Speaker 1: The last time there was this much hupla around a
Speaker 1: Christopher Nolan film, it was Oppenheimer, which cleaned up at
Speaker 1: the Oscars in twenty twenty four, taking home seven Academy Awards,
Speaker 1: including Best Picture and Best Director. This time, Nolan has
Speaker 1: shot an entire film in Imax and assembled yet another
Speaker 1: all star cast. Will he do it again? It's The Odyssey.
Speaker 1: I'm Ronald Young Junior, and I'm leaving the theater.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 3: This is Ronald and I am leaving the theater after
Speaker 3: seeing The Odyssey. The Odyssey written and directed by Christopher Nolan,
Speaker 3: starring Matt Damon, Tom Holland and Hathaway, Robert Pattinson, Lupita Youngo,
Speaker 3: Samantha Morton, Zendeia, and Charlie Sterren per Usual. For a
Speaker 3: complete listing of the cast and crew, go to the
Speaker 3: link in our show notes because I definitely left some
Speaker 3: names out.
Speaker 2: I am not here alone.
Speaker 3: I am watching this screening in La or I just
Speaker 3: watched the screening in la and I'm here with Night.
Speaker 2: Rosie Knight.
Speaker 3: Welcome to the show, longtime fan, first time guest on
Speaker 3: the Nope, I didn't land that well anyway, I'm glad
Speaker 3: you're here.
Speaker 2: How are you?
Speaker 4: I'm glad to be here. It's very fun to watch that.
Speaker 5: And it starts to be Reunited after Pop Culture Debate Club,
Speaker 5: which we did a couple of times together.
Speaker 3: Good Pull. We don't talk about that show here, but
Speaker 3: it's okay. I'm not hurt or anything. It's okay. No, no,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna leave it in there. I need everyone to
Speaker 3: know my pain, all right. So The Odyssey is Christopher
Speaker 3: Nolan's reimagining making of Homer's classic the Odyssey, which is
Speaker 3: a bunch of Greek mythology and stuff. You probably learned
Speaker 3: about this in school. This plot follows Odysseus after he
Speaker 3: fights in a war against the Trojans and he has
Speaker 3: to take the long way home because he keeps getting lost. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: his wife and son are trying to fight off people
Speaker 3: who are trying to usurp his throne home in Ithaca. Okay,
Speaker 3: that is the plot the movie, Rosie Night, What did
Speaker 3: you think of this film?
Speaker 4: Okay? So I do hate to say, this is a
Speaker 4: tough day for me.
Speaker 5: Because I am, as most people know who recognize my voice,
Speaker 5: I am a Christopher Nolan sink, let's say, But I
Speaker 5: gotta say I actually thought the movie banged.
Speaker 4: I loved it. It's very annoying.
Speaker 5: I actually thought it was like incredible, and it was
Speaker 5: very tailored to my exact taste.
Speaker 4: So yes, I was.
Speaker 5: I went in with the expectations and I was honestly
Speaker 5: pretty blown away. The imax of it all was amazing
Speaker 5: to see a full movie in imax for the first
Speaker 5: time ever.
Speaker 3: It's so funny because about a third through the movie,
Speaker 3: I was like, this movie stupid, and then halfway through
Speaker 3: the movie, I'm like, oh, what are you doing? And
Speaker 3: then somewhere in that last third, I was like, Yo,
Speaker 3: this movie is incredible.
Speaker 2: What is happening here?
Speaker 3: You're absolutely right, I feel like the it's There was
Speaker 3: a part of me that said, I don't think the
Speaker 3: writing of this movie is that great, but I think
Speaker 3: the execution of this movie, like what they actually what
Speaker 3: you actually see on screen, which is more than just
Speaker 3: the lines that they're delivering. And there are some banger
Speaker 3: lines in here, but there was just a lot of
Speaker 3: parts of story that I was questioning, pacing and all that.
