is just like a personal thing of mine. I always thought the the great joke of the Odyssey is when they're with the Cyclops and they've poked their eye out and he's asked them their name, and he tells the Cyclops that his name in in Latin is Nemo, which in is was actually the translation of the Greek, which means nobody. So that when the Cyclops goes to his brother Cyclops, like, who did this to? Who did this to you? He's like, Nobody did this to me, nobody, and like he's yelling that nobody did this to him. And it's like, I guess if you're trying to play with the straight face, that might have taken you out of it, but that would have been a great reference to the original work. Um, but it was it was I mean, it was really good. I think via like graphic, I might I have eight children, as you know. Right. Uh the oldest is actually 13 now, and they all want to go see they all want to go see us. They're reading the a lot of them are reading the Odyssey this year in school, and they want to go see it. And I I was like, well, let me watch it first. I mean, I think most of it was okay. The Cyclops biting the heads off soldiers, it's a little graphic, but actually not not the worst. Some of the fighting scenes, only one that I was like, okay, I can't let my little kids, they don't need this image in their head, was Cersei transforming the men into pigs, right? Which was is it was an interesting scene. Um it was very jarring though. I mean, it was like even before he starts transforming them, like they're like slovenly and like like all this food's falling out of their mouth, and she like literally takes like hand arm down their throat, like ripping things out and forming their faces into snouts, and like I mean, it was I mean, it is a jarring thing for a man to be transformed into an animal, like before your eyes, like that would be a jarring thing. Like, how do you get from this sh this shape and this form to this shape? And there's honestly probably something ethical or philosophical about that of like, okay, like we do set ourselves apart from the beasts and seeing ourselves transformed into the beasts, the food that we eat, like that that is jarring for us, which actually gets to, I think, your big issue, which is artistically, uh fun-wise, you had a good time, you enjoyed it, but you actually have some philosophical problems with this entire film. Is that accurate? Yeah. So what are those problems? So I think that that scene is a good illustration of like, I mean, because there's a lot of there during that scene, Circe has some uh I was gonna say tirades, I guess they kind of are tirades, right? Definitely definitely some monologues where she's talking about the evils of men and all they do is take and plunder and kill and murder and destroy, and she just goes off and on about it, and then she turns them into pigs because basically all men are pigs. Right. Um, and that is sort of for you illustrative of your problem, right?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah. Principally my contention with Nolan's depiction is that it's the underlying worldview is principally that of a nihilist modernist, you know, uh director. And so that includes a lot of how it manifests in the film is Well, tell me what you mean.

SPEAKER_03

What is a nihilist modernist?

SPEAKER_01

Like, what is that even? Well, Nolan is uh said to be a nihilist. Well, what's a nih nihilist? I mean, I think nothing really matters. It's all kind of uh all you have control of is your own actions. Okay. Blah blah blah.

SPEAKER_03

So you're and he's basically been a professed, a self-professed nihilist. So I'm told.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. I haven't talked to him about it. Okay.

SPEAKER_01

But uh generally

Practical Effects And Rushed Adventures

SPEAKER_01

I just mean the like post-Christian accumulation of and uh pre-enlightenment thought that has kind of taken control of modern cultural media and the modern culture, and usually that takes the form of feminism or relativism. Relativism, moral relativism, materialism, hedonism. Yeah, yeah, all the all the isms. All those isms. Um all the bad isms. All the badms.

SPEAKER_03

Not Catholicism.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, no. That's a good ism. Yeah, that's the only the only good one. Yeah. So, but I think the Circe scene is important because it's uh illustrates kind of the feminist underpinnings of the worldview the story's built on. So Circe, instead of being this powerful super babe who uh turns men into pigs, and then has Odysseus come in and resist her enchantments using the the holy herb Molly from Good the Good Hermes. Um and then he resists her enchantments, threatens her unless she turns the men back to men, and then they go off and party and sleep together for a year until his men beseech him to take them home because they want to go home. And so he reluctantly leaves. Uh so that's like that that's the original part of the story. Instead of doing that, they have her being like this middle-aged uh witch who has in some way been victimized by men, and so she's She is uh motivated by the trauma from the the evil of piggish men and just kind of shows them to be who they are. And um so it it kind of fundamentally shifts from like this powerful being to this victimized being who is acting in self-defense rather than a powerful being who's just kind of acting out her power as she can on these people who come, and then she interacts with Odysseus and he you know goes and parties with her. The reason that's that shift is important is because Circe is a direct uh like uh pivot point. That's not the word. She and Calypso have to be compared as indicating two states of Odysseus's moral moral.

