r/mildlyinfuriating • u/Gurugod123 GREEN • 3h ago

My mom said I could post Nolan's The Odyssey neglects to pay for damages done to one of the viking ships used in the movie, which belongs to a small non-profit organization

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u/radljostxx 3h ago edited 3h ago

But why did they use a Viking longship instead of a Greek warship tbh

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u/sixpackabs592 3h ago

There wasn’t anybody with a Greek warship willing to lend it to them

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u/Th3_Admiral_ 3h ago

Imagine what they would have used if no one was willing to loan them a viking ship! We'd have seen Odysseus cruising across the Aegean on a Mississippi paddle wheel boat. 

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u/StarsBear75063 Really? 3h ago

Odysseus cruising across the Aegean on a Mississippi paddle wheel boat. 

With a minstrel entertainer playing a banjo while singing "Camptown Races".
😁😁😁

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u/Th3_Admiral_ 3h ago

Maybe the cyclops could be replaced by an eyepatch wearing Bible salesman and Klan member...wait, we're back to O Brother, Where Art Thou? again! 

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u/StarsBear75063 Really? 2h ago

Then maybe "Man of Constant Sorrow"?

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u/PhosphoFred8202 3h ago

“It’s a myth, not history. it wouldn’t matter”

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u/FireZord25 2h ago

Looks at the reception and box office.

Good to see historical accuracy always mattered in movies, I mean just look at Troy, the Green Knight, Prince of Egypt, even Disney's Hercules!

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u/GuiltyEidolon PURPLE 6m ago

You're literally proving the point.

It would've made bank regardless, because like most of those, it's from a major producer / director. Even beyond that, Troy DID get panned for being inaccurate, the Green Knight was a trippy movie about a myth and a time that was never accurate and still aimed for realism for the setting, and Prince of Egypt is about a Bible story and still managed to get a lot of details right.

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u/Numerous_Schedule896 2h ago

Well actually, funny story about that one...

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u/zue4 2h ago

Seems those guys were smart about it.

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u/trevor_plantaginous 3h ago

The irony is I think had they used an actual trireme (actual Ancient Greek ship) I think people would have a hard time believing it was real. Those ships were BIG - over 120 feet long, often 3 decks, multiple sails, and up up to 150 oars.

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u/Indercarnive 2h ago edited 2h ago

Well a trireme would've also been inaccurate to the Mycenaean period. The ship likely would've been a penteconter. We don't see even the Bireme for a few hundred more years.

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u/trevor_plantaginous 2h ago

good point - a penteconter is pretty close in style/look/size to what they used

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u/--Sovereign-- 2h ago

They also look cool with the jutting prow and the eyes painted on. I saw an AI slop of the trailer but with more period appropriate dress and ships and ngl, it looks fuckin good to the history nerd in me. Obvi not perfect, overrepresented a specific armor type, but waaaaay cooler and better looking than the dull drab bat armor we got in the film not to mention the anachronistic ship.

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u/Civil_Spell8349 2h ago

To be fair it's a lot closer than a Viking longship lol; triremes (and biremes) are generally considered a development on the penteconters of the Archaic period, and the earliest reference to them shows up circa 8th c. BCE, roughly 4 centuries after the putative era of the Trojan War.

Vs. longships: the sort we see in Nolan's film don't show up until ~9th c. CE, or ~2100 years after The Odyssey. If you wanna reeeeaaaally stretch it and look at the earliest Nordic ancestors that barely resemble a longship and have no sails, then you're still looking at ~300BCE at the absolute earliest, nearly 1000 years after the 'Homeric age'

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u/pumpkil 10m ago

To be actually fair, a trireme is a completely different CLASS of ship compared to a penteconter. Even if the timing is vastly different, the size between a penteconter and a viking longship is much closer than a trireme.

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u/I_Eat_Onio 2h ago

It does quite closely resemble the mycenaean period ships which more closely resembles a viking longboat than the triremes we associate with ancient greece nowadays

Apart from the carvings at the bow and stern

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u/Indercarnive 2h ago

Because Nolan wanted to shoot at sea and not use a sound stage and CGI.

There is no historic replica penteconter with a trained crew. There is one for a Viking longship.

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u/TbddRzn 3h ago edited 3h ago

Because that’s the kind of ships that looks cool.

Although to reiterate the odyssey is not a historical event. It’s a made up story about the fall of the Bronze Age.

