Trailer The Odyssey full trailer

[Pale Violet Light]

Poor Aaron Eckhart.

He’s fine. Bale’s Batman’s the real problem - whenever he uses the Batman voice I can only think of Pete Holmes.

People rewatch Terminator 2 for the scenes with the T1000, Robin Hood Prince of Thieves and arguably most of Die Hard for Alan Rickman (including the German brothers for the latter) etc etc

T2 holds up much better; the slow parts are interesting and allow you to recover before the next big setpiece. Also, Rickman is clearly the best part of Prince of Thieves!

First time I've heard someone call parts of TDK boring.

I loved it on my first watch; it’s only on a rewatch I found it lacking.

 

[Clint_L]

Let’s say a middle eastern person/asian/ African legends and cast a anything but those

I saw the outrage in china and how Hollywood had to diminish the size of a certain x stormtrooper on posters etc in the new Star Wars movies or

What if they recast some f the people on Wakanda with people from say India

There would be outrage and the director would be immediately fired

Your argument is what difference does it make is 109% one sided

Oh. I think I understand you better now. I'm going to disengage.

 

[gban007]

Yes, some of the dialogue and tone suffered. Gimli, for example, made into comic relief worked for entertainment but distorts the character. Similarly, the addition of self-doubts to Aragorn and an impulse to resist his destiny, the manufactured melodrama of Elrond not supporting Aragorn's relationship with Arwen, and of Arwen and Aragorn giving up on each other, distorted those characters. Similar distortions were made to Sam and Frodo.

It's hard to say whether a more faithful version will ever be made. Obviously making films this big is a huge logistical challenge.

I can speak well of some changes, OTOH. The screenplay makes some excellent, tasteful edits to employ Tolkien's words in different places than they fell in the original, to good effect. For example, Gandalf's famous comforting words to Pippin in the face of Gondor's doom, about what lies after death. "A far green country, under a swift sunrise". Gorgeously poetic, and apropos for the moment and mood, but stolen from a prose description of a dream Frodo had while sleeping in the house of Tom Bombadil. In this case the writers did crib from a part which was edited out primarily for run time and pacing (Tom Bombadil and the Old Forest), and did so excellently, in a way which was consistent with Tolkien's tone and characters.

One of the areas I struggle with most in the films is the transfer of agency. I even think it is probably the right move for shifting from book to screen and anchoring a bit more on the fellowship characters, but it still gets to me at times.
Biggest examples for me are:
Faramir starting to take Frodo and Sam back to Gondor before events, Sam and Frodo convince him otherwise in contrast to book where he determines on his own that best bet is to allow them on their way.
Theoden appearing to be wary / afraid , needing to be pushed into action/ to support Gondor, and decision to go to Helms Deep coming across as almost cowardly decision, as opposed to in book marching out to meet Saruman until convinced by Gandalf to go to Helms Deep.
The elves / Elrond shown as stand offish/ remote until Galadriel pushes for Elves to be at Helms Deep, compared to books where all quite active and facing own big battles.
Pippin starting the beacon fires, whereas in the book Denethor had already had them started before Gandalf and Pippin reach Minas Tirith.
All round, understandable changes, but make some of the characters lesser than their book counterparts to me.
On flipside, I think I prefer the movie version of Boromir.

 

[Older Beholder]

I'm interested in this as a Nolan film, less worried about how faithful it is to the original text. Nolan blends mainstream and arthouse sensibilities an a way that makes his work always worth seeing on a big screen for me.

 

[Gradine]

 

[jian]

There’s now an excellent article by Bret Devereaux (professor of military history, ACOUP etc) about idiots on X who don’t know a damn thing about the classics:

Why Stone-Faced Fascists Keep Getting Antiquity Wrong

Online bigotry masquerading as a love of history in the fever swamps of Elon Musk’s X.

www.thebulwark.com

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

There’s now an excellent article by Bret Devereaux (professor of military history, ACOUP etc) about idiots on X who don’t know a damn thing about the classics:

Why Stone-Faced Fascists Keep Getting Antiquity Wrong

Online bigotry masquerading as a love of history in the fever swamps of Elon Musk’s X.

www.thebulwark.com

I'm going to disagree with this point:

This community of self-appointed defenders of Western civilization emerged only relatively recently.

As I said upthread -- or maybe elsewhere on ENWorld -- I had a teacher when I was in middle school (maybe early high school) who claimed the actual ancient Greeks were blond-haired and blue-eyed and were replaced by "invaders" who were the ancestors of modern Greeks, and that everything that "western civilization" is based on is the product of -- checks notes -- the Nazi ideal of racial superiority.

Also, this makes me want to buy Emily Wilson's Odyssey.

 

[jian]

I'm going to disagree with this point:

As I said upthread -- or maybe elsewhere on ENWorld -- I had a teacher when I was in middle school (maybe early high school) who claimed the actual ancient Greeks were blond-haired and blue-eyed and were replaced by "invaders" who were the ancestors of modern Greeks, and that everything that "western civilization" is based on is the product of -- checks notes -- the Nazi ideal of racial superiority.

Also, this makes me want to buy Emily Wilson's Odyssey.

Yes, and I presume various European nationalists through the ages from Victorian Britons to German Nazis assumed or declared that Achilles and Odysseus were as Aryan as Jesus or Caesar, who in turn were of course whiter than Conan O’Brien.

In fact, Devereaux refers to the fascist tradition of appropriating Homer and the classics in his last paragraph.

 

[myrkulyte]

I'm going to disagree with this point:

As I said upthread -- or maybe elsewhere on ENWorld -- I had a teacher when I was in middle school (maybe early high school) who claimed the actual ancient Greeks were blond-haired and blue-eyed and were replaced by "invaders" who were the ancestors of modern Greeks, and that everything that "western civilization" is based on is the product of -- checks notes -- the Nazi ideal of racial superiority.

Also, this makes me want to buy Emily Wilson's Odyssey.

Agreed. Fascist preoccupation with Classicism isn't new, its a continuation of the supremacist ideology that was visibly present in anthropological fields in the 20th century.


Love that "thumbless grip" line from the article, I will be using that from now on.

 

[AnotherGuy]

Also, this makes me want to buy Emily Wilson's Odyssey.

Sure, if one is running of out of charcoal.