The Odyssey

♪ Blank Check with Griffin and David ♪ ♪ Blank Check with Griffin and David ♪ ♪ Don't know what to say or to expect ♪ ♪ All you need to know is that the name of the show is Blank Check ♪ Excuse me. I am but a simple beggar. Is this the kingdom of the Czech Republic? I've heard that your co-host has been journeying on an odyssey across Europe, and there is an opening to co-host the podcast. And once again, I'm just a simple beggar and nothing more. Unsheath! Ah! Bling! I draw a bit into my bit bow. The bit bow. Right, yeah. And then here's my bit bow. Your joke arrow. Shh! Shh! Boing! Defy the pods. Oh, that was defy the pods. That's funny. Defy the pods cast. Wow. That was so great. That was really good. Yay! And you have authentic facial hair, much like Matt Damon. I do. I have. How would I describe this? I'm describing it as you look like Seth Bullock in Deadwood. Yes. I do. I've been saying conquistador, but you're right. I feel a little Don Quixote. It's a little. Maybe that's because I've been in Spain. Well, that's. So, we should explain for the listeners. Basically, Griffin, he's always been rocking a mustache, but now he's got a pretty full soul patch. He's got the patch. I'll say this. So, the mustache has become more and more of an emphasis in how I conduct my face. I'm a fellow stash man. Of course. I get it. I love it. We stash it up. We look great. We're secret stashers. Sure. Thank you. I'm filming a TV show. I'm working on a TV show, which I'm going to say, sometimes I think people should make. And I'm going to say, Griffin, Humblebrag. Thank you. This TV show is very well run, but I am coming in late into a season, and there's a big wall in the hair and makeup trailer of like the 70 speaking roles in this season. Yes. And I'm introduced like 60 out of 70. There you go. And they're like, you need to have a facial hair design that is different than what anyone else has. So, it's like so many of the things have been claimed in variations. And I came in just sort of unshaved. I hadn't shaved anything in like a month or two going into this. And they were like, we're keeping the mustache and we're emphasizing the flavor saver. There you go. So, even right now, you're seeing me. I'm a couple days off from filming. The rest of my face has been squeaky clean. I got a little stubble back now, but I've been squeaky clean outside of mustache and flavor saver. He's squeaky. And you're right. I look exactly like Matt Damon in The Odyssey. Well, I was going to ask you, like, how long of a beard can you grow? Oh, like, if allowed. Matt Damon's beard, the length of it is really impressive. I mean, if you can grow facial hair, you can grow a long beard. You can. It's about commitment. It's about time. My problem is, if I have too much beard, I start, like, picking at it as, like, a nervous tick. Exactly, right. And then I start, like, pulling at it and futzing with it. So, then I usually don't let it get past a certain point. I heard that Matt Damon grew for a year. He said a year. He said he had a beard for a year, I guess is how he put it. I mean, at a beard. It's a full-looking beard. Yes, because in Greek antiquity, they didn't have fake beards, I guess. So, no one was like, no fake beards. Well, and we know that this is a movie that is 100% historically accurate. Exactly. And that's why no one is angry about it. Exactly. Wait, people are already angry about it? Oh, don't worry about them, Ben. Don't worry about those guys. We're here to celebrate. It's guys? You're saying it's angry guys? What if it was all girls? Ben, if I told you that one multi, multi, multi-billionaire was angry about it, angry about this movie, who would you guess it was? One very online, very rich man. Well, let me think. Are they normal, though? The most normal. Okay, then Elon Musk. Perfect sense of humor. Yes, exactly. Yeah, okay. Okay. What's this podcast called? This is called The Podicy. It's called Blank Check with Griffin and David, but today we're going on a podicy. We are going on a podicy to Ithaca and, I guess, Troy and. A bunch of other. Unnamed islands with scary stuff on them. Upstate New York cities. Yeah. Yeah, a bunch of other rights. That's so true. Socrates. Have you guys been to Ithaca? Of course. My mother is a Cornell alum. The thing that's really scary about Ithaca as far as walking around is the gorges, and you have to go over these bridges, and you just look down, and it's just. It's quite hefty. It's just. It's quite a drop to a drop. I visited Cornell in Ithaca on, like, a little college tour, and the one thing that everyone talked about was, like, oh, yeah, lots of people just, like, fling themselves off into the gorges. My cousin went to Ithaca College and just casually mentioned, like, yeah, people just will commit suicide. Because it's too gorgeous? It's very small, and look at the island. Like, God, everyone's fighting over this. That big. Yeah, but, like, you know, it's home. It looks like it has some nice beaches. It's home. I know. It's home. It's home. But, you know, Pattinson's coming all the way out just to try and get this little, like. Why not this island? Look at this island. This island's huge. Cuffalonia, right next door. I don't know. Maybe there are fucking monsters on it. Yeah, God. All these islands seem to have monsters on them. There are no monsters on there. They're just, they're just, like. Well, there's, yeah, there's men. There's petty men. Men are the monsters. They're the real monsters. But you don't have, like, giant Bill Irwin, like, butt naked with one eye eating you. See, my read on it was just the smaller island is maybe more strategic. Maybe, yeah. It's just maybe safer. I think it's easier to govern, too. It's just kind of like, hey, you know, got some sheep. I want to front load this. But the Cyclops sequence in the movie is the highlight of the film for me. Interesting. I would not say that's true for me, but it makes sense that it is for you because it have big monster, which you do love a big monster. Right. I also love Bill Irwin. We love Bill Irwin. It genuinely was one of the first times in a long time that I watched a sequence in a movie and went, I have no idea how the fuck they did this. I had the same. I certainly, obviously, I was trying to give myself over to the movie, but I was constantly, kind of like, I guess there's some forced perspective stuff, but I'm not totally sure how they pulled this off. But then it's that great movie magic thing where you watch one shot and you go, okay, I think I figured out how they did this. I think I can see this one. And then switch it up for you. The next shot completely breaks whatever your sense was. And part of it is that he's pulling things back to basics so much that any overcomplicated process that you would just assume or hand wave away, you're ruling out. Yeah, I don't know. It was very, very cool when he'd pick up Guy and eat him. Yeah, that was scary. I got scared. Step on him with foot. And step on him with foot. And squeeze him. And squeeze him. I know. You know what's so cool about The Odyssey is I wouldn't be surprised if all of us had a different favorite section of the movie. Okay, let's go around. Let's do this. Let's go around the horn. David, favorite section? I think Marie and I have the same favorite section, though. Well, I have two favorite sections. Oh, I know mine. My favorite section is certainly Cersei and the pigs. Cersei was a big standout for me, but I also was really, really moved by the flashback to Odysseus' experience of carnage in Troy. That was very, yes. I was very impressed by the narrative thing he was doing in the third act. Certainly, yes. That is fair. Ben? Okay, I'm going to attempt to say, the name of these people, and I'm sure I'm going to butcher it, the last Dragonians. The big guys. The big fucking crazy knights. You like a big guy. Oh my God, it was so sick. Yeah. Yes. And that was crazy when it was like, who's that man? And then it turns around and it's a giant kid. Sure. And he's laughing. Well, that was great. It's weird that Ben liked the sequence with the taunting child and the giant brute army, and I liked the sequence with the emotionally wounded. Wounded monster. Just in a fetal position in a cave. Played by one of America's finest clowns. I didn't know it was Bill Irwin until after the fact. Yeah, I had to tell you. It's such a good performance. Very cool. This is Blank Check with Griffin and David. It's a podcast about filmographies, directors who have massive success early on in their careers, such as making a Bartman movie, and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want. Those checks have not run out for one Christopher, for Nolan. They keep getting bigger. He has been on an uninterrupted run of checks being handed to him for now 21 years. Yeah? Yes. Yeah. What are we counting as the. Batman Begins, right? That was 21 years ago? Yeah, it was 2005. Yeah, that's what's crazy. Oh, my God. I was but 19, maybe 20 years old, yeah. You could say that Batman Begins was the guarantor, but I think the circumstances around Batman were so weird at that point in time that they basically gave him a blank check because they were like, we got no better ideas. But we already said this with him. He constantly has guarantors. He said about this movie, like, this is my biggest budget movie ever, and it's because Oppenheimer did so well. Right. It's like it keeps. But you don't get to make a movie like Oppenheimer at Oppenheimer's budget without that being a bit of a blank check as well. Of course. Correct. So it's like. Correct. I have no idea what he does from here. He can do whatever he wants. I don't either. I think he has to go smaller, and I think he's even sort of talking about that now, but we covered him many years ago his success has only grown at since we covered him at the time he already was arguably the filmmaker of his generation and with every success of film he's only become more and more important and now he's making what feels like uh the biggest movie you could possibly imagine yeah sure i mean we had this conversation after oppenheimer all of us we were just like the fuck does he do next when oppenheimer which on paper was a one for me makes nearly a billion dollars and wins every oscar yeah and performs as high as most of his films have ever