Speaker 3: But then again, when they get to the point that
Speaker 3: they're trying to make, it gets a lot better. That
Speaker 3: being said, there's a lot of this that kind of
Speaker 3: reminded me of Exception of a man tried to get
Speaker 3: home to his kids, and emotionally the beats felt a
Speaker 3: lot like inception.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you call it.
Speaker 5: Now, I will just say I don't know if you've
Speaker 5: ever watched any of a Christophanilla movie, but that's basically
Speaker 5: every fucking movie he makes, Like it's always about a
Speaker 5: dad going back to his kid, A wife has died,
Speaker 5: I have to see. I actually think the constraints of
Speaker 5: the two thousand year old plus poem, which is like,
Speaker 5: you know, this epic that was written probably by hundreds
Speaker 5: of people over like hundreds of years, so it's kind
Speaker 5: of hard to adapt. I found those constraints kind of
Speaker 5: helped him because like he couldn't kill Penelope, like just
Speaker 5: don't do it, like that's not in the story.
Speaker 4: Do the story or whatever.
Speaker 5: You're sorry if it actually is, and he changed that,
Speaker 5: but good for you. So no dead wife. Yeah, it
Speaker 5: definitely has a lot of his usual themes family. I
Speaker 5: think the big thing that stuck out to me though,
Speaker 5: and I was actually talking to in my X ray
Speaker 5: vision group chat.
Speaker 4: About this already.
Speaker 5: It's definitely like a very heavy anti war movie. And
Speaker 5: I think that is a reaction to Oppenheimer, where he
Speaker 5: thought he was making an anti war movie but he
Speaker 5: actually wasn't and it ended up being way more kind
Speaker 5: of controversial. But the big thesis of this movie is
Speaker 5: definitely like an anti war movie, which I was.
Speaker 4: Not expecting, and I felt for me the movie worked.
Speaker 5: But I was speaking some other friends outside who had
Speaker 5: similar issues, like you said, with pacing, but all of
Speaker 5: them agreed that once you get to the third act
Speaker 5: and it wraps up, it actually kind of works. And
Speaker 5: for me it worked because I felt like it was
Speaker 5: very lyrical and weird and kind of like an oral
Speaker 5: story because you just jumped between so many different characters,
Speaker 5: and but it worked. I felt like he got the
Speaker 5: dream like weirdness down.
Speaker 3: That was perfect. I think dreamlike weirdness is a great
Speaker 3: way to talk about. As a matter of fact, I
Speaker 3: think he kind of stretched as a filmmaker in this one,
Speaker 3: because and I mean we're talking about a person who
Speaker 3: did Interstellar. He's good at imagining things. He's good at
Speaker 3: inception tenant, he's good at imagining things. As a matter
Speaker 3: of fact, I'm hoping that he's imagining something new for
Speaker 3: his next film. I don't want to see another historical
Speaker 3: drama from him, But knowing what he was capable and
Speaker 3: how he executed, especially the scene there's a scene where
Speaker 3: I'll just say, pigs, there's pigs, and that scene was
Speaker 3: it was body horror, and I don't like body horror.
Speaker 3: But I was watching the whole time with my hands
Speaker 3: on my head. But I was watching the whole time.
Speaker 3: So I feel like he's definitely stretched himself as a
Speaker 3: filmmaker here in a way that I mean, I already
Speaker 3: know this is a front runner for Best Picture. It's
Speaker 3: everything that Hollywood likes. It is a big, spectacular, epic film.
Speaker 3: I think my only quibbles with it really come down
Speaker 3: to things that took me out of the movie several times.
Speaker 2: Every now and then.
Speaker 3: Telemachus, playing by Tom Holland is just like, hey, mom,
Speaker 3: so and so and so, and I'm just like, what
Speaker 3: do you mean, Mom.
