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History vs Hollywood — by basket traffic
Need a break from the intensity of life? Need a laugh? Join our podcast. Basket Traffic is where film, television, and history collide—with a sense of humor.
Hosted by Craig Chubb, Shawn Clements, and Susie Chubb, the show dives into movies, pop culture, and the stories behind them, connecting past and present in a way that’s insightful, conversational, and never too serious. Whether it’s breaking down the Oscars, unpacking historical context, or just calling out the absurdities of it all, Basket Traffic is your go-to for smart takes and entertaining tangents.
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History vs Hollywood — by basket traffic
The Odyssey: The Puppet Show Debates Homer
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A movie can be gorgeous and still pick a fight with history, and Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey is doing both at full volume. We walk in fresh off sold-out IMAX screenings and come out arguing about the same question everyone’s asking: does a billion-dollar adaptation deserve the title “The Odyssey” if it reshapes the meaning of Odysseus, Penelope, and home itself?
We start with pure cinema: Nolan’s commitment to practical effects, massive in-camera spectacle, and the kind of imagery that sticks in your head for days. Then we get specific, from the Calypso framing device and the Cyclops sequence to the scene everyone keeps bringing up: Circe turning men into pigs with effects so unsettling it plays like a horror film. Along the way we talk casting, performance style, muted color palettes, and why Nolan’s characters can feel intentionally flat even when the world around them is overwhelming.
From there, we zoom out into the real myth and the real timeline. We break down the Trojan War backstory, Greek gods as active and petty forces, the role of xenia hospitality, and what Homer is doing beneath the monsters and islands. We also go full history-nerd on the Bronze Age, Linear B, the collapse that triggers the Greek Dark Ages, and how the Greek alphabet evolves from Phoenician writing into the foundation of Western literature. If you’re searching “Homer’s Odyssey explained,” “Nolan The Odyssey ending,” or “Odysseus hero meaning,” this conversation is built for you.
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Puppet Wall And Studio Chaos
CraigYou're listening to Basket Traffic.
ShawnA face. A fleet. A war. A man. A woman. A thought. A trick. A podcast.
CraigLast episode I had you wrapped. With this done, literally. Yeah. Uh boom. And now we've got a puppet show.
ShawnI can't wait to see what you're gonna do with the puppet. Yeah. So you've taken the wall down. You were like, you know, you're like Reagan. You're like, you know, take take that wall down. Exactly. And um, so now you have first of all, I'm a little disappointed because uh I expected to walk up today and see uh a lineup of people. Um, because we did have a seating area now that we're we moved from studio D to studio A. That's right. And there's a seating area over here. So I I had mentioned to your daughters last time I said, hey, FYI, put the word out on the street that we're gonna do a show on Wednesday, and they were so excited, they ran out of here, they were gonna tell everybody, and they never came back.
SusieThey ran out again this morning.
ShawnYour your your oldest is gone at six in the morning. I saw her up the street. And so I come in and I see that all of the we've got one, two, three, zero people here, and and I see the area is completely blocked off, so they wouldn't be able to see us anyways. And Craig's got a fucking puppet show thing up.
CraigYeah, yeah. Yeah.
ShawnWell, I took it's a big blanket.
CraigI took away the wall so I can see your full body now. I mean, well, sorry, uh, stomach up. And I wore a shirt just for you that says he's wearing a few.
ShawnWhich is ironic. I didn't know the wall wasn't gonna be here. I was actually gonna put some pictures up on the wall.
CraigHe's wearing a shirt just for me with a crow with the letters F-C A W F. Fuck off. Yeah, there you go. Very good. That was good. And um, I've put this up, so I think my hope is this for the listeners who really give a shit about this.
ShawnSo that well, they're hanging on a thread, man. Every week, this is why they tune in.
SusieThere's gotta be one out there. Yeah.
CraigYeah, I think what happens. Explain the the um physics of this. Okay, I shouldn't bother.
ShawnNo, no, I I would just is the my voice going to bounce off of this and orbit the moon and then come back down. Essentially, yeah. Okay, yeah.
SusieIt's gonna absorb a little bit.
CraigI have these blankets up. What would you say, 10 feet by five feet wide, just to kind of soften the echo in this room.
ShawnAnyway. Well, I mean, another experiment. Here we go. There we go. Exactly. I just feel bad for the fans
Jamaica Jokes And Camping Margaritas
Shawnsitting behind that thing over there. Can't see nothing. Stick in there, guys. So, Sean. Oh, we're back at feels like it's been feels like a long time. If I'm checking my notes right, you guys went camping in Jamaica?
CraigCamping.
ShawnOh, camping. Okay. Yeah, okay. So I that's not right then. Okay, camping.
CraigYes. Yeah. Okay, so just just we're gonna delete that part. We're uh forgot to tell you this. Uh, we're not gonna talk about Jamaica.
ShawnIt was a joke. Camping in Jamaica. Uh no, you didn't go camping in Jamaica. Well, why aren't we talking about Jamaica? Uh are we hiding this information from somebody?
SusieShe wants to bring it in differently.
ShawnSo we're editing our our chats now off the top. What we can talk about and can't talk about. Holy fucking NBC here, man.
SusieIt's different to talk about Jamaica. We went to the same place.
ShawnAnd I'm not trying to talk about it. It was guys, it was a joke. I fucking went, you went camping in Jamaica, and you were supposed to go, no, we went to Jamaica, we didn't go camping, we went camping over here, and then I'd go, I can't got my notes crossed. And then I'd go camping in Jamaica. Sounds like a euphemism for smoking weed, doesn't it? You guys want to go camping in Jamaica? Yeah, but you guys shot all that down. But let me go back to my notes. Uh yeah, let's not talk about you guys at all. I mean, like, we don't need to talk about your guys' trips. Oh, we're going on another trip. We yeah, we went to Jamaica again. Great. Yeah. Um then we went camping.
SusieYeah.
ShawnYeah, fantastic. And you guys were roughing it. No Wi-Fi. No Wi-Fi. No cellular. So it's just you and the moonlight and the loons, and then a fucking margarita blender. Yep. That's what I heard. That's lovely. The neighbors must have loved you. Oh, it's yeah.
CraigToilet. So, yeah. So we bought this ninja battery-powered blender to make margaritas. It's fucking fantastic. Oh, highly recommend it.
ShawnOh, are we are they a sponsor for the show now? Yeah. Well, they're you hope so.
SusieBetween the ice cream, the ninja ice cream blender and now the ninja margarita blender for camping.
ShawnDefinitely should be a sponsor. Now you said that three times, four times, man.
CraigWhile we were in Jamaica, we had a bit of an issue. Um, we are talking about Jamaica. Okay. Well, and you opened it up, so uh you shut it down. Vacation. Um Susie was kidnapped by a bunch of people in this one resort, and we were in this other resort along this beach here. And I had to recapture her. Oh.
ShawnIs this d did this take you long to write this setup? I hope not.
CraigSo I got some workers. Susie of Troy. I masked an army. Yeah. The face that launched uh a thousand ships.
SusieA thousand ships. Or a couple of couple of hobies.
ShawnYeah. Yeah. Yeah. Fantastic. You got her back, obviously. Well, yeah, but it it took some time. I had to uh You looked around and then sat back down. She was made a margarita. You're like, nope, can't see her.
CraigSo I went to the beachfront of the resort and uh we came up with a solution so that I would like strip down naked and kind of statuesque into a like Adonis. Yeah. We went to the hardware store and like painted me gold. And I just stood there stiff and uh and waiting. And waiting, I'm waiting for somebody to you know pull me in. And they did. They they pulled me into the gates of this resort, and once in, I was able to find Susie.
ShawnSo you went to a Jamaican hardware store. I mean, let's talk about that, dude. And uh, I'm pretty sure that paint is toxic. So you probably got about 24 hours left to live, dude. Great. Well, I'm glad that you got your wife back. Yeah. Uh that's fantastic. Um saved by Adonis. That's right. And then you went camping. And now we're back. That's right.
CraigWe're back in this room. Of course, we always plan to do uh Odyssey by Nolan. Um, it came out uh July 12th, was it? Something like that.
ShawnYeah, somewhere in there.
Why Nolan’s Odyssey Is Everywhere
CraigAnd uh it's now August 5th, the recording and a lot later than we anticipated. But the plan here is that we uh that gives us opportunity to talk about a lot of things, like people's reactions to it. The amount of attention that this movie has been given is quite extraordinary, and I'm actually quite excited to talk about it.
ShawnWell, no expectations. They've only been like advertising it for two and a half years. I I was sitting in a theater two and a half years ago, and the simple trailer was you know, black screen, the Odyssey, a film by Christopher Nolan, and the entire theater went nuts. That was two and a half years ago.
CraigYeah.
ShawnAnd then I'm like, oh, and now we're sitting here and it's it's been out, you know, and I'm like, God, time flies. First of all, that's the first thing you think about.
CraigSusie and I went to the movie what what was it?
SusieLike a week ago. No.
CraigNo, it was more than that.
SusieThat rainy, the super rainy, rainy day.
CraigYeah, that's a day to go.
SusieI was happier to give up three hours, three and a half hours of my day than um the previous beautiful sunny.
CraigYeah, the disclosure, disclosure day.
SusieDisclosure day.
CraigSunday matinee, and it was jammed packed. It's still jam-packed, by the way. Yeah, you went and saw it about a week after us, I think, because because you just assumed like Sean, what Sean likes to do is he's a he's a single, just goes up, got buys a ticket, but even that was not something you could.
ShawnI had a few ladies that I um had invited, and they uh had had to cancel at the last minute. Uh something about uh uh laundry malfunction or uh anyways, uh yes, I did go. Uh it was completely sold out. It was a Wednesday afternoon. Wow. And and even yesterday I looked at it again and it's completely sold out.
SusieWow.
ShawnUm it is a bonafide uh blockbuster phenomenon. It's probably gonna be the largest grossing movie of all time. Oh wow. It's already almost at a billion dollars, right? It's at 800 something million.
CraigSo the question is, does it deserve it? And I've been waiting to find out your thoughts on this one. Um, but I there are certain things that I want to talk about. And because I'm I know I come from the perspective of history, and to me, you know, I love this. This time period is a is freaking amazing. There's so much to talk about, and I don't think we may even get into all the things that I want to talk about. Take around time, actually. Um, thanks so much for it.
ShawnHey, go see that movie.
CraigBut anyone listening, it's I really want to contextualize the history here because I think it would just kind of shape so much for people who maybe don't know much about this time period and this geographical era. So I want to talk about Greek culture. I want to talk about obviously Greek history, but I also want to talk about how it all weaves in, interweaves with Homer's Odyssey. I also want to talk, if we have time, to talk about the alphabet, the you know, the Greek alphabet, which of course is absolutely essential to the kind of creation of the Western tradition.
