We discuss a recent film adaptation of the Odyssey and spend most of the episode comparing it with the original myth. We summarize the story of Odysseus trying to return home to Ithaca after the Trojan War, while Penelope fends off suitors and his son searches for him.
We focus on the parts of the film that felt confusing or inconsistent, including the non-linear structure, the modern dialogue, and the use of contemporary accents. We also question several casting and costume choices, along with the film’s dark visual style and what we describe as a lack of clear sense of place and time.
We go through several major sequences, especially the Lotus Eaters, Calypso, the Cyclops, and the Lestrigonians. We point out what we see as logical problems in the action, including how the monsters behave, how the men escape, and how the film handles Odysseus’s motivations and suffering.
We also discuss the film’s treatment of guilt, trauma, and the gods, especially Athena and Poseidon. We contrast this with the themes we see in the original epic and in the Iliad, including the costs of war, honor, and homecoming.
We end by saying we would not recommend the film. We briefly note that some performances worked better than others, but we find the film long, dull, and lacking in humanity.
0:00:00 - Opening Impressions
0:05:04 - Myth Collides With Movie
0:13:06 - The Cyclops Problem
0:19:16 - Lost in the Cave
0:27:24 - Armored Giants and Ships
0:37:14 - Homecoming and Recognition
0:39:51 - Athena, Zendaya, and Troy
0:45:51 - Casting Problems Begin
0:48:31 - Tom Holland’s Flat Reaction
0:50:21 - Matt Damon’s Impossible Abs
0:52:14 - Homeric Backstory and Greek Decay
0:54:47 - Laocoön and the Trojan Horse
0:57:44 - Race Swaps and Anachronisms
0:59:28 - Return Home Feels Wrong
1:02:13 - Iliad and the Cost of War
1:05:25 - Heroes, Glory, and Loss
1:07:47 - Priam’s Grief and Hector
1:09:58 - Troy’s Fall and History
1:11:39 - Why the Greeks Fought
1:14:38 - War, Slavery, and Survival
1:16:53 - Greece After the War
1:19:10 - Siege, Speech, and Despair
1:21:35 - Stories Shape Civilizations
1:23:39 - Darker Than Greece Should Be
1:25:30 - No Humor in Hardship
[0:00:00] All right. So, James and I are going to talk about the Odyssey. Hopefully, hopefully, hopefully. Fingers crossed, toes crossed, earlobes crossed. We can make the review shorter than the movie. What do you think?
[0:00:12] You know, I think it's possible.
[0:00:13] 50-50?!
[0:00:15] There's a lot we could talk about. And I'm like wondering, how much do we want to actually talk about how much deviates from the myth? But other people have probably covered that as well. And I mean, I was only using AI to cross-check that. But I think there's plenty to talk about outside of that.
[0:00:30] All right. So, what were your impressions? Oh, spoilers. Yeah, blah, blah, blah. It's going to be spoilers. You know, the epic is thousands of years old. Hopefully we've passed by the general spoiler thing, but there are a couple of spoilers about the movie. But given that we're encouraging people not to go, at least I am, what were your thoughts? You settled in for the long haul, the opening, and what were your thoughts?
[0:00:59] So uh, there were there were things almost right away it took me out of the movie um so like the the the one of the suitors the black guy uh kind of kind of ghetto accent it's like yeah um doesn't really fit for a Greek epic you know just.
[0:01:17] I think it's Homer not homeboy that generally is my homeboy uh that was bizarre to me I mean, there's only one Greek guy in the whole movie and he's being lectured to, by an Indian guy in English that they're Greeks from Ithaca and I'm just like I went with my wife my wife is Greek and her hands closed around my forearm uh like she was trying to scoop out a new penis so yeah it was wild.
[0:01:47] Yeah, so that sort of took me out right away. And overall, I found it was very confusing. There's a lot of jumping back. I got used to the jumping back and forth. And I was looking for things that I recognized from the myth because I don't think I ever read the Odyssey, but I definitely heard over the course of my life various tropes and things from it. And there's a lot in there that's actually culturally impressed upon us. Um you know Helen the face that launched a thousand ships I mean that's just well known yeah yeah yeah um, it's yeah like the casting choice you get it these days okay yeah they're gonna do you know
[0:02:29] They don't have to. You know...
[0:02:31] Yeah I know they don't have to, but...
[0:02:33] So in, in the Hollywood stuff like you have to have a certain amount of diversity and gay characters and so on in order to but there are exceptions for historically accurate blah blah blah so So he absolutely didn't have to take a long, slow, squalid number two dump on Western culture and history. There's absolutely no factual requirement for it. And, of course, I would assume that this stain of desecrating a canon of Western literature falls on everyone involved. The cast, the producers, the funders, like everyone. And, of course, here's the thing. People don't understand economics, right? So they say, hey, man, if you hate the movie so much, why are you giving him, money to go see the movie? And it's like, well, you know that if I can encourage other people to not go see the movie, then it's a net loss for the movie maker. Anyway, so anyway, so so as you went on and it is a real drug trip because I think in general. And he's addicted to these, was it lotus flowers? Is that right? So he's a drug addict. He's an opiate addict or whatever. I assume that they're sort of standards for poppies or something like that. So he's a drug addict and his memory is emerging from this seven-year hallucinatronic deal with the Charlize Theron character.
[0:03:44] And so his memories are kind of emerging. And by the way, what an insane universe that the black woman is the most beautiful woman in the universe and the Charlize Theron character, who's gorgeous, is just some weird isolated washer woman who has to drug an old guy just to keep him around but the black woman, she's a smoke show that never ends it's just bizarre, unbelievable
[0:04:07] yeah yeah
[0:04:08] did you did you start to get like when did you start to I tried to scrub my mind and go in with an open mind like try try to you know I want to be fair you know and I don't want to go in like I'm determined to hate this because you know there are people who are determined to hate what you and I do. And I try to, you know, have them not be that way. So I'm like, I am going in as a blank slate. Was there a particular point where you began to feel uneasy? I mean, you knew probably about the Travis Scott thing at the beginning, but was there a time where you began to feel like you and the movie were parting ways?
[0:04:41] So, um, I don't know if I quite went in with that sort of, uh, I didn't like mentally prepare myself for that, but you know, I want to be fair to the movie as the movie. Um, but they, even the movie itself has just things that don't really work. Um, but I can't help compare it to the myth, right? Cause I know the myth, right?
[0:04:58] Well, it's based on the myth. It's supposed to tell the story of the myth, right?
[0:05:00] It's supposed to, except it's not based on the myth, but we can get to that. I'm sure. Um so uh where I think it actually started pretty early on I I got I got lost with lotus lotus eater Calypso thing because if you look at the myth those are completely different sections of the actual epic um, it was Odysseus is trying to grab his men away from the lotus eaters uh so all his men were still there
[0:05:26] Who were drugging them to keep them around, right?
[0:05:28] Yeah
[0:05:28] Like in this one he's stuffing the drugs in his own mouth it's his men being drugged and he's trying to rescue them so So that seems like they're actually predatory. They rape the men, the women. And at this point, she's like some sort of bizarre trauma therapist with ice blue eyes. It's just this weird thing. Sorry, go on.
[0:05:43] Oh, it's crazier than that. Because she's a trauma therapist and she's drugged him to keep him on the island. So she's the cause of his addiction and also the result, like trying to heal his mind through weed, right? Well, just to say it's weed, right?
[0:06:01] I think it's stronger than weed, but yeah.
[0:06:03] No, you're right about that. Stronger than weed.
[0:06:05] Yeah. So why would you drug someone to keep them around and then try to heal them to send them back? Like, that makes no sense. That's like buying somebody. It's like kidnapping someone and buying them a bus pass at the same time. It just doesn't really follow.
[0:06:16] Yeah. So I would say the thing that, and it took me a bit to figure this out, but the thing it really did lose me is like, what is, what is Odysseus's motivation at all? Like, like why? Like he's taking forever to come home. And the movie's answer to this is that he feels guilt and trauma over the war, essentially.
[0:06:36] Which is not part of the original. I did actually read The Odyssey because I did an English degree. So we had to plow away. So in the original, a brother, he has no problem with raiding Troy. He has no problem with winning. I mean, he literally is supposed to be the smartest. He's not the best warrior, but he's the smartest guy, Odysseus. And so he is, he comes up with the whole Trojan horse thing to, to win the war, like where they, they pretend to leave, but they're actually inside. So he comes up with the whole thing to win the war. And then he's like, ah, but the guilt and the, and it's like, he's a warrior. He's a King. He, anyway, we'll get to that in a sec. So no, you know what? I'm just going to follow my train of thought. So he's a warrior who wishes to slaughter all of the people in Troy, which is in modern day Turkey. And by the by, the Turks and the Romans, sorry, Turks and the Greeks would be going at it for ever and ever. Amen. So he wants to win the war. He wants to get back home to his wife. He has this brilliant stroke of genius about winning the war. And then as an ancient warrior, who's well-versed in the art of combat, what he's surprised when there's some violence inside of Troy? Oh no, who could have imagined, as a warrior who's been a warrior my whole life, who is very keen to get inside Troy and end the ten-year war.
[0:07:59] Oh my gosh, there's violence inside the city. Like how, oh, this is so insane to me that there's this, it's this whole modern boomer Vietnam PTSD nonsense that, oh, it's just so terrible. And also if he's so horrified at violence and the slaughter of the innocent and the slaughter of the soldiers who've been trying to kill him for 10 years, why is he slaughtering all the suitors. I mean, oh, violence is so terrible. Chop, slice, slash, hack, gouge, kill. And it's like, oh, man, if you're going to make him a pacifist, make him a pacifist. If you're going to make him a violent guy, don't have him regret. It's just more of this programming white males to not take vengeance or have violence. Oh, it's a curse. It's all this Christian boomer nonsense. Sorry, bit of a rant there, but it drove me a little nuts there.