Speaker 5: Let's talk Okay, So let's talk about this because we
Speaker 5: were This is actually something really interesting that Nolan decided
Speaker 5: to do. So there was a recent adaptation of the Odyssey,
Speaker 5: which was the first woman to ever adapt the Odyssey,
Speaker 5: and it was very like plain language and she also
Speaker 5: changed it to iambic pentameter, which is the Shakespearean kind
Speaker 5: of thing rather than how Grecians would have said it.
Speaker 5: And I think because of that, he went for this
Speaker 5: like loose, easy, free, so it doesn't feel forced. And
Speaker 5: I actually think for like ninety five percent of the
Speaker 5: movie it works really well because a lot of times
Speaker 5: when you watch like Lawrence of Arabia or like an
Speaker 5: old timey Cleopatra, they're doing such accents that it ages
Speaker 5: it they do.
Speaker 4: It's campy.
Speaker 5: They're all talking in like very high British. So I
Speaker 5: think that the casual nature for the most part really
Speaker 5: loves ubim. But then like at one point, I'm pretty
Speaker 5: sure that Tom Holland did throw a sword and go
Speaker 5: Dad's swords or something, and I was like, but generally,
Speaker 5: I do want to give credit to the whole cast, actually,
Speaker 5: including Tom Holland and also.
Speaker 4: The Punisher himself.
Speaker 5: You know, John Berthall, he's really great in this movie,
Speaker 5: and he did.
Speaker 2: Not stretch as an actor in this movie.
Speaker 5: Now he didn't, but this is actually the thing that
Speaker 5: worked for me about this movie. Right, John Bernhal's being
Speaker 5: John Bernhale, Robert Pattinson is being Robert Pattinson's Zenda is
Speaker 5: acting as a beautiful young woman, but she's barely in
Speaker 5: it right, so she's basically Zendeia. But the way that
Speaker 5: they put the story together and they cast everything, there
Speaker 5: were truly moments where I was so engrossed that I
Speaker 5: was not just thinking, Oh, that person's seen an air one.
Speaker 5: That person sent a text, which, like with Nosferatu, like
Speaker 5: Egger's last.
Speaker 4: Movie, I really struggled with that with Lily Rose.
Speaker 5: Depp, I do feel like, also you mentioned the horror,
Speaker 5: I do feel like this is the Christopher Nolan who
Speaker 5: for the first time has like watched Robert Eggers and
Speaker 5: Denny Villeneuve. It feels so influenced by June in a
Speaker 5: really positive way.
Speaker 4: Like I feel like this.
Speaker 5: And Dune three coming out this year is gonna tip
Speaker 5: us onto a kind of period piece Swords and Sandals,
Speaker 5: grand epic, because Hollywood's been wanting to do this since
Speaker 5: the fifties.
Speaker 4: But it has always struggled, always struggled.
Speaker 3: I agree, and I think I don't know. I'm like,
Speaker 3: I'm a I'm not a sword in Sandals park guy.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 3: But I will say the one thing that this does
Speaker 3: well is it could have ended as just a sword
Speaker 3: in Sandals movie. But I think what Doune does well
Speaker 3: and what movies like this do well, is that they
Speaker 3: state their ethos enough, and they land their ethos enough
Speaker 3: that you realize, oh, this wasn't about the war, this
Speaker 3: wasn't about We're not gonna see like fifty dudes painting
Speaker 3: abs on their stomach saying oooh like for three hundred
Speaker 3: this is like they're basically saying, no, there's something else
Speaker 3: going on here. Because by the time this movie gets
Speaker 3: to a state, it's point where he's kind of like
Speaker 3: talking to his when he's talking to his wife at
Speaker 3: one point in the movie and he starts to kind
Speaker 3: of state the ethos of the film. I was blown
Speaker 3: away because at some point he says, ten years of
Speaker 3: rage flew into Troy.
Speaker 2: In one night, and I was like, oh no.