ShawnI just want to say quickly, I played Dungeons and Dragons as a kid, so I'm up with the whole Greek mythology stuff. Like, you don't
First Reactions And Theater Shock
Shawnhave to worry about me. You're good. I we got the Zeus guy, we got like uh Apollo Creed, we've got uh Athena, we've got what? We got the chick with the snakes on her head, Medusa. Medusa. Uh so I'm up just so you know. Love it.
CraigOkay. And and I'm no freaking expert in this field. I just I'm just a fan on this one. I just love it.
SusieI don't, I didn't have the background, the historical background.
ShawnYou didn't play Dungeons and Dragons as a kid?
SusieI was not an English major.
ShawnI think there was some assigned reading for this course today. Did Craig not assign you some reading? Well, I suggested that I might look at it and he went, don't I just gotta say quickly, because I I didn't get it. That sounds like Craig.
SusieYes, don't bother reading Homer. That's what you told me. Because I was like, oh god, should I read it?
ShawnAnd you were like, don't bother. Remember the last time though? It's like he it was like he gave us a signed reading, and I'm like, is this guy trying to teach us stuff?
SusieI know.
ShawnWhat the hell is going on here?
SusieI know. Oh well, I've been listening in on a lot.
CraigI'm a history guy, but this is kind of English major stuff. Um I however I took some English courses in university and I did end up touching on Homer's work. And um so let's talk about it. This controversial movie. Would you say it's controversial, Sean?
ShawnI think every Nolan movie is controversial. Okay. I I think that that's because he is the biggest director in the world, so everybody zeroes in on everything he does.
CraigAnd it's it's the reaction's been interesting. Yeah, people love it, but yeah, I'd say people hate it. Yeah. Uh academics kind of give it a thumbs up or two thumbs down. Uh I would say that generally the reaction is more big question mark negative. I mean, uh right off the top, I'd say even Emily Wilson on which this version of Nolan's film was based. Emily Wilson is the translator who wrote I translated Homer's Odyssey in 2017. And even she, when she saw the movie, her reaction has been not necessarily overly positive. They found the script very bland, the writing bland, and also just very questionable decisions about what to highlight, what to omit. And so all these, all these things that I want to get into.
ShawnThe thing is, we got to remember too, with Homer in the story, the Iliad and the Odyssey, this is the basis for all heroes and all films that come in that sort of package. Wouldn't have Star Wars, wouldn't have Game of Thrones, wouldn't have Lord of the Rings, wouldn't have anything without this. This is the template. It is. This is it. Talk about, you know, pressure and talk about, you know, trying to translate, trying to bring this to audiences in this day and age. Of course, you're gonna get ripped to shreds no matter what you're gonna do.
CraigBut anyways, well, you know, and on that one, I mean, this body of work becomes part of the educational system in Greek history in Greece, you know, the classical period, which again I want to talk about these periods, but they they don't look at this as just a story, they see this as kind of civilization foundation stuff, and so it's taught. Um, and so we're gonna even talk about Alexander the Great, who had a copy which he read at night and on his candle. Yeah, maybe not. I mean, this is this goes to show you how influential. I mean, and Aristotle uh was the teacher of Alexander the Great. So there's so many kind of interesting interwoven connections to all this. So I'm gonna ask you guys this. Uh Sean, Susie, what do you think the Odyssey is all about? How would you summarize it?
ShawnUh Hero's mythic quest. Okay. I mean, that's obvious, but are you talking about the story or are you talking about the film?
CraigWell, I based on whatever you want to talk about.
ShawnUm, I would just say that I stayed away from everything coming up to this movie. I didn't go online to hear all of the talking heads like myself right now. Um, I didn't want that because I knew this was coming. Yeah. And I wanted to go in clean. And I don't know, I mean, I of course I know the story of the Odyssey and I've seen it played out in so many other films, but I don't know the exact details of the Odyssey. So I was excited to see it, you know, in full effect in front of me. And I can tell you, seeing the film, and we'll get into all of this, I'm sure, throughout this little talk here, but I was completely awestruck by this movie. I I left the theater like I had been shaken. I thought about this film for days. I didn't stop thinking about it. I the visuals were on a level like I can only equate it to like people going to see Stanley Kubrick's 2001 Space Odyssey. I saw things in this movie that like I couldn't get out of my head. And you know, good and bad things. Like, you know, some of these things will haunt my nightmares, some of these scenes. I don't, I'm sure there's all sorts of little things, of course, that we can pick away at this film. Um it might have been a little longer than I wanted. It could have maybe been 25 minutes shorter. There's a you know, a few little scenes here and there. I I will tell you the beginning, the first 20 minutes of the film, I wasn't swept away. I was actually a little concerned. Yeah. Because it's the Nolan flashbacks within flashbacks, which he always does, which I was going, uh-oh. Is this where we're going? Uh-oh, uh-oh. But as soon as the actual journey starts, like we get these, you know, the cave and we get into all these other scenes, I was completely, completely blown away.
CraigYeah, I agreed. I had the exact same response. Um, I was really
Ithaca, Penelope, And The Setup
Craiggetting concerned about where this was going. And then the energy and the momentum just built, you know, as they started to go through their episodes.
ShawnYeah, there's a lot of talking off the top between Penelope and and Telemachus.
CraigAnd so just yeah, the context is it begins in Ithaca. And just for those people don't even know where Ithaca is, it's on the kind of the Ionian Sea, kind of the western part of Greece. It's a small island. And Odysseus is the king of Ithaca, and Penelope is the wife. And uh played by Anne Hathaway, and of course Matt Davon is yeah, yeah. And they have a they have the which like they're soulmates, I'd I think it's fair to say.
ShawnYeah, love. Yes, right. You right off the top, you get that. She gives him a little like uh pendant or uh it's a little is that her?
SusieNo, it's Athena.
ShawnIt's Athena, sorry, of course. And so there's a there's a very close relationship between them, right? Yeah, yeah.
SusieShe gave him the Athena when he left because she wanted to leave with him and just go together and let's just explore, and and then he has to stay.
ShawnSomething happens to him, and she hears stories, she knows the pen, she hears about the pen, then it's actually him. Yeah, that's right.
SusieYeah.
CraigSo they're in Ithaca, and then they uh he has to leave. Odysseus has to go. He has a they both have a son, obviously, Telemachus, who is uh basically a brand new baby at the time. Uh and Odysseus doesn't want to go. He actually doesn't want to go. He apparently feigns insanity. Uh he's pretending to sow his you know crops with salt. But in the end, the people who are kind of rallying the kings to kind of mount an offense against Troy, uh, against Paris, who is the person who took Helen, or was Helen abducted, or was Helen just agreed to go? Odysseus, after feigning insanity, is fails in his attempt. Uh he's caught, you know, he says, Okay, you you caught me. I'm not actually insane.
SusieYeah, I'm saying faking it.
CraigAnd and I have this oath that in fact it was his idea, uh, this oath, when called upon, the people who are calling on on him is a man named Menelaus. And Menelaus is married to Helen. This part of the story is actually kind of interesting. So I wanna tell you about this. So it's the judgment of Paris
Troy, Paris, And The Real Stakes
Craigof Troy, you know, this who is this prince of Troy. And by the way, if people want to know where Troy is, it is in modern day what country?
SusieTurkey. I was gonna say Turkey.
CraigAnatolia. Okay. And just so just to be more specific, it's on the kind of the northwest portion of modern day Turkey. It's just south of the Dardanelles. Now, this is important because this whole story is around the idea of the Greeks, the Mycenaeans going in and attacking, which actually is part of the Hittite Empire. And interestingly, no one really knew about the Hittite Empire un until about a hundred years ago. Uh, and so Troy is this vassal city of this larger Hittite Empire. And this whole thing could be made up. The fact that uh, you know, Helen was abducted, uh uh it could be a story, but the reality could just simply be that Troy acted as a gatekeeper to the Dardanelles, which gave access to the Sea of Amara, which is shipping routes, interesting, exactly trade routes.
ShawnSo very interesting.
CraigSo you gotta jizz it up. Sure, sure. Is it gizz it up? What is it? Did you just say jizz? Jizz it up.
SusieWe're not gizzing it. Interesting.
CraigYeah. At the end of the day, Agamemnon and Menelaus and these aren't names that just roll off the chart, by the way.
ShawnThey're hard to say.
SusieTelemachus and Agamemnon.
ShawnYeah, yeah. You know they abbreviated all those when they were hanging out together, right? There's no way they were pronouncing all those. It'd be like telus or something, right?
CraigWell, and telemachus is an interesting word because actually, if you break it down, tele is literally translates into far from. Uh so that's where you get telecommunications, you get yeah, telephone. Yeah. So and Macchus is like battle, so far from battle. So his son's name is literally rooted in this story. Right. So again, which brings into question uh, you know, how much truth is in all of this. Uh so the judgment of Paris is kind of interesting. So uh it's basically a story about Peleus and Thetis, who are the future parents of Achilles. Uh and Eris, who is the goddess of discord, basically was deliberately left off the guest list of their wedding. And so in retaliation, she tosses a golden apple inscribed for the fairest, quote, for the fairest, which you know, does that sound familiar to other more deep? Disney uh you know, yeah, sleeping beauty. So she uh she tosses a golden apple inscribed for the fairest into the celebration, so igniting basically a vanity contest between uh Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite. Now, Hera is the uh wife and sister of Zeus. Athena is the goddess of wisdom who becomes like the the the key supporter for Odysseus, and then Aphrodite is goddess of love, isn't she? Well, yeah, she's goddess of beauty and all things, you know, sexual, sensual, love, and all these things. Zeus was a kinky motherfucker.
ShawnYeah. He used to turn into an animal and go down and sleep with women in the villages. I trust me. You gotta hear stories about this guy doing it.
CraigI want to talk about the kind of relevancy.
ShawnYeah, figure that. Yeah, but that was the everybody did that back then. Come on, you can't judge people for that.
CraigSo, what's funny about the story is that Zeus realizes oh my god, I have to judge who's the fairest of all, and his one of them is his wife. So you can you can't do that. So what he does, he says, I'm gonna delegate this decision to Paris, the Prince of Troy. So each goddess wants to get chosen by Paris, so each one offers a bribe. So Hera says, I'll give you uh endless political power and control over vast territory. Athena says, I'll give you uh incredible. Incredible wisdom and supremacy in warfare, you'll be the greatest general in the world. And then Aphrodite says, I'll offer, obviously.
SusieLet's je it up.
CraigI'm going to offer you love of the most beautiful woman alive. And so he's probably thinking, Oh, I get Aphrodite, but Aphrodite is too smart for this. Aphrodite's prize is actually Helen of Sparta, which is fucking funny because somebody Helen.