[0:08:50] No for sure and that was just I didn't it didn't, I didn't put two and two together with about what that was until I was like I basically on the drive home you, know uh back and forth with voice uh you know taking my notes with Grok and everything and I'm like okay so what was Odysseus's motivation in the Odyssey itself it's like to get back home it's like that was a single driving force to get back home right and he lost all of his men, Um, and he finally gets back home. And so, so that was like, oh, he had, it wasn't anything about this, you know, this, this guilt and other stuff and end of civilization stuff, which was just shoehorned in somehow.
[0:09:31] Well, so they didn't know this at the time, but, um, basically the Trojan war destroyed Greece for over 2000 years. Like, so after the Trojan war, and also in part because of the bitterness of the Odyssey about the Trojan War and the waste and the horror of it all, then Greece was ruled. Why did Greece never become a world power after the ancient world where it was a foundation of Western civilization? One of the reasons was the Trojan War and the bitter writing about it, which is like, okay, what's the point of all of this stupid fighting over nothing, which is what's happened with the West as a whole over the First World War to some degree.
[0:10:09] The end of all things, you can make a case for that because for the next 2,200 years, Greece was mostly ruled by others and they didn't fight back. And part of this sort of was the pacifism or the despair about the warrior ethos that comes out of the Odyssey. So I can certainly see how you could make that case, but it was made not because they pursued a stupid war, but because they lost some general civility. It's like, ah, but you've got to treat people as well as you can because there could be gods in disguise, which is a terrible reason for treating people well. So you're supposed to treat people, so well because they could be guards in disguise, except for the suitors. Now the suitors, okay, so you can argue that the suitors were really pushing his wife to get married. And one of them, or two of them, the black guy and the guy from Twilight, Robert Pattinson, who was very good in the movie, by the way. But they're plotting to kill his son. Okay, so that's bad. But the Trojans were plotting to kill all of his soldiers.
[0:11:10] And he was following a guy who slaughtered his own daughter to get favorable winds to go and start the war in the first place, which is why he ends up being killed by the black woman's twin sister. The twin thing also is kind of crazy because, I mean, if he's going to have a black woman as Helen, then he's got to have a black woman for obvious genetic reasons as the sister but if he hired two black women to play two Greek women that would be twice the outrage so he's got to make the woman a twin. And why did she get scars on her face? I asked AI about that and I I'm not sure exactly how she got the scars, Helen, how did she get the scars on her face? When the the Andrew Tate guy was sort of saying that about about her but I don't know do you remember why? I didn't catch that.
[0:11:54] No I forgot to ask uh what that was about.
[0:11:56] Yeah AI didn't know, AI didn't think she had any scars she thought ai thought I was talking about the scars on Odysseus's, feet but uh okay sorry uh I took a lot a bit of side quest now we can do the background to the movie or we can do the problems with the movie. Should we do the background first?
[0:12:15] Sure.
[0:12:15] I think it's worth doing that. So I took a bunch of notes about the sort of background to the movie. And so summarize, right? Odysseus is a Greek king trying to get home to Ithaca after the Trojan War. He's the king of Ithaca. He faces monsters, gods, temptations, the Cyclops, sirens, Circe, while his wife Penelope fends off the suitors back home. So she is in the modern equivalent of Tinder, right? Because the average woman has like a hundred guys after her, a reasonably attractive woman, and she's got a hundred guys and they're just kind of floating around waiting to marry her or something like that. After 20 years of wandering and struggle, he finally returns disguised as a beggar and reclaims his throne, epic tale of cunning, perseverance, and homecoming.
[0:13:06] Now, Odysseus, they missed a bunch of key stuff for me. And in particular, this is with the Cyclops, Polyphemus. So they, ugh, the Cyclops. Okay. I was going to do the backdrop. What was your experience of the Cyclops sequence?
[0:13:29] Okay, so they get into the cave, Cyclops comes in, and you get, either he's in the cave or he's lit by the fire, you see his face, it's this weird, tilted eye, kind of like a flounder fish with disfigured nose, which is a bit like, why? I don't know how much Homer described the Cyclops, but you know, eye in the center of the forehead, so not here, right about here, right? But I mean, not particularly disfigured. It's some kind of race thing. There's some kind of race of giants that he says about Cyclops things. So yeah, big lumbering, slow moving, like when I used to weigh over 300 pounds, right? So like the guy is like moves around moves so slow roars uh doesn't and I'm like, didn't he speak, right? I remember...
[0:14:29] No he yeah he he speaks, he mutters to himself and they say, well why can't we reason, I mean it's that the time for arguments is past it would beyond reason or something, so yeah he's intelligent enough to have a conversation.
[0:14:38] So you know he's just just the effect of the Cyclops was, weird like you know they try to run out and the Cyclops slowly moves his foot towards the soldier and then the soldier slowly flies against the wall and he's dead immediately. It's like, It looked gummy, weird. I guess you could say uncanny. I don't know.
[0:15:07] Yeah, I think that special effects have not improved too much, and I'm not sure exactly why. So here's some logical problems I have with the Cyclops. So they follow the sheep, right? Oh, but we've got to go where the herd is, right? So why does the Cyclops have sheep? Why? No, because he's a carnivore. He eats two guys a day, right? Two guys are like four times the size of sheep, which means he's going to have to eat eight sheep a day. He's got like 20 sheep. So that's two days at a breakfast worth of food. So why does he have the sheep? He doesn't need the wool because he doesn't use clothing. He doesn't want the milk to make feta cheese because he's a meat eater, right? At least that's the general assumption. And plus, they wouldn't be able to produce enough. How is he going to milk them? Why does he have the sheep as a whole? Now, I get that maybe in the original, blah, blah, blah, but you've got to explain things in the movie. Now, why does he eat two guys, see all the rest of the guys, and then just fall asleep.
[0:16:02] Like, can you imagine you got you got guys in your home who were there with swords and maybe they're shorter than you or whatever. Right. So you've got midgets in your home with swords. You don't know what they're there for. You eat two of them, thus pissing the rest off. And then you just fall asleep. That makes no sense to me at all. Now, you could say, well, he's just a dumb animal, except he's smart enough to talk. So why doesn't he talk? Why doesn't he say, why are you here? And again, you can say, well, this is in the original, but you have to explain it in the movie because people haven't read the original. Why does he fall asleep shortly after having his eye poked out? I mean, I got to tell you, if somebody poked out my eye, I'm not sure I'd be dozing off sooner after. How is he able to chase the soldiers down to their ship despite being totally blind and in horrifying pain? Why is the son of Poseidon living on a cliff in the hillside? And there was a bit where I may have drifted because I found it very hard to pay attention to the movie at times. So it seems to me, because Odysseus says, well, we can't move the big rock. We got to wait for him to move the big rock.
[0:17:03] So from what I saw, he moved the... the Cyclops moved the big rock, and then what he did was he... they seemed to get out. And then suddenly they were back in again and stuck. And maybe I missed something because that first time he moved the rock, they were all supposed to go out into the outside and get free and all of that. But suddenly they just ended up back in again, despite the fact that the guy had unrolled the rock. And I didn't quite understand that. And then the other thing that bothered me quite a bit about all of this is in the original, like in the actual poem, Odysseus says, I'm nobody, right? Because there's a conversation, I'm nobody. And then the Cyclops says, oh, nobody is attacking me. And therefore he doesn't get any help from whoever's around, right? So that's kind of a joke. And the director, Christopher Nolan, said he couldn't find a way to make that work.
[0:18:01] But one of the reasons, one of the main reasons why it takes Odysseus so long to get home is because when he's leaving, he says, ah, know that it was Odysseus who put your eye out, suckah, right? In the Travis Scott way, right? So it was Odysseus wanting to claim his victory over this Cyclops and give the Cyclops his name. And that's how the Cyclops tells Poseidon to get this guy. And that's why Poseidon then makes it so hard for Odysseus to get home. And that's just, it's an important fact because Odysseus is played as a victim. Like the gods are just against him. He's just trying to survive. It's like, it's partly the vanity aspect that he wants, to claim the victory over the Cyclops and therefore gives the Cyclops his name, which gives the Cyclops an identifier to give to his father, Poseidon, to then prevent Odysseus from getting hot. So the pride goeth before a fall thing, all of the morals and all of the self-generated issues are based on vanity that Odysseus is subject to completely gone.
[0:19:15] Right.
[0:19:16] Yeah.
[0:19:16] I think, I think the, uh, from what I recall about the, them trying to escape initially is that the, uh, that was when the, the Cyclops slowly kicked the guy and he slowly went and like died when he hit the wall. Um, which just didn't seem to make any sense. Like realistically, it's like.
[0:19:34] Why don't they stab the Cyclops with their swords in the toes or the hands while the sky hands are coming down?
[0:19:40] Yeah. They just decided, okay, we're not going to try to get out now because he's right there. I mean, he's not going to get to all of you. Look how he moves.
[0:19:47] Well, you have to do it at some point, right? You have to try and get out at some point. And also, look, I'm not a military guy. I've done a bunch of research for military stuff for my books, but you just have to put yourself in the mindset of really experienced military guys. So what you do, you're Christopher Nolan, pretty much anyone's going to talk to you. you've got a quarter of a billion dollars to make a movie. So you call up experienced soldiers, you call up Navy SEALs, right? And you say, if you're in enemy territory and there's 50 of you or however many, 40 or however many there were, there's 40 soldiers and you are going into a cave in enemy territory, what do you do? Well, what's the SEAL going to say? Is he going to say, oh yeah, you totally all go in, and you don't leave any guards outside and, uh you go in because there's sheep and you don't just grab the sheet and immediately get out you go in and hang around for a while and you poke around things on the wall and and then you realize that the cave is occupied you just hang out some more and it's like oh my god why should I care about people surviving who are this stupid.
