I Made My History-Buff Husband Sit Through "The Odyssey," And We Were Both Surprised

Note: This post is an Op-Ed and shares the author's personal views.

Is The Odyssey historically accurate? Or, is it even a good movie? Bravely, I took myself to an 8.45 p.m. showing to find out.

Melinda Sue Gordon / Universal Pictures / Courtesy Everett Collection

The endless discourse surrounding the "historical accuracy" of Christopher Nolan's take on the epic fall can be divided into two categories. The first are nerds who like to point to things like the armor would have looked very different in actual Greek times. The second are white supremacist crybabies who complain about Black people being on screen. Alas, there is overlap in this Venn diagram. All super fun, given that, you know, IT'S NOT A REAL STORY.

Kristy Sparow / Getty Images for Universal Pictures

As such, I decided to take my husband along for the viewing. I have never read The Odyssey, and generally like Nolan's work. Conversely, my husband has read The Odyssey multiple times and considered The Iliad to be his favorite book as a child. He unironically thinks about the Roman Empire. Regarding Nolan, he has described Inception on numerous occasions as a film made by "a man who's never had a dream in his life."

"Honestly, my main concern about the movie is that it's such a colorful, fantastical tale, and Christopher Nolan's imagination has the texture of porridge — gray, bland, flavorless gruel," he told me beforehand, while eating an alarmingly large piece of chicken. "The images I've seen from it have just shown, in my opinion, a worrying lack of imagination. All of the right angles in his brain projecting onto the beautiful culture of Greece. When I saw those rectangular temple pillars, I was like, 'This is exactly why I hate Christopher Nolan aesthetically.'"

And so we went into the screening, assuming that our differing expectations would result in different experiences (positive for me, negative for him). Turns out we needn't have done all that, because we both thought the movie was incredibly dull.

My husband, a man who will repeatedly rewatch the extended editions of The Lord of the Rings, thought that the movie was too long. As I found myself checking my watch, I agreed — the pacing was all over the place. The majority of the characters were written without any real personality, save for Robert Pattinson doing his best "weird little guy," for one. Similarly, both of us struggled to root for Matt Damon as Odysseus — my husband, in particular, had always read the character as being wily and cunning, which was not translated to the movie.

Even I noticed that the sets all looked like Greek ruins, rather than the colorful buildings and furnishings that would have existed at the time. To be clear, there's nothing inherently wrong with going with a more modernist approach, but in this case, it felt less like a cohesive stylistic choice and simply more...bland. Drab. Void of character. Indeed, a bit like gruel.

My husband had initially been excited for the inclusion of the gods in this movie, as many adaptations over the past decades have omitted them, but this also left something to be desired. While Zendaya's performance and depiction of Athena were strong, the movie kept finding friction between its realistic and fantastical elements, resulting, as he put it, in "weird dissonance." It's neither a fun, who-cares-about-the-history take à la Gladiator, nor is it a careful, terse, Robert Eggers-style take. It's the greige of both, topped off with costume-store Greek armor.

That's not to say that we disliked all of The Odyssey. The sequence with Circe, played by Samantha Morton, is captivating, tense, and grotesque. The underworld scene in this version is a striking reimagining. Lupita Nyong'o steals every scene she is in. Throughout, there are flashes of poignancy, brushes with anti-war messaging or earned tragedy (see: One particular moment with the Cyclops). It's a glimpse at what could have been a better, brilliant film.

All this aside, the movie currently stands at 96% on Rotten Tomatoes, so clearly we are in the minority. What did you make of the movie? LMK in the comments.