SPEAKER_03

It's like a paradigm shift, a one shift to there's two shifts in the story. There's like Odysseus when he's with Circe and Odysseus when he's with Calypso, and the mindset when he's with each of these in the in the poem, at least beautiful women. Uh I think they're both demagods, like I mean, so they're godlike beauties in the in the book, or as you say, super babes. Um, and uh the way he interacts with one is very different than the way he interacts with other, and it shows his growth, maybe.

SPEAKER_01

Right. Yeah, it shows his growth because Cersei, with Cersei, he doesn't want to go home, and with Calypso, he's kept there against his will, and he does want to go home. And they both and he realizes during his stay with Calypso, or he there's some kind of conversion there where he does determine that he wants to go home to his wife, and she offers him, and they remove this from the film, but it's really important. Calypso offers him a mortal life if he chooses to stay with her forever. Immortal, like live forever. Yeah, live forever. And so he rejects this kind of uh endless, dull, sensual, like uh just getting to be with the super babe forever. He rejects that and chooses instead to go die in Holman Hearth with his family to re to accept his natural end as king and father and husband. And that's like them taking away the actual dynamics at play with Calypso pretty pivotally changes what Odysseus's actions mean, how his character can changes, develops for the better, and because really he just kind of in the film what is it? He gets his memory back eventually, Calypso lets him have his memory back, and then he's like, Oh yeah, I have a family, I I should I should go back. And so then she lets him go back some somewhat reluctantly. But it's not like that we don't see the great character development in the film that was supposed to be there and was really important and symbolic in the original.

SPEAKER_03

Which is actually pretty unique for a Greek work in some sense, because often you think of Greek stories as like men striving to become gods, and here's a man that was offered to become a god, basically, or at least a demi-god, and instead or is given our mortality, instead chooses to go back and and live out his mortal life. Right. Um which I guess is is is yeah, is very interesting because in some ways that's more of a a Christian story. Like I think I'm thinking of Tolkien, right? And like the elves and and Aragorn and and uh who's Aragorn's the el the his elf I'm a man of Eowyn? Eowyn. Yeah. Oh man, the the the trolls are gonna come after me for forgetting people in Lord of the Rings. Um but that she she gives up her immortal life to be with him, right? Like her Elrond, her father, right, is is affronted that she would do that. But um uh it's the opposite here, but then I'm thinking like that is but you still have the problem of the of the mordinity of of the story, right? And like what you think he's trying to tell us. So he's trying to so what is how does that relate? So I I hear the point you're making, but how does that relate to your earlier point of he's a narcissist and a modernist? Nihilist. Nihilist, sorry. Not a narcissist. No, he's not a narcissist. He's a very nice man. He's a nihilist, he just thinks everything is is is pointless.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh well, I think that's yeah, the end outgrowth of kind of this modernist worldview where um and it's I see it's the outgrowth of the modernist worldview that's shown insofar as they've changed all of Odysseus's motivations and the the character arc that they want for him. Uh they've changed it from being driven by honor and and glory and b by the the goods of honor and glory, and being driven also by his failings of pride and deceit, cunningness, um, to now in the film he is driven primarily by trauma because of bad actions and Troy, which is totally uh which is I think very overtly a modern lens on top of the interpretation of of the Odyssey because originally, yeah, the men were driven by honor and glory. And when he sacked Troy, he was proud of his action, and that's that's part of why he would brag to uh whatever the uh Cyclops' name was. Uh like he's he's driven by his pride because of how great he did at Troy and how great he is as a king. He's not driven by trauma because he feels bad because they actually defeated Troy.