[0:20:55] You leave a guard outside, you rush in to get, because they're hungry, I get the guard. You rush in, you grab the sheep, you get the hell out, you hide, you slaughter the sheep so they can't bar, like you, them all just going in and hanging out without any guards outside makes zero sense. And I cannot, I cannot, cannot, cannot have compassion for characters who act in this absolutely stupid way. And it means that none of the soldiers were advocating for their characters. So I've been an actor, of course, and when you're an actor, you advocate for your character. It's one of the things I liked about the movie Alien, sorry, the second Alien movie, right? Where the guy is like, well, let's just go and nuke them from orbit and let's do this. Like all the stuff that the audience is thinking. Like if you're stupid enough to wander into a giant's cave, knowing that there are giants and magical creatures, if you're stupid enough to wander into and hang around a cave, which is clearly inhabited by some huge, dangerous giant, with no guards at the front and you're just hanging out, waiting to chat with the guy. I cannot really care. This is like watching somebody playing Russian roulette. No, no, they died. And it's oh. And Christopher Nolan does technical stuff. He does not do actual people who make decisions and want to survive. So sorry for that rant, but that just drove me completely nuts.
[0:22:15] Yeah, no, I mean, that totally makes sense. It didn't rise to my, like, oh, yeah, that didn't bother me so much watching it.
[0:22:24] I mean, I'm not a soldier. I would have left a guard out front.
[0:22:28] Yeah. No, well, they all go in. And one of those first things Odysseus does when he walks into the cave is he eats the cheese. Like, what do you even know? Like, you don't even know if that's cheese. Like, I mean, maybe you're Greek. I don't know you do, but still it's like, what? And then you don't clear the room. Like, you know, like make sure there's nothing else in there.
[0:22:48] And how does the giant milk? At least there could be giant sheep. Like, how is the giant with his big fingers? Like, that's like, like, like you and I trying to milk a mouse. Like, it's just not going to. So I mean, I get the suspension of disbelief and all of that, but not this far. Not you and you have to solve see, in a movie you have to solve problems that you don't have to in prose so in prose if I write there's a giant and he's got some sheep right okay, then the audience will generally say okay well he can't be like 20 feet tall because then he couldn't have right milked the sheep and he couldn't possibly get enough calories right human beings who are active need like 3 000 calories males like a day or something like that, right so he's like what 10 times the size, so bro needs 30,000 calories. Where is he getting those from, from a couple of sheep? So when you're showing the actual creature and its size and the entrance, and if you say they tried to get out, but they couldn't, in the story, people would just make up why they couldn't. But if you're going to show the guys, like there's a hand coming down to grab you, you stick it with a knife. You've got a giant sword, it's going to do some damage. right if somebody uh, pokes my hand with a needle I'm going to recoil automatically so do they want to like ah so in movies you have to solve problems that uh mere text doesn't because you you're creating the actual actual visuals and size and ratios and all of that so.
[0:24:16] Yeah yeah and I mean the the moment the Cyclops comes in you know he's completely, is he... there... it appears to be very simple right except he does eat, the two of his two of the men um and then immediately falls asleep. That's another thing I saw with this this movie, a couple of things, the passage of time um, like this didn't seem like there's any passage of time whatsoever after he the men, went to sleep, and then Odysseus is like, I think he's asleep. Oh, come on. Like, there was no sense of, like, a cut or a break or a fade or whatever. Filmmakers, all these things that they can show, you know, it's been some time. Like, they're all sitting away from the fire. Oh, yeah, get away from the fire, but they're all fully illuminated by the fire still. So, I mean, it's, the orders are confusing, not followed. I mean, this is a whole military thing, like, you know, again, not a military guy either, but...
[0:25:11] And the other thing, too, is... But Poseidon must be stone evil, right? Because if your son comes to you and says, this guy blinded me, I mean, obviously you'd say, gee, that's too bad. What happened? Well, I ate four of them or five or six. I killed a bunch. And it's like, well, you attacked them first and you were keeping them there. They couldn't leave. And you were trying to kill them as they tried to leave, well, what were you expecting? Right? So the fact that Poseidon is so family or race loyal that he's going to punish Odysseus. Now, you say, oh, but he was trespassing. It's like, yeah, but the punishment for trespassing isn't chewing people. Like it's not cannibalism or eating people is not, it's not really cannibalism. I guess he's a different species, but so Poseidon is then evil and the good or evil of the gods is not addressed because the only any god who shows up and I have a whole bunch of questions about Athena the Zendaya character, but you know she shows up and she's trying to be reasonable like why don't the gods talk to me bro you're literally talking to a god saying why don't the gods talk to me which made no sense to me and she's like ah yes but the god, does not pain communicate things to you does not fear does not death communicate things to you and stuff like that it's like well.
[0:26:33] So, Athena is a good god. Is Poseidon a bad god? Because he wants to slaughter people. Why do they say the sun god and not Apollo? That I don't know exactly later on. But if the gods are evil, like I'm going to thwart you and get your men all killed because they acted in self-defense after my son tried to kill you all. That would just make Poseidon like a Tony Soprano character, like just an absolute mafia boss. that, and I didn't get any sense of whether the gods were good or evil. And of course, now the gods show up less in the Odyssey than they did in the Iliad, which is the one that describes the end of the Trojan War, but they're still supposed to be there, but he chose not to have the gods in.
[0:27:15] And, you know, that's just an artistic decision. I don't have any problem. The gods only show up as like thunder and things like that, which is not particularly vivid, but, uh,
[0:27:24] And then the giant armored people. Oh, can we talk about the tin can giants? Okay, go ahead.
[0:27:29] Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, again, just purely what they looked like. They looked like that fake foam instead of, like, actual metal.
[0:27:38] They looked like what?
[0:27:40] You know, it looked like fake armor. It didn't look like actual metal armor to me. So that was a weird thing. Also, full plate armor in, you know, what was this? 5th, 6th century BC, Greece, right?
[0:27:58] I think it's further back than that, but go on.
[0:28:00] Yeah, yeah. So, that wasn't a thing, you know, like, steel iron armor back then, definitely not a thing. Really strange how they just sort of, they came upon a child character who was all fully decked out in armor as well, and the child laughs and screams and runs away, and then they're beset upon by these creatures. Now... Uh, I'm like, I, I had no idea what this was supposed to be in the myth or from the myth or what we're referring to. I sort of, it might be the Laestrygonians.
[0:28:32] They are supposed to be just giants, not giants hanging around in full armor with all their weapons for no reason whatsoever.
[0:28:41] Yeah.
[0:28:42] No reason. Like we just went hiking a couple of months ago in New Hampshire. We did not go hiking in full plate armor, uh, or in, you know, with full strapped down weaponry and all of that. It's like, you know, what are they doing just out in the woods in full plate armor for no reason whatsoever?
[0:29:00] Yeah. And then of course, you know, the, the trees magically move to imprison the men. And so they stab 'em through the trees and again, the lumbering slow, like they swing and it doesn't look like it's going to do any sort of real. I mean, yeah, sure. It's a threat, but all you have to do is like do a little power walking. I mean, it's just, it doesn't like that whole execution did not, was not compelling.
[0:29:20] 12th century BCE. So 12th century. So it's, yeah, it's a long and a half. This is why I said for like 2200 years or so. Yeah, no, it was a long, long time ago. But yeah, that just drove me nuts that these guys are just like mindless, killing robot machines. And for what? They're not at war. There's no war. Because if there's a war, why is there a kid there? So there's no war, why are they just hanging around and played and just want to slaughter everything that moves without any conversation. Oh, you frightened our child. It's like oh that just drove me nuts.
[0:29:55] I I I literally did have the thought like what are the Cylons doing in the Odyssey?
[0:29:59] That's right, that's right. And and old school Cylons not even the new hot models yeah that's right.
[0:30:05] Or no uh maybe maybe those uh the metal men that they had whatever it doesn't really matter.
[0:30:09] Yeah.
[0:30:09] Um yeah, it's a saint saint you get the joke.
[0:30:12] Right right
[0:30:13] But yeah it's like the sort of bizarre thing and then they're going out and they're you know they pursue them to the coast and they destroy all the ships and only one leaves and I asked you know, Grok to sort of, what was this actually supposed to be? Because I didn't remember any of this stuff. I didn't remember magic moving trees. I didn't remember this weird sort of like armored men in the forest. It's supposed to be the Laestrygonians, cannibal giants, and these are the guys that are throwing boulders into the sea to sink Odysseus's ships. Now, the Cyclops went into the water and threw one boulder and just a poof, you know, basically a nothing burger, right? I, and this is, I mean, creative choice of the movie. I get all that stuff. But like when, at the time that in the myth, when Odysseus arrived at the shore, he had 12 ships. And so in the movie, they only have three. Okay, fine. You can make that choice. It's,
[0:31:11] I'm sorry, what you mean by ships is not ancient Greek ships, but Viking long ships. Again.
[0:31:16] Yeah.
[0:31:16] Only separated by 2000 years and an entire continent, but okay.
[0:31:21] Yeah. I mean, I didn't catch that myself, but yeah. it's definitely not the same, right? Because the the the Greek ship was much lower, is that right?
[0:31:29] I think so, yeah. They just, they look to me like, I'm not an expert they just look like viking long ships to me.
[0:31:34] Yeah yeah um so I mean the the these these armored giants are going in there basically tear the ships apart with their hands. But I'm like, well, why did they not have, these boulders being hurled off the cliffs by these giants? And I don't even remember like what the actual interaction between Odysseus and these giants were. Were they just set upon, or they were kept captive, they're eating them or whatever the case was, or they just plain attacked them because they were they're hostile to all outsiders?
[0:32:01] Or they frightened a child or whatever it was.
[0:32:03] Or they frightened a child.
[0:32:04] Yeah.
[0:32:06] But I mean I was just thinking like you have access to all this other stuff all these presumably all this you know, cg thing would it not be more epic and actually be feel threatening, to see boulders being hurled towards these ships, you know? Now with maybe three ships, it's like, I really can't do that because there's only three ships you know with 11 with the 12 ships you could kind of do that and it's like only one gets away you know that's that's more gripping I guess. But, um and again it's like that's like a creative question. I mean that's a fully creative question, but the way it was done, and it was like, they come in, they're sort of rocking the boats back and forth and tearing it back. And it was underwhelming, essentially.