Speaker 3: And then as they start showing you, it was just
Speaker 3: such first of all, was remarkable restraint, because you really
Speaker 3: think that you're just seeing vignettes the whole time, But
Speaker 3: when they actually get to the point, it's you realize
Speaker 3: that this was all done with intent, which immediately makes
Speaker 3: me want to watch it again. That being said, I
Speaker 3: need Hollywood to understand that I need Hollywood to say, hey,
Speaker 3: this isn't just sword and sandals. We're actually making something
Speaker 3: that's good here and that matters. And that's what Doune
Speaker 3: and movies like this do.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think like with any genre stuff that's like
Speaker 5: the big issue that Hollywood often has is like the
Speaker 5: same way of seeing it right now with the back rooms,
Speaker 5: where it's this idea of like, oh, quickly find someone
Speaker 5: on YouTube, right, like find something like on YouTube. But
Speaker 5: it's like Caane Parsons is a once in a generational
Speaker 5: talent who's like sixteen years old who made a super
Speaker 5: weird movie, Like you can't replicate that, but what you
Speaker 5: can do is support independent artists, right, So this is
Speaker 5: the same thing where it's like, what you can do
Speaker 5: is give artists with a vision a lot of money
Speaker 5: to do great genre stories that can be analogous. Because
Speaker 5: something I did not expect from Christopher Nolan, who, by
Speaker 5: the way, in the past I have complained a lot
Speaker 5: about his tendencies to be like he's not a very
Speaker 5: international caster, and when he is, he he doesn't usually do.
Speaker 4: A great job. With Dunkirk.
Speaker 5: He really missed the mark on that historically, I felt
Speaker 5: like here he was learning from a lot of his
Speaker 5: own mistakes, Like this was a cast that looked how
Speaker 5: I would a want to see a fucking movie look,
Speaker 5: but be also like, this is what it would be
Speaker 5: like in ancient Greece, like think about trade routes, thinks
Speaker 5: about pillaging and raping, like it's gonna be diverse.
Speaker 4: I think there's a lot of choices.
Speaker 5: He makes that is gonna make this age so much
Speaker 5: better than a lot of his other movies. I actually
Speaker 5: think this is a lot of people are gonna say
Speaker 5: this is the best movie, and I do think they're
Speaker 5: probably right. I only have a couple of Christopher Nolan
Speaker 5: movies i'm a fan of, but this is definitely now
Speaker 5: I've probably got three, you know, with this.
Speaker 3: It's funny because I'm I like again when I by
Speaker 3: the time I walked out of it, I enjoyed it.
Speaker 3: And the more I talk to you, the more that
Speaker 3: my score on this is like is is adjusting. I
Speaker 3: love Christopher Nolan like you, and I feel like when
Speaker 3: I think about this as a part of his cannon,
Speaker 3: it obviously fits his most recent cannon, if you because
Speaker 3: Dunkirk Oppenheimer all of.
Speaker 2: Those, Tenant is the only one. Tennant is kind of
Speaker 2: the odd man out.
Speaker 3: Now if you think of it as last four movies,
Speaker 3: it's Dunkirk, Oppenhauer to Oppenheimer, Tenant and the Odyssey, and
Speaker 3: Tenant's really.
Speaker 5: Like more of the last bastion of like the Batman sci.
Speaker 2: Fi era, you know, the Interstellar inception all that.
Speaker 3: So because of that, it makes me say, I don't
Speaker 3: know what he's going to do next, but I will
Speaker 3: say he is a very sharp filmmaker right now, and
Speaker 3: it's gonna be I mean, it's gonna be very I
Speaker 3: mean I almost feel like you might need to quit.
Speaker 2: Like I don't, Like there's a part of me I'm like,
Speaker 2: where do you go from here?
Speaker 4: I'm not gonna lie.