SPEAKER_03

Well, and now that you say that, that is interesting because as I think of all the other characters in the movie, too, they're all driven by trauma, right? Either like the PTSD of the soldiers, or of them seeing their friends die, or of Circe and her trauma, implied trauma, or Helen and her trauma, and or her sister and her trauma. Like, I mean, that it's all about it is all about like the trauma. Penelope and Telemachus, too. Like they're the trauma of being besieged by the suitors. It isn't, it is interesting. It's a very, in a way, relativist, personalist view of the world. Is that it's not that there's this abstract virtue and vice that you should either follow or or stay away from, but that you're actually it's your internal mental health and trauma that is what allows you to, I guess, become a better person. Like getting over which we I I guess we have some of that, like getting over wounds, like you know, internal wounds. I get that. I'm not saying that trauma doesn't exist, but to make all of morality about overcoming trauma and and and all of motivation about overcoming trauma is an interesting choice.

SPEAKER_01

Right. Yeah. Instead of combating your primary faults, I think like we see Odysseus combat his primary faults and be confronted with his failings at the island of Calypso and then make subconscious decisions to go do what he's supposed to do. Instead of that, he's more trying to, you know, react to his trauma or handle it, and then eventually his conversion is kind of kind of a therapeutic Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

I mean, so uh calypso basically I mean that whole thing plays out as if she's his psychologist, right? She's like, It's like, well, you have a lot of trauma, and here take some lo take just a little bit of lotus, a little bit of medication. Here's your here's your happy pill for a little bit. Yeah. And then but it's like you just weren't ready yet to remember your family. You weren't ready yet to go back. But now you've healed and you are ready.

SPEAKER_01

Right. Which is yeah, a big whitewashing of her as well, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

She uh it's not that she was just trying to help him out, she was just wanted him there, her little Well, and I think that goes to maybe another of the modernist themes of like I think you and I were talking about this. I was trying to think of a woman in the movie that was actually like not just somebody that did something bad because they were traumatized, but actually like somebody that was bad, like that did something wrong, like or evil. Right. Because I think you could make the argument, at least for the men, that there are evil people. Maybe not. I'm trying to think like, well, who's the main suitor? And Tinelus and Antonet. And Antonious something. Yeah, the main suitor. Edward that's it. The main the main bad guy. I think he's portrayed as pretty bad. I mean, maybe not evil though, maybe just again like a victim of circumstance.

SPEAKER_01

Uh yeah. I mean, I think, yeah, he was probably a pretty clearly bad. I mean, that they're not they don't feel that reluctant to show the failings of the men.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, I guess that's what I'm getting at. Is like the men are they're very clear with their feelings, but the only feelings of the women usually have to do with trauma or deceit on the part of men.

SPEAKER_01

Right. Yeah. Yeah, which is unfortunate because they could have shown pretty powerful women.

SPEAKER_03

Uh because I let's talk about Penelope. Like we we talked about this before, like talking

Graphic Scenes And Family Viewing

SPEAKER_03

about powerful women. I mean, well, so I really can't remember how long the Odyssey was originally around 3,000 or 4,000 years ago, somewhere in there. And um Penelope. So like at that time when they say, like, oh, the ancients, they had no respect for women. Those ancient cultures had no respect for women. I mean, the main heroes of the of the story are Athena and Penelope in a lot of ways, right? They're two of the main, the main heroes of the Odyssey.

SPEAKER_01

Um Athena serves to be maybe a figment of Odysseus's imagination.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, I wondered about that too.

SPEAKER_01

They kind of just access his conscience.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. Yeah, it was an interesting choice. Like clearly they live in a world where magic exists. Although at the beginning they had some some like little uh subtitle that said something about a time when magic may have existed. I mean, it was kind of like a little ambiguous about that. But yeah, you're they're not ever clear that the gods exist. Right. And even at Athena, in some ways, I think is it's implied that she might be just a figment of his imagination for of a woman he saw murdered in Troy. Right. Right. At the end, they show a young girl that looks like who Zendiah, who played Athena the whole time, being her head chopped off at the same time the the statue of Athena's head is chopped off.

SPEAKER_01

I think she's supposed to be a priestess of Athena.

SPEAKER_03

A priestess of Athena being beheaded at the same time that that is. And I think you could I think he left it ambiguous enough. You could take it that she actually exists and and has the form of a priestess or was just a figment of his imagination.

SPEAKER_01

Right. I do think that's uh him stripping away the the gods and leaving it ambiguous is pretty thematically important and a bad choice.