[0:32:48] Yeah. And once you're driving them away, why would you want to keep killing them? I mean, they're already leaving. And sorry, just to back up to the Cyclops for a second. And so I put a lot of trust in people who make art. And I myself write novels and so on. So I try to make this realistic. But the Cyclops blinded in agony, running down a hill. Right. All you have to do, literally, it's this simple as a movie maker, right? So you should, wherever possible, you should try to do what your characters are doing, right? So all you need to do is blindfold yourself when you have a bad headache and try running down a forest hill.
[0:33:26] Like you're going to run into trees, you're going to trip, you're going to like... So if the movie maker can't put himself in the Cyclops' position and say, what would it be like? Like at least show him feeling his way or or tripping or something like that right but no he just comes crashing down as if he can perfectly see so what was the point of blinding him, if blinding him is no different from him being able to see, and so again in a if you say well the Cyclops chased them in the poem then people can imagine that he's tripping and stumbling but if you're showing the Cyclops coming down it means you haven't even put yourself in the position of a blind character trying to run down a hillside, and, That just means that there's zero inhabiting of the characters on the part, because he wrote, right, he wrote it too. So there's no inhabiting. And if you're not even going to figure out what it's like to be a blind character, you know, in the movie, the Al Pacino movie, where he plays the blind guy, I can't remember the name.
[0:34:27] Scent of a Woman.
[0:34:27] Scent of a Woman, thank you. I mean, he did a huge amount of research, he knows how to unfocus his eyes and they have to figure out that he's blind so I mean can you imagine a scene in Scent of a Woman where he's playing tennis, as the blind guy, you'd say well you can't play... yeah you you can't you can't play tennis as a blind guy!
[0:34:49] Yeah.
[0:34:50] Right and and so it's like and so you wouldn't trust the movie makers if they hadn't so having that just I need to be able to trust the movie maker, and this is another thing to do with the world as a whole, which is there's much more detail about the Odyssey, like the whole journey, right? There's much more detail about that than there is of course about Lord of the Rings. Now in Lord of the Rings, there are all these maps and Rohan is here and the Shire is here and Mordor's over there and Gondor's over there and you get a sense of where places are. I had no sense of where anything was. They're just like bouncing around like a pinball. Like there's no sense of passage, just a bunch of oceans. And then there's another island. And I just did not get a strong sense of, but this is actually rooted in facts. There are maps of where he goes and it just would have been really helpful as a whole to just have them not bounce around in random places to random new islands.
[0:35:50] To have a sense of, is it summer? Is it winter? What is the passage of time? Why is there an Indian guy who's the voice of reason and second in command? I mean, it takes them 10 years to cross the Aegean, are you really going to say it's easy to get from India just to make no sense? That was just beyond. But that guy already owned the Beatles in that other movie. So.
[0:36:14] Yeah, just wanted to mention that as well. And, you know, I'm trying not to nitpick all of the logical issues, but some of the basic ones to me were really, really disturbing. Because, again, I need to be able to solve this. Uh this I need to to understand that the movie maker understands the characters that he's creating and if they're going to put a quarter million dollars a quarter of a billion dollars sorry and you know half a dozen years and you've never figured out what it's like to run down a hillside when you're blind I don't understand that at all like you'd want it costs you nothing and you just need to solve that uh that problem.
[0:36:55] Yeah uh this might be skipping ahead a bit do you want to sort of go more in order or do you just want to sort of.. there's another one of those things that's yeah let's do that incomprehensible, incomprehensible... sorry which one?
[0:37:06] uh you can go uh let's go theme not sequence because I mean the movie's all over the place so we can't go in sequence anyway because it goes back and forth in time.
[0:37:14] Yeah yeah so um well this is one of those like this was completely incomprehensible uh uh when I was just reviewing the movie in my mind. Okay, so Odysseus comes back. He's the beggar, right? And the queen wants to meet with him. And so they have this long conversation and she doesn't recognize him at all. Like she, now I mean, I was 20 years.
[0:37:39] 20 years, man, that's a long time though, for sure.
[0:37:43] Yeah, I mean, I don't know if she suspects or not. I get, yeah, 20 years is a long time, but it was also a bit like... he never faces her, so I guess that's fine too. And your voice does change over 20 years but, man I don't know that kind of it bothered me, it bothered me at least a little bit.
[0:37:59] So, I mean it's an interesting question so if you, let's say that you hadn't watched the Odyssey. It's kind of tough to think about in hindsight let's say you hadn't watched the Odyssey and somebody played you Matt Damon playing Odysseus, would you have recognized Matt Damon's voice? Because he did...
[0:38:16] Just the voice?
[0:38:17] Roughing up his voice quite a bit.
[0:38:20] I wonder, no, I wouldn't have recognized his voice.
[0:38:22] Yeah so so maybe and you know we've obviously heard a bunch of Matt Damon's been like 50 movies or something like that.
[0:38:27] So yeah yeah yeah no no I would say he yeah no what I would say he doesn't sound at all like he did in uh you know just sort of vague memory like um Good Will Hunting right yes you know much younger you know yeah yeah so It could be the case.
[0:38:41] Right?
[0:38:41] That's a fair point. It's a fair rebuttal. It just seemed odd to me that, I thought, yeah, 20 years. But... Yeah, no, you know, that's fine. That's fine. I'll say that's something I was noticing, thinking about, but yeah.
[0:38:55] I can live with that because also she would never expect him to come back as a beggar. So if it's a beggar, you can't really see he's kind of mumbling in the dark. I can kind of get, um, by the way, I just wanted to mention Anne Hathaway. Absolutely slayed that role. And it's fairly underwritten role, except for the feminist bit about, oh, because I don't have stubble on my chin. I can't be king. Right. But she, she was, I've never really thought much about her as an actress. She just seems like this big eyed cutie pie, but like she's half anime. It seems to me, uh, I did see her as Fantine in, um, but I thought she just, she was great in this role. Like she really tore into it. And I, uh, like they call it a scenery chewer, like you're so acting, uh, or like this Swoosie Kurtz thing in liar, liar over actor. But I thought she just ripped into that role and I thought she did a great job.
[0:39:48] Yeah yeah I would say definitely a great presence yeah.
[0:39:51] For sure yeah uh all right so um other things let's just bounce around and then we'll do we'll do the story then we'll do the backstory if that's all right so Zendaya first of all why does it always look like somebody, just squeezed a lemon up her nose like she's always got that, because you know as uh I guess she's sort of non-whitish and non-white people always have to disapprove of white people and they always have to be wiser than white males in particular. That's just a fact. Whenever there's any conflict between a white and a non-white, the non-white is in the right. So I got really confused about this and maybe, and I asked AI, I didn't have any luck, because these aren't AI-generated things, but I wanted to double-check a few things with AI. Maybe the movie's kind of new, so it doesn't know. So in the siege of Troy, after they get in, And Zendaya seemed to me to be one of the priestesses or acolytes in the temple of Athena. And then she's got her head down and she gets beheaded. And then at the same time, they behead the actual statue of Athena. And the statue of Athena goes bouncing down the steps. You remember that part, right?
[0:40:57] I do, yeah, yeah.
[0:40:57] Right. So isn't the Athena character, the Zendaya character, isn't that his guilt over setting the events in motion that had the young woman be beheaded. Now, AI did say that Athena also talks to Odysseus' son, the Tom Holland character, and Tom Holland still seems to have more testosterone than Elliot Page. But anyway, less testosterone, sorry, less testosterone than Elliot Page. But I don't remember that. Doesn't Athena or the Zendaya character only talk to Odysseus? Or do you remember her talking to anyone else?
[0:41:42] I do not remember her talking to anybody else. And it was very clear that when he was, he would talk to her as if she was there when other people were around, like a complete hallucination.
[0:41:50] Yeah, yeah.
[0:41:51] Like no one else could see her.
[0:41:53] She seemed like this sort of, it was a Nash character from A Beautiful Mind. Do you see that person? So she seemed to me to be a figment of his imagination because none of the other gods are shown. And she's supposed to be this Athena character, but she seems to me a figment of his imagination, uh, about the horrors of the siege of Troy, because he saw this girl get beheaded right in front of him. And then she shows up, uh, you know, and, and he feels really bad about, so I don't know that she was actually Athena. I, you know, I, it just seemed very confusing to me because, uh, she did seem to be a real person who got beheaded. So if other people can explain this to me, I would appreciate that because I can understand that if you start a siege and then you watch some young girl get beheaded right in front of you, that that would leave a bit of a scar. But, of course, it's not generally the case that when there's a siege, they don't kill the young females. I can tell you that. That's not generally how history works. Genghis Khan didn't just go around killing. He'd kill the males and impregnate the females.
[0:42:52] I did notice that, too. It's like, wait, they're killing everybody.
[0:42:54] Yeah, why would they be killing the girls, right? That doesn't make any sense, right? Maybe the old women or whatever, right? But even, you know, soldiers who've been at war for 10 years, you know, this is not any, I'm just talking about the facts. They tend not to be overly fussy at the females that they can get a hold of. So...
[0:43:10] So the modern idioms, I didn't like. I didn't like the American accents. And I didn't like the Indian guy with the witch, like the witch who turns everyone into pigs. It's like, no, it's okay. It's okay. It's like, okay? Okay? That's like 3,000 years ago. They're not saying, okay, bro. And they had an F off. And I can't remember the idiom. It was something like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and stuff. And it's like look I'm not saying you've got to be Shakespeare but that's wretched it was way too colloquial you know oh you got total daddy issues bro and it's like they would use pater father you know they would use some sort of formal particularly with your father, uh the so I thought that the colloquialisms and the idioms, I don't mind. You got to dumb it down for a universal audience, maybe whatever. Right. But I just thought it was just, it was just gutting the language. Like the language, the language is like the eye, the vertical eye of the Cyclops. And they were just like, blinded. And I thought that was just too much. And, uh, if you don't want to do sophisticated language don't do an epic poem and, I just thought it was it was too much did did it take you out maybe it was more of a thing for me did it bother you much or uh.