achieved and then what is there even left for this guy to cash in and there were all the rumors that he was doing blue thunder that's made up is that a helicopter cop movie things oh is he doing a horror movie is he doing a this there was he has said he wants to figure out a horror movie which is which is interesting but do you remember we were all in the office together i can't remember what episode we had just recorded or about to record and i went holy shit and i showed you there was a tweet and it was christopher nolan's the odyssey filmed entirely in imax coming summer 2026 right it was just all at once suddenly the announcement was out there we had known the cast the cast had been started been growing had been pinned to the board but we didn't know what it was and then we just went holy shit of course he had to do this it was either the odyssey or the bible it was the only move for him to do now as he's pointed out there's no uh hollywood version of the odyssey ever that's what's why he's like and that's why it had to be this no one had ever tried this obviously there's there were a couple sort of italian you know there was the amanda sante that's a tv movie i tried watching that on youtube last night i turned it off after 30 seconds do you want to see what the cyclops looks like in it someone posted it to my works oh you know he looks kind of good he looks like a big baby let me see this guy i like this i like this guy he looks pretty good that's some griffin shit right it's a little bit uh dinosaurs vibe you know yeah like you know little early holland there did the jim henson creature shop work on this at all i mean one assumes right i mean let's find a lot of those tv movies i was gonna say that was their that was how they kept the lights on right exactly there's like the ted dancing gulliver's travels around that oh that was kind of hallmark remember the ted dancing well he was huge remember how big he was he was big he was and you know what griffin and the lilliputians were small i can confirm for you that the creature effects for this miniseries were provided by jim henson's creature shop they had a talking animatronic pig roasting on a spit that's cool love that uh they had a rod puppet sea slug sea monster and they had you know well maybe i'll try i'll give it another shot but i'll just fast forward to all the cool to the puppet stuff puppet stuff last night for research i was like i want to watch some stuff to like get me in the odyssey mood again because we saw the movie what like three days ago uh so i watched the uh episode of arthur where dw retells the odyssey yes uh and i watched the episode of wishbone i was gonna say wishbone must have spun that tale but it's very interesting because okay in the arthur version with dw there's none of the like what's happening back at ithaca stuff it's just dw on a boat encountering monsters uh sure and then in the wishbone version barely any of the monsters it's all back at it i really hope there's a bunch of limitations listening right now as we talk about this um i just think it's i think it's crazy that children's media it's the first story well yeah well they you know they still do it i'm sure gabby's dollhouse has done an odyssey episode she found a new room i'm not sure not sure if she's gotten there yet i i just have to read this uh review for the 1997 miniseries that's cited on wikipedia because it's so it's such a good burn uh by richard nielsen of the arizona republic even though the made for tv movie is only four hours long i wasted a fifth hour stewing over how god-awful it was that's pretty good he's saying this is this shit was so bad it ate into further time in my life it ruined an additional hour of my life that miniseries had its own controversy at the time because they cast baby sinclair to play helen of troy because they had him kicking around the creature shop and people got really upset and that's and that's a muppets reference or is that that's a dinosaur i didn't know his name was baby sinclair you didn't know i think he's handsome but people thought he didn't have a face that would launch a thousand trips that was the argument i think he's handsome he's iconic i mean i don't know if i would call him handsome but like he's the one who knows the baby he is literally the moment you think he's currently the moment i think now i think baby sinclair has never been more relevant as proven by how quickly all three of you understood the joke i was making i didn't like the joke i just forgot they're called the sink why are they called the sinclair because they're just a normal family but they should have had like a pun name i agree you know wait isn't there like a sinclair oil or like a gas station called sinclair with a dinosaur on it oh i think you're right that sounds a little that sounds like a stretch though no see oil corporation fossil fuel yeah the name is a reference to sing okay this is funny this is really good it's a really good show i am so smart that's too sophisticated okay let's talk about the odyssey the odyssey and our screening experiences so okay great we have three different screening experiences three different experiences three different experiences cities three different three cities wow much like the odyssey the movie this is an episode that spans multiple countries multiple cities multiple formats uh multiple formats because yes okay so all right well marie and i saw it at the amc imax lincoln square 70 millimeter imax 70 millimeter imax where i guess you can't get like a seat at like the 3 a.m screenings in august right now like it's like right sold out for the rest of time we are checking our privilege uh it was i feel enormously blessed to have had the opportunity to not only see this film the the director preferred format big old theater but also in the best seat in the house of course we had my my favorite seats in the back of the house near the secret bathroom yes which i really yes on the imax screen yes okay uh but it was 70 and you know the the fit like the the picture there were little little spots and yeah i like that little guy oh yeah it was very cool i like the texture exactly i like the imperfections now ben ben where did you see i was in chicago the windy city visiting and i went to an amc theater in downtown chicago and saw this film in 70 millimeter and and at that theater there's no ketchup and it's all it's like uh giardiniera right and a big pickle in your popcorn i'm doing a chicago bit yeah there was celery you saw inside the bean right you did and the perspective was a little weird right right it was a little bit funky what's what's the deep dish version of a movie theater is it right the chairs are behind the screen it's like the whole theater is kind of like a conversation pit yeah but it just goes yeah pretty funny or it's maybe maybe it's like ben's original pitch of like the underwater upside down movie right right that would be good especially for that anyway okay so yeah you you were in chicago chicago and so you went to a press screening there yes yeah and unfortunately imax not they don't have an imax in chicago i just learned this today i am that's pretty wild yeah for such a major market i guess or i guess if they do have one they don't do press screenings there i don't really know um do you know what format you saw ben was it 35 was it a digital you saw in seven okay so you saw in a gentleman 70 a gentleman 70 yes obviously most people around this country will not be able to see the film in like fancy fancy imax obviously there's you know digital imax out there and there's 70 out there there's a lot of formats i'm going to see it on 35 on saturday where night hawk wow crazy i i saw i think the number is there's somewhere between 40 and 50 screens on the planet that show it in the kind of complete preferred nolan format now i have been in spain filming griffin's in spain in the entire country of spain there are only two imax screens both of which are digital wow i had purchased tickets for one of them at midnight so i was going to see this movie at midnight on thursday record with you guys the next day and then my buddy let's say friend of the podcast he came through in a major way here sam clements who works for the picture house chain in the uk the great movie theater chain i was texting with him and he said i might be able to get you into the press event which was at the bfi south bank imax a big big fancy theater in waterloo very very large one of the biggest imax screens yeah and he pulled off a miracle his buddy david at organic publicity got me in i had a handful of days off from filming uh i in fact have more than a handful of days off from filming a little bit a little bit i've been doing a lot of siestaing but a little bit of work a little touch of work on the side uh a kind of pinchos amount of work just small tapas work um how many other uh phrases can i appropriate here but i got to see it at the south bank in in 70 imax which was quite a treat it is it's a it's a fucking big ass movie it really is and this is nolan's been working on this project for a decade of How much more? More than a decade, almost 20 years now, because I guess it starts with Dark Knight 18 years ago of how much IMAX can I get into a commercial release film? And this is the first movie where he's gotten it up to 100 percent. Right. Every single shot in this movie. I got to say, this movie is epic. It is quite epic. And I think regardless of what format you see it in, the actual fidelity of the image that has been captured is pretty fucking astonishing. Yeah. David Ehrlich, run of the pod, a friend of my life, was at the same screening as us seeing the movie for the second time. He saw it in IMAX for the first time. And then for the second screening, he saw it in 70. And he said he preferred it in 70, which we were like, interesting. I think you're just making stuff up. You know, the first screening of a movie like this where it's all hyped, you're all you're so like, you know, buzzed up watching it. And it's hard to concentrate even, you know, the second screening, you can focus more on what he's doing. Maybe that was part of it. And if he's listening right now, he should throw a wallet at himself. Yeah, he should actually. Yeah, that's right. I'll say this. We've we've all seen it one time. We've