SPEAKER_03

So I I I think that's another example of the modernism uh serving as the the foundational worldview, is that we there's no interaction with like transcendent reality, there's no interaction with transcendent goods, there's no like outside forces that can positively or negatively impact your but how do you jive that with the fact that there are Cyclops and who is supposedly the son of Poseidon and uh Circe who clearly has magic to transform people. Right. How do you jive that with what you're saying?

SPEAKER_01

They allow in magic in those in the form of those two characters and they subtly imply it at other points, but they don't but they do away with the gods in general. Other than Athena, who may be a figment of his imagination. Right. And she doesn't really provide the positive guiding hand that Athena original originally did. She primarily serves just to frown at him.

SPEAKER_03

Well, that brings us back to the was the point I was trying to make earlier is that actually in the Odyssey, Penelope and Athena are two of the strongest characters, right? And I think Athena chides Odysseus regularly, and the other people too, right? Right. Athena is not one to to stand down to anybody. Um and and then Penelope, talk a little about like what what is so great about Penelope in the original Odyssey?

SPEAKER_01

Well, in the original, she is circumspect and and wise, and uh most importantly to the story. Well, maybe not most importantly, but she's circumspect, she's wise, she and she's faithful. She is like continually uh faithful to you know, the idea of her husband returning home. Hopefully, too, like hopeful and faithful to him, and and she is she demonstrates a little bit of uh that cunningness, or maybe it's just like the prudence with the way that she tries to interact with the suitors and keeps them happy and unraveling the the thing with J.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, in the in the Odyssey is very clear, like she was in a very bad spot and yet she somehow kept him going for ten years um with her cunning, right? I mean, she's the hero in some ways the hero of she saved Ithaca. Which how does that contrast with how she's portrayed in the film?

Trauma Lens And Nihilism Critique

SPEAKER_01

Uh in the film she's beleaguered and anxious, and she has, you know, she has her little outburst about sitting on the throne for 20 years but not being allowed to stay there because she doesn't have stubble on her chin.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, which also took me out of the out of the out of the story. I thought that I think they were trying to portray that as like righteous indignation from Penelope, but it honestly just came off as like out of place and angry. Uh it was weird. It was weird to have like that that kind of rant at the point where it was, right? To her own to her own son, right?