[0:44:37] I I noticed it a bit less but I definitely noticed it with Telemachus and uh in calling you know his parents mom and dad. A couple of things, first off, way too freaking familiar for like a son of royalty, you know? Even if you say like let's you know the servants will call their parents, mom, and dad, you know, whatever those familiar terms are. Not in the case for you know a royal like a son of royalty essentially. And Telemachus never knew his father he's been gone his entire life, and so I mean there could be kind of like a reverence, there could be kind of like a thing, but it's not going to be warm. There could be some sentimentality, for sure, but there's not going to be this sort of this warmth, like, dad! You know? His heart, like, oh like, you know, that's not gonna happen, right? You know, he's gonna have more warmth for his mentor yeah you know and he and he does he has warmth for his mentor too um, And I'm not saying that it was played wrong in that way, but it was definitely like, oh, dad's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Father.
[0:45:38] Yeah.
[0:45:39] You say father.
[0:45:40] Yeah.
[0:45:40] Mother. You say mother or whatever the, you know, honorific would be for the queen, right?
[0:45:46] Um, and I mean, that was, that certainly took me out for sure. Uh, seeing that. And I mean, as I mentioned before, the, the guy, the black guy with this, you know, accent, not even trying like the, the actor is supposed to be, uh, or what was this? The actor's supposed to be like the sort of the the lens or the glass.
[0:46:03] Oh Travis Scott the bard story yeah travis Travis Scott bard oh mate it was just terrible.
[0:46:10] Oh uh remind me of that character.
[0:46:11] Oh that was the guy who opened uh he's the guy who's like thumping and let me tell you the tale and blah blah blah thumping in the bar like the opening he's supposed to be the bard who's telling the tale and, yeah Travis Scott the bard uh was just wild uh I mean uh, I I don't know that too many rappers have have done songs about the Odyssey I don't really think that's a thing. Okay, Tom Holland you gotta explain this to me I I I do not like I mean, he's supposed to be this warrior he's got the arms of a noodle he's got the beard potential of a baby's ass cheek uh, he is lower t than just about everyone else uh who's who's female he looks like he should be a, kiddie's baseball coach he has about as much gravitas as helium I do not understand the Tom Holland thing at all plus he's a British actor I think and he's got to put on an American accent for the Odyssey in ancient Greece it's like oh my god, oh and he's such a he's such a bad actor let me let me sort of tell you why and and then you can tell me if this makes any sense maybe I'm overreacting or whatever right because it should have been mine that should have been my role but
[0:47:15] Okay so Tom Holland, the character Odysseus's son so he's willing to go into almost certain death to find out to even to even have the remote possibility of finding out whether his father might be alive and this is set up like a huge thing you're gonna die they're gonna chase you down in the wilderness they're gonna ides of march you and you're gonna end up looking like Boromir with some steak knives, right? So they set up this whole thing that this kid is so desperate for news that his father is alive, that he's willing to die and almost does in order to find this out, right? So in artistic circles, that's called a setup, right? So the setup and the payoff, right? So, you know, if a child dies, the mother has to show to really love the child. I love the child. The child's the best, right? And then when the child dies, the payoff is like, oh my gosh, she's going to be really sad. So you've got to set things up. You've got to pay things off. Literally two and a half hours of the movie is the son, the Tom Holland character, desperate to find any news of his father.
[0:48:24] And then he's following Odysseus. He doesn't know Odysseus is his father. He's following him up the hill.
[0:48:31] And why is everything so ugly in Greece? Greece is one of the most beautiful places in the world. Like the Aegean is aquamarine blue. There are fantastic islands. People go there. Greek islands are famous. The whole thing looked like London's damp armpit as a whole. And that was just pretty terrible. Anyway, so Tom Holland's walking up, and he finally finds out. The beggar says, I served with your father. He's still alive. Now, I'm waiting. I'm like, he's going to stagger. He's going to, oh, my God, like he's going to burst into tears. What does he do? Oh, cool. Cool.
[0:49:07] And they just keep on walking up the hill. And I'm like, what the ever living F is that nonsense? And again, this is the actor is not advocating for his character. The actor needs to say to the soulless, empty hearted cinematography obsessed Christopher Nolan, look, you've just set up two and a half hours of I'm desperate to find out news about my father. I finally get the news about my father. And it's the greatest thing ever. I mean imagine if if there was a story that your beloved daughter or son was was kidnapped and you spend 20 years and and risk your life to find out if she's still alive and then someone tells you oh my god she is still alive I mean you would dissolve you would freak out you would like you'd do a dance you'd burst into tears nothing, what does that mean not one single actor said whoa chris yeah, you gotta you gotta have this moment otherwise the audience doesn't understand the entire movie nobody makes any sense none of the motivations make any sense sorry go ahead.
[0:50:08] No I mean just just you know uh and more than just sort of like a oh okay cool like no like press for press press for information...
[0:50:17] How do you know? Where is he? What happened?
[0:50:20] Yeah yeah yeah.
[0:50:21] Oh, drives me nuts. Other thing. Okay, listen, obviously Matt Damon is, he's what, 55 or whatever, right? The fact that he has, you know, granite abs, fantastic. Good for him. That's a lot of protein. That's a lot of, I don't know what he's injecting directly into his nipples to get that physique. Good for him, right? However, however, I got to tell you, if you've been a drug addict laying around on a beach for seven freaking years, I'm going to doubt the reality of your abs. If you've been starving for a long time, I'm going to doubt that you have all of these giant muscles because your body will eat. Like they literally say that we're starving to death. We're starving to death. We're starving to death.
[0:51:05] He's got all his muscles. His gums are fine. He's got giant abs. He's not lost any particular weight. He's not like your body will eat the fat and then it'll start to eat the muscles just to stay alive. Now, I'm not saying obviously that they should have CGI'd him or he should have done some, you know, machinist slim down or something like that. But it just doesn't make any sense. If the guy's been a drug addict lacing around on a beach for seven years, he's not going to have abs. He's just not. But abs, especially in your 50s, abs are like four to five hours a day, an insanely strict diet, four to five hours a day of exercise and dieting. And you never see him do a single bit of exercise. And he's just got muscles and abs. Like, I'm sorry, it's just not believable at all.
[0:51:54] Yeah.
[0:51:54] And that just drives me kind of nuts. It just took me out. Like, where are the abs coming from? Anyway.
[0:52:01] Yeah, no, that didn't take me out in particular because, of course, you know, I never had abs, so I'm kind of jealous.
[0:52:07] Well, you have them somewhere. We all do. Otherwise, our intestines would fall out. But, yes, they are minor stealth abs.
[0:52:14] But, no, no. What took me out about somewhere related to that is he goes, floats out into the ocean on his makeshift raft, and it's to face the punishment of Poseidon. Let's just sort of not go into that, too much of that anymore. But Zeus won't let him die. so then he wakes up washed up on the shore of his home and Zendaya is uh is a hallucination is like don't you recognize your home? And it's like well no this doesn't look like Greece at all! No um but.
[0:52:42] When it looks exactly like how he left it.
[0:52:45] Yeah.
[0:52:46] Like it does like he's got he's got the dog where his son is training right he's got that little dog that shows up which gets a much bigger bit in the movie which is fine but I mean how does it look different from how he left it?
[0:52:58] I mean, I don't remember what it looked like when he left it, but.
[0:53:01] Well, so do you remember there's that sort of one building, like apparently all of Greece is just one building on a hill. That's all Greece is. There's no cities, no towns for the most part. Right. So, oh, and a couple of temples. So at the beginning, his son is training with the guy who says, you're moving too quickly. You need to move slower. And I'm like, please don't give that advice to Christopher Nolan because it's just brutal. Please do not tell him you need to move slower because it's I I, an hour into the movie I'm like okay so only two hours and only an hour 45 more an hour and a half I'm like okay we're halfway done a little over like I literally was counting because I just could not get into, uh caring and I thought Matt Damon was absolutely appalling no character arc he was the same at the beginning as he was at the end there was nothing other than oh I'm sad and blah blah blah right at the very And he just, to me, it's a phoned in performance. It's not real. He did not.
[0:53:55] And if you are more traumatized as a warrior by causing some death than it is that you love your wife, then I don't believe in your love of your wife. Right? I mean, that doesn't make any sense to me at all. This is like a surgeon being upset that he had to cut someone open and so upset that he had to cut someone open that he can't get back to his beloved wife. No, the reason why he couldn't get back is his vanity at bragging about just defeating the Cyclops. He was safe on the ship. You know that it was Odysseus. But if it was like, well, I have some PTSD from the war and that's why I didn't want to come back. Well, why would you not want to come back from PTSD? Because then you get back to your wife and your son. And like, so that, that just made no sense to me at all. And then it's just generic, uh, boomer guilt. So now here's an interesting thing.
[0:54:47] So this is, um, I'm going to read this, and we'll put the sources for all of this in the show notes. So this was, I thought was very interesting. I looked this up. So there's a famous statue of the only man in Troy who saw the trap of the Trojan horse. He tried to warn everyone, and this is what the gods did to him because of it. His name was Leo Kakoan, a Trojan priest. When the Greek army vanished and left a giant wooden horse outside the city gates, all of Troy celebrated. Only, and by the way, why do you put the horse half in the water? Because it's going to be submerged by this tide.
[0:55:23] And people were drowning. Like, why? Why? That's not, they left it outside the city gates, not on the beach. Anyway, so the Greek army vanished and left a giant wooden horse outside the city gates. All of Troy celebrated. Only this Trojan priest refused to believe it. He warned his people that the horse was a trick and to prove it was hollow, hurled his spear into its side. So look at all. In Virgil's telling, he spoke a line that has outlasted almost everything else about Troy. Uh Laocoön said I fear the Greeks even when they bring gifts he was right the horse was packed of soldiers and troy was hours from destruction, the sculptor shows what he got for it what did he get uh tell me james based upon your experience of working on this show for for many years um, when you try to tell people the truth how grateful are they in general?