been fortunate enough to see it one time before release in order to get this episode out quickly. I don't think I had any, like, adjustment to how high my expectations were. Or the hype. I felt pretty settled into meeting the movie where it was at. It does feel like a lot of movie to absorb on one viewer. Yes. Like, I feel like I'm struggling even two days later to get my head around some of it. I think the movie's excellent. Not me. I'm strong as hell. Strong. You're strong as hell. Yeah. You feel like you got a complete take. He was saying before we started taping, like, he's got the names locked down. Yeah. He's got the names? I was saying, look, I'm not going to remember all of the names. And he was like, don't worry about it. We're just going to say the actors. We're just going to say the actors' names. And I was like, okay. John Leguizamo. Can I say he's my MVP in this movie? Well, of course he is, Griffin. Of course he's your MVP. He's so good. He's so good. He's the Krumholtz of the movie. I personally, and I don't know, maybe, David, you will agree with me on this. I think Samantha Morton is the, like, standout performance. I mean, I really think that everyone in this movie is very well cast and used. But it was so nice to see people like Morton and Leguizamo. Who Nolan's never worked with before. Where Nolan clearly, immediately was like, that is the person. I don't need to identify, like, whatever, a bigger star here. Or, you know, like a glitzier. Like, he matched the actor so perfectly. Leguizamo in The Odyssey, you're like, that, what? Like, that doesn't automatically. And then you see it and you're like, I understand this completely. Morton makes total sense. That was not. I think they're the two MVPs. Morton, you know, we've talked about Morton a lot this year. And on the Morvan Caller episode, we were talking about how much, in the late 90s and the early 2000s, she was seen as, like, one of definitively the great actresses of her generation. And she's receded a little bit. And this just feels like Nolan wanting to remind everyone how good she is and how powerful she is. Leguizamo, I don't feel like I've ever seen him used like this before. I was trying to think about this. Unlocking new chambers for me. Because he's, like, kind of the heart of the movie. He is, yeah. He's the emotional spine of the thing who all the other characters are filtered through. I, for some reason, kept thinking about John Wick because Odyssey does have a John Wick vibe of, like, he's coming back and he's mad. Which I feel like maybe John Wick has an Odyssey vibe. Of course, absolutely. Odysseus is calling him and being like, do you still have my car? Yeah, right? I mean, it was a little bit that where it's like, Leguizamo's just playing the guy where it's like, everyone agrees that this guy is reliable and wise. Yes, as hell. Like, that is what we turn. Because I'm looking at Leguizamo's, I mean, he works. Like, Leguizamo's always working. But, like, what's the last time he was, it might be John Wick. Like, that he was in something where I was like, oh, it's so, what a great use of him. I didn't see Bob Trevino likes it. Which everyone said he was really excellent in. I should see that. He's the lead of that, right? He's Bob Trevino? It's him and Barbie Ferreira, yeah. And Barbie Ferreira, by the way. She's having a hell of a year. She is. I'm loving Barbie Ferreira. No? Everyone? No? Mylon Kirsten's great. Our buddy Chandler Levick's great film. Yeah, that movie is so good. Chandler. It's so good. Yes. Are you listening? Chandler, I liked your movie. The Canadian film explosion of 2026 is, to me, the big story. That's so true. Yes, Canada's everywhere right now. Oh, let's see. He's in The New Exorcist, Leguizamo. Okay. I bet you he plays like a priest who's like, I don't like the looks of this. We gotta get this game now. I bet you're right. That sounds very great. I can see it. I bet he talks out of the center of his mouth exclusively. Right down the center of his mouth. Those front teeth getting a lot of exposure. Is he like, you know, has he done like, should we throw him like a glitzy miniseries so he can grab an Emmy or something? He was in an Apple TV series called Smoke, which wasn't very good, but he was in it. He was in it. It feels like he's primed, though. That's a good point, David. You know what I mean? I feel like we got Leguizamo. I feel like we got Leguizamo in like third position on an FX series. He's like winning every award. Yeah, like who doesn't, who's not happy to see Legs? Johnny Legs. Well, King Koopa. Well, that's true. Although actually, I don't really know that King Koopa registered Luigi as a threat, did he? I mean, I can't really remember. You know, I haven't watched that film in a little while. Do they do battle even? Like, I don't really. If King Koopa doesn't register Luigi as a threat, I would say that's a narrative shortcoming. I would say if King Koopa does not register Luigi as a threat, I would say that's a narrative I would say if King Koopa does not recognize one of the two Mario Brothers as a threat at any point, that movie might have some script issues. I do think I've seen the Super Mario Brothers movie several times in my life. I think one could accuse it of having script issues. I think that's fair. I think everyone would bear that accusation with grace and respect. This is the first I'm hearing this. Oh, my God. What do I say here? Put my finger up behind my ear. So here we are. We saw the Odyssey. So, Griff, you saw it at the BFI. Was that nice? That's a lovely theater. I haven't been there in a long time, but it's very good. It's very cool. It's a big old circle. It's in a circle. You got to go a little bit underground in a tunnel. Cool. Yeah, because it's in like in the middle of a giant roundabout. Correct. It's like there's cars going around. It's in the middle of like a traffic circle. Yes. And so you got to take an underpass to go into the secret chamber. Cool. That's great. See any pals there? Any of our Brit pals? Honey Ross, friend of the podcast. Okay. And Sam Clements was there with me. I don't think I saw anyone else. Fair enough. But I was. I was. I was immediately taken aback by, and I think I wasn't reading early responses. You guys had gone with Marika Brownlee. Ben was seeing at the same time that I was vaguely. I had gotten general thumbs up from people I knew, but I wasn't reading anyone's deeper thoughts. And I was taken aback immediately because I was, Sam helped me get into the screen, but he had already seen the movie. And there was a whole kerfuffle with me being his plus one. So I was like, okay, I'm going to get into the screen, but I'm going to get into the screen. Where they wouldn't let me in without him. So he said, I'll come and I'll sit through the first like 30 minutes again, and then I'll leave. And I said, is like the opening particularly good. I was wondering, like, does it have one of these classic Nolan sort of James Bond style dark night tenant? You open with something kind of just so fucking insane. Right. And he was like, the opening is great, but it's not like that. And the movie starts and immediately it was just like, this is not where I thought this film would start. This is not how the first hour I imagined would progress. And the structure of this movie for a guy who likes to play around with structure is so different than I was expecting because he doesn't diagram it. Usually when he does funny structure tricks, it's like really set up and explained. And this movie almost immediately reminded me so much of Thin Red Line. Okay. Yeah. And that it feels like it's editing based on emotions. That's interesting. So, you know, I will say the Odyssey, I'm going to, am I the only reader of the Odyssey? In the room right now, not to, not to Odyssey mog anyone. I mean, I studied it in school. Sure. Okay. So you read it. I have no memory of it really, but I have brushed up a little bit and just watching some YouTube guides. I bought a graphic novel version of it with pictures. Who did, who did this graphic novel? It would be a disaster if the graphic novel did that. That would be a huge misstep. Big bummer. Gareth Hines. I've seen this. I think my wife has used this as a teaching aid because she teaches the Odyssey. Your wife teaches the Odyssey. She does. She does. But like, you know, the first four books of the Odyssey are from Telemachus' perspective. They do have this kind of prologue-y kind of like, where's Odysseus? Son of Odysseus, we should say. Telemachus is the son of Odysseus and he is played by Tom Holland in the film. You guys notice that? Yes. Peter Parker. Peter Parker himself. Uh, Nathan Drake himself. Uh, did you guys see the video of Tom Holland and Matt Damon doing a, like, junket thing where they had to guess? Make a pizza? I did not see the one where they had to make pizza. What did they have to guess? They have to guess which of their films by just the colors of the frames. You ever see the movie Lutz thing or whatever? Yeah. Yeah. That's a fun game. It's tough to put those two filmographies next to each other. Well, that was what was really fucking funny. Right. Damon has like eight masterpieces. I was like, okay, so is this movie The Departed, Interstellar, or Good Will Hunting? One of the 14 Soderbergh movies I made. And Tom Holland's like, is this chaos walking? No, for Tom Holland, they gave him three Spider-Man movies. And he had to guess. That's so lame. They all fucking look the same. I wouldn't be. It was so sad. I felt so bad for him. Is this the best? I mean, I think The Lost City of Z is my favorite movie that he's ever been in. You love that film. Yeah. But then I think this is a huge challenger. I don't see anything else in his filmography that I would really vault up the list here. It is wild that, I mean, obviously, No Way Home was so fucking humongous and was, you know, one of the first in a series of movies that saved Hollywood after the pandemic. Right. And it got a little erased by Top Gun and Maverick and Top Gun, Maverick and Barbie and Oppenheimer. But it was a phenomenon. Humongous. It's one of the 10 highest grossing films of all time. And he's been a little silent. And I think there's been a couple of years for all of us to stroke our chins and be like, is he juiceless? Like, where the fuck does