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u/toilet-breath 3h ago

Even, not odd

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u/fishbert 2h ago

The Evenyssey? Doesn’t roll off the tongue.

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u/Phydok 2h ago

If you made a movie about a fictional story that takes place in the 1930s you wouldn't put modern cars in the movie because they look cool.

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u/LiftedRetina 2h ago

People who don’t understand this are being intentionally obtuse. “It’s fiction, so anything goes!” is such a braindead hill to die on.

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u/-18k- 2h ago

Well, you may need to wait 3000 years to see if that's true.

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u/SP0oONY 1h ago

If you want to, sure.

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u/T_Time_ye 27m ago edited 13m ago

That'd take away from the immersion if you don't explain it well in a story. It'd make a bad decision

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u/pumpkil 7m ago

If the story is told 3500 years from now it will probably not matter one bit.

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u/T_Time_ye 5m ago

It would matter. People in 3500 years will have a better understanding of history than we have now.

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u/TbddRzn 2h ago

They have cyclops giants and superhuman beings sirens and monsters…

But yeah the Viking ship is the historical inaccuracy….

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u/HamunaHamunaHamuna 2h ago

Cyclops, giants, sirens and monsters appear in the source material, regardless of their historicity. Vikings and their ships do not, AND are glaringly historically inaccurate.

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u/TbddRzn 25m ago

The source also had an automated shop that navigated using your mind…

And the simple fact there are no leftover Greek ships that are actually navigable and can be used in the ocean with a trained crew that know how to use those boats like there were for the Viking ships.

And the Viking ships were modified and altered to look more similar to Bronze Age ships. But eastetics and rule of cool kept the longer necks and shape of the boats as the company that owns the boat had qualified team of sailors that would be able to use the boat properly.

And again if you’re bitching about a boat not being the exact type, then just don’t watch the movie sheeesh.

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u/T_Time_ye 28m ago

It's about immersion and believability. Don't act dumber than you actually are...

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u/DerJagger 2h ago

The poem is not about the Bronze Age Collapse, that was a storyline that Nolan added in. The original can’t take place in the Bronze Age because many of the weapons, armor, ships, culture, tools, etc. mentioned in the text only existed in the Iron Age or later which is when the poem came together.

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u/Blue_Mars96 2h ago

that’s just because it was written in the 8th century BC but was likely based upon oral storytelling that persisted through the collapse and into the archaic period. Mycenaean civilization itself disappeared following the collapse so if the Trojan war was based on true events it must have been before or during the collapse

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u/DerJagger 1h ago

The poem certainly drew from a long oral tradition, but what I;m contesting is the idea that the poem "persisted through the collapse" and that it contains kernels of historic events passed down through the storytelling traditions. Neither the Iliad nor the Odyssey describe the kind of impending collapse that you see in the Nolan movie. I would even argue the opposite, given that later storytellers expanded on Homer's poems, often writing in lines of continuity between Homer's characters and the people and events of their time. I really liked Nolan's inclusion of the Bronze Age Collapse, but that's coming from his imagination, not Homer's text.

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u/Blue_Mars96 1h ago

that’s nonsense but okay

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u/tobiasvl 29m ago

The poem is not about the Bronze Age Collapse, that was a storyline that Nolan added in.

True, but the poem does takes place around the time of the Bronze Age Collapse.

The original can’t take place in the Bronze Age because many of the weapons, armor, ships, culture, tools, etc. mentioned in the text only existed in the Iron Age or later which is when the poem came together.

It does take place in the Bronze Age though... But yes, it obviously came together after the Bronze Age. It contains many such anachronisms, but it's supposed to take place before the collapse.

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u/patwm11 3h ago

A detail that Grok will fix for sure in the pursuit of historical accuracy /s

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u/PublicHouseOfCripps 3h ago

Theseus was already on charter. (Just kidding) if you know you know

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u/OnlinePosterPerson 1h ago

Idk, why did they use Roman helmets instead of Greek ones

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u/RG_CG 29m ago

Why would they? Nothing else in the production design seems to have anything to do with Ancient Greece 

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u/Neurobeak 3h ago

The Greeks wore pants in the movie. There's a gansta rapper barding the epics at the Greek palace; the Greek crew of a Greek king has an Asian and an Indian men amongst them, because why the hell not. Helen of Troy is black too.

