Galloping for the Exit

A few days after I posted here about Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, The Atlantic published another article about it by Emily Wilson, this time discussing Nolan’s version of the Trojan Horse. For its timing alone, it felt like that quote from another Homer-related property, but mainly I was annoyed that she and the article’s illustrator had spoiled Nolan’s opening scene. None of the features of Homer’s Odyssey have been a surprise to anyone for two thousand years, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to spoil in Nolan’s. I was glad I’d enjoyed the full impact of his imagery before I’d seen it reproduced elsewhere. Seeing this article’s illustration and reading Wilson’s opening beforehand would inevitably alter the impact of the movie’s opening scene. I would say “diminish its impact”, but some might not feel that when they come to watch it; either way, though, it would be harder to do so without preconceptions. Imagine a 1999 reviewer of a newly released The Sixth Sense opening with…