ShawnI have no idea where we're going here.
CraigWell, this is funny because Aphrodite says your prize is going to be the most beautiful woman in Mycenae or the known world, and it's going to be Helen of Sparta. But Helen is already married to a man named Menelaus. Right. Hence the hence Menelaus going, uh, what the hell, Paris? Why are you here? I welcome you into my home, and now you're taking my wife.
SusieGive away my wife.
CraigSo this is the backstory why they must now sack Troy. Right. Which is going to lead to the whole journey following the Iliad, which is the Odyssey. Right. So does that make sense? Is that because that's an interesting kind of like I blacked out about two minutes ago, dude.
SusieIt's I was going to say that um I'm
Adaptation Versus “The Odyssey” Title
Susiejust trying not to be offended that you asked how Sean and I felt about the movie. And then when Sean finished speaking, you just went to somewhere else.
ShawnYeah, anyway. So good points is.
SusieI didn't have any of this background. I didn't have the history. I didn't read the book. I do love going to big epic movies. And I actually prefer not to know what they're about. And so in the first few minutes, when you guys are getting concerned, I'm I'm just like, I'm not putting this together. Like if I had had some of this backstory, I think it would have been easier. But um, once they hit that part, the epic show when the journey starts to absolutely took over. And it was it was really amazing. I mean, of course, it would have been if I'd had more knowledge, then I could have been more critical. But it was a pretty epic journey just to go on on its own without the extra knowledge. And then kind of then you start to reflect back and hear and learn all these things and go, oh, then I wanted to go see it again. Couldn't get in.
ShawnSo I think I'm kind of upset that I'm doing this podcast without a second viewing because you probably have seen a second view. There's so much to unpack with the movie. Yeah. And totally agree. So it I'm kind of like coming in here with an emotional response more than a lot of people.
CraigThat's perfect though, because I thought about that. I I like, you know, I I'm hoping that I can ground some things, but I also wanted to play off kind of your your responses because this is what I think what I love about this, and I think this is gonna reflect for a lot of the listeners too. A lot of people I talked to went, it was a great movie, loved it. Okay, you asked me the question.
ShawnJeez Craig, yeah. You asked me the question. Jeez Craig. What did you think of the movie? You ask yourself the question, huh? You're you're running the show over there. You're running the puppet show, dude. Go.
CraigOkay. I totally agree with you. The it was epicy in terms of the um I don't think that's a word.
ShawnEpic makes it sound like epicy are the words coming out of your mouth today. I'm gonna write these down because I want you to know what you're saying here. Jiz and Epicy. Epicy. There's a great name for a podcast. Yeah, epochy. Yeah, yeah.
SusieYeah.
ShawnFrom the Greek Latin. Well, it's some Epicitis.
CraigOr Epicurean. Epicurean. Which is I might be onto something. Hedonism. But perfect. But controlled hedonism, my perfect version of Epicurean. We're bringing things together here.
ShawnWhat did you think of it, Craig?
CraigOkay. Thank you for asking, Sean. Yeah. I really was impressed by the scale of it, the lack of CGI, just practical effects. We'll get into that, man.
ShawnOh. Pretty freaking amazing. How about the fact that he shot it all 100% on an IMAX camera that he built?
SusieYeah.
ShawnBecause the original IMAX camera is so loud that you can't record dialogue while you're using it. This camera looks like an ATM bank machine. You should see them ro moving it around. It's four guys to move it.
SusieThe nickname for it on set was the blimp.
ShawnYeah.
SusieWell, that's they nicknamed it because they had to four people tad to move it. And it was all enclosed within this box so that they could have dialogue as well as the filming happening.
ShawnBut they had to change the film every three minutes. Yeah. So that's right. So the the film guy, Kenny something is the cameraman.
SusieYeah.
ShawnHe he got so good, like he's like a military, like reloading a weapon. So they would be right in the middle of a scene and everybody would just freeze. And he would reload. He was so good at it that nobody was taken out of their place. You know what I mean? Like mentally. Right. So they would stop and then he would go like military style and nobody would talk. Nobody would, and he'd load that camera again and then they'd pick it up right where it was. Every three minutes.
SusieThree minutes. Yeah. Jesus.
ShawnI've never seen images like that.
CraigWhen you're going to see a Nolan film, you're going to the theater to see something new. Yes. And something grand.
ShawnKind of like James Cameron used to be back in the day. Interesting. You know, I couldn't you see James Cameron doing this movie 20 years ago.
CraigIt's so funny they say that because here's James Cameron with the Titanic and all that. Opposite to pure animation.
ShawnIt just seems it's such a waste to me. Oh, totally. I mean, don't I don't want to get the avatar lovers on my back here because I like the first avatar, but we lost him 20 years ago. Yeah. And he was, don't you think that he would have done something like this after Titanic, some historical Odyssey type of a thing?
CraigTotally. Maybe he'll make up for that. Maybe anyway. So in short, I would say that the movie, like you said, was too long. I did not like the way they didn't really develop the characters as well as I think they should have. And we're gonna talk about what I mean by that when we go through Homer's purpose and meaning behind narrative storyline. But um I wasn't really wowed by it.
ShawnReally?
CraigYeah. I was impressed, like I said, by the visuals, but I walked away kind of frustrated.
ShawnNow, did you watch a lot of stuff before you went to see it? Did you watch all of the YouTube stuff? Did you watch all the reviews, the critics, the no, uh not so well a little bit.
CraigI mean it's hard.
ShawnSo you weren't sheltered before you went in, like Susie and I.
CraigYeah, but I'm I I don't say that that's gonna necessarily influence like social media.
ShawnNo, no, no, not that you would you would side with it, but you're over-stimulated by it.
CraigWell, here's the thing. I to answer the question, I focused more on the the story of Homer.
ShawnYeah, so I I was right with your with your research.
CraigBecause what exactly so what I wanted to do is to really have a a really strong foundation of what Homer's Odyssey meant, right, and then watching it, layering it and seeing what Nolan would do. So I could have a adaptation.
SusieYeah.
CraigI'm not gonna say and stand here, like look, a lot of people say I'm a purist, because there's no such thing as a purist. And it's a film, it's a movie. So and Nolan has, I think there's always uh an opportunity or a right to kind of have a little bit of creativity. Absolutely.
ShawnIt's entertainment. However, this isn't like written in stone, it's a fable. No. Most of it.
CraigYes, but I have a problem though. I want to say this. Yes, you do. Okay. So if you're gonna get like a like a what did they call it, like a set soft translation or whatever of like, you know, um, oh brother, wear out thou. Right. Sure. So we adaptation. An adaptation, right? Yeah, but it has a totally its own name and and you're not making We talked about this with Animal Fire. Yeah, exactly. And you talk, you're they're pulling elements from the Odyssey. Right. But when you actually get and go into a movie like Nolan's movie, which was called The Odyssey, yeah, people who didn't know nothing about the Odyssey are going in there thinking that they're gonna see kind of an accurate portrayal of what Homer's Odyssey was.
ShawnAre they? Because I I wasn't. No, you don't think so? Well, no, you I mean you do, because you're up on this.
CraigYou're a history guy, but like I said, so when people don't know are going to walk in and they're gonna go, oh, that was interesting. I have a sense of what Homer's Odyssey was about. And it and it's not.
ShawnThere's yes, there's elements of Oh, I never thought about Homer. I just like uh the actual because it's been adapted like what, how many thousands of times?
CraigYeah, well, I mean, in terms of movie, that's interesting. I think the only other Hollywood time Hollywood attempted this was in the 1950s. Right. Hollywood has never really wanted to go there.
ShawnOh, it's they haven't had the technology really to do it. Well, they maybe. Right.
CraigBut I I think it has to do with more about kind of what Hollywood I don't know. I well, it's not biblical, right? Is that no, no, no, no, not at all. It's all predates Christianity. Right. Exactly. But uh what I think is important is what is home. So that's why I asked you the question at the top. What do you think the story's about? And you're right, it's about many things, it's it's about human beings who can be heroic and we're in the pursuit of glory, but it's also a story about how human beings are also fallible, they make mistakes and they sometimes need godly intervention. But interestingly, the gods themselves are also anthropomorphic. So they you know, they the gods themselves are hilarious. I mean, uh, you can really relate to these gods because they feel the gods feel jealousy, lust, pride, you know, pettiness, and they and they want to intervene with these kind of mortal creatures
Gods, Hospitality, And Homecoming Order
Craigas they are immortal themselves. And so they really want to personally get involved in human affairs rather than being removed from the world like kind of more monotheistic gods, right today. So that that that in itself is very interesting. So that interplay between the mortal and and immortal is really fascinating because it uh tells a story about the human condition. So I just want to quickly talk about kind of the the role that the gods play in this era. I think it's it's important to contextualize. So we already talked about how they're the gods gotten involved with human affairs. They're not distant or abstract notions, um, but they also have an explanatory function. So, in you know, pre-scientific worldview, you know, before people didn't understand why waves and oceans or seas would get you know tumultuous. And it so they blamed it on gods, which kind of makes sense. Human beings like to fill in voids and blanks and they create stories around that. So, so there has that kind of like relationship where gods provide a causal framework relationship to otherwise inexplicable events, so storms, plagues, madness, sudden strokes of luck or ruin. And so, you know, you got Poseidon who's oversees the sea, you got Zeus who's like sky and thunder, Zeus's Law.
ShawnYeah, I've been following that for since my 30s, and it's working out pretty good for me.
CraigWhat you mean Xenia, like the notion of hospitality? I I I don't know.
ShawnI just I just know it's called Zeus's Law.
CraigYeah, Zeus's Law, the we live it.
SusieWe live it and live it. Yeah, yeah.
CraigAnd that was that's also interesting because in Greek culture, the I you know, the idea is that um if someone walk knocks on your door, so to speak, you you're not even allowed to ask them their name or who they are. You're supposed to kind of invite them in right away. Yeah, and make food for them. It's not until you have actually had a meal. Turn them into pigs, and they could eventually crazy. Yeah. Well, I'll get into that.
ShawnI would I have I've paid, I have a book. I have a book full of film stuff.