Speaker 5: It does feel like he's kind of done. This is
Speaker 5: a magnum opus Like it felt to me like all
Speaker 5: of his British tendencies, all of his storytelling tendencies, all
Speaker 5: of his film nud tendencies to be the first director
Speaker 5: to ever direct a full feature length film completely in imax,
Speaker 5: like it's all led to this. I think if I
Speaker 5: was gonna see him do anything, I would love to
Speaker 5: see him like take a twenty five mil budget and
Speaker 5: do like a mid budget like crime thriller or something
Speaker 5: like he used to do. And again, not a huge
Speaker 5: fan of all of his work, and I will say
Speaker 5: I do think the reason this is really good is
Speaker 5: also because he had so much source material to work from.
Speaker 4: I think that helped for me.
Speaker 5: I would love to see him adept something where he's
Speaker 5: not just directly ripping off an anime movie, So like,
Speaker 5: let's do an original movie next Christopher, a little bit
Speaker 5: lower budget. But I know, really Universe was probably gonna
Speaker 5: ask him to do the Iliad, and honestly, I would
Speaker 5: be there on the first day.
Speaker 4: So I can't complain.
Speaker 3: Okay, So here at leaving a theater, we rate movies
Speaker 3: out of five stars. I know this is your least
Speaker 3: favorite thing, but it's out of five stars and you
Speaker 3: can use decimals. Let me just tell you what the
Speaker 3: scale is so you understand it. So one is this
Speaker 3: it's irredeemable basically. Two is I didn't like this. I
Speaker 3: hated it, didn't like it. Three is I would watch
Speaker 3: this again. That is the most basic down the middle.
Speaker 3: I would watch this again when you start to get
Speaker 3: above three, when you get to like three point twenty
Speaker 3: five three point five. You really enjoyed this movie. Four
Speaker 3: is typically where a lot of the Oscar films live,
Speaker 3: and most of the movies that you really like they
Speaker 3: live around the four range, and then five typically. Just
Speaker 3: so you know, the first movie I ever gave five
Speaker 3: stars to was Godzilla minus one, and I also gave
Speaker 3: it to the one with Lupinia and Jungo as the robot.
Speaker 3: The Wild Robot also got five stars. So there's movies
Speaker 3: that are just so satisfying that their imperfections are not
Speaker 3: outweighed by how I feel when I move out of them.
Speaker 3: Those are movies that get fives. So now you know
Speaker 3: the ratings there were five. You can use decimals if
Speaker 3: you need them. What would you rate this movie out
Speaker 3: of five stars?
Speaker 5: No, I think going by your rating, I think just
Speaker 5: being objective, being sensible. I mean, this is like a
Speaker 5: solid four star movie for me. I think I would
Speaker 5: highly recommend people go and watch it. I think the
Speaker 5: cinematography is amazing. I was not bored even though it's
Speaker 5: fucking long.
Speaker 4: That I like the weird choices, but and I do
Speaker 4: feel like it pays off.
Speaker 5: I do feel like maybe some people would leave, so
Speaker 5: I'm not giving it five. It's not perfect, but I
Speaker 5: do think it is definitely much better than just good.
Speaker 3: So so let me just say something about you that
Speaker 3: I think is incredible. You are a very sharp reviewer,
Speaker 3: and you understand things very well, and you're very good
Speaker 3: at articulating things, and you're very fair when you don't
Speaker 3: like things, because I know you don't like Christopher Nolan.
Speaker 3: And I know that because when I was sitting here,
Speaker 3: I was trying to think of what my score was
Speaker 3: going to be. And when I walked out of this film,
Speaker 3: I thought, this is a four star movie. I four
Speaker 3: right down the middle, and I wasn't sure what you
Speaker 3: were going to say, because it seemed like you enjoyed
Speaker 3: it more.
Speaker 2: So I'm like, where could it beat? Where could it land?
Speaker 3: And you just solidified that, Yes, it's one hundred percent.
Speaker 3: This is a solid four star movie, one hundred percent
Speaker 3: one through three, four stars out of five. I don't
Speaker 3: think it's more. I think a lot of critics are
Speaker 3: gonna lose their minds and give it like it's probably
Speaker 3: gonna have a ninety five ninety six percent Rotten Tomato score.