his career go at this point? Especially because everything he tried to do outside of Spider-Man really didn't work. And yet, he's about to be the undisputed king of the summer box office. It's true. He's about to have a humongous fucking summer. He's going to have a huge, it's just July. He's the king of July. Sully could have only dreamed of the kind of July he's having. That's so true. I think he was very well cast in this movie. Yeah, I thought he was well deployed in this movie. I think he's, you know what? I'm going to give him. I think he's good in the film. I know some people are like, ah, no, I just sort of felt like Tom Holland-y to me. But no, I think he. No, I think he's good. I think he really, he's really, he's good at playing someone who needs to learn. Like, and mature and grow. Like, and I'm not saying that as a neg on him. No, the problem with him is going to be the, can he ever age into anything else? I'm not sure. I don't know. I saw him saying in an interview, like, I think this will be the last time I'm kind of playing a kid. And I was like, maybe. I know that he is 30. He is 30. I cannot believe that he is 30. He do have a baby face. But it reminded me a lot of his Lost City of Zed performance. It did. There's that John Mulaney joke of I'm sober, which I know is surprising to people because I look like someone who hasn't done anything before. Right. He's just been sitting in a room eating crackers. Right. A lot of this Odyssey Spider-Man promo tour has been Tom Holland pushing Bureau, his non-alcoholic beer alternative. And that's another thing where you're like, I can't believe you're old enough to be sober now. I'm happy for him that he's got whatever equilibrium he desires or whatever. But yes, it is interesting. But he reads as perpetually 16. Yeah. He does. He does, which is why he's in this role in which literally the point is that he is not of age yet. The point of the Odyssey is like you are Odysseus' son. You're a strong young man, but you cannot inherit his throne yet. So I got to keep weaving this fucking thing until he comes back. Can I say, Hollywood, thank you for your service. How about you sit here in the corner and you do your thing and we're just going to wait on Matt Damon to come back. David. Yes. Did you know there's a new place where you, you specifically can let your nerdy freak flag fly? I did. I did. I did. I did know that because it's a real digital town, Video Game Town. And it's populated by some of the best freelance writers on the internet, where you can read compelling editorials, reviews on the latest pop culture releases, get exclusive interviews with tastemakers, even get rankings of sexy mascots if you're into that. 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Get your tickets today at netflix.com slash house. So, The Odyssey. It is a film. Directed by Christopher Nolan. And it does begin with Travis Scott. The great Travis Scott. A friend of Christopher Nolan's. Right? They're best buds. Right? Don't they like send each other gifts and shit? They are friendly. Yes. Because Travis Scott had a song in Tenet. I feel like that was their initial. And he's got the end credit song in this. And, you know, it begins with him trying, you know, he's going to sing the song of Odysseus. And it's clearly Nolan like taking you by the shoulders and being like, you have to understand that this story. Telling form exists now and has just evolved. Like, yeah, it's just changed. And like, but he's like, it's a real mission statement moment for him where he's just like, this is still what we do. We tell like stories through verse to each other. It's so good. I was so startled by the first five minutes of the movie played in front of another movie. Is that true? No, no, no, no, no. The prologue, which I saw is the Trojan sequence, which is much later in the. Okay. Because. I really tried not to see a ton of marketing for this movie. Like I saw the teaser trailer, whatever it was, where Tom Holland was like, my dad's coming home or whatever. And I saw that and I was like, this doesn't look good to me, but I'm so I'm not going to watch anything else because I trust Christopher Nolan. And you want to see it in context. I want to see it in context. But then I, I know that I don't know what movie they put it in front of an IMAX, but some people did get to see the prologue. You could see it if you bought a ticket to. I bought a ticket to an IMAX. So I saw, I bought a ticket to the Sinners re-release just to watch it. Okay. It was also in front of one battle, I think, you know, where, I can't remember. Like it was, it was the fall of, it was like a little sizzle reel, basically. Okay. So. But it was not like the first five. It wasn't like Dark Knight Rises where it was truly just like, let's watch the opening. Because I too was genuinely shocked that the movie, the first shot of the movie is Travis Scott. Yes. Saying sing, oh muse. And so I was like, oh, did people know this was coming if they saw the preview? No, no. I'll also say, uh, uh, Sam Clements of Paris. Picture House aforementioned goes to like the European equivalents of CinemaCon. And he said that a month or two ago, they showed what they said was the opening of the movie. And it was very different than this. It was constructed differently. So it feels like they've been, the editing of this movie feels very free flowing. I could see this being a thing that he kept iterating on until the last second. Um, but to your point of the Travis Scott thing and the stupid controversies that existed around this movie, which Nolan very wisely didn't really weigh in on until recently he had to do the press tour. And then I thought he put it perfectly, which is, you know, a lot of people were complaining that there were things in the trailers and the posters and fucking whatever that seemed too modern or too casual or didn't seem historically accurate. And this is partially a trap of Nolan's own making in that his fans have come to build this sort of mythology around him of being like the guy who takes everything the most seriously. Whereas that has never been his thing. There's always. There's always been silliness in his movies. There's always been flights of fancy and stylization in his movies. He is a literal minded guy in a certain kind of way, but it doesn't mean that he's a guy who just is like nothing but the facts, ma'am. And he said, you know, so much of what people consider to be accurate in these types of movies is based on iteration of theatrical traditions of how we tell these stories. These things like that we like to think of, of people speaking in Shakespearean accents in a certain language is like. A theatrical form that we use to connote seriousness that is put on epics like this. And as you said, this movie is starting out and being like, this is the tradition that this is in. And we're going to translate this into something that feels urgent to you right now, a modern audience, rather than trying to gloss it up in some sort of sense of seriousness. Right. And then you almost immediately go to the beaches with the horse. Well, you sort of do. It's basically. It's basically like he's starting to tell the story and you see Elliot Page getting pinned to the horse. But then what is, isn't it Penelope? And Hathaway is like, no, I don't want to hear the fucking story. Because the point is, it's like. I hate that story. Enough of this. We've been singing the song of Odysseus for so long. But where is he? If we heard he did this, then why hasn't he come back? If they won. Other guys came back. Where's my husband? Right. The other guys came back. And meanwhile, Odysseus is on a beach with Charlize Theron. And, you know, send help vibes, obviously. Nice work if you can get it vibes. I love when she wears that little like fishnet thing. Yeah. And I was like, ooh, that's so couture. She's the catch of the day. She really is. David, she's the catch of the day. I understand what you're saying. I would say Odysseus actually is the catch of the day. She caught him. And she's like, I like when I caught him. She's been feeding his ass lotus. I know. He really likes that lotus flower. It doesn't look that good. It was very pretty. it didn't look appetizing to me it doesn't look filling about how it feels yeah i understand i could use some lotus sometimes definitely lately well i mean once in a while you got a lotus night yeah i mean you know i'll tell you you need to pull a pedal yep or two mike white he could use the lotus he could use i think he's got more than enough of it he should share the lotus he should you're right he should share the load i don't know i was trying to figure out a white lotus joke Can Mike White share the Lotus, please? Just share the Lotus, Mike White. I just saw something that he wrote. What was it? Oh, yeah. Despicable Me 4. Okay. He has a writing credit on that one. And on three, maybe? He's got it on two of them. Am I wrong? Let's find out. He also wrote Migration. He wrote Migration. He has no other Minion credits. But, of course, he wrote the Emoji movie. Okay, there we go. Which is not Illumination, but I lump in in my mind. And he did write Pitch Perfect 3 and no others. Yes. Weird. We both were watching through all the Despicable Me and Minions movies in anticipation of Minions and Monsters simultaneously. Yes. And it was very funny for you and I to check in with each other and be like, yep, still don't like these very much. Not too much. I like the Minions. Two more to watch. Right. Yeah. No, but they never really got me those earlier ones. See? You were like way out on Gru and really in on the Minions. And I'm a little bit in on Gru and I'm not that in on the Minions. And both of us were just like, not my cup of tea. Some stuff I like. Anyway. I don't like Gru. I'm sorry. I'm sorry to Gru. I kind of like her. And you know who I really like? Gru's mom? No. Gru's wife, Lucy. Who is her own person who has a lipstick taser and I think is quite fashion. Yeah, she's okay. Played by Kristen Wiig. I'm glad. I'm glad she's cashing the checks. I'm glad everyone's cashing their checks, you know? That's fine. Direct deposit on that one, right? No one's taking the time to run those to the bank. No. They're doing mobile deposit or at worst, they're taking the photo on their phone. Do you think that the Cyclops