CraigSo, you know, like they're also the guardians of social order. So Zeus, you know, enforces the moral and social codes that that hold Greek society together. So they they have a very important connection to human beings. So to what I just said, that kind of guest host hospitality called Xenia. Also oath keeping, you know, you like honor your word, which we're gonna see elements of that. Um, but there's also patronage and favoritism. So, you know, Athena who sees the cunning and Odysseus and the intelligence really admires that because she is that herself, and so that she has that kind of connection. So so gods can kind of relate to human beings, which is also very interesting. So Athena will come to Odysseus's help and also come to Telemachus's help, and to make sure that uh order is restored, which fundamentally, if you want to talk about it, the kind of the fundamental theme to this is you have uh this couple, soulmates, who are forced to separate. It's not a few months, it's uh essentially 20 years. And 20 years, like I I I just think about that. You have to be gone from someone and you have to uphold that that household, house and home, and from afar, and you so both Penelope and Odysseus are in the greatest struggle of their lives, they're trying to maintain this this bond, this union. And they do. And then when they return in Homer's edition, they do bring uh order and res restoration to the house and home. And in order to do that, they had to wipe out the suitors and they had to like hang 12 or so women. And uh Nolan quite literally said that he felt like the ending was misogynistic, so they didn't do that, they didn't reveal that scene. And I'm like, really? In 2020, I just find that insulting. In 2026, you find it insulting. You're yeah, I knew I do find it insulting. I I find it insulting that in 2026 you're gonna go, oh, that's just it's for today's audience, modern audience. It's just not, you know, it's not appropriate. Right. So you're gonna rewrite one of the greatest epics, like you said earlier, which is the foundation of the Western tradition and western civilization. This is not just a story, yeah.
ShawnUh the question is, what do you keep it, keep in and what do you keep up with anything you're doing?
SusieYeah, yeah, yeah.
ShawnAnd it's it's like you have a hundred people screaming at you, you've got to do that, or you can't do that, or you've got to do so. And you this is what you're faced with when you do stuff.
Susie40 books, you said Homer. 40 edition 40 books.
CraigWell, the Odyssey is 24 books.
SusieThe Odyssey is 24 books, and so Christopher Nolan needs to decide what to include. Right.
ShawnSo you're gonna you're gonna piss people off.
SusieYeah, you're not gonna make everybody happy, but well, and I can appreciate that.
CraigYeah, I I you know, I want to make it clear that you know, uh when I was watching the movie, I'd be like, no, I wouldn't do that, or I would no, I like that.
ShawnI know a lot of boxes, a lot of um He was saying that out loud too during the movie, uh, which was really annoying. Oh, yeah, I would do that. Yeah, yeah, no, I wouldn't do that. I wouldn't do that. And people are like, shut the fuck up.
CraigYeah, well, and I'm conflicted having this, you know, talking about this right now, because on the one hand, I don't want to come across as a purist, but on the other hand, I do want to honor the origin story. I I think that's necessary. And so I get it, I I may come across as hypocritical at times, but I I'm I'm totally self-aware of this. So let's let's talk about the key characters. I
Calypso, Memory, And Nolan’s Structure
Craigthink we need to establish who they are before we then get into the uh uh what are called episodes. We talked about Odysseus.
ShawnWe talked about, you know, he Matt Damon started doing his Jason Bourne thing again because he's like, I have no idea who I am or what I just did. I'm I'm high on an island with a beautiful Charlie Suron.
SusieYeah.
ShawnAnd it was sort of for me, I'm like, oh yeah, he's got to remember again. He's high on what? White lotus. Lotus flower. Lotus flower.
SusieAnd and then so he's that is that an actual thing, or is it supposed to be like an actual historical connection?
CraigIs he well that's the thing? Nolan actually combined the you know, the lotus eaters, which is one of the first episodes. He just took that, removed it, and combined it with Calypso and so which he was played by Charlie's Therone.
ShawnAnd it's very, very Inception Inception-y to me because if you remember Leonardo DiCaprio in Inception was with his wife washed up on a beach in in their subconscious, right? And you remember Inception, right? And they were stuck there for 50 years together, and they built a whole city out of their out of their dreams and their memories. Yeah, and so this was very sort of calling that back to me a little bit because he's on this beach for he doesn't know how long.
SusieYeah, right.
ShawnYeah, I guess it's a decade or whatever, like and he's high and he's trying to remember like what happened, the journey. Did it happen at all? Well, that's of course that's where am I going to?
SusieDo I have a family? Do I?
ShawnYeah, right. And he's starting to it's starting to come back to him.
CraigAnd that's is essentially how the movie starts. And so they use that calypso episode as the opportunity to tell the narrative of the story. That part I didn't mind.
ShawnI I'm okay with that part where I didn't mind Charlie's therapy on the beach. She looks fantastic, man. Yeah.
CraigSo what what is she doing? Like she was he was there for seven years, but what Nolan didn't really communicate in Homer's version, I don't want to call it version, the original. Yeah, uh, was that Calypso was holding Odysseus at his will for seven years.
ShawnBut but I got against whoa. But I I got that feeling, didn't you? That he was there, like being sort of held there. Like, did you get that? I did. Okay. I I thought there was an evil, like, even though she was quite sweet, and there was there was a there was a subtle evilness underneath all of this. Do you know what I mean?
SusieShe knew it. Yeah, she was keeping him, but you know she was just like, Oh, you know, just he's desperate.
ShawnI'm like, when is she gonna turn into this witch or something? Like, like that's what I kept waiting for. Yeah, like you can't leave, you know, like or something like that.
CraigBut no, I'm happy to hear that actually. Uh that's what you got. Because basically, what she was offering was immortality and kind of in eternal ease. Hey, listen, I'll make you immortal. You're gonna live with me. And eternal easy. I'm one of the hottest people in the world. Internal sex with calypso. And you're gonna have internal sex with calypso, yeah.
ShawnYeah, break out the uh the ninja blender, dude. Let's make some margaritas, man, on the beach.
CraigBut I felt maybe you can tell me if I'm wrong here, but I did I felt that that Nolan's film did not convey this idea that Odysseus, despite this amazing offer, he his his need to be with Penelope was so strong, he was willing to give up all of that immortality, endless sex, and all that stuff.
SusieHe was committed to forever his own family, which I agree. He remembered that he had a family.
ShawnSo do you think that Nolan conveyed that in the movie? I do. Doesn't he pull out the um the little yeah um what are we calling this?
SusieTotem it was a pin. It was a pen, it was a pin.
ShawnRight. Doesn't he pull it out and at some point and it start stuff starts coming back to him, and that's when he actually builds the raft? Or you go back to Inception again and we have the little spinning top and the pull the totems and that, right? To keep them grounded, to keep them yeah, yeah.
CraigAll right, so Calypso and that episode is used as a kind of a narrative structure, and I thought it was that was done well. I just want to talk about Penelope a little bit. So she spends 20 years fighting off the suitors, like what is it, 108 of them? They all want to get I they all want to marry her. What Homer was trying to convey was this idea that the suitors represented not just men who were just wanting to marry Penelope and take over the kingdom, although that is true. The suitors represented a kind of um I don't want to say evil. Well, they were. The suitors represented this kind of everything that goes against the union of of man and woman, house and home, this thing.
ShawnAnd so they It was like The Bachelor. That's what I or Bachelorette, basically. Uh it was the original Bachelorette that Homer was intending to he wanted to do a reality show, and they shot him down in Greece. So he's like, fuck you, I'm gonna do this on my own. I think Andy Cohen hosted the reunion uh of Homer's The Bachelorette.
CraigDid you like Ann Hathaway's portrayal of Penelope? What'd you think, Suze?
SusieI did.
ShawnI don't she's a great actress.
SusieShe is a great actress.
ShawnI mean, she's definitely once an Oscar, a best supporting actress Oscar for this. I think that's a good thing. I could see a few scenes. I think she'll be nominated. I don't know if she'll I don't know what she's gonna be up against. Uh she's one of those, she's one of those polarizing people for me, and I think for a lot of people, uh, in the sense that um sorry to cut you off. I'll let you come back with this. Um, but like I love her and I hate her. Like she kind of comes off as a bit um privileged or something to me sometimes.
CraigAre you talking about the movie itself? No, I'm talking about talking about her. Yeah, generally. Yeah.
ShawnSo I it's she I I guess the question I'm trying to answer is do any of this, these actors take you out of the movie?
CraigYes.
ShawnYou know what I'm saying?
SusieYeah.
ShawnAre there people that surprised you and and are there people that didn't? And did Anne Hathaway take me out of the film? Do you know what I mean? I went, oh, there's Anna Hathaway. Yeah, instead of Penelope. No. At times, yeah, um, um, I was really surprised, like people like John Leguizamo, that I saw at first and went, Are you fucking kidding me, dude? Yeah, why what's he doing in this? And then I was like, oh, he's actually really good in this.
CraigI have to say it was actually the exact same reaction as you.
ShawnAnd and so uh there was a few moments where I kind of in my head went, Oh, is this like, is it good that Ann, but you know what? For the most part, I thought that she was okay.
SusieYeah.
ShawnI thought she did a pretty good job.
CraigYeah, there's a couple moments I didn't really like.
ShawnYeah.
SusieYeah.
ShawnI thought it was interesting too. Another interstellar connection that she's always behind this big latisse uh scrim like screen. Yeah. Like, and then at times you can see through it, and other times you can't, like it's opaque, and then it's like and so I thought that was really sort of uh in it, kind of a not a tie-in, but it reminded me of Interstellar when he's behind the bookcase. Well, and she's right and the in the demand, and it's like you can see into the room and then you can't see into the room and interstellar when he's going through the black hole. I don't know if you guys remember that you've seen Interstellar, right, guys? Okay, yeah, we have to. Um yeah.
SusieSo and she's pregnant in real life. So I maybe that. Was part of why they did this because uh now that she's out on all the red carpet and all well, just before the all the openings, she's very pregnant. So they've had to hide that and you know, um, make it. And so maybe that was part of it too. But um, she didn't, you know, here she is with her only son trying to protect the her world while the king is gone. And here is her son, and she didn't really make any effort to support his training to become the new king, like to take over for his father.
ShawnLike she got the sense she wanted the to be queen, right? Yeah, yeah. She wanted to hang on. Well, she sorry, she is queen, but she wanted to keep that.
CraigYeah, she did the work. Well, that's what I mean. Like, I'm glad you're saying this because it just seemed a little bit all, a little bit off.
SusieYeah.
CraigThat part, you know, her relationship with her son. I mean, here's a son who was basically raised without a father, no mentorship. His his that whole idea of like being, what is it to be a man in this environment? He's being trained by someone who's to be a warrior. And that's what this Mycenaean culture is all about. It's a warrior culture, it's a warrior aristocracy. Right. And so he does, he's learning, and I and that's where I thought, okay, they could really develop this in a very beautiful way. Where here's this young boy really struggling, and Tom Holland. I like Tom Holland. You know, he's good at Batman. I mean, he's good at Spider-Man, but thanks for playing. Thanks for playing. Fuck.
ShawnUh, he's good. That's a beauty. Yeah, yeah. Trust me, he is Spider-Man because the biggest grossing movie in the world ever for one weekend is the new brand new day, Spider-Man. I know. $355 million.
