The Odyssey

Say Zues’s Law one more time… I was gifted a perfect preview of this film before watching the latest James Cameron Avatar in iMax last year. They just showed a straight 5-10min of the Trojan Horse scene, uncut, from gifting to gating. It was the best preview I had ever seen: continuous music building, tension increasing, a crashing wave of resolution. If only the whole film had been like that. There were some very lovely parts, as all Odyssey retelling tend to have. I loved Circe’s warping work, the landscapes of Calypso’s beach, the shores of Hades, the monologue of the Sirens’ call. But ultimately I felt it was just too poor of a script. Multiple moments had me reeling away from the screen, taken aback by phrasing that sounded like a first draft. “Civilization will rise again”?! Who speaks like this? I had a thought after the preview: I had hoped that the film would be entirely disjoint, every adventure of Odysseus told as a story by someone else, to another character who would then…