The team at SteynOnline is delighted to welcome Tal Bachman back to these pages. This is the first of several forthcoming columns by Tal. Enjoy!
This is the first topic I've ever written about which probably shouldn't be written about at all. By anyone. Anywhere.
Based on all indications so far, the best way to treat director Christopher Nolan's forthcoming movie, The Odyssey (starring Matt Damon as Odysseus) is simply to ignore it. Never mention it. Certainly not see it. Everyone in the entire world should simply continue living their lives as though the movie never existed at all.
The reason isn't just that the trailer conveys an odd combination of overwrought and unserious. It's that the trailer, interviews, and press releases so far suggest the main point of the movie — maybe it's only point — is to provoke spluttering outrage from half the population, only so as to provoke the other half into buying tickets just to feel superior. Which is to say, to write a piece objecting to any aspect of Nolan's new movie is to give these folks what they want. It vindicates their business plan. Ultimately helps make them money.
Could Hollywood be that cynical? Could any group of film industry "creatives" and their bosses be so hollow, so self-absorbed, so willing to do violence to one of the great literary achievements in history, only in order to pursue a ragebait, "movie-as-trolling-device" commercial strategy?
Well, the alternative explanation is a level of artistic incompetence not seen since Franz Liebkind produced "Springtime for Hitler". Given Nolan's successful career so far, that seems unlikely. But who knows? (On a side note: Nolan's slavishly laudatory 6,700 word Wikipedia entry reads exactly like Nolan wrote it himself — a possibility I'm definitely not ruling out).
But let me just dive into the details of why I suspect this entire project, in the end, amounts only to monetized trolling.
The Odyssey, as you'll recall, recounts the story of the Greek warrior Odysseus trying to return home to his wife Penelope, and his son Telemachus, after the Trojan War ends. The war itself had begun after the beautiful Helen, queen of Sparta, ditches her husband, King Menelaus, and runs off with a visiting Trojan prince named Paris. To retrieve his disloyal wife from her new home in Troy, the cuckolded Menelaus rounds up an army of soldiers from surrounding Greek city-states (one of whom is Odysseus). They all sail to Troy, expecting a quick battle and rescue. Instead, they wind up in the Mother of All Quagmires, spending the next decade trying and failing to take the walled city. One of their problems, toward the end of their ten-year attempt, is a terrible quarrel between top warrior Achilles, and the commander of the entire army, Agamemnon. Achilles grows furious as a result of their quarrel, and announces he will no longer fight. This is a huge blow: Achilles is by far the most dominant warrior in the entire army. The Greeks start to lose as Achilles sits out.
But when the Trojans kill his best friend Patroclus, Achilles rejoins the fight to avenge him, beating back the Trojans like no one else can.
Yet the Greeks remain unable to breach Troy's walls, retrieve Helen, or defeat the city once and for all. Eventually, Achilles' fellow-soldier, Odysseus, comes up with a plan: They'll feign abandoning the war altogether. They'll pack up their entire camp, load up the ships, and take off. Behind, at the front gates of Troy, they'll leave a large, newly-constructed wooden horse as a parting gift, honoring Troy's resilience. They'll even leave behind a Greek soldier (a brave, theatrically-inclined chap named Sinon) to sell the whole story to the Trojans: Feigning upset, Sinon will tell the Trojans the Greeks mistreated him and left him behind when they decided to sail home. He'll tell them the horse is a sacred offering to Athena, such that if they destroy it, they'll anger the gods. He'll even suggest that if they bring the horse inside the city walls, they'll receive even more divine favor.
The Trojans fall for the ruse. They bring the giant wooden horse inside the city. They proceed to celebrate their victory over the Greeks with a night of revelry. As the Trojans finally settle into alcohol-induced sleep, Greek soldiers hiding inside the horse exit, throw open the city gates, and the rest of the Greek army — which only pretended to sail home — moves in and sacks the city.
The war ends. The Greeks sail home. Only one crew gets waylaid: Odysseus and his crew. Poseidon sabotages them. This goes on for a decade. The whole time, Odysseus' young son, Telemachus, is growing up without him. His lonely wife, Penelope, has no idea whether her husband is alive or dead, and is beset by eager suitors. Finally, Odysseus makes it back to Ithaca, after twenty years away (and I won't spoil the end for you).
Now, if you're anyone normal running a movie studio, you'd think: "Wow. This could be spectacular. 'Star Wars'? Huge franchise. 'Lord of the Rings'? Huge. 'Game of Thrones'? TV, but still huge. All our superhero movies? Huge franchises. There's an eternal demand out there for these big, drawn-out dramas, multi-episode, high-stakes, compelling characters. Hell, we could turn this whole Homer thing into all kinds of movies, with spin-offs, sequels to the sequels, the whole thing. All we gotta do first is tell the story the way Homer wrote it. And after that, we can make up our own add-on episodes. We could make zillions on this! And it can go on for decades!".
Instead, Nolan and Universal, as I mentioned above, have gone, as they say, "in a different direction". And again, there's just no way to explain that different direction, other than as the most cynical trolling, or the most spectacular artistic incompetence. You can make up your own mind when I dive into more details next time.
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