SPEAKER_01

Oh yeah, yeah. And yeah, she was just very rude or like uh snippy and uh shrill with her son, which seemed angry, pretty, pretty bad. Like they they turned her from this kind of awesome, graceful, wise woman to this weird, feminist, beleaguered girl boss who's mean. And that I thought that was a great shame.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, I'll I'll admit I did not really like the portrayal of Penelope. I thought that was definitely something that I was disappointed in. Because I did think in the Odyssey she's she's just she is in many ways the heroine of the book, right? I mean, like one of the one of the heroes along with Odysseus. Yeah. Um and in fact, actually, I don't know, I may have just gone too far. I don't know even in the Odyssey that Odysseus is portrayed as a hero. One of the things I was glad to see in Christopher Nolan is when I remember reading the Odyssey, I was struck by the fact that Odysseus was not really trying to get home. Right. Like it's it's sort of, you know, he makes pays lip service to going home, but he basically does everything along the way that would that would take him in another direction. And and a lot of it's his hubris and his pride, and you see, but you did see that in the movie, like when Odysseus shoots the Psycops with an arrow at the end, and when he's not gonna take the normal trade routes and things like this, there is that hubris and pride, and it was there in the original. So I appreciated them having that. And I will say, like, it was way more faithful, I thought, to the overall story than I expected to be. I mean, I thought it actually followed the story really closely. Um But then I I had a completely different thing. So you took the modernist nihilist approach to it, and I actually I mean, this is maybe this is like maybe you're the maybe you're the pessimist and I'm not. Maybe you're the nihilist. Yeah. Maybe, maybe the nihilist should, maybe the the pot should not call the kettle black until you've looked in the in the own mirror. But I I I was thinking, I mean, but then I think a lot of my friends like Father Josh uh always tell me that like you try to make everything a movie about Catholicism and family. So then I was like, well, you know, it's not my fault. Fast and the Furious is a movie about Catholicism and the family. It's all about the family. But I do think in this one, like I was really struck by some of the Christian themes of Christopher Nolan. Um, and so I'd I'd be interested to hear what your take on what you think of my my view. So I enjoyed the movie. I was along with them. I enjoyed the spectacle. There were things that took me out of it, like the language, um also the um uh casting of Ellen Page, I thought it was just it was just sort of uh it just was it just she was supposed to portray like a soldier, a male, a male soldier, and it just didn't didn't work. And so like there are things like that that I I was trying to be I was trying to be charitable and optimistic about it, but I just felt like it took me out of the story. Um then also but you know, honestly, like the Helen of Troy casting, I didn't really I didn't really mind that much. And I found out recently, do you know that Orson Wells, when he did his version of the Odyssey, also casts a black woman as Helen of Troy? Uh yeah. I don't know he did one. Yeah, I didn't either, but evidently that's the case. So so it's not so that one didn't that didn't bother me as much. Although Helen did bother me the way they portrayed her again as like a victim of this whole thing, right? Whereas I think in the in the book, she's not. I mean, she definitely made some mistakes. She's not like I mean, she was the cause of the war in so many ways in in the poem as well as in the film, but or more so in the poem than in the film. But overall, my take on Christopher Nolan was here's a man that is actually trying to do good in his own way. He was raised in a Christian society. Um whether or not he's Christian, I actually don't know any of I don't know what Christopher Nolan is, if he's practicing any faith at all. But whether or not he is, he's raised in Western Christian Christendom, right? He's raised in a Christian society. The Judeo-Christian tradition of the West, and especially in the United States, is very strong. And you can't really get away from its influence on you if you're raised in that society, right? I think uh I think you've seen it with like Bill Maher sometimes, like he'll say things and he's even called, I think, I can't remember who it was. Somebody called him out for it. It's like the only reason you're saying that is because you were raised in a Christian society. Like you let's and and the central theme of this movie is what they call Zeus's law, right? Which is basically the the golden rule of Christianity, which is sort of do unto others as you would have them do unto you, right? Now they put it in such a way of hospitality, like, oh, you never know if a beggar is a god in disguise or or whatever it might be, which I could see you getting from the ancient Greek stories of gods going around in disguise. But the reality is like if you look at how the ancients treated the poor and the beggars, even how the ancients of the time of Christ treated the poor and the sick and the destitute, they were like oftentimes cast out, if not in the streets, outside the city or put in their own camps, right? I mean, they're the and Jesus really was the one that changed that. He's the one that brought about the golden rule in so many ways. And he actually took it even further than do unto others, you'd have them do unto you. He he say, um, do unto others even if they persecute you, right? Do and do unto others the good even if they harm you, like turn the other cheek. All you know, he's he takes that basic, I think, philosophical moral rule and just takes it to the next level by basically saying, No, not only must you love your neighbor, how easy is it to love your neighbor? You must love your enemy that persecutes you and kills you. And he shows he shows that because when he dies on the cross, he is doing it for all men, including the men that literally put him on the cross. In fact, we all of us did put him on the cross, right? And that gets back to the Odyssey, which is I don't think Christopher Nolan can escape that idea. He's stuck with it. He is in Christian society, and as such, and maybe just being a human being, maybe we don't even have to be in Christian society. Like, if you are trying to be honest with yourself, humanity is fallen, right? You can recognize the fallen human nature of man, right? And which I think he does. I think he actually does recognize that. And to be fair, the Greeks did too, right? That's where you get uh uh Socrates and Plato saying like the flesh is bad, right? And it was really Aristotle that was like, no, the flesh is not inherently bad. You know, they had they had their the Platonic ideal was that the forms of things were the ideal and the flesh kind of held them back. And you see that heresy rise up through the ages, including, I think, in modernism today, again, like in some ways, like of uh a lot of those ancient heresies have come back. But I think this is your nihilist point. So I think I agree with you that Christopher Nolan's a nihilist. He sees how hopeless everything is, how fallen everything is, right? He gives so many speeches in there. Now, I think he definitely goes too far, and he says when he says man, I was thinking mankind, I think sometimes he just means the male. Um, but that aside, like if you take The greater point of like, no, like who are the who are the people selling the sea people that are coming back and destroying Greek society? It's the soldiers, it's them themselves destroying their own societies, right? And we see that in Rome, and you see that in today, right? I mean, so oftentimes it's our own sins that destroy society. And I found it very interesting that the gospel reading for opening weekend of the Odyssey happened to be this year the man who goes out to sow, and then an evil one comes and plants weeds that grow

