God that movie was boring, and no not because it had black people.
It felt like they wanted to tell a primarily ‘drama’ type movie; I would say I don’t like that there was so much focus on Telemachus and the suitors, but they cast famous actors, no way were they going to just have them appear in short segments; also Odysseus’ segments wasn’t as fantastical as I would’ve liked so I didn’t feel like I was being kept away from anything interesting. And again, it felt like they wanted to tell a primarily drama type movie; Odysseus felt like a broken man most of the time, and yes, by the end of the movie they reveal why he was so broken the whole time but it doesn’t make having to watch him be like this the entire run a fun journey. Was Christopher Nolan depressed or something and wanted to make a movie to reflect that mood?
Was there ANY good parts to the movie? Few and far between, but my favorite scene was Circe practicing her magic on Odysseus’ men, absolutely fantastic job on the practical effects (cause that’s the other thing; apparently Nolan had a strict ‘no CGI’ rule on effects like this); the Cyclops, while his segment was unimpressive, had a scream that was genuinely monstrous. The acting was amazing but of course it was; they cast accomplished actors who knew how to act.
Ironically though I think casting such famous actors was a mistake; basically you’re looking at this movie and thinking ‘Hey, spider-man! Hey, Edward! Hey, Punisher! Hey, familiar guy who acts in lots of side roles (the blind farmer)!’
Also the locations were dreadfully dull to look at; most of the lands they go to are just forest sections, beaches or deserts. Places were always important to me a in a movie (also games), and I need good, fun environments to really make a movie memorable and exciting, and to make it stand out.
I will say though that perhaps the movie just wasn’t for me, as tons of people enjoyed it and even by the end of the movie people were literally clapping; when Odysseus strings his bow and shoots his arrow, the guy next to me even instinctively just began clapping in excitement. I’m a horror movie fan who also likes heavy fantasy; I’m fine with sword and sandal fantasy, but where the fantasy is more pronounced, like in the older Odyssey movie. This movie just really wasn’t for me, but clearly everyone else in the cinema had a blast.
I feel like bad Hollywood shit has had a tendency for 10 years now to have a lot of right wing outrage over race and diversity shit and all discussion of that sucks up all the air and then when the thing comes out and it turns out it’s just bad for a lot of reasons any criticism of it is initially perceived as coming from the racists. I.e. the star wars sequels and all the right wing outrage because they had black people and women in it but actually they were just badly written dogshit full of plot holes and bad directing and half straight up stealing plot beats from the originals
Thinking of that because you had to open up with “it sucks, but not because of black people”
Yeah honestly they’ve really poisoned the well on this, but my concern was also that I don’t want people to ever think the racists were right; this movie sucks but not because of all the stuff they’ve been crying about. Any complaint about ‘woke’ movies and they’ll immediately make it seem like it’s because the movie was ‘woke’, not because of actual weaknesses in the movie.
Yeah no exactly, that’s what I mean, it primes people to assume future criticism is coming along the same lines, and then actual criticism has to waste time being like “it sucks but not because of what the racists/misogynists/etc said”
Idk if it’s an intentional ploy by Hollywood, i.e. if they stoke bigoted sentiments to spur and intensify those “discussions” or if they’re entirely organic, but i definitely think it’s something they consciously take advantage of at this point to avoid having to deal with real criticism