CraigHe's already made almost a billion dollars.
ShawnBiggest grossing movie ever in the history of is now Spider-Man. I call it's gotta be Spider Odyssey, right? Speak because we had we had um Oppenheimer. Oppen no, Barbenheimer. Barbenheimer. Right? Because we had the Barbie movie and we had Oppenheimer come out in 2023, and that was the biggest summer of all time. Now this is the biggest summer of all time with Spider-Man and and of course the Odyssey. So that that's you know, they rolled into press. They rolled in from the Odyssey right to Spider-Man. Like you can't the guy that directed Spider-Man or the studio must just be going, oh, this is the most beautiful thing ever, dude. But it's great for the movies. So I'm happy this all happened. Absolutely. Well boy did it need this.
CraigAnd despite my misgivings in certain areas of this movie, what it's done though, I mean, the fact that people are buying up Homer's original poem. Because they're interested. Because they're interested. The people are talking about this.
SusieI Googled something. I Googled like Epic book series for not uh thinking that at all. I was looking for something else. And that is like the first thing that came up. First thing that came up on all it was like Homer, Homer, Homer, Homer.
ShawnIsn't it interesting? Hummer, Hummer. That's where I was gonna go. Hummer. Oh, look, this actually looks interesting. Um you get a whole other Odyssey, man, if you go down that road. Um, isn't it interesting? A few months ago we were talking about Hollywood. This this season, we've talked a lot about the fact that we the practic you talked about practical effects coming back and wanting that, and about the overuse of CGI and all of these things. And then we we saw, of course, um the Hail Mary project, and now we've seen the Odyssey. Project Hail Mary. I'm sorry, Project Hail Mary, you get it. Yeah, uh, I like calling it the other one. Um, but we have these two movies that have all used practical effects now, more so, and and given us what we were talking about, what we wanted. Yeah, you know, so hopefully there's you know an evolution
Circe’s Pig Scene And Horror Craft
Shawnhappening here. I think there is.
SusieThere was something else that I noticed that I was like, okay. Um, and I don't know the details of IMAX film, and but I'm I've seen some IMAX films. Like the whole visual of this was very kind of gray and very muted.
ShawnAnd a lot of his movies have that tone though.
SusieI mean, the ocean scene when they the or the ocean scene when they went away from the whirlpool and went the other way, that was like crisp and clear color and like really bright. But like most of the rest of it, it's dark.
ShawnYeah, and that's Nolan. On that one, all I just dark night, dark night, inception, they're all very dark sort of tones.
SusieYeah. Yeah.
CraigOkay. Well, on that one, when you know they had to make a choice, and he was told while his during his visit at with Cersei, who was supposed to also be this beautiful woman who, you know, a seductress, uh, who then turned the men into pigs. But what if you're not gonna do that?
SusieYeah, no, she I mean, she's great, but like I would have been.
ShawnSamantha Morton is a fan fantastic actress. She might be one of the best working in the business. Agreed. Very memorable. She, I'll tell you something. Chris Nolan said there's only two times on set where the crew has stopped and applauded someone. Oh, okay. Once was Heath Ledger on Dark Knight.
SusieOh.
ShawnThe other one was Samantha Morton in this movie.
SusieOh.
ShawnPeople stopped. People are saying she's in the movie for fucking 10 minutes, and they're saying she should get an Oscar for this.
SusieWow.
ShawnI I don't know about you guys, but that will stay haunt my my nightmares that scene. Um, do you want to go into that scene a bit?
CraigThe the the pig one.
ShawnYeah. So those practical effects were amazing. Um, those were all there's no CGI on that. They're turning these guys, it reminded me a little bit of American Werewolf in London. You've got these sort of um uh I don't know, plastered, you know, like uh it's a scene. Yeah.
SusieShe was manipulating it was incredible. Yeah, with her hands like clay work.
ShawnYeah, you know, and then people are talking about that scene more than any other scene in the in the film. When you go and you look at what they that really hit people, that scene. It was really well done. Uh well, and the food that she offered and how the men were starving and how they were eating the stew and they had the tripe, you know, they it was stuck down their throats and they couldn't, you know.
SusieThey couldn't get it out. And yeah, it was very anyways.
ShawnThat was a big visual for me, that scene. That was one of those ones where I was locked in and I was completely lost. Yeah.
CraigI want to talk about that. I I I totally agree with you. I thought that was the best part of the movie. The reason why? It was because it was audacious. It it was it it it was different and it took risk.
ShawnAnd the and the sister in the in the in the she's the bird. Yes, and he's got the bird, he's you know, yeah.
CraigAgain, I'm my my thing about that is like she hates men and she's getting back at men, like she's this kind of like pro-feminist, but really they're all evil. But yeah, what did she do? Uh turns her sister into a crow because what'd she say? Because it's better. It's better that way. I thought that was funny. I thought that was a funny line. People laughed, actually. I just I don't know. See, I maybe I'm a little too sensitive about it, but that I'm like, really? Like there is you're evil too.
ShawnYeah, I know, but you there's gotta be a little bit of entertainment value in a movie. It can't all be like this has to be factual and it has to be. I understand. This is where we're we're coming together and we're also coming apart here. It's because you're and I I completely respect what you're saying. I get it. You're saying he's gotta be true to the text. He can't, like, you know, but then there's another part where it's like, okay, well, the text are 3,000 years old. We're gonna take this now in a different direction. Now, people are not gonna like that. What's the responsibility here, right? Like, how do we can we go off or can we go on or can we it's a matter of philosophy between you and me? Sure, sure. I I don't get so offended. Like, I'm not, I I never at no point did I go, well, fuck this. You know, like I never I was just entertained. Yeah. So now, sure, maybe, you know, maybe it should have stuck more in places too. But anyways, that was a great scene. I don't want to go on and on about it. It was beautiful. I got lost. I just that was a high one of the highlights of the film for me. And I thought there was a few other ones like that, and enough of those to keep me.
CraigWell, you I felt sitting there, I actually got squeamish just watching her shape these human bodies into pigs.
ShawnLike it was pretty extreme. And you know what people have said about that? They said, Oh, hasn't Chris Nolan made a horror movie? Right. Because they've all said that was kind of a horror movie. Yeah, it kind and it had that feeling to it. It was I was that dread. You're like, oh, he would make a really good horror movie.
SusieAbsolutely. And the darkness and all in the stone, you know, and she's
Cyclops, Hubris, And What Got Cut
Susiejust she's got the best psycho face. Yeah.
ShawnI mean, she's always has. She's been great. I loved her in Minority Report. Remember her in Minority Report? Yes. That's right. Yeah. Anyway, so we can all go back to the to the um, if you want to talk about the cave.
CraigOh, yes. So Polyphemus, the the Cyclops. Yeah, Nolan's version of it is they're always getting off the boat to these islands and the ideas.
ShawnThese are the actual, some of the actual islands, by the way, is all shot, right? Somewhat in similar locations to where they think it could happen, right?
CraigTo get food and you know, resources to keep the journey going. Um, but of course they act as devices for stories. And so uh they see the sheep. They as they're I think it's the sheep, they're walking, and then they're Yeah, they say, wait, let's follow the one, because it'll lead us back to they follow the sheep into the cave. And this is an important story. Again, uh you you can contrast this. Uh Homer's uh you know, version, or I keep saying that Homer is is making a point where here comes Odysseus and his men, they they see this cave, they see in these bags of cheese. The origin of feta cheese, thank you. Hanging nice Greek salad. Oh and it goes back to that idea of Xenia hospitality, like you know, what they hang a bag of cheese in the window. Well, that's what you do, man.
SusieGrab your bag of cheese on the way out.
CraigAnd so Nolan starts eating some of it, which Nolan? Nolan?
SusieOh, yes.
CraigSo a cheese, Nolan.
ShawnStarts eating some of the cheese. He's lactose intolerant, actually. I know that about him.
CraigWhich breaks that kind of hospitality code. So Polyphemus comes in, he's a little bit pissed off about this. But then Polyphemus, like I said earlier, who uh who represents this kind of uncivilized element, who all who happens to be the son of Poseidon. Yeah. He just immediately walks in and eats a couple of Odysseus's men and they trap him, puts a big rock in. But what's interesting is that Nolan's Odyssey, uh, Polyphemus doesn't speak. But in fact, in Homer's Odyssey, there's a whole conversation that happens to the point where that story line was supposed to show uh Odysseus's kind of cunning and his intelligence to get out of a difficult situation. They represent that a little bit, but I think the the fundamental point about that is that during the escape, as they as Homer's story is they hugged underneath or held underneath the sheep as it was leaving, instead, Nolan's all at a sea, and I don't have a problem with this, put basically straw shrubbery on their backs and pretended to be sheep. Whatever, that's just a little detail that's not relevant. But they uh as they escape onto their boats and leave, Odysseus makes a crucial mistake. I mean, he shows his ego, his pride by going, Hey, my real name, and this is another key point to this whole story, my real name is Odysseus. Whereas what Nolan uh did not include at all, which is an interesting point, is that when uh the Cyclops uh Polyphemus and Odysseus had a conversation in the cave, he said, Who are you? And in this kind of creative way to kind of cunning intelligence to get out of the situation, he says, I'm nobody. And he says, I'm nobody. I'm Batman. So so that when he uh when they stab Polyphemus into the his only eye, Polymphemus yells out and screams help to the other cyclops, the and says, You come and help me. I've been stabbed, and they say, Well, who stabbed you? Who's hurting you? He says, Nobody's hurting me. And who's on first? No, he's on second. I told you exactly. And so the the other cyclops go, Well, this is just a godly intervention. This has nothing to do. You don't really need our help. You can figure this out on your own.
ShawnUm that was the beginning of the Abbott and Costello comedy. I just realized that was the origin. Probably. Um, you talk about the fact that it was shot in Nestor's cave, which I mean, this is the one of the oldest caves in the world. They went and shot it there in Greece. Very cool. And uh, I mean, they've been using this cave since the Neolithic times.
CraigLike this cave is like so just the fact that they went to these locations and shot at so the learning of that is that when they're leaving, Poseidon, so Cyclops, the the polyphemus, you know, screams out and says to Poseidon that, you know, this is Odysseus. And so then Poseidon then directs his anger towards uh Odysseus. And the kind of the moral of the story is that during this, his hubris that that human trait got you know out of control and he didn't show his humility. So though those are the little kind of kind of narrative arcs that are important in this that was interestingly removed from Nolan's version. And I don't understand that. I have trouble understanding that that's something that Nolan could have easily wrapped in. Yeah. Because he's trying to, I think, like I go back to my point. He's conveying Odysseus as this kind of guilt-ridden, shamed person. And I think that speaks more to people's worldview today of the world of the Western world than it does actually reflect anything about the era of the time. And I think the era of the time 3,000 years ago actually had very um still had today has very important messaging that we need to learn here in our modern day world. But we take our modern day world and we just assume that the 3,000-year era period just is old school or you know, uh inappropriate or whatever. And I think that's fundamentally wrong. That's I I think that's why I have a problem with some of these elements. Right. Right.