Speaker 3: I wouldn't be surprised if it's even higher than that.
Speaker 3: They're gonna be run with that. I think it's a
Speaker 3: four star movies. I think you set your expectations saying
Speaker 3: I'm going to go see a very good movie. Get
Speaker 3: your popcorn. It's two hours and fifty two minutes long.
Speaker 3: There was sometimes where you felt every minute of that
Speaker 3: two hours and fifty two minutes. But what it does
Speaker 3: in that time, I mean, it's good. And then we
Speaker 3: sit at the end, we saw the credits. The credits
Speaker 3: are less than six minutes long, which your point, less
Speaker 3: than seven minutes long. What you pointed out was probably
Speaker 3: because they used a lot of practical effects. They didn't
Speaker 3: use a lot of like houses and digitals and all
Speaker 3: that which have all these staffs that make the credits
Speaker 3: much longer. So one last thing I'll say before I go,
Speaker 3: what did you think of Ludwin Gordson Ludwig Gornson's score.
Speaker 4: I did love it. I'm a Ludwig fan.
Speaker 5: It was obviously very Dune influence, very Zimmer Hans Zimmer influence.
Speaker 5: I think what I really liked about it was the
Speaker 5: more like electronic elements that he bought in that kind
Speaker 5: of brought something new to it for me, and I
Speaker 5: think like that is something what I liked about this movie.
Speaker 5: And the reason is that for for me is like
Speaker 5: there is unique It's not in a original film. We've
Speaker 5: seen Greek myths, but there is unique choices that are
Speaker 5: made throughout that makes it very satisfying and enjoyable. And
Speaker 5: I think the score is one of them, because it
Speaker 5: would have been very easy to go like John William's
Speaker 5: Danny Elfman even like classic, and it's so much weirder,
Speaker 5: and I think it worked.
Speaker 3: I absolutely agree, and with that, I'm leaving the Theater
Speaker 3: as a production of Oh It's Big Roun Studios. I
Speaker 3: mixed this episode, and per usual, I am working very hard.
Speaker 3: I am currently in LA right now. By the time
Speaker 3: you're hearing this, I will be on my way to
Speaker 3: New York because I am recording a new podcast. I
Speaker 3: have not announced it yet, but I am announcing it
Speaker 3: very soon. You can only hear that announcement on Patreon.
Speaker 3: They are going to know the truth. They are going
Speaker 3: to know exactly what's going on. Patreon is a very
Speaker 3: good source of support for me because I'm working hard
Speaker 3: putting out all of these episodes of Leaving the Theater.
Speaker 3: For you sometimes it's harder than it looks, even though
Speaker 3: I know I make it look easy.
Speaker 2: It's real, real labor. It's a labor of love, but
Speaker 2: it's labor still labor.
Speaker 3: If that means something to you, go to patreon dot
Speaker 3: com slash Oh It's Biggron, or go to the link
Speaker 3: in our show notes. Show art from Heather Wilder. Theme
Speaker 3: music by the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder. For more information about
Speaker 3: the Odyssey or Rosie Knight, check out our show notes.
Speaker 3: You can follow me on Instagram, Blue Sky, TikTok, threads,
Speaker 3: or letterbox at Owens Big Rond that's at O h
Speaker 3: I T.
Speaker 2: S b I g R O N.
Speaker 3: You can find out more about this show on other Owis
Speaker 3: Big Brown Studio shows by following us on Instagram at
Speaker 3: Owiz Big Round Studios. Leaving the Theater will be back soon.
Speaker 3: Thanks for listening and thanks for being.
Speaker 2: On the show.
Speaker 4: Thank you having me.
Speaker 3: Leaving the Theater is a production of Oh It's Big.
Speaker 5: I just try to do a cheery point and instead I'll.
Speaker 2: Get it for you.
Speaker 4: Sorry, with that, With that,