Missing Gods And A Changed Penelope

SPEAKER_03

up, and the and the vineyard owner says, Let them grow up together so that we so that we can just let them grow together and not just pull them out because you may pull out the good with the bad, right? And so many of the homilies, I heard about that this weekend, were um in so many ways we are all the weeds, right? But God is giving us a chance to grow and and and hopefully he will harvest us um and hopefully we'll be we'll be harvested. But he wants he gives us all that chance to grow, right? It's not like like, oh, you have evil in you, I pull you out from the beginning. Like you're actually given a chance to grow into into wheat before he harvests. Um that that was like big, and but also that you know your your fruits or your sins are in some ways not your own, right? Not your choice, right? That actually this is I think I can't, I could not think of a time that Christ was more explicit on the devil. Because so after he tells the parable, his apostles say, explain it to us. And he's like, well, you know, these are the good people, these are the bad people, and the evil, and the one that sows the weeds is the devil. And he just calls out straight out, says, like, the devil. And I think it's important to remember that like that is how you grow into wheat or a weed is through humility and faith, and saying that it is not uh that you know, being in God's vineyard and growing in God's vineyard according to the plan of the master versus the plan of the evil one, who does exist, right? The devil does exist, and we don't like to hear that a lot, but the devil does exist. And so what I what struck me about that is I think Nolan gets the point of fallen nature and evil and and their thus his nihilism. And I would normally say, like, what he doesn't go all the way, and he doesn't go all the way, but I also think he got the idea of faith and something of beyond yourself, because at the end of the movie, after Odysseus is with Calypso, um, Athena, the god, the goddess, the only goddess we see, right? Now, whether she's a figment of his imagination or not, she's definitely there with him through much of the movie. And she says, Um, she tells him she's like, You've always relied on yourself, your own cleverness. You're you're such a capable person, right? You've never had to have faith in anything. And you see that through the entire movie. And early on, like he finds food, and they're like, Oh, you always find food. You're so clever. Oh, he does this, oh, you're so clever, right? Like you see his cleverness all the way along the way. And it's always himself. And in fact, maybe that's the change of keeping the gods out of it to really show, like, no, it wasn't the gods that saved Odysseus from Circe. It was Odysseus who saved him and his men from Circe, right? Like the clever, it was all about the man himself. But in the end, um, most of his time that he was lost, seven years of the ten, he was not, he was just on this island by himself. And it was not until he showed, had a movement of faith, uh, both in the gods, Athena, um, but in trust in something higher than himself, that he ultimately got home. So at the end, he has, you know, he's he's every step of the way creating clever things to go, to go one place together, making clever decisions. But in the end, he throws himself on a raft, barely held together by anything, into the ocean, or I guess in the sea in this case, and uh is is cast off the raft, submerged in water, which to me was very baptismal, basically the baptism of Odysseus, and then he washes up on the shrine. So that was kind of my like Christianized take. But maybe I'm like trying to baptize Christopher, Christopher Nolan?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, no, I I that's uh I think that's it's plausible. Obviously, the uh there are artistic merits that come from a tale that are not intended by the author. So that I think you can you can put that in whether or not Christopher intended for it to be you can Can we just call him Christopher? Christopher. Yeah, I don't know. I mean we'll we'll see. We'll see. We'll see how we feel at the end. Yeah. Um No, I yeah, I think that that is pretty compelling. Definitely she d calls upon him to act with faith and he does. Yeah. And the symbolism there is pretty or yeah, it's pretty overt. Which is interesting. That seems like pretty much the only aspect of the tale. It is a pivot pivotal aspect of the movie, but it is the only one where they kind of take that approach to his need to um get himself out of the way. Yeah. But that yeah, I guess they do reference pretty often throughout it that he has some kind of cynicism towards the gods.

SPEAKER_03

Um I mean the whole subtitle of the movie is Defy the Gods. Oh, is it? Yeah. So it's like when on all the posters and Trans itself it says the Odyssey, defy the gods.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. Which in the end he couldn't defy the gods. In the end, it was only giving himself up to the gods that got him home.