ShawnWell, I I remember Nolan talking about cutting that scene. There was a joke, a pun that's in the Homer version, like there's actually a joke between the Cyclops and and Odysseus. And and Nolan said, no, we we cut that for whatever reason he wanted to cut it. But let's talk about Bill Irwin because he plays the Cyclops. Right. He's a Tony Award-winning actor. He's been in so many films and plays. He actually uh was the puppeteer and the voice of Tars uh for Interstellar. Those are the robots that you see in Interstellar, which are so integral in that movie. So they shot Bill Irwin, of course, uh on a smaller cave scene, and then they intermersed both of those, right? So that he looked a lot bigger than he was. And whenever the Cyclops was laying on the ground, it was an animatronic puppet, like 60 feet tall or something crazy, uh, laying on the ground. So they intermersed between a puppet and an actual actor, and they they put that together. That's right. No CGI, and I just loved that, and I just wanted to make a point of that because I think totally important. Not in, but is that the one in Ithaca that's up on the rock at the beginning?
SusieSo they were given permission to use it for filming, but you they were not given permission to build a road.
ShawnThat's right, they had to hike up.
SusieSo they had to hike up and then they had to fly in all the cameras every single day that they were filming.
ShawnSo I mean, like your days must have and talk about the location tourism that they're getting right now. Yeah, it is off the hook. It's like kind of like when Lord of the Rings shot New Zealand and everybody went to New Zealand or Game of Thrones tourism.
SusieYeah.
ShawnNow, because they shot all around Greek and uh Greece and Italy and Morocco and all these sort of places, they like everybody's gone there now. Yeah, it's like to see these. That's
Trojan Horse Spectacle And Miscasting Fury
Shawnhow big the film is.
SusieSo fast too. It's crazy.
ShawnYeah. And fair enough.
CraigI mean, that's that's the I think that's kind of cool.
ShawnWouldn't you want to sail around those islands and kind of imagine like that? I want to talk about the imagery of the fact because we're talking about how epic the movie is, and I want to talk about the parallel between Oppenheimer with uh Oppenheimer creating the atomic bomb, and I want to talk about Odysseus with creating the Trojan horse. Yeah, and they shoot both of those things. If you watch Oppenheimer and you watch this, they're very shot very similarly. The handling of the horse, of course, the Trojan horse bringing the end of destruction of civilization, the bomb, you know, doing the same thing. So these they they there's a lot of parallels between those two. And I just thought, first of all, that shot of the horse buried in the sand. Yeah, was I'll never forget that. I think that is modern cinematic history. It's like 2001 a space odyssey, dude, with the thing, first time you see the ship rotating in space. You've never seen, I just thought it was amazing.
CraigTotally agree. Kind of like one third buried into the sand, too.
ShawnWe're so used to the cheesy one with the wheels on it, right? You go, oh, what who wouldn't see that? You're rolling in, oh, rolling in.
CraigAnd then the scene of all these men holding in there. Oh, yeah. No, there's that two, and they're stuck in there.
SusieDying in there.
ShawnThat that was so that was cool, man. That was real. Like, that's how it would have happened. And they're pissing on each other. And like one guy gets when they stabbed, when they put the, you know, the sword through, the guy gets stabbed, they're all grabbing his mouth to cover him up. And then they wipe the sword as it goes back out. Like, that was very that's historical to me. Yeah, that's how it would have happened.
SusieYeah.
ShawnAnd then apparently apparently Nolan left them in there for a lot longer than they wanted to be in there. Like as they were doing setups, he's like, I'll just leave them in there. And like, so they're starting to get, you know, like claustrophobic, and they're starting to, you know, and like smell each other.
CraigAnd like well, and on that one there, you had Sinon, who is there to be the foil or whatever, to say, I'm you know, defecting, I'm gonna join the Trojan army. And here's a gift from the Mycenaeans as they kind of supposedly left. Now there's another Synon is not even in the Iliad, it's not even in the Odyssey. And in fact, Synon is first comes as a character 700 years later in another poem in in the Roman era. That was a really interesting decision for for Nolan to bring in Sinon. Played by played by, yeah, yeah, Elliot Page Elliot Page, who uh I uh was miscast. I didn't like, didn't make sense to me. Actually, same with Anne Hathaway, I would have chosen somebody different. In fact, I would have chosen for Anne Hathaway Penelope, I'd have chosen someone who is less well known. And uh yeah, anyway, Elliot Page seems so bizarre to me.
ShawnAnd correct me if I'm wrong, but in the story, uh Sinon knows that they're inside the horse, and is is but in the movie, he he does he they they don't, they don't, they don't know, they they do they know they don't know that they're they're hiding in the horse. She he doesn't know. Fuck, I'm confused. Well, somebody get me a pie chart or a diagram here.
CraigShe or he gets angry at Odysseus for lying. You sacrificed me. And again, I'm like, fucking hell, fucking hell, Nolan. That was my most frustrating part. Really, Nolan? You're gonna turn this whole situation, you're pulling in a um a character that comes 700 years later from Homer after Homer, and then you're using her as a plot point to basically hammer home the rage of Odysseus being a fucking liar. Like, what are we? Fucking elementary school children here? Like, this is the this is the part that makes me ragey.
ShawnOkay, settle down. I know it's a 3,000-year-old story, bud. Yeah, it's okay. It's okay, it's not personal. Yeah, all right. I want you to know that you're with friends here.
CraigBut what's the point in all of this to make Odysseus feel like this person who should be full of shame, which is how it fucking ends. The movie ends totally different from actually the Odyssey itself. The order has been restored, house and home, the the marriage, the relationship has been restored. But no, Nolan's version is they have to go west, which by the way is symbolic for like entering into an unknown era place. It's also in Game of Thrones, by the way, with what's her name, who um ends by leaving going west. It's all that symbolism, but ultimately he leaves because he's really has to atone for his sins and shame and guilt for his fucking odyssey. It's like that's not at all the point. He restores that glory, that kleos, which by the way, kleos, cleopatra, you know, kleos means glory. That's where I again another really key point. I got so pissed off. This becomes this kind of like post-modernist. I'm sorry I'm saying it, my students fucking hate me for it. But the reality is is this kind of like ultra modern they don't hate you for that, they hate you for many other things, but not that. Ultra progressive modern view. Did you notice that he's just basically this man who has no agency really? He's just kind of going along these journeys, but he seems flat. I felt a lot of the characters, except for Morton in Cersei, were totally flat.
ShawnThat but okay, but that's kind of a choice by Nolan in all of his films, if you'll notice that there's
PTSD Athena And A Different Ending
Shawnnot a lot of glitzy dialogue, there's not a lot of big performances, like of course, Heath Ledger, but that lent itself to the Joker character, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. But you'll find like Batman and you'll find like DiCaprio's character and even Oppenheimer are very like one-tone. Do you have any idea? It's just Nolan's Nolan's thing. I mean, I I reference I you're not gonna see a big showy, like like dramatic thing out of his main characters of quite solemn and dark and quiet.
SusieRobert Pattison took me by surprise because he was that he was a snibling little shit.
ShawnIt was good.
SusieI actually was annoyed watching him. Me too. He did his job very
CraigVery well.
SusieBut he stuck with me after the movie.
CraigLike one of the I'm glad you raised that, Susie, because that's my point. I mean, Nolan, uh, from what I hear is a very kind of hands-off, he's like George Lucas, very hands-off. He says, Here's a script, you you do what you need to do. Uh whereas, you know, me, I'm a control freak. I'd be like, no, I redo it again after.
ShawnYeah, no, you wouldn't make it fucking in two seconds in Hollywood, dude.
CraigUh I would be like, no, redo this, or I want this out of you. You know, like, and so you got you got different characters who are going, oh, okay, like Tom Holland. Oh my god. Craig would have the most sorry for Tom Holland. Every role he plays is like this young boyish person. It's like he's being typecast.
ShawnAnyway, Craig would have the most over budget movie of all time, dude. It'd be like it'd be like 10 years in the making, dude. This guy's movie. And it'd be like, we're almost there, guys. We just gotta reshoot again. Yeah. Yeah.
SusieAnd I'm not ready to talk about this yet, but we'll get there. I'm gonna talk about this. No.
ShawnAnyways, the only time uh watching the film that I started to feel like I length never bothers me. Um that's what my girlfriend used to say. That just hit me. Um right? It's not important, right, Susie? Um, it's the quality of the film. Susie of Troy. No, no, I mean I always get bugged when like people are like, oh, it's so fucking long. And I'm like, it's a like the old movies used to be like four fucking hours long, dude. They have an intermission. But now we have no fucking attention span, right? It's like I have to get back to my phone, dude. So well, the problem for me was I had to take a piss. Like, yeah, I'm not talking about your bladder. I'm talking about like the generational thing of like we can't spend more than two hours in a in a theater because we have way more important things to do. Yeah. So, but so that never bothers me sitting there for a long time. But I will say that the the suitors scene at the end started to kind of come out of the movie a little bit at the end. Some people think it's the best ending to a Nolan movie ever. With that, you know, the the memory, but he killed. Well, yeah, and he he's a little dark night-ish for me at the end. He's in the in the cloak with you can't see his face. Yeah. And it's very Batman-ish. It's like, I'm here to compete, you know, that kind of thing. And with both stringing the bow, all of that. I found like that scene, if they could have been a little bit more compact and shorter, I might have been a little this is me nitpicking. Yeah.
CraigIt's interesting that you say that. It had actually some symmetry with Homer's version. See, perfect. So that's what Homer's version. Yeah, I know. But yeah, it has symmetry. The source material. Yeah. What is different is that Telemachus and his father, Odysseus, come together together to fight. But really, where is Telemachus in this scene? He's kind of upstairs fighting this one guy that's locked in a room. It doesn't show that narrative arc where he becomes the warrior, despite his father's absence, never really somewhat comes about in Nolan's version. I just and that's the part that how it ends too is like then you have Matt Damon saying stupid things that really drive me nuts. Like from an historical perspective, he's like, Our age of bronze is over. And in an era, you don't know that your era is collapsing. But here he is. It's like this obnoxious self-awareness. That scene, it was actually the culmination of like the we're gonna restore order, and it was violent. And lots of people die. And the suitors are some of them are killed, some of them are not. But Athena, that's where Athena uh jumps in and intervenes and says, Listen, I'm gonna bring order because I know that there's gonna be backlash. But if there's backlash, there's gonna be an you know godly intervention here. And so that's how the fundamentally the story is ends with with Homer. But in Nolan, it's they go on a vacation, you know, Penelope and Odysseus. And you know, because because of the guilt and shame. I just don't understand why we live in an era today where there's this endless guilt and shame. Where is this coming from? It's like everyone needs fucking therapy, and yeah, hey, some of us more than others, and therapy's good. I know I will need it after this, but it's just imbued endlessly.