in Christopher Nolan's version of the Odyssey would have been harmed by stepping on a Lego in the way that the Cyclops in the Minions version of the Odyssey was? I mean, that whole sequence would be over. It would be over in two minutes if Odysseus had thought to carve a Lego block. That's all he needed to do. The Minions had the answer. Henry and James. I wanted to bring up that we see Elliot Page, whose character is Sinon. Sinon? Yes. And the horse so early because this movie feels very haunted by the horse. The horse is very forward in the marketing. It's on the poster. They've been putting the horse up outside of theaters. There's a horse popcorn bucket. And I assumed. Oh, there's probably a big horse set piece, but that's not the main story that Nolan wants to tell is just the hiding in the horse. But this movie keeps cutting back to the horse as like this thing that fucking haunts Odysseus. Yes. That the thing that he's most known for what is seen as his greatest triumph. He can kind of never get over what feels like the dishonesty of it. Yes. So this is, I would say, the brilliant conceit of this movie. And it's clear that. But Nolan, you know, is like, okay, I'll do the Odyssey. He's sitting in his chair, drinking a cup of tea, not having a smartphone. And he's like, perhaps the Odyssey. But like the Odyssey is, is the original great tale of Western storytelling or whatever. But like, it is not something that you can locate emotion in easily. And but it is, if you read the Odyssey, it is obsessed with hospitality. Like, that's a huge part of the poem. The idea, the ancient Greek notion of hospitality. And, you know, they call it Zeus's law here. You know, the sort of like. Be kind to, you know, welcome a stranger to your home. And like, you know. Any simple beggar might actually be your co-host in disguise over. Exactly. And might have wonderful Seth Bullock facial hair and all that. And it's a simple idea because like both the Iliad, which is also by Homer. Quote unquote, you know, we don't really, you know, and the Odyssey. Those things are not like, and we really fucked Troy over. Like those things are like, it rocked when we smashed Troy to pieces. And you're like, great, you know, you're so. But like, it's very simple for Nolan, but it's very clever for him to be like, it's kind of fucked up. Yeah. You know, we, we, we, you know, kind of lied our way in there. And then we sacked the city and. And it was a lie to put a bunch of soldiers in a horse. And to make this, this sort of like. Emotion of like Odysseus, right. Is weighted with the guilt of like, we did kind of defy the gods by doing that. Yeah. And like, we are the ones who maybe have contributed to the feeling that society is ending around us. And makes the film feel contemporary without it feeling didactic to me. Like I was just kind of like. They broke the social contract. I kind of can't believe he pulled that off. Yes. In this movie. Much like Oppenheimer is the same way, right? Where it's very haunted by like the world we live in now. Oppenheimer. Made the terrible world we live in now. He didn't mean to. He was just smashing bits together in his. His particle accelerator or whatever. Right. You know, and fucking everyone's wives. Nolan movies, because he has become the guy at the top of the mountain. He has become the person who represents filmmaking globally, sort of as an idea. And certainly as an industry. And now is literally also the president of the DGA. A guy at his level of career rarely takes on an elected position like that. Except it feels like he's like, there's too much at stake and my people need me and I have to fight for them. All of his movies have increasingly become about two things. One, I am the only one who can do this. The burden is heavy on me, but I must do this for everyone else. Two, what have I done? Oh, sweet Jesus. What have I done? And this is a movie about a guy who's like, I need to do this for everybody else. And the final shot of the movie is literally the shadow of the Trojan horse. And it's like, he cannot get out from under that shadow. It's one of the first things we see in the shadow. The silhouette is the last thing we see. Um, you know, it's, it's beautiful stuff. Uh, do you guys know about the sea people theory of bronze age collapse? Can I very briefly? That's like what they were talking about. This is what I'm saying. The sea people that were ruining everything. You know, so sort of during the late bronze age, all of the major civilizations in the Mediterranean basically collapsed and no one knows why, because it was so fricking long ago. So we can't really, we're talking like the 12th century BC or whatever. And it led to the first dark age, right? Not, not the lovely dark age. We like to think about, which is like, you know, whatever, like the eighth century and people rattling, you know, I don't know, carts and stuff. What do people do in that dark age? Wearing big rattle carts. Yeah. Coughing blood into a tissue. But like the right, the old, old dark age. And one of these notions is like the, the sea people were like, it's like an academic theory that like these kingdoms were done in by invaders and no one knows who or even why or except for it. But like, and I just love Nolan picking out on that and having that be this like looming threat in the movie. And then of course at the end, it's like, well, no, but we are, we're the, we're the sea people. We're the ones who ruined civilization. Like going to do a. Stupid war that sucked for no good reason. And then returning home to like, you know, like places, you know, our homes were in turmoil and like with civility gone and everyone at each other's throats and getting stabbed. Right. I also think, yes. And with, within that framework, you realize that the big set pieces of the odyssey as a story are mostly about them being bad guests. It's like, we just got to get home and they landed. In a different place and come across a different creature and just kind of our shitty house guests over and over and over again. There's that early moment where they show up on some beach and the guys have like burned their houses and are in a bad mood. And Hamish Fratella is like, we're Greeks. Like we're, we're not threatening. Like, you know, even though he's like in armor and has a sword. Why are you scared of us? And the guy's like, oh, fuck you. Sea people, leave me alone. Let's clarify. They pull up, their whole town is on fire. He's like, why? He's like, we saw people coming. We thought we'd just get this over with. Like, rather than let you burn us to the ground, we'll burn ourselves down. Like, that's the level of paranoia and exhaustion everyone's at. Yes. But okay. So let me, let me try and unpack the, the flow of the story here. So yes, the first bit obviously is just, we're in Ithaca. We're with Telemachus. Penelope is. In a bad mood. I was. She's many a suitor. I was really impressed by how cunty Anne Hathaway was in this role. She's great in this movie. She's great. David, what did you text about Anne Hathaway the other day? Because we. I thought you worded this very well. Uh, someone, someone was noting what a busy year she's having. Six movies. Is it six? I'm going to look it up. Mother Mary. Devil Wears Prada 2. Yep. The Odyssey. Oak Street. Verity. Oak Street. Oak Street. And I believe there's one movie. One more that I'm forgetting. No, it's just five. Just five. It's just five. There's a movie called Alone at Dawn. that's a Ron Howard movie with Adam Driver, but I'm not sure if we know when that's coming out. It'll come out eventually. Well, now that I know it's only five, she seems like a slacker. I said Anne Hathaway is a gift to Hollywood that we should always be thankful for, and I certainly believe that. The range of just even the three movies she's had out so far is pretty astonishing. Well, it's also interesting because, like, it's not like Anne Hathaway had. She's been working. Like, she didn't, like, go dark. But it was sort of like. But the size of the movies had shrunk a little bit. Yeah, and, like, after Ocean's 8, which she's great in, but even that's a supporting role or whatever, you know, she's got that weird Serenity the Hustle Dark Waters year where, like, we love Serenity, but it's a weird one. The Hustle was filmed, like, seven years prior. Dark Waters is a wonderful movie, but she's kind of just showing up to help it along the line. You'll miss it. She's right. Yes. As you said, that was a tax-deductible role. Last Thing He Wanted, Disaster. Right. Last Thing He Wanted is one of those movies where you're like, did they forget to finish it? Like, sorry to that movie. The Witches. The Witches, obviously, was five stars A+. We loved that one on Blank Check. But this is, like, all these movies are in one of two categories. She tried something smaller and more interesting and it worked or it didn't or a real failed attempt at a major movie. So the stuff she's doing that's good is not really at the center of the culture. And the stuff that's attempting to be at the center of the culture is not working. But then, like, you know, locked down, we're going to give everyone a pass on that one. The pandemic made everyone. Right. Armageddon in Time, again, she's great, but it does it a little bit, again, kind of like, I'm here to help this movie along. I'm not. And then Eileen I did like, but it didn't really go anywhere. So good. She's excellent in that. She's great in Eileen. I did not see the Rebecca Miller film She Came to Me. Me neither. No, which is her and Dinklage and who's the other guy? Marissa Tomek? Marissa Tomek? Oh, Marissa Tomek. And then there was The Mother's Curse or whatever that movie's called. Right. Her very kind of, like, trashy 2024 of Mother's Instinct and The Idea of You. The Idea of You is good. No, it's not. Yes, it is. It is good. She's good in it and I respect her. That movie is not good. That movie is good. Sure. The boy band in it, good. Was a streaming hit. It was a big streaming hit. I don't think Michael Showalter is capable of. of telling a story like that with sincerity, I guess. You don't think he knows how to put on a show, Walter? I. You know what? I found it. Sometimes he does. I found it very sincere. I liked when they were in their hotel room kind of, like, kissing and dancing to Dance All