Maybe the most damming thing about Nolans odyssey is i haven’t seen a single gifset from it
the odyssey of recollection
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My scorching hot take on Christopher Nolan Presents Homer's The Odyssey is Tom Holland having his mind blown while filming this, then going back to Marvel to and being all "Why did no one tell me that you can, like, have a finished script before you start filming and a cinematographer who has all the shots planned before filming instead of figuring it out in post, has anyone else heard about this?" is pretty funny
Visionary Director Christopher Nolan's controversial directing style of "telling actors what's happening in a scene when they're filming"
odysseus absolutely does present a threat to penelope if he perceives her as at all unfaithful, and i feel the unfairness of this, and i think people tend to undersell how much tension at least potentially exists between odysseus and penelope. but i'm also like. his reaction, all speculation aside, his actual reaction in the odyssey to her flirting with the suitors is delight, because he immediately ascertains that she is running a con. sorry that they're so in-sync in spite of the forces that try to drive a wedge between them, including their own misgiving hearts. sorry that they invented homophrosyne ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
oh, you meant they literally did, ok
would i, tumblr user thee odysseyofhomer, lie to you?
this is the only funny addition to this post
Animal Farm, a book criticising totalitarian governments, is getting a visual adaptation where there are silly animals selling their crops to those they're supposed to hate.
The Picture of Dorian Gray, a book written by an author who got imprisoned for sodomy, is getting a visual adaptation where the two characters with clear homoromantic undertones are turned into brothers.
Dracula, a book about a group of friends that explore the themes of antagonism and Victorian anxieties, is getting a visual adaptation where the count falls in love with one of his rape victims.
Wuthering Heights, a book that beats the reader over the head with a bat about how the POC protagonist wants to be privileged and white, is getting a visual adaptation with a white person as the protagonist and a POC as the one he envies.
The Odyssey, a book about a man from Ancient Greece trying to get home from war, is getting a visual adaptation coated in a "Hollywood" aesthetic that rejects accurate armour and casting.
2026 is not a good year for classic literature fans all around.
When [Penelope] awakens after the slaughter and hears the news that Eurycleia brings her, she cannot at first believe that it is truly Odysseus who accomplished it (her skepticism mirrors the earlier suspiciousness of her husband; both Odysseus and Penelope need to learn that there is a time for trust and acceptance to supersede disbelief). Instead, Penelope supposes it must be a god who has come down from Olympus to punish the suitors for their villainy.
The scene which follows shows Penelope, in the midst of her confusion and doubt, formulating a plan to test the identity of the stranger. Once before, in Book 19, she had attempted to do so ('Now, stranger, I have it in my mind to test you'), but there Odysseus had sidestepped. Now we see the tables turned, the biter bit, in the famous counter-test of the bed. Here Odysseus' celebrated caution and control vanish, and he bursts with indignation. This scene not only trumps Odysseus' previous testing and Penelope's own failure in book 19; Penelope here also goes on better than Athene in Book 13, for even Athene, though she deceived Odysseus and he failed to recognize her, could not make him give himself away: Impasse. Penelope is the only person who could outwit Odysseus in such a test, and this shows, like many other details and parallelisms between them, how well matched husband and wife truly are.
Further, it is not just the test itself, Odysseus knowledge of their secret, which makes Penelope believe in him, but his moment of angry passion, of uncontrolled emotion. As commentators have pointed out, a god would have known the truth [...] The automatic, unthinking surge of anger at the thought of his bed, his wonderful creation, being violated is wholly human.
—Richard B. Rutherford, 'The Philosophy of the Odyssey'
penelope didn't have to turn the tree bed into a riddle. she could have asked odysseus to prove his identity, to tell her something only he would know — which she actually did a few books earlier, when she asked the beggar to describe odysseus, and odysseus told her about a purple cloak with a particular golden brooch that she fastened herself twenty years ago. when penelope tells telemachus they have signs by which they'll know each other, you sort of expect more of the same. and instead, she decides to trap him. like a bug in a cup.
and it's delightful to me, idk, how odysseus has been trapped and cornered in various way throughout the odyssey, but arguably never so that he has to tell the truth to get out. (with the phaeacians, maybe? the omniscient narrator corroborates some of what he tells them, but do we really know everything?) and in fact he is not trying to get free of penelope. he wants something from her, wants to convince her, wants to be welcomed home, but until this point he's lied to her, revealed himself to other people before her, and been distant with her (though also patient! he doesn't try to strongarm or rush her into accepting him; it's his idea to sleep elsewhere).
except penelope isn't looking for him to be distant and patient. penelope lies in a way that requires odysseus to stop playing along — not only to prove that he knows what odysseus knows, but that he's willing to tell the truth about himself.
(tags from @finelythreadedsky )
#and the thing is he has a scar. a physical identifier. but that one he only shows servants to prove his identity#repeatedly flashing a scar on his thigh is MORE impersonal and less revealing. to him#he must do something far more exposing and vulnerable and revealing with penelope. he must drop the act via @ilions-end
The Odyssey but retold as a low-stakes modern adventure of one guy out with his girlfriend leaving the bar with his buddies to do just one (1) simple thing real quick, it'll take like 15 minutes tops, he'll be right back, but then some bullshit happens and the trip keeps getting more complicated as more bullshit keeps happening while he just tries to get back to the bar because he promised his girlfriend that he'd get back and he knows that she's still there because she told him she'd wait there.
And by the time he finally gets back it's almost 3 am and the bar is about to close while she's sitting there stone cold sober, surrounded by 5 drunk guys unsuccessfully trying to convince her to give up on waiting for him and go home with one of them instead. And the guy shows up to proceed to beat the shit out of them before explaining himself to her like hey sorry bullshit kept happening, my phone fell into a storm drain and my wallet got stolen when I was trying to find someone who'd borrow me a phone so I could call and
His girlfriend had been fending off the 5 drunk guys for most of the evening by explaining that even if she was going to ditch her boyfriend, she can't possibly leave without finishing her beer, which she is keeping perpetually full via careful sleight of hand where she's just pouring it back and forth into and out of the pitcher.
However the drunk guys are also drinking, and eventually she can't afford to buy another pitcher for the table so she can't keep up the ever-full beer glass trick. At this point she has to resort to setting up the pool trick shot that she's never seen anyone but her boyfriend pull off, and says she'll leave with whoever manages the shot first.
That buys her another hour or so and then, finally, her boyfriend makes it back. He looks like shit, hair down and just a mess, he's wearing an entirely different jacket that he got from an alley, and barely recognizable—especially to 5 guys who've been drunk for hours now. He lurks for a minute, finds out what's going on, and proceeds to pull off the trick shot first try. Throws the jacket off, fixes his hair with a hair tie his girlfriend lends him, finally looks like himself again, and THEN beats the shit out of them with the pool cue.
yuh i was there, that's how it happened