ShawnIt was interesting. Um, the whole Zendaya, uh, you know, her part as Athena. And and then, of course, she's the the young girl, right, that gets killed at Troy and then becomes his sort of representation of Athena, right? I mean, she's beheaded in front of him. And and then so you're left to think, oh, is this happening at all? Is he just hallucinating this, right? This whole thing. Like so he's got PTSD from the war, basically, right? And he's coming, he's been on that beach in Troy for 10 years, right? And so all these PTSD is coming up, right? And he's sort of creating this whole timeline. Did it happen? Did it not happen? Was there a cyclops? Was there not a cyclops? Was there a right? That's what's at the Odyssey part of it, right?
CraigClosest we got to some kind of godly intervention, right? But you know, Poseidon used Zeus, nothing. It was all implied or inferred or intimated.
ShawnAnd I was a little like, oh, I, you know, and don't get me wrong, I I uh Zandaya's extremely beautiful, extremely talented, but I'm a little boring. Okay. She's just a little overexposed. I don't think she's boring at all. She's a fucking great actress. She's won multiple.
CraigNo, she was boring in this movie.
ShawnOkay. Uh, you need to get in touch with your anger, and we need to find out where that's coming from. It's 3,000 years old, Craig. No, but it's just, I think she's been overexposed, and so is Tom Holland to a certain extent, because of all the they're so the it people right now. If I have to see Zendaya on another fucking talk show talking about something, if she's married or not, or she's so when she popped up, yes, I agree with you 100%. Boring. Uh I mean there wasn't anything like okay, here's the thing. Everybody got so out of fucking their heads about the casting, but here's the thing, they're not even in the movie, dude. Yeah, they like they got well, Helen of Troy, they oh, they got so upset about Lapita Nuango. She's in it for three minutes, folks. If you go to the bathroom, like fucking Craig should have eight times. You go to the bathroom or you go to get your IMAX popcorn. How about those like IMAX camera popcorn things? Or the horse? Or the horse. Oh, Jesus. That's bad. That was bad. It was only a hundred bucks to get one of those IMAX IMAX camera popcorn things. I'm like, fuck, sign me up, dude. I want two of them. Um, we can have a right here, dude, on display. No, but I'm like, everyone is so mad. I I love when people get mad, like this guy across the table. I'm going, I've got they get so mad. And I'm like, it's not real. No, it's nothing to do with you. But I understand you're getting that's what film does in great books, and like that's what it does.
CraigI love having issue with the key. Well, you have issues. Let me tell you, I didn't have issue with the key.
ShawnI'll tell you. Oh, Jesus. All right. He's getting really worked up and angry, and I love it. You too, dude. No, no, you you are definitely leading the way today. It's usually me. It's always me. But I'm refreshing. This is so refreshing, man. I'm like, settle the fuck down over there. You're bleeding into Susie's mic. Yeah.
CraigI didn't have any issue with the casting is in the same way that other people had. I just Well, you did. You didn't like Ann Hathaway. You didn't like No, no, I what I mean sorry. The no, the diversity, so-called diversity of that. Um, you know, the fact that Helen is black, whatever. What? What I had issue was the the the character and what they brought to the table. So Antonus, you know, the suitor, you know, by Pattison, he was good. He was they gave him some juicy shit. I I feel sorry for Tom Allen in this one because how do you play Telemachus in this kind of boy? He was Peter Parker. Yeah.
ShawnThere was hi, hi everybody. I'm Spider-Man.
CraigYeah.
ShawnAm I Spider-Man or who am I in this?
CraigHe was Spider-Man. And that's the part. I mean, here's Odysseus and he's in Telemachus, and where they're they come and reunite, and it takes him a little while to figure it out that this is his father, but the moment that he realizes it's his father, right after the, I think the dog died.
ShawnI think oh, the dog stuff, man. People did not like the dog stuff. They're throwing, they throw a puppy off a cliff, and the dog dies throughout the whole movie. Serious? Did you did you go to the bathroom?
CraigI know the dog died, but what do you mean the dog off the cliff?
ShawnThey throw the puppy off the cliff at the beginning of the movie. You're saying people read the the pro-animal people. Oh, people sitting next to me. I mean, like, oh, is that right? It's like, I didn't like it either. No, but did you like was that your favorite scene, Craig? Craig's like, that was the best part of the movie because it was historically factual. No, they used to throw dogs off cliffs. That's what they did. I guess I don't feel um, yes. Thank you. Now we're getting somewhere. Use your words. Fuck therapy, man. This is great, man. Tell us, tell us why you don't feel. You can use the puppets if you want to show us like what you're going through. Oh, geez. This is longer than the Odyssey, just so you know, folks. This is the Odyssey's a cakewalk, dude. That's a fucking forget that.
SusieBuckle up, you're not going to.
ShawnWe haven't even gotten to my notes yet, dude. I got fucking 40 pages of of. I thought it was really cool that they, um, and I thought Craig probably saw this and loved it too, was that like they used the world's largest biking launch and actually took this thing out into the water. Wow. And and so that that's cool. The Draken Harold Paragar, which is an actual like sailing ship, and they brought the crew in to work with the actors. And then so they had part crew, part actors actually working this thing. Where was happening in the world? So I think that would have been pretty amazing to see. As a film lover, and like to but to see that thing out of the water, and actually as an actor, too, to be rowing that thing. They showed him all this how to work this boat. So that I think that I thought that I was thinking about you, Craig. Because I thought I bet you he really liked this scene. Because I've never seen water shots like that. Well, like other than the fact it's a Viking ship. Well, I know I get that it's not historical to But again, I don't care about that so much.
CraigAgain, that part of the thing is that you somehow with the visual I'm talking about. Like Stragonians, you know, with the with the metal armor and when those the Iron Age hasn't even started yet. But the thing is that there's an there's a 400, 300 year difference between the Mycenaean era and when the Homer epic was created, which was the beginning of the Iron Age. Okay. So I don't really care so much if there's kind of this mashup or the anachronistic elements to this film. It doesn't bother me so much. Just the fact that the optical ephenoscope is scale, like exactly the imagery of it, there's wrong. I've never never seen anything like that. And you're water stuff. And I can visualize it. That's Nolan, right?
ShawnAnd and the wine-colored ocean, which is a quote from Homer's book. He talks about the wine-colored ocean, dark, and that's what you can see in the movie, those shades that he got. So he did get some stuff right.
CraigSo I'm uh on that one, uh
Bronze Age Collapse And The Greek Alphabet
Craigbasically, I want to talk about the kind of the geographical area right here. So, you know, they've got the Mediterranean Sea, you've got North Africa below it, you've got right Morocco, and that's where they shot some of it. Correct. And you've got uh you've got you've got Greece, which is kind of upside down L-shape, you know, where you get the ends with the Peloponnese, where you know where Sparta. Yep. Um, and then you cross that to the east in the Aegean Sea, you've got Anatolia, modern day Turkey, the eastern part of the Mediterranean, which is kind of modern-day Israel, Palestine. Does anybody feel like Sivlaki right now? Lebanon. But be in between that, you got Cyprus, and and to the left of Cyprus, you got the island of Crete, which is the south of Greece. And the Mycenaean era is basically like the birth of Greek civilization, you know, 3,000 years ago. That's its historical relevance. And how do we get the Greek alphabet out of this? Is because the Minoans in Crete had a a form of writing which has not been decoded even today called linear A. But when the Greeks, the Mycenaeans invaded Crete, they took on this linear A and created their own version of it, linear B. And uh creative. Well, the name itself is interesting. But at the at the end of the day, it was a language that was an administrative language. They like, you know, all of the can we talk about the bronze age? Bronze is an interesting thing in that how did it come about? Well, bronze is the combination of copper and tin. Copper was relatively plentiful and easy to collect, but tin wasn't. So, in order to make bronze out of the two, you needed to go far off distances. So you had to have a very clear kind of structure, which is why they say the bronze age was kind of the first kind of globalized era, because it required administrative systems and a language like Linear B to communicate and maintain this the stat information to administratively create an era of bronze. But what's fascinating during this period, so at the end of Homer's epic, where you have Matt Damon going, This is the you know, the era of bronze is over, it was like, okay, you didn't need to say that, but it is historically true. And uh what's fascinating about this is that the Mycenaean era collapses. There's fires, there's burning. In fact, the reason why we know that linear bee even was a language, because they were inscribed on clay tablets dried in the sun, which would have been destroyed over those thousands of years, but they were hardened because of the fires, because of we don't know why. All of a sudden, Mycenae, the whole era just burns, palaces burns, the whole era collapses. Forest fires. Yeah. Well, yeah, we don't know. And and and so what what happened is that apparently these clay tablets that were dried in the sun were actually forged literally in the fires of these burns. That's why we know it historically. So we know about linear B. But what happens is it doesn't just take place these, you know, destruction and the wars and the battles don't take display place in Mycenae. They take place in all in this region. The Hittite Empire, you know, where Troy is based, literally collapses within a decade or two because of this. Ugarit, uh another important city-state, collapses. Even the Egyptians will never fully recover from the battles, from the apparently these sea peoples. They'll never walk like an Egyptian again. Oh, jeez. And and so this whole era collapses and the language dies off, too. The era of the Mycenaean becomes the Greek Dark Ages. So uh the population uh is estimated to die off 40 to 50 percent. The there's no more lit language or sorry, written down language, which is why they call it the Dark Ages. This is the beginning of Greek migration. But what's interesting here is the Homer connection to the Greek Dark Ages is that the oral tradition, so this is the 1100 to 800 BC, so we're many hundred years later, is that the oral tradition of heroic uh poetry develops and is transmitted here. So the bards preserved it and reshaped the memories of the Mycenaean past because of the the written word is gone. So you have oral history here, oral tradition, and that takes place and uh which then comes into the Archaic period, around 800 to 480 BCE. And so this is when the Greek alphabet uh which is is comes from the Phoenicians from the East. And what they do is so the Phoenician language was mostly consonant and and it didn't really work very well with the Greeks. It worked somewhat. So they took this Phoenician language and then they there are certain symbols that they didn't have in the Greek language, and they just turned them into vowels. And why this is so important is that now the Greeks will take this language, it was mostly consonants, add vowels to it, instead of being a syllabary or a syllabery language like linear B, which means that like, for example, Homer. Homer. So H-O- And then M-E-R, that would be the language structure of linear B. But the alphabet went and said, we're gonna create 24 letters, symbols, and then we're gonna have a mixture of consonant and vowels, which now be allows for things to become much more sophisticated. It's not just used for administration, but now you can use it for literature. In other words, the you can develop your language or ideas through language much more in sophisticated ways, which then allows, which is essentially the birth of Latin and the Russian language and so on and so forth. So this is the this is the birth of something very powerful and the birth of the Western tradition. So that was the archaic period. And so Homer's connection is that most scholars date the actual composition or the fixing so you know, quote unquote, of the Iliad and Odyssey into written texts to this period.