[0:56:13] Oh, I would imagine that they, you know, held a parade and, you know, just, you know, on bares, you know, down the city wall. No, no, no. I think he probably got his eyes gouged, his tongue cut out and put in stocks or something along those lines.
[0:56:31] So he was right. The horse was packed with soldiers and Troy was out of some destruction. The sculptor shows what he got for it. Two enormous sea serpents rise out of the sea and coil around him and his young sons, dragging all three down together. The father's whole body is knotted in the struggle, every muscle straining, his face locked in a scream.
[0:56:48] The gods wanted Troy to fall, and Leo Kakoan was in the way. The Trojans watched him die in agony and drew exactly the wrong conclusions. They decided the gods were punishing him for attacking a holy gift, so they pulled the horse inside their own walls, and that night Troy burned. The statue is called Laocoön and his sons. It is the work of three Greek sculptors from the island of Rhodes, Agatissandra and Athenodorus, and Polydorus, for whatever that's worth, and dates to the Hellenistic period, making it well over 2,000 years old. Buried for more than 1,000 years, it was dug out of a Roman vineyard in 1506, and Michelangelo rushed across Rome to see it the day it was found. It has been called the single greatest depiction of human suffering in the history of art, but it endures because of what it is really about. The man who sees the truth says it out loud and is destroyed for being right while the crowd watches and cheers. It is one of the oldest patterns there is. It has never stopped repeating. There is nothing new under the sun. So I thought that was quite interesting.
[0:57:45] I also wanted to point out in the movie Black Panther, it's really important to protect the African representation. In Moana, you've got to consult Polynesian cultural experts. In the The Odyssey casts virtually everyone except Greeks. Greeks disregard Homer's source material, then dismiss objections. So what happened in the Odyssey? Well, Christopher Nolan excluded Greeks from their own story. Oh, and by the way, took how many millions of dollars from the Greek government to film subsidies in Greece, right? Race swap casting and hypocrisy. Diverse casting ignores Greek heritage and Homer's descriptions at a time when other cultures demand strict authenticity. A feminist reinterpretation of Homer, Emily Wilson's modern feminist translation, alters the tone and emphasizes female characters. Gender-swapping Greek warriors' dark, gloomy aesthetic, right?
[0:58:34] Turns sunny, colorful Greece, known for light and beauty, into a desaturated, dark, moody world. Wrong costumes, Robin Hood style. Ignores bronze-aid Greek clothing and armor. Dark leather outfits look more like Robin Hood or generic medieval fantasy. Viking ship. Anachronism uses a modern Norwegian Viking longship set in 1200 BC over 2000 years too late and the wrong culture. Reinvented. Monstrous. Ignores Homer's description. The giant armored knights were just primitive cannibals in the story. Modern dialogue and changes. American accents, contemporary language, non-linear plot, and dismissing criticism as irrelevant. That is not at all unimportant. Now, sorry, if there's more that you want to add or things that bothered you about the movie, and of course, you can come back as they show up, but I did want to give a bit of the backstory.
[0:59:25] Right.
[0:59:28] Let's see. Oh, well, I just want to finish up the thing about, that didn't track for me when he washed up on the shore of his island.
[0:59:38] Yeah. I'd like to find out who's been interrupting you when you've been trying to get your point across. We will hunt them down. Sorry. Go on.
[0:59:43] Yeah. Cut their tongue out. No. So...
[0:59:50] I did it again. Someone. Sorry. Someone did it again. We'll find them.
[0:59:53] No I'm interrupting myself...
[0:59:54] He washed up on the shore yeah
[0:59:56] yeah he washed up on the shore and then so uh again this is another one of the passage of time problems with that the movie has um he just kind of like he's ready to fight. You know he's been half drowned, washed up on the shore, uh and then like you know and also it's been 20 years you know since he's been I mean he's been fighting on the, all along the way but you know Matt Damon's 50 uh and he's or sorry in his mid-late 50s now and um, you know so he's probably about the age Odysseus would have been, maybe a little bit older, so he's not he's not prime fighting age, you know? So he's he's past I'm I'm past it right you know and it's like uh what late 20s right? That's your prime fighting age, maybe?
[1:00:33] Uh yeah, I mean it probably peaks mid late 20s for sure and he takes on like 50 or 100 guys um anyway so with just a bow they would just brush him.
[1:00:44] Yeah oh yeah and then the other thing I'll just mention this too. The fighting was all pretty bad. But you know Matt Damon just sort of doing a shooting the arrow from the hip thing.
[1:00:53] I thought he got stabbed as well, like I could have sworn I saw him get stabbed at one point
[1:00:58] He did.
[1:00:58] He got stabbed! I don't understand how people just keep going. I've been stabbed! My intestines are falling out, but I'm fine to keep going. I get there's a certain amount of adrenaline and so on, but when you're tripping over your own intestines, it just seems to me that's going to put a little bit of cramp in your MMA style.
[1:01:14] Yeah. I mean, I also mention this because I'm not a fighter, I'm not a violent guy at all, but, you know, I mean, I understand experience definitely goes a long way, you know, that stuff, but you're talking about 50 guys, you know.
[1:01:24] In an enclosed area and a lot of them are way younger than you are. And by the way, I think I can get you to violence if I keep interrupting you, but go on.
[1:01:32] No, I think that's all for now If there's anything else.. oh, the only thing I want to sort of touch on as well is the Circe thing, you mentioned, you touched on this as well, but she's like, you know, she basically Is afraid that the men are going to rape her essentially, which is absolutely modern injection to the film that wasn't part of the myth...
[1:01:52] Yeah,it certainly was part of warfare, but yeah it's not part of the myth.
[1:01:55] Yeah but she you know she's like completely terrified like oh I mean I I said I know I said rape it wasn't said in the movie but it was definitely like she's so terrified of like you know take anything you want, like just whatever um, and that just was like that was again of the things take you out of the movie, that was one for me too.
[1:02:13] All right. so uh the iliad comes first of course we're going to talk a little bit about the backstory just because you don't know how much the movie's deviated if you don't know the backstory. So the Iliad, the poem, is not about the Trojan War. It opens in the 10th year of the Trojan War. The war was almost over, the men exhausted, the end is in sight, and closes before the war even concludes. It's about what the war costs from the inside without distance, without the mercy of a conclusion. The very first word of the poem Iliad is rage. Not glory, not war, not courage, rage. So you think of this catastrophe, right? So Helen is taken by Paris after modern-day Turkey. And I asked, oh, I looked up how many soldiers were involved. And it's between 50 and 100,000, according to the number of ships and 100 to 150 men per ship and so on. I also asked about reinforcements. They didn't really get any. So, and maybe these numbers exaggerated, nobody will know for sure, but we'll just go with 50 to 100,000 of the prime Greeks go over to get back Helen, right?
[1:03:22] For what? Well, because they swore a vow and so on. And by the way, they didn't use lots, right? They didn't, there's this whole scene with the lot and you, you know, like that's a draft thing, you know, like the draft lottery in the 60s for Vietnam. So they didn't use that. So they go and the cream of Greek manhood spends 10 years. They didn't have any siege implements, right? You know, the sort of famous siege implements most people would have seen in Lord of the Rings, the Battle of Helm's Deep and so on. They don't have any siege instruments. So they just hung around, throwing arrows over, I don't know, whatever, trying to climb the walls from time to time and raiding all the nearby villages for all of their sustenance. Because of course, they had a very long, supply chain to deal with, right? I mean, certainly the Aegean. Now, you can sail the Aegean even back in the day, you know, between a week and two weeks, depending on the weather and so on. But that's pretty tough, right? And the other thing, too, is that there was at least one rebellion that is recorded, and where the troops are like, basically, F this. This is ridiculous, right? We're not getting any reinforcements. We're not making any progress. It's been 10 years. And she's probably even had an egg. So what are we getting her back for anyway? And they try to get to the ships and sail back. And what does Ulysses do?
[1:04:47] He beats them with a giant staff and threatens to kill anyone who leaves. So this makes him a homicidal a-hole, just by the by, just by the by. And this was the incredible frustration that people had, which again, can only really be matched in the modern parlance with World War I. And so all of this fighting is one man's wounded ego, right? So whether Paris abducts Helen or whether they elope, it's not really particularly clear and we'll probably never know for sure because it'll just be someone's opinion. It's not like we've got her autobiography or anything, right?
[1:05:26] So 10 years, tens of thousands of death, a civilization destroyed flows from one guy wanting to get his wife back. And that's horrendous. That's horrendous. So all for this, right? Now, Achilles, you know, the Sinon character, Achilles is supposed to show up in the afterworld. That part's taken by Sinon. There's some theory as to whether page was cast originally as achilles and they changed it after blowback who knows right but achilles is not, a hero in the way that we would really understand it so he's the greatest warrior who ever lived he knows it and he uses that knowledge as a weapon against his own side, he's capable of tenderness his love for patroclus patroclus is the emotional spine of the poem, and of something barely human in his rage he just desecrates hector's body dragging it behind his chariot. He looks magnificent and monstrous simultaneously. Homer doesn't resolve this. He holds both at once. Fate is known in advance. So Achilles has a choice, live a long life in obscurity or go to glory and an early death. He chooses glory with the full knowledge of the cost. This is the Iliad's answer to the Odyssey. Two poems, two heroes, two opposite arguments. Odysseus chooses home, mortality, the particular. Achilles chooses legend Death the Eternal. Both poems know what the other costs.
[1:06:48] Now, it's interesting. In the middle of the war, Homer stops everything to describe the shield that Hephaestus forges for Achilles. On the shield, images of cities at peace, weddings, harvests, dancing, the ocean, fishing, the full richness of the world not at war. Homer inserts the entire civilization inside the shield, showing what is being destroyed by it. This is the greatest anti-war statement in the poem. It contains not a single pacifist word. The gods make everything worse. They intervene not to save anyone, but to extend the suffering on behalf of their own favorites and quarrels. The Iliad's cosmos is not just, and this is what I was talking about with Poseidon. Oh, you killed like half a dozen of this guy. He blinded you to get away, but I'm going to punish him, right? The cosmos is beautiful, terrible, indifferent, men die heroically for causes the gods treat as entertainment. There is no meaning assigned from above, only the meaning the men make for themselves, which is the most modern thing about a poem 3,000 years old.