Days. Yeah, there you go. But you were saying, basically, last year she was quiet because a lot of her 25 movies got pushed back to 26. Right, Mother Mary got pushed to early. Yeah, right. And Oak Street got pushed. Yeah. Can't wait for her next movie. Whatever the heck that is. I know this is kind of her big center stage year, and I love that it's such an array of even different sized roles and different styles of performance. She's so kind of stripped down in this. Yes. Like, she's really just sort of laser-focused. Yeah. And she's not doing any of the theater kid stuff that people sometimes bristle at. And I think it's. It's why she's so good and why, as you put it, she's a gift to Hollywood because it's like. She's like an old-school movie star who can do any type of film thing. She really is. And, you know, like, the scenes she has, the flashbacks with Damon before he goes to war are really, like, simple and beautifully done and get all the emotion across very fast, right? Also, fucking sexy. Yeah. A little sexy. But, like, you have very little time to establish a sense of genuine chemistry between those two characters. Right. And you're doing it late into the film and immediately you're like, there's heat here. Yeah. There's a reason why she's not remarrying. Yeah, no, for sure. I mean, look, Robert Pattinson is a handsome fellow, okay? I wouldn't fucking marry this asshole, right? Would you? This guy's an asshole. He's slimy. Are we. Can we say he's an asshole? He's an asshole. He is so good. I just love that he is always game. Like, you know, that he's not, like, whatever, like, looking for the sympathetic role or looking for the. You know, like, he just wants to play little slimy freaks and he's so good at it. They just announced that Batman is being pushed back another six months and people are wringing their hands over it and I'm like, there is no better outcome than Robert Pattinson having six years in between Batman movies to do whatever weird shit he wants to do. Batman's the ultimate hammock. In between, he's just given latitude to do whatever because they go like, as long as you promise you're gonna put that cowl back on, we'll let you play your worms. He's got. He's got five movies in this year, too. He's got. He's having a crazy year. Okay, wait. So, it's this. Yeah. It's Prime Time. Yeah, which I hear is great. It's the drama. Mm-hmm. And then the other two are. Neither of them have yet to come out. Correct. One we just got a trailer for. Yeah. Dune Part 3. And then what's the fifth movie? It's the Fernando Morel film Here Comes the Flood with him and Denzel Washington. Oh, which sounds awesome. It's a Netflix thriller but does sound very cool. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. So, he's all over it. He's all over the place. And he's doing different voices and he's having fun being a little sicko. And he is, yeah, he's the lead suitor here. Mm-hmm. He likened the character to James Wood's character Lester Diamond from the 1995 film Casino. Which we will be talking about soon. Just a classic Robert Pattinson poll to, like, read the Odyssey and go, like, you know what this character's like? James Wood's in Casino. You've also got the great Corey Hawkins. I love Corey Hawkins. Those are the main two-suiter jerks. Yeah. I feel like, right? He's sort of the right-hand man. Yeah. I think he's just a total fucking gem. He's always good. He's always good. Love to see Corey Hawkins. Yes. Yeah, he's not working enough. No. Yeah. And then Logan Marshall Green and Mia Goth Yeah. are the two kind of Grima Wormtongues of the palace, right? Yeah. She is, like, she's the servant to Penelope. Yes. I think it's unspoken in the movie but they are twins. They're siblings. Logan Marshall. Logan Marshall Green and Mia Goth in the myth of the Odyssey. Yes, they're working together to take the whole thing down. They're the bad servants. They're not being, they're not, you know, tending to Odysseus' flock. Now, who is? Leguizamo. Leguizamo. Holding a stick. Being blind. And yet, he can see more clearly than everyone. There is a bit of a, you know, there's an irony there. Mm-hmm. It's true. It's a real irony. So, a little rude for him to throw a dog off a cliff. Yeah. Right at the top of the mountain. In the movie. David and I were concerned. One of the first things we said after we got out of the movie was we were worried how Ben was going to take the dog violence in this film. Yeah. It's the kind of thing that does turn Ben off completely sometimes. But I think because he did it like so early in the film, it felt like just pulling the Band-Aid off. And then, of course, they treat the other dog, Odysseus' dog, really well. Even though he's like old and sad and waiting for Odysseus to return home. Mm-hmm. I think, I think they also, the inhumanity of how the animals are treated is used as a dramatic storytelling tool for the rot of society. It is not something that is done callously. It's not using it just to shock you. No, no, not at all. No, it's, I think all the stakes of the, they're like, because, yes, there's the argument for like, shouldn't we shoot this movie out of a cannon? Shouldn't we start with something really exciting? And it's like, now you just sort of, it's not just that he wants to go home. You're like, his home is like, ruined without him. Like, it's like, he's, you're starting with, there's a vacuum and he's missing and it's just like, yeah, it's ruining everything. Which is what the story is really about. Right. It's the fact that this guy's fucking gone. And there are like, two main sort of narrative or storytelling devices, I guess. The first is Tom Holland hearing stories about his father. Sure. Right. As he, who he's never met, essentially. Right. He was a baby. A wee baby when he left. When he left. So, he is traveling and hearing stories from other people, most notably, John Bernthal. Yeah, Bernthal. Let me tell you something. He does. He's a pretty cool guy. He does like the fifth season of Serial and pull enough stories together from his dad to get a good narrative going. And then the other, on the other end, we have Matt Damon with Calypso played by Charlize Theron. Mm-hmm. And she is kind of goading him to remember how he ended up. How did I get here? What happened to my men? But also being like, do you really want to remember? Yeah. Doesn't remembering suck? Are you ready yet? Doesn't it suck here? Have some more Lotus, baby. Yeah, take some Lotus. We're, right, we're sort of like trying to put the pieces together of like, okay, what happened? Where are his men? What happened? Why hasn't he come home? Mm-hmm. And then I feel like the first, then we, we do find, you know, okay, what do you remember? We do finally get to them like getting on the boat and I guess is the, the first place they go to the, to, you know, the, the Cyclops, right? Like that's the first sort of major sequence. The first major set piece in Odysseus' journey that we see. But we also establish what life was like back on Ithaca before Odysseus left. We meet young Robert Pattinson and young Elliot Page. That's true. I was going to say, yes, this set up very early on. you know, a very upsetting dynamic of, what is, Pattinson's character's name again? It's like. Like Antonius or whatever, Antonius, he's, yeah. Yes. But the volunteering Marie. Right. Antinius, Antinius maybe. Antinius. I don't know. I don't know. What do you like? What do I know? Every time I watch something where it's like little boys going off to war, this also happens in Horatio Hornblower and in Master and Commander. I just get very upset. Well, I think it shouldn't happen. But they're drawing sticks. They're drawing lots. Yeah. Like a short stick gets you on the boat. And Odysseus' cousin, Sinon, draws. Elliot Page. Elliot Page draws whatever. The stick, that means that he has to go to war. They say there's a lottery draft going on. They need to build an army. It's a lottery draft. And Sinon gets picked, who is a very small child. Yes. Right. And the Pattinson character sort of volunteers to go in its stead, not just out of some generosity, but also because of, I think, an ego of wanting to be a big, tough boy. He's a little older. He's a teenager. And Odysseus puts his foot down and goes, like, it's got to be who's chosen. And also says to the Pattinson character. No, no, no, no, no, no. Antonia, you know, it's Pattinson draws the short stick. Sinon is put in his place. Right. Oh, OK. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The whole point is that Antonia's ducked the draft. Correct. That's why him giving the lot back to him is, like, this is your shame. I misread that. See, I also didn't get that. Right. Like, it's like Antonia's. It's the, I think, you know, the richer he because he is like one of the big wigs or his family right on Ithaca. That's why he's the littler guy. And like, they're saying that Odysseus basically kind of knew what was happening and overlooked it or like didn't put his foot down because like he knows like he doesn't want to wound the pride of the parents like they say. And this will all be helpful on rewatch, I will say, because like this information, it's the classic Nolan thing of. This information is being like hydraulically delivered to you in voiceover and flashback. And you're like, OK, OK, OK, OK. And you can tell, like, it's the Nolan thing where he's like, this will matter later. Like, you need to know all the context. I mean, that happens in like the first 10 minutes. Very early on. You barely met the characters. We have not met the characters. And I did not even totally track that, you know, that Sinon had become, you know, Elliot Page had grown up to be. Right. Because like it's almost as something to the effect of, you know, he needed to do things to help the ego. And basically, Odysseus says this thing of, no, it's actually good if you stay because you need to watch after your family and watch after my family as well, which kind of poisons him with the idea of, oh, I have a responsibility to watch your family. I should probably fuck your wife if you disappear. That's kind of the implication, is it not? You know, that's he goes message received. I got it. So if you're gone for like five years, I should start trying to fuck your wife. Maybe Greek law should have some rules on this. Okay. Maybe