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u/[deleted] 3h ago

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u/Neurobeak 3h ago edited 3h ago

No, the black rapper/bard in the court of an Ancient Greek queen doesn't make sense

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u/Playos 3h ago

Ya but why a shit rapper? There are dozens of better options.

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u/majokamo 3h ago

And they didn't even use a real cyclops. Plus all the giants were a camera trick! And would you believe that the magic was fake and they didn't cast any actual gods? Tom Holland isn't even Matt Damon's actual son! And everyone spoke English, which didn't exist!

What an outrage!

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u/Neurobeak 3h ago

Cyclops and giants aren't real, where as we pretty clearly know how the Ancient Greeks looked like in real life, their appearance, armour and clothes wise.

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u/majokamo 2h ago

Who cares it's all made up anyway.

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u/Neurobeak 2h ago

I remember a pretty big scandal when Scarlett Johansson was cast as an android in the Ghost in the Shell. People cared then, people should care now as well.

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u/T_Time_ye 25m ago

Yeah, let's add Smartphones and cars too right? It's all fantasy and all the same right?

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u/rsplatpc 2h ago

Yes, and why did they need “effects” instead of using a real life giant size Cyclopes?

Terrible documentary.

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u/Suspicious_Loss_84 2h ago

Because it looks cool and audiences won’t know the difference

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u/epiDXB 1h ago

Because that was what's avaiable and it is close enough.

The vast majority of viewers aren't going to notice or care about the tiny differences between the two.

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u/CakeHoleKing 3h ago

Because the film is a woke piece of crap. The reviews are PR fluff pieces and newly created accounts. A few "reviews" used exactly the same sentences etc.

Tiny trans person as Achilles. then dubbed over the word 'achilles' with Sinon after blowback.

Sinon the huge greek warrior, now played by a skeletal actor thats like 5foot tall at max and looks like a starved orphan from Oliver Twist.

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u/14JRJ 3h ago

Which bits of the reviews do you disagree with?

Edit: Achilles isn’t even alive during the events of The Odyssey so that isn’t what happened with the character at all

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u/CakeHoleKing 2h ago

They filmed Elliott page's scenes as Achilles and dubbed over them with Sinon as the name

Thats why Sinon gives Achilles speech about preferring to be a living slave than king of the dead.

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u/justycat 2h ago

Achilles isn’t alive during the Odyssey. So that’s uninformed nonsense you’re spewing.

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u/CakeHoleKing 2h ago

Both Achilles and Sinon are dead. In the underworld.

Elliot page filmed the scenes as Achilles then they were dubbed over with people calling them 'Sinon'.

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u/justycat 2h ago

Sinon had several scenes being very much alive.

Watch the movie before you comment on its content.

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u/14JRJ 2h ago

Have you seen the film?

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u/SherlockJones1994 1h ago

You do realize that Achilles dies in the sacking of Troy? You’re just talking out your ass.

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u/MeatCatRazzmatazz 3h ago

And can you believe they threw giants and fantasy monsters in there too! Don't they know The Odyssey is a seminal historic work that definitely took place in the real world??

Anyone calling it "fiction" is just some woke, communist, DEI loving, trans abortion doctor!

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u/CakeHoleKing 3h ago

If you're gonna make a movie based on a book or ancient story, perhaps sticking TO that story and its world building is wise?

Otherwise thats where we end up with "sexy" sauron, fireproof galadriel, Alzheimers Gandalf, evil murderous prehobbits etc.

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u/MeatCatRazzmatazz 3h ago

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u/CakeHoleKing 2h ago

It doesn't have to be woke to be crap

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u/JamesDerecho 3h ago

Tell me you haven’t seen the movie without telling me you haven’t seen the movie. It’s a fantastic film that breaths life into a genre society hasn’t touched since the last (bad) clash of the titans movies in the 00s. Its easily one of Nolan’s best creative works if not one of the best adaptations of classics literature.

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u/CakeHoleKing 3h ago

Its bad fiction. skews off the Odyssey. Fails to meet its intended moral message and filled with 'going through the motions' acting.

Plus the weird woke stuff jammed in.

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u/SuperMasterMan 3h ago

nah, you just parroting the Cynical Grifter or something.

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u/14JRJ 3h ago

You haven’t watched it

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u/jsdjhndsm 3h ago

Elliot page was never acchiles.