[1:07:48] So, Priam walks alone into Achilles' camp to beg for his son's body. Achilles, who has been barely human in grief and rage, looks at the old king and sees his own father. They weep together, two enemies who've lost everything, sharing grief in a tent, right? There are opposites. In the middle of a war that has destroyed both their worlds. The most human moment in Western literature inside the most brutal text. Homer puts it there deliberately. The war doesn't pause. The humanity doesn't disappear. Both are true simultaneously.
[1:08:13] The Iliad ends with Hector's funeral. Troy has not yet fallen. Achilles has not yet died. Homer closes on grief, not victory, because that is what he thought the poem was actually about. Not who won, but what it cost. Every war since has had its Iliad. It's the official version that records the outcome and the true version that records the cost. Homer wrote the true version first. Most wars are still waiting for theirs. I thought that was really nicely written and a sort of good backdrop to this, because this is one of the problems is that the war destroyed, like there are some decisions that destroy cultures for centuries or millennia. And this war, plus the brutality of the Odyssey as the poem describing the war, do you want to go and fight a war for nothing in particular if this is what's out there and this is how tough it is to get home? It is a pacifist text which also removes the heroic self-sacrifice on the part of the warriors that is supposed to sustain a culture and civilization after this war, after this poem. Again, 2,200 years. Greece, I mean, was ruled by others and everyone else.
[1:09:28] And that stuff is really powerful. It's sort of like the Spanish decision to go to the New World and bring all of the gold back destroyed their economy for 400 years. And now, of course, it's been destroyed in other ways. So I think the poem is really powerful as a demotivator for a kind of self-defense.
[1:09:59] So, and they say, well, you can't blame too much if people are taking liberties because it's just a made-up story. But it's not just a made-up story, right? So Odysseus returning from the Trojan War, that actually was a real thing. Troy existed at a place called Hissarlik in Turkey. Archaeological layers show destruction by fire around the late 13th or early 12th century BC, matching the traditional war date. Hittite records mention conflicts involving Vilusa, or Troy, and Achiyawa, likely Mycenaean Greeks. So a war, a series of raids almost certainly happened. We don't know if it was the exact 10-year siege with a wooden horse or anything like that. Now, of course, Cyclops, Sirens, Scylla & Charybdis, they're fictional, heavily mythologized.
[1:10:44] And Troy also was a pretty good, it was like a Strait of Hormuz thing. It was a pretty good trading route. So maybe it had something to do with Helen. Maybe it had something to do with wanting to gain control of a trading route, in order to gain taxes and so on. Ithaca is a real island. They have found relatively recently Mycenaean-era ruins, later sanctuaries, where people worshipped Odysseus as a hero or cult figure. The story had deep cultural roots. So the poems rooted in the real collapse of Bronze Age civilizations and Mycenaean seafaring culture. So when he's talking about sort of the end times of things, that's important as well. But, of course, the idea that a society is destroyed by not having enough sympathy for outsiders, that's a very modern left-wing open borders kind of thing as a whole. So that's kind of important. And so...
[1:11:40] So yeah, this is the math, right? So the face that launches 1,000 ships. So Homer's Iliad gives the number in the catalog of ships, 1,186 ships from 29 Greek contingents. So 50 to 120 men per ship. That's where 60,000 and over 100,000 men. Now, why did they go fight? So Greek leaders, kings and princes, were bound by an old oath they swore when Helen first married Menelaus. Menelaus. If anyone stole her, they'd all come to help and get her back. So once Paris took her, Agamemnon and Menelaus called in that favor. Now, some leaders, like Odysseus, actually tried to dodge it at first, but most came either out of honor, fear of shame, or political loyalty. Common soldiers had to follow their local kings. It's like a feudal duty.
[1:12:28] And if the common soldiers tried to dodge this, it was horrendous, right? In the Iliad, when the army nearly breaks and runs for home, leaders like Nestor and Agamemnon make it brutally clear anyone who tries to desert or sail off early will die right there, killed on the spot, not allowed to leave. Homer shows the social pressures and shame playing a big role too. The ultimate deterrent was execution or death at the hands of their own commanders. It's like the First World War. You either go over the trench or I'm going to shoot you right here. Because if your local king called you to fight and you refused beatings public shaming death and so on, in the iliad when the army tried to flee leaders like Odysseus physically beat men back into line with the staff desertion or outright refusal was treated of betrayal of the group and your leader, common soldiers had little real choice once their king decided to go.
[1:13:17] And what I thought was interesting too is that the slaves didn't fight and I've been posting about this on X a little bit because everyone's, oh, slavery was like the worst thing. Morally, it's a great evil. But in a time of war, you were better off being a slave for two reasons. Well, slaves were very rarely, well, sorry, it did sometimes happen, but in general, slaves were not enlisted to fight because you don't want to train slaves how to fight. And also because people don't want to, like a slave costs the price of a car, right? It's sort of a modern car. So $30,000, $40,000 or whatever, like a modern good car. And so the slave owners didn't want their slaves to be taken away from them and sent to fright on the front. Sometimes slaves were kept like behind the lines doing sort of support roles and so on. But if you were a slave during a time of war, you had a significantly higher chance of survival. So it wasn't like, if you could go back in time to the time of the Trojan War, would you rather be a citizen or a slave? Well, if you wanted to survive, probably a slave. And male captives were almost always killed on the spot. And this is why the Trojans fight so desperately. Surrender means death for the men and enslavement for the women and children. So that is another aspect of it as well.
[1:14:38] Now, I did ask what was the casualty rate for the Greek soldiers in the Trojan War? Now, if 100,000 plus went, I mean, I didn't exactly count the extras, but it sure didn't look like 100,000 were leaving. And of course, we can imagine just war, disease, accidents, infections, dysentery, like all of this kind of stuff as a whole. So rough modern guesses, depending on the fleet size, 30,000 to 40,000 Greeks died over 10 years. So nobody knows in particular. So was Greece considerably weakened by the Trojan War? Well, yes. Homer and later Greek writers described the Greek kingdoms as powerful before the war, then struggling badly afterwards. The Iliad itself hints at it with Odysseus saying the war drained the manpower of every city. And archaeology is right along with this. Right after the traditional Trojan War period, about 1200 BC, I'm going to not say BCE because I think it's before Jesus, right? Almost every Mycenaean palace in Greece was destroyed or abandoned.
[1:15:40] Right after, the entire Bronze Age palace system collapsed within a generation or two. So, Trojan War was one main cause, or just one factor. Greece came out of that era much weaker, poorer, and more chaotic. That collapse kicked off what we now call the Greek Dark Ages. The Greek Dark Ages lasted roughly from 1100 BC to about 800 BC, so 300 years and change, right after the collapse of the Mycenaean palaces. Life got much poorer and simpler. big palaces disappeared, writing was forgotten, long-distance trade collapsed, and populations dropped sharply. People lived in small villages instead of grand cities, and most of the fancy art and craftsmanship vanished. And things started getting better around 800 BC. The archaic period began and Greece slowly reconnected with the wider Mediterranean world. And this is also when the Homeric epics were finally written down. Populations started growing again. More people meant more labor, more demand and pressure to innovate, trade revived. Trade is very important, of course, for survival. Greeks began sailing and trading across the Mediterranean, bringing back wealth, ideas, and the alphabet, which they adapted from Phoenician script. And they started founding colonies all over the Mediterranean and Black Sea. This relieved pressure at home and created new markets.
[1:16:53] And so, why did Greece never become a world power after ancient times? Mainly because, And I think this is related to the Odyssey and to the Trojan War. Greece spent most of the last 2,300 years under somebody else's rule. After the classical era, it fell under Macedon, then Rome, then the Byzantine Empire, and finally the Ottomans, the Turks, for nearly 400 years until independence in 1830. Being ruled by larger empires prevented it from building independent power. Even after gaining freedom, and I mean, my wife's parents grew up in a village and there were holes in the walls from the communists and trying to take over and so on right...
[1:17:37] About 10 million people in Greece limited farmland no huge natural resources compared to powers like Britain France or Germany lack the population and economic base to compete on a world scale I'm not sure about the huge natural resources thing because japan was pretty powerful and has very few natural resources in the same kind of way, and of course because Greece is a crossroads area right like Strait of Hormuz stuff it's constantly fought over by bigger, powers as a whole. But the funny thing is that ancient Greeks did not see the Odyssey as a tragedy. It was the ultimate success story. A man using his intelligence and endurance to overcome impossible hearts and finally get home. That was sort of... The real tragedy in Greek is not so much the Odyssey, which is the post-war story, but the Iliad. All that pointless death and destruction with no real winner. It's their.
[1:18:27] All quiet on the Western front kind of story. And so the Iliad doesn't celebrate war. It shows war is brutal, heartbreaking, and ultimately pointless. Even the great heroes like Achilles and Hector suffer terribly. And the final image of the poem is Hector's funeral, not a victory parade. And this shaped Greek thinking about war for a very long time. For centuries, Greek literature, philosophy, and even political debates carried a deep awareness of war's terrible costs. While they're still fought constantly, the Iliad helped plant the idea that glory in battle always comes with immense suffering and loss, not exactly a ringing endorsement of war. And again, this goes back to me to a lot of art. It's just about teaching white males to never fight or fight back or whatever, right?