there should be time limits. Yeah. But okay. So but no, no, we're with Odysseus and it's post Troy. We still haven't really seen the sack of Troy, but we've seen little glimpses of the horse and all that. And the horse looks so good. It looks really good. It do look pretty cool. Really awesome. It's awesome. And he sees, you know, Agamemnon played by Benny Safdie in this crazy imposing armor. Nolan wanted him to have, he has what's it called? It's called black bronze and sulfur. In his armor, which Nolan was like, these were like the most expensive sort of materials back then. So we wanted him to have this. He's got a gold spine on the back of his helmet. He's so funny that it's Benny Safdie. Not that he's not good. He is good. We never see his face. Not really. We see his beautiful hair. Yes. I mean, we see his face through a slit. We see the, yeah. It is interesting though, that that was the main, like one of the main posters for the film. Right. Was the back of Agamemnon's. Head. I wonder how much he kind of just likes that imagery and how much it is that like, much like the shadow of the horse, the sort of like image of Agamemnon's armor without ever seeing the guy inside represents this force that's pushing everything along. I mean, and, you know, I interviewed Benny Safdie last year. I told you this, Marie. Yes. And he had just finished the Odyssey. And I was like, who are you playing? And I just assumed. He was going to be playing some weirdo. Like, I was like, of course, Safdie's going to play like, I don't know. Yeah. Like a weird little trickster or, you know, right. Like a. Yeah. A mean suitor. And he was like, I can't tell you, but we were just in Iceland, like shooting on this like black beach is what you get to. And then obviously that's the like afterlife sequence. That was another. That was another favorite sequence in the movie. This is really great. But you basically never see his face. It's like the idea of him loomed so large. Right. And most directors. I think would go, oh, so then what you should cast in this role is either a stunt performer because this is mostly going to be physical. It's going to be who fills the suit or cast a guy with a voice like Clancy Brown, because it's mostly going to be booming voice if you're not going to see their face. And as you say, it's so funny that he cast Benny Safdie, who's such like a presence energy guy. Yeah. And is also like a sensitivity guy. But Safdie is, I will say he's very tall. He's like six. One. And he has this great hair. And maybe Nolan just kind of liked the physicality. I appreciate it. I think, you know, you guys bring this up. You brought this up a lot in the Peter Weir series, the casting for the final color. Yeah. Thing. Oh, yeah. And I do think that when we get the backstory of what happened to him and when he is in Hades and he is speaking from the, you know, from the dead. Right. There is like a. Pathos to it. Yes. That it really got to me. And you need to be able to unravel this guy. You need to be able to strip away the sort of imagery and the mythology of him to get to a sort of broken person inside eventually. So I I'm not really a big ancient Greece person. And I was asking David Sims on the subway home from the movie. I was like, I want to keep living in this world. So, like, what movies should I watch? Next? Oh, I wasn't even thinking movies. I was going to suggest a time machine. That seems a little expensive. But sure. You know, I did pay four dollars and ninety nine cents to rent Troy on Amazon Prime. I want to talk about this briefly. I'm very confused by this recent holding up of Troy as the gold standard. Griff, I'm we got to get into it. That movie is fucking dog shit. I hadn't seen it until like this week when I watched it after the Odyssey, which is, like, a masterpiece. And there is, you know, it's the the Iliad is part one, the Odyssey, part two. You know, so it's like a prequel. A lot of the same characters are in there. What the fuck? What's going on there? Hollow movie in my memory, right? I hated it when it came out. I thought it was a bomb. People didn't like it when it came out. Not bad reviews. It made money, made a lot of money. It was a hit, but it was not taken seriously. It got no Oscar attention after, like, you know, in the warm up. Because of movies like Gladiator, people were like, maybe this will be a epic, you know. And I pointed out to you is the same year as Alexander. There were two, like, giant budget swings that, like, great. Well, if Gladiator wins Best Picture, what other, like, epics can we do? And they did the most they did the Iliad and they did Alexander the Great. Like, they did the most obvious ones possible. Both of those movies are flawed. Troy made a lot of money, but sucks. Alexander didn't make enough money, but is very interesting, in my opinion. And they both have the director's cut DVD reedit like they're like, I fixed it. And you're like, no, yeah, I'm not sure that you do. I mean, the big problem with Troy, it's the ultimate pit thing of like, he sucks at this. He's so good at playing squirrelly weirdo. He's actually not good at playing the hero, the alpha. That's not what he likes. It's also that's his cat in the hat. That's he has to make that movie because he pulled out of the fountain. Warner Brothers were like, you fucking owe us a movie. And he was like, ugh, do I have to do some movie star shit? He's really blonde in it. I remember him looking great. I wasn't into it. Yeah. But the thing that was really sending me at like watching it immediately after the Odyssey was that Brian Cox is playing Agamemnon. He is Agamemnon. Yes. Very similar to Benny Safdie. And I'm just like, wow. These are two very, very different interpretations of this character. Brendan Gleeson plays. I'm in the layers. Yeah. And who plays Odysseus? Sean Bean. Sean Bean. He's the best part of the movie. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I don't even remember it that well. But I just remember being like, it's all surface level. It feels like an impression of a type of movie, a type of epic that actually has ideas within it. And it's only absorbed the aesthetic. The ideas that are in Troy are not ideas about like. Man and psychology. They're more like mapping like political and historical ideas of war onto a myth, which is not that interesting to me. I agree with you. I don't find that more interested in the interiority, which is what the Odyssey is. It's like it's such a psychological story while also being really epic visually. It's why I related this to Thin Red. red line is A, your perspective character is changing a lot throughout the movie and b it feels like you're often kind of editing laterally through the character's memories and thoughts and feelings it is so much trying to find a way to put you in the inner life of these people rather than zooming out and turning it into mythology right so dave i gotta ask since we're talking about the iliad and and how that story then relates to the odyssey how do you feel about them not really including a lot of the gods in this story in this film we really only get so mention of of zeus we can talk about the gods on poseidon and poseidon mentioned right but i'm saying we only really see so athena so the thing in the odyssey the story is for example one of the uh important moments in the odyssey is that uh odysseus is stuck on the island with calypso in this movie he has this emotional realization of like right i'm ready to go home i'm accepting the loss of my men right you know it's this big in the odyssey hermes the messenger god shows up and is like hey time to go yeah and this is like oh fuck okay he's like come on boats this way that happens a lot in the poem the gods show up and they're like totally i mean even the reason that helen ends up in troy is because of intervention from the gods right and so obviously that's a little dramatically i'm not gonna you know that won't work i think it totally makes sense that he you know he made that choice um it's just when you go back to the source material i mean especially the iliad it's like the the like the children of the gods are you know are all kind of connected and zeus sees a lady and it's like oh kid i want to fuck this lady yeah i'm not turning into a swan fucker she she has eggs and that one of the children that come out of the eggs is helen uh can i do a tiny little merc spotlight look at what they were given out at the screening oh you got the pin oh you got the athena pin i got the athena pin oh what did you get then i got the athena you got the athena they had the athena and the horse but you could only take one i tried to take two and i got yelled at very loudly well the athena pin feels like that would be my pick because the pin itself is such a it's such an important part of the movie it was before the movie it was before the movie but i had a feeling this is closer to the movie object because i always like in my penelope gives this pin to odysseus as a way of remembering her but also as a symbol uh to prove that it is him yes i i saw uh interstellar again last week david uh because it was just playing in 70 millimeter in spain they're every night rolling out the two weeks the classics right yes um and you said that's a smart rewatch i have a feeling these two movies are going to be really paired together and there certainly is i mean nolan loves his i feel so bad for leaving how do i get back home kind of movie yeah um uh i i need to get back to my family i need to get back to my wife i need to get back to myself he's so tormented by it but he works with his wife i know but i just feel like he had it's like clearly this thing that rent you know because like so many of his movies have that well yeah i think it's less about the way that he runs his life as an adult a husband and his father but more of what he experienced as a child when his family was split up i think it's 50 that and i think informed by that it is his worst nightmare it's the reason he works with his wife and he makes everything a family production is because he can imagine no worse fate than being stuck on a shoot for six months away from his family like he is just such an ultimate wife and family guy that he needs that unit around himself and so if he's writing an emotional story of a challenge it's