ShawnBut when we think of Greece, we think of the classical period, which was the 480s and the music and the just and uh falling in love and the Yeah, when you think of the classical period, Danny and Sandy Always gotta throw a Greece reference in, sorry. Do you think the Greeks knew that like they were gonna use the alphabet at these roadside check stops and you were gonna have to say it backwards? Yeah, and man, I thank God, you know, that we know the alphabet backwards and forwards. I don't think drinking driving is cool, by the way. So don't do it. All right. Did you get a look down?
SusieBecause there's gonna be a test.
ShawnThere's gonna be a test, yeah. Oh, I know, I can see over here. He's got back in two. I know. Go ahead. Sorry. Sorry, Professor.
CraigSo the classical period is the period that we most think of like you know, the Parthenon, Athenian democracy is born. It's the era of uh Socrates, Plato, Aristotle. It's also the rise of Alexander the Great. What makes this uh significant? The classical period is the height of Greek cultural and intellectual achievement, it's the shaping of Western philosophy, drama, political theory. Nanomascurry.
ShawnYeah, I get it.
SusieYeah, she's Canadian.
ShawnIs she? I thought she was Greek. Sorry. All right, skip that.
CraigSo the classical period, Homer becomes the bedrock of Greek education. It's memorized by school children and performed at festivals. Plato himself and Aristotle, I mean, Plato uh has this love-hate relationship with Homer's epic because Plato sees it as this incredible story, but at the same time, too, he hates poems. He hates the fact that because poems draw from emotion and that's dangerous. He saw that as a very dangerous because it's a very emotional kind of uh pursuit. Whereas Plato is trying to create a very kind of intellectual framework. And so he's arguing that such portrayals can corrupt the young. So this is his worry about Homer's Odyssey. However, Aristotle, on the other hand, took the opposite stance. He was like thought Homer as a technical model of excellent poetic craft rather than a moral threat. But it's the last period that I want to talk about, the Hellenistica period between 323 to 31 BCE. The connection is, and this is where we get to kind of the modern understanding of Homer's epic epic. So already we've gone over hundreds of years. We've got the bards telling stories, it can be construed and changed, can it make it more fantastical if you're telling stories like we usually do, a little embellishment here or whatever. But it was here during the Hellenistic period, after uh Alexander the Great had created Alexandria and the you know the great scholarly kind of society that he created in Alexandria, Egypt, where the uh Alexandrian scholars basically produced the standardized critical 24-book edition of the Iliad and the Odyssey. They've uh cleaned it up, removed you know, duplications and stuff like this. So we don't even know during this period how much uh license was given to kind of creating Homer's story. So when you're that's why I go back to my point about, you know, if we I'm I don't want to be a purist because what the hell does that mean in this context? But I think it doesn't matter. I think what matters is what ultimately the what the the truths of of of what it is to be human, the human condition. And I think that's what Homer is able to convey. And that's where I get a little bit protective of that. And so I'm like, you know, I'm trying I'm trying to balance this line of between going, you know, Nolan, well done. I hear you. Nolan, what why did you do that?
ShawnYou know, you just reminded me too. Um, why couldn't we have
Sirens, Nolan’s Legacy, And Box Office
Shawnmore of the sirens? We didn't get enough of the sirens. Yeah. Because I was excited about that part. I'm going, oh, we're coming into the scene. And like, are we gonna see these beautiful women like you know, singing and then they're gonna change into these like harpy things, or like I kept thinking, we didn't even get we saw these just this outline, yeah, and we didn't even get a shot of them. And then they kind of just went by them. And like one guy, of course, jumps in the water and and is gone. They got their little ear wax earbuds in, right? And I'm like, I'm like, oh, that's it. So I I was actually maybe it's good. Maybe, maybe that actually is more effective that we didn't see it, right? I always think that. I always go, but but I wanted a little more payoff with that. I was going, oh wow. I guess I was, I guess I just wanted to see some hot chicks. Yeah, right, right. You know, and some hot chicks on the PS.
SusieThat would be a bit stereotypical.
ShawnYeah, it would be stereotypical. I'm a big Christopher Nolan fan. I am. So once again, we talked last week about Steven Spielberg. After seeing the Odyssey, it's like, and I love Spielberg. I don't want to shit on Spielberg because I grew up with him and I'm very nostalgic. But like it was after seeing the Odyssey, and we had seen Disclosure Day like we months before, it's like the men against the boys here. Oh, it's true. I I mean it's like I feel bad for disclosure day now. Yeah. Because I'm like, that's horrible compared to what we just saw. What I just saw for me was. Such a great piece of artwork that I'll never forget it. And and I can't wait to see it again. Yeah. And it left me thinking about it and obsessing about it and wanting to know more about it. And that's what a good film does. It shakes you up. Maybe it makes you angry, like Craig. And you go, no, that's not right. But it creates a conversation.
CraigWell, it's interesting that you raise that because uh, you know, uh when I was listening back to the previous episode about Disclosure Day, I could see myself a little bit flat. It's because I couldn't really get into the movie.
ShawnHe is the biggest director in the world. He is the draw. When you're not going to the movie to see Matt Damon, you're going to the movie because it's Christopher Nolan's movie.
SusieYeah.
ShawnYou're going to see what he's going to do. And you're going to see his visuals. He did not disappoint. And I love all, I always go to his movies for that very reason. And the only movie that I've ever really hated from him that I walked, you know, out afterwards and went was Tenant. And there's a great shirt out there, a t-shirt that says, I still don't understand Tenant. I want to buy it so bad. But I will tell you, just walking away from this, I uh it's Interstellar or it's the Odyssey or it's Dunkirk for me. Those are the three. His picture. And I think it might just by a little bit still be Interstellar because that connects on such an emotional level to me. Right. But the Odyssey, man, it might be my, I don't know, man. It's in my my top movies, man. It's in my top movies I've ever seen. Wow. And I've seen it once.
SusieYes.
ShawnAnd I feel that way. Interesting. So that's an event movie to me. That's a fucking movie, dude.
CraigIn terms of box office, it's kind of interesting between if we compare Spider-Man with Tom Holland and Odyssey with Tom Holland in it. The Odyssey so far, after 19 days, is 930 million dollars. Spider-Man's only been out for three days and they're already made about 970 or something million dollars, which is quite extraordinary.
ShawnI didn't know it. That that was the number.
CraigAnd so you know, it's like it's interesting though. I bet if you talk to anyone who's a little bit younger, they have not seen the Odyssey. It's not on their world. But Spider-Man, what the hell is going on? Why is that a such a massive draw? Is it the Tom Holland Zendia thing? Is it just that people love it? Spider-Man? Yeah. Interesting. And I don't want to talk too much on that.
Listener Thanks, Voicemail, And Outro
ShawnWe can talk about No, no, let's do another hour on Spider-Man. And the mythical themes of the arachnid.
CraigBut let's just summarize this. So, Susie, summarize Odyssey. Three words.
ShawnThree words. Oh, great. No pressure. No pressure. Thank them up. I'm really um good.
SusieI'll go again.
CraigI do feel like I need to see it again.
ShawnYeah. I know, I know some people that are like the exact opposite. I know a girl that's like, oh God, Christopher Nolan movies are the worst. She's like, they're so bad. And I'm like, okay. And so right away I get my get mad and I'm like trying to argue with somebody. I'm going, I'm going, okay, what about Oppenheimer? And she goes, oh, that's the worst movie. She's like, that is the number. And I go, you mean like fucking Oscar winning best picture, best actor, best like, you know what I mean? What? She's like too long. She's just like, she's younger. Like nothing against younger. I'm just saying. Some younger. She's just like hated it. And I was so entertained by the fact that she hated it. And I'm trying to argue with her. And I'm going, what are you doing, dude? Why are you doing this?
CraigI want to say, people who are listening, thank you. We really appreciate you listening. And there's like interesting. We have people from Virginia who are seem to be regular listeners from Ashburn. How about Greece? Do we have the follow button? From Oregon.
SusieDid they hit the follow button?
CraigI don't know. I don't I don't have control of that.
SusieAnybody who hit the follow button.
CraigWe have listeners from Pender Island, British Columbia. Oh. We have lots of listeners in the lower mainland here, but uh it's really interesting. Uh we have people who are consistently listening in places like Coquitlam, too, and and Asurri and stuff like this. So we want to thank you uh for your support. So there's always this thing called fan mail where you can leave a voicemail. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, you can leave a voicemail. You can leave a voicemail. Oh, fantastic. And we will even put you on the podcast if you leave a voicemail. Anyway, it's been a good run.
ShawnYeah, you know what? It's been great. I mean, I think we've decided this has been a lot of fun, but the experiment's over. So uh what about bringing in a fourth version? I think we we need um like somebody that can just a historian that can just go up against Craig here, really give him a run for his money. Yeah. Just push this guy's buttons. Because I mean, Susie and I are, I mean, how much can we talk about Greece? I mean, or you know, like the musical. Wrong Greece, yeah. We're talking about the wrong green. I mean, we don't have the ammunition to go up against this guy. No. I mean, we what uh you know, I tried to talk about the movie, just wanted to keep going back to fucking the Bronze Age. I'm open. Let's do it. Game on. All right, let's go next time.
SusieMaybe uh open up uh auditions. Anyways, it's been a great audition.
ShawnIt's a five, six, seven, and eight. Do you remember the beginning of the movie? Um, where it that's that's Travis Scott. That's Travis Scott, who and then because we could do like um um a voice. Travis a man. Uh, you know, like like uh like you know the beginning that he does that, and then we go a podcast, you know, like that should be like into the opening. It'd be funny.
SusieYeah.
ShawnI've got it here. I wrote it down. It's um it's a face, a fleet, a war, a man, a thought, a trick, a podcast. You know, like something we could do.
CraigHey Sean, how do you want to send us out? This way.
ShawnA face, a fleet, a war, a man, a woman, a thought, a trick, a podcast. Hey move your basket.