[1:19:10] So the Greeks, why did the Trojan War last 10 years, 10 years? So ancient siege warfare was incredibly difficult. Most of the time they were camped outside the city, raiding nearby villages rather than attacking Troy itself. They had no siege engines or artillery. And both sides were evenly matched. The Trojans had strong allies from across Anatolia. The Greeks were far from home, struggling with supply lines, low morale, and so on. So they couldn't. That's why the trojan horse um was was decisive in that kind of, way from ancient Greece to troy five to 650 nautical miles which is pretty wild like he just had to go I guess not a tiny distance or anything like that across the aegean and aegean and ionian seas, a good engine ship with favorable winds could cover that in about a week 20 years versus, a week from eastern Greek mainland like oilists where the fleet gathered. It was a bit shorter, maybe four to six days sail. Isn't that wild?
[1:20:09] And let's see here. Yeah. No continual reinforcements for the Greeks. And I was curious, what was the status of free speech in ancient Greece? Because criticizing wars is a tough thing, right? So in Athens during its democratic period, free speech was strong, especially for male citizens. They could speak openly in the assembly. They could criticize leaders and debate politics freely. Playwrights like Aristophanes openly mocked powerful politicians on stage, but only for adult male citizens. Women, slaves, and foreigners had no political voice in particular. Athens, of course, as we know from Socrates, could punish speech it disliked.
[1:20:46] In places like Sparta, as we can imagine, a whole lot less freedom of speech. Society was tightly controlled. Open criticism of the state or the military was not tolerated. So that's important as well. And so I just wanted to, you know, abandon their post, return home, the rebellion that soldiers have. There's a famous scene in the Iliad in book two, the Greek army becomes so demoralized, they suddenly rush to their ships, fully intending to abandon the war and sail home. Immediately, they're only stopped when Odysseus, at the urging of Athena, who was the goddess of wisdom and strategic warfare, physically beats them back into line with Agamemnon's staff and shames them into staying. This episode is called The Test of the army. And this is after nine years of fighting and all of that as well.
[1:21:30] So I just wanted to mention all of that kind of stuff.
[1:21:35] It doesn't so much matter what happens to a society. It matters in particular, the stories that are told about what happens. And this is a very powerful story, about war and its consequences. And I can't imagine another culture, maybe it would be the case for another culture. But I can't imagine another culture castigating its own war heroes. It's not very common. Like I don't see, I mean, as we've talked about before, on the show, I mean, a brutal war hero, Genghis Khan, is celebrated by Mongolians. They've got statues, they've named an airport after the guy, he's on their currency. They openly celebrate this absolutely psychotic, mass rapey-rapey warlord guy. I don't know that the Muslims castigate their own warriors and their victories and so on, but it is sort of this unique thing. And of course, you know, we don't want war, but the world is based on combat to a large degree. And if you're going to give up any martial heroism or passion for self-defense, you're.
[1:22:45] I don't know that it lasts particularly long and Greece went from an absolute central world power to being conquered for over 2,000 years, in part because of this war, but I think more importantly because of this poem and the fact that it comes out at a time when the West is in crisis, I'm not sure is entirely accidental, if that makes sense.
[1:23:05] Right, right.
[1:23:07] All right, I think we've done a pretty good ramble fest. I think I got everything across that I was looking for, and that's what matters most of all, of course. Is there anything else that you wanted to mention would you recommend I wouldn't recommend it it's not even a good make-up movie it's not even a good escapist movie I just find it long slow grinding dull and negative as a whole but what do you think?
[1:23:29] No, I would, I would also not recommend it. Uh, you know, it was confusing, long and then the stuff that wasn't confusing and long was irritating or frustrating.
[1:23:38] Right.
[1:23:39] You know so um yeah I think uh you know there are other things that I had mentioned, but all sort of, you know, coming down to like, this is this dark, gross sort of, you know, dirty look. I mean, I've not actually seen Greece myself, but you know, go look.
[1:23:54] Well, you've seen the pictures, like the beautiful Aegean, these cities on the hillside with this white, and I don't know if it was that case like 3,000 years ago or whatever, but I mean, Greece is absolutely beautiful and the fact that it looked like this, like shaking out an umbrella on the London subway line just did not seem to fit it at all. I don't know, why can't you just make it beautiful?
[1:24:12] I mean, and, yeah, I was going to say, don't worry about it. This is a random thought. But no, I don't have anything else to add here. This has been a great chat. I mean, there were a couple of things that they got right, sort of. But, you know, for the most part, it's not worth going to see. I don't know if there is, are there any adaptations you're aware of, to film of, I mean, I guess the Iliad, but particularly the Odyssey?
[1:24:42] Oh, yeah, there's been a bunch for sure. Yeah, there's been a bunch for sure. And you can see this sort of glorious woman who played Helen of Troy, I think in the 80s or whatever, versus this woman who plays her now. So there have been a number of adaptations before. I have not watched them. And so it may be worth watching them to do a sort of comparison of the two. But I found this soulless. And I can see all these people saying, oh, the technicals, the cinematography, the lighting, the costumes is like, bro, I don't care about that stuff at all. What I care about is the humanity of the story and people's motivations didn't really make any sense. People's character arcs didn't really make any sense. I thought the acting with the exception of John Leguizamo was pretty good. Anne Hathaway was fantastic in my view.
[1:25:26] Everyone else was just kind of bland and dispirited and trudging their way through. And if the characters don't seem exciting, oh, yeah, one other thing I want to mention. So Odysseus is like a passionate, powerful military leader able to keep a campaign going for 10 years. And he has all the charisma of a desiccated mold-filled soap dish. I mean, it really is terrible. Here's the thing, like, I don't mean to, like, macho myself up or anything like that because Lord knows I don't have his physique, even though I'm a little older. But listen, have you ever been in a situation with men who are going through incredible difficulties? Do they ever make jokes?
[1:26:08] Of course they do. I mean, when we used to have to go out in minus 35 degree weather in a hailstorm to go and get soil samples, you know, it was actually quite funny.
[1:26:20] We're like, this could not be a worse possible situation. All you can do is laugh. And it happens in the army all the time. It happens with people. If you've ever worked with manual laborers and so on, you know, they will constantly make jokes about how bad things are. There's a kind of positive humor that goes along with physical difficulties. And I just thought where's his charisma where's his henry v ability to you know rally the troops the famous sort of saint crispin speech where is his flashes of insight and wisdom where's his leadership where's like this is a guy who is a one of the most famous leaders and motivators in all of human history I'm not saying you've got to turn him into anthony robbins with a sword which would look, I guess, like a toothpick in that giant banana hens guy. But where is his humor? Where is the good humor of the men who are going through these kinds of difficulties? Again, it's famous in the military that embrace the suck, right? You've heard the sort of phrase in the military.
[1:27:23] I've worked in very tough manual labor jobs and people make a lot of bitter jokes and funny jokes about it because what else are you going to do? And I just, I don't know if Christopher Nolan has ever worked a manual labor job or talked. You should go and talk. If I was making this movie, I'd go and spend like a month or two talking to soldiers because that's the closest analogy that we have. And people are still people and so on. And the idea that it's all just grim and he, the only passion that he showed was when he was weeping about the sirens and everything else was just kind of staring and mumbling. And oh my God, like I just needed a flash of something I could care about. Because if they're going through hell and they're making jokes.
[1:28:02] You know, that's going to give you something to admire. I admire these guys. I want them to live. But if they're just wandering around, complaining and being negative and not protecting themselves and wandering into caves with no... The survival instincts of your average butterfly in a windstorm just doesn't, I needed something to admire. I needed something to be passionate about. And just watching a guy in a drab landscape be attacked and be depressed for three hours is just not entertainment. It really felt like a root canal in IMAX.
[1:28:36] Yeah. No, I mean, military guys and EMS, police and all those sorts of folks, they're, I mean, that's one of the things. It's a stereotype and often true. They have a wicked and dark sense of humor.
[1:28:47] They do.
[1:28:47] But, you know, but it's slash coping. But it's also like, look, I mean, it's not just coping in terms of like the cope, that's sort of the colloquial. No, it's actually, it's how you deal with it because it sucks. Embrace to suck, like you said.
[1:29:03] Yeah. Yeah, I remember once I was riding on the back of, it was in winter, and we had a bunch of drill bits. And I was riding on the sled being pulled by a snowmobile through the forest. And there was some guys hiking ahead and then a friend of mine was driving the snowmobile. I was sitting on the back and he was going to go down a steep hill and I decided to get off because it just looked a little dangerous. So he went down the steep hill and he hit the bottom and the whole thing stopped. All of the drill bits got removed and they went around him in this sort of pulp fiction shoot around the guy. They just went around him. And the guys look back and see this guy had almost been speared by like eight different drill bits, like these big giant, like heavy drill bits. And one of them guys like, what are you, a vampire hunter? And it's like, cause you know, you could have been impaled with this kind of stuff. Right. And those kinds of jokes is just how you survive these, these horrible, difficult, uh, situations. Uh, you know, there, there was a, uh, when we were carrying these drill bits on these, um, these, this heavy, deep snow, and there were all these bushes down there and you kept getting the tip of your snow shoe caught. And then it would whap up and hit you on the butt. And he's like, I only like to be spanked by my girlfriend, you know, this, this kind of stuff just you know goofy jokes that you make uh when you're going through these kinds of physical horrible uh situations and so on or, there was a guy when when we were carrying these 80 pound weights of of of soil on sacks on our back and we had to all the trees had been cut down so they were all just jumbled we had to go on these slippery tree trunks to get back to the road and I just remember uh, this guy saying this is the worst game of pickup sticks I've ever played. Because, you know, if you slip and you get your groin mashed by some tree. And so that kind of good-humored joking about how terrible things are, I just, I really could have seen some of that. And I think that would have really changed the movie, given some flash of courage and comedy and given you something to admire, as opposed to these depressed guys like logs rolling off Niagara Falls into death is just with barely lifting a finger to change the outcome.
[1:31:11] Anyway. All right. So we'll end here, freedomain.com/donate to help out the show. If you've had thoughts, we got anything wrong, please let us know in the comments below. We'll put our sources. We'll get this out right away. And thanks, James, for your time. It was a great chat.
[1:31:26] Yep. Great.
[1:31:26] Bye.
[1:31:27] Bye.
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