SPEAKER_01

Right. Yeah. Well, I think I think that definitely has pretty strong Christian the way you just described has pretty strong Christian motifs. I don't think I could carry that through the rest of the film very handily because most of the moral messages that it provides are not necessarily Christian ones. For instance, uh the the golden rule, the Zeus's Law, that is that one's interesting because it has what some have pointed out, uh somewhat modern implications. And it might be a modern put reference to you know the politics around immigration.

Zeus’s Law, Faith, And Final Verdict

SPEAKER_01

Like who are you to cast out these people who need hospitality? Um, but it's also that is a hearkening to Christian moral teaching with regard to charity and to welcoming. But it's it's used with possibly that kind of sub-context background motivation, and also it's used poorly throughout the film because it's it's supposed to be that he broke Zeus's law by tricking the people into accepting the gift from uh giving them the Trojan horse, and then he feels bad about that, and so they just keep breaking Zeus's law. Yeah, but uh it's it was very inconsistent. Yeah, and that that introduces logical failings within the film because we forget that Paris broke Zeus's law starting all of this by stealing Menelaus's wife and then taking her back to his kingdom. So if we're gonna carry that through, then really he just got even.

SPEAKER_03

Odysseus just got even by sex, which I guess could go again to curr- I mean, I think this is where I would end up. So I think we could I I I I th maybe end it here, which is I think that Christopher Nolan is at least sincere. Now, not he's wrong on a lot of things, right? But he's at least, I think, trying to be sincere. As pretty much most human beings are trying to be sincere with their actions or their beliefs. Again, I'm the optimist here. Yeah but I think that because he la and he grew up in a society that has so many good things around you, you can't help but bring some of those good things into yourself and your sincerity. But I also think he's wrong, right? He doesn't have this fullness of truth, he doesn't understand even the golden rule, like you said, like he doesn't even understand this basics of of Christian morality, um, and definitely doesn't get the next level of it, which is not only like welcome in beggars, but give them all give them your entire house, right? Like I guess if they were really gonna take it to the Christian extreme, like Penelope should have just given them everything. It's like you're all the kings now. Like, right, you know, I mean there's there's a lot of stuff they don't get, but I think there were some truths that he that he portrayed in there, which um and I think that in some ways he made an epically beautiful movie in different places. Some things, not the best thing I've ever seen from Christianoland, not the worst. I enjoyed it. I I think you're probably right that his modernism and his nihilism and uh sometimes like shines through so much that it's like, come on, man, why'd you have to put that in? This would have been a lot better if I didn't have to get preached to um on that. But overall, I still enjoyed it. And I think that there are some good messagings to take away from it. Um that'd be my final tech. So if this was Siskel and Iber, I'd give it a thumbs up. Wow. What do you do? Thumbs up or thumbs down?

SPEAKER_01

Strong. No, uh I'd I'd I'd probably like a midling. Middling or it's yeah, it's better than tenant, obviously.

SPEAKER_03

But uh, this isn't a tenant movie review. I didn't even know we I mean that one was very confusing, yeah. Dark Knight? Not better than Dark Knight.

SPEAKER_01

Interstellar. No, no, I don't think it's better than Interstellar.

SPEAKER_03

Which is another one. Ooh, Inception. Inception.

SPEAKER_01

Inception.

SPEAKER_03

So Dark Knight, Inception, Interstellar, all better than this. Um but this one's better than Tenant.

SPEAKER_01

Maybe not Inception. I don't know. Yeah, uh yeah, it's definitely better than Tenet.

SPEAKER_03

So yeah. So Brian's Brian's review, it's better than Tenet. Yeah, yep. Well, thank you. Thank you for being with us, Brian, and expressing your opinions. Um, and thank you, everybody, for watching or listening, as it were. And please like and subscribe and share this around. Have a good day. Amen. Amen.

SPEAKER_00

Thank you for watching this episode of Christerocast. For more information on the Christeros or to join the movement, check out our website at theChristeros.org. That's theChristeros with an S.org. There you could find our daily reflection series as well as many of our publications and articles. Thank you for watching and viva Christore.