the biggest challenge he can imagine in so many ways which is why you know people go why is he so obsessed with the dead wife thing i like that he has moved away from dead wives and has found a way to tell stories about men longing for their wives that do not require them to be dead um but that scene is so fascinating because the dialogue even though it's a very different scene where she hands him the pen feels so similar having watched it recently to the final child murph scene of like i'm coming back i'm coming back when are you coming back i can't tell you but i'm coming back i just promise you that i'm coming back yeah i mean i think christopher nolan is by and large a charmed man who leaves the one leads a wonderful life and he knows that like he's got a great thing going on but that's clearly the fear that drives him a little bit or whatever keeps him up at night i guess i mean he's just he's very similar to shamalan in my opinion in this regard he's just so concerned with like the world we're living in with like what the future is going to look like for his family and he can blow it out you know to big epic scale but it's you know it's what what makes these movies tick the key difference between him and shamalan is obviously that nolan is not very concerned with what if the devil was in an elevator other than that i think they were very not saying he wants to do a horror movie what if he's like i'm remaking devil m night shamalan produced thriller that would be the greatest move in the history of the movie i think it's going to be the greatest move in the history of movies i saw logan marshall green on the set of the odyssey and we started talking about devil and i said who has the rights to devil and he said i have them they cost one dollar you can have them right now for one whole dollar uh who directed devil because it wasn't shamalan john eric dowdle what else has he done uh he did the remake of the spanish film wreck uh quarantine oh sure yeah he did the poughkeepsie tapes which is one of those like fucked up tiny budget horror movies that everyone talks about yeah they kind of never got a proper release right and then he did as above so below oh sure that's the catacombs movie yeah and then something called no escape oh yeah that's like that is like uh owen wilson is stuck in a country that is having like some sort of like political uprising yeah uh it's owen wilson trying to do behind enemy lines again it's like straight survival action movie yeah except he's a family there yeah um the athena pin is handed to odysseus as a if i can't stop you from leaving then let you know i'm not going to do it again i'm not going to do it again i'm not going to do it again athena watch after you which does feel like talking about nolan imagining his worst nightmares it's like handing him a smartphone it's saying if you're gonna leave and be away for a really long time at least take this pin so athena can pop in and talk to you all the time it is such an incredible display of christopher nolan's clout that you're like what does zendaya play in this movie zendaya plays athena athena the god watching over odysseus she shows up at certain times over his shoulder and gives him a hand and he's like i'm not going to do it again i'm not going to do it he gives him a look and says like one line zendaya as an actor is really really good at doing like disappointed face unbelievable at it yes when she makes that face i'm like oof i feel bad you don't want her silent judgment but this is the kind of role where you go oh it's pretty small you can't shoot her out three days because she has to be in 20 different countries yeah she has to keep showing up on different ships yeah i mean she's obviously like in the movie probably for five minutes she's like i'm not going to do it again i'm not going to do it again i'm not going to do it total but uh she makes an impression she makes a huge impression and she must have been yeah i mean every every i don't know every small part in this movie is played by someone that has a wikipedia page yes like yes our our mutual acquaintance griffin shiloh fernandez is in this movie yes somewhat briefly he plays one of the soldier one of the trojan soldiers who i think approaches elliott page in the beginning of the movie never takes his uh mask off but it is crazy that like even those guys are played by guys totally right i mean i mean who wouldn't want to be on these sets right the beggar in the beginning is james yeah i i asked david and i didn't know i believe it's james remar no no no no is he hades oh yeah like a terrorist yes or whatever his name is but yeah he's he's the guy buried in the sand yeah i recognized i recognized the bottom yes while i was trying to pay attention to that scene where he kept going like is that richard from sex in the city and i was like one of the two cloaked guys i don't know who the guy was at the beginning but he seems so familiar yeah by the time this episode comes out marie and i were trying to figure out who that was we couldn't figure it out but i i'm sure we will know in a bit it's because to the the nolan mystery box kind of thing there's still so many actors for this movie with unlisted characters on imdb like the cast has been announced but it was not really told who was playing what other than the top 10 people right right david i can't see you where are you oh my god david my glasses are so dirty oh no they're cracked wait a second what about zenni wait a second what about zenni wait a second what about that's an online eyewear shop with stylish prescription glasses sunglasses and customizable lens options at prices that make it easy to own more than one pair it's zenni.com you pick a frame you enter your prescription you customize your lenses and they ship right to your door no store visit no pressure for under 30 starting at under 30 and at that price you Stop asking, "Do I really need new glasses?" 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beat the heat play eat and shop on repeat at netflix house at galleria dallas bring your crew and save get your tickets today at netflix.com house let's just talk because the movie is a bit of like an episodic structure let's just talk about the scene okay so all right cyclops cyclops is the first big thing they go they go to island they follow some sheep as you do yep and into a cave there was that nasty moment where uh odysseus just sees like giant bags of cheese hanging on the walls of the cave and just eat some they're hungry they're tired i guess i don't know if i would eat cave cheese i don't know that i would eat random cheese hanging in a cave in a sort of where cheese comes from it is in fact usually it's been for me inspected by a government one assumes or at least by somebody like a merchant fair enough a trader if there was a stamp on the bag of agamemnon given the thumbs up would you feel okay if that was the inspection of course or if it was like you know cyclop you know poly polyphemus is you know beloved uh homespun cheese cave or you know he had a little sign some sort of branding you know i i will admit this because it was a special screening the bfi south bank the concessions was not open and i i really wanted a popcorn and a soda the whole movie especially because it's a long film so when he goes over to the bags of cheese i went like that's disgusting is he really gonna eat this and then the more he started eating it i started getting jealous of him like kind of go for a bag of cheese right yeah so these little cheese bags i had two full of cheese they had popcorn going at the imex but they they had shut down all the other things so i had to go downstairs talk to like the ticket taker and be like hey i need to go buy some food because i'm gonna like faint if i don't eat something during this three hour movie and she was like yeah whatever so you got chicken nuggets nachos and popcorn that's right is that a problem is there a three-course meal i also got orange soda and the free style machine kind of spat some like orange you know like the sort of concentrated stuff on me and it looked like i had robbed a bank and like a die pack yeah it was a very good time um i did feel borderline faint towards the end of this movie i was talking to you guys before a quarter of just how hot it has been in europe yes and halfway through every day i get uh exhausted just from uh taking steps and i think europe has like one air conditioner per country right they kind of just like moving it around right so this this week i think spain has it and sadly i'm in london right um i i do you know it was bad timing to uh take a euro trip uh you know for some amount of work right when a heat wave is hitting the entire continent on the other hand i feel great that i left the united states and new york in particular at the time that the diarrhea wave is hitting there is one of my friends has it yeah there is some there's some diarrhea out here your sister everyone has the diarrhea your sister i don't know if we want to announce that on the podcast about it she stacked it yeah she stacked it and she graham did she graham the ria yeah no it is fun no griff i think you're wrong you would be thriving right now because basically the government is like you can only eat the most processed foods imaginable do not touch a vegetable leaves are not for you look everyone everyone's complaining about how bad it is i go yeah welcome to my world now you know it feels like for a minute driven you're also missing the wildfires is causing a lot of residual smoke down here so you also can't really or you're not supposed to go outside which is perfect for a griffin newman there's also like the legionnaires outbreak on the upper east side so you wouldn't be able to visit your grandma that's a good point my grandmother does live on the upper east side to dox her um i also say i mean ben if if the wildfires from canada are brushing over into new york city i imagine it wouldn't be a good time to barbecue any smoking i would try to do would get intercepted by the smokes that were not in my control yeah i'm very particular you know i'm fruit woods only have you been trying any of the barbecue in europe it's not really a barbecue hub that that i've been trying to make my own of course yeah you lugged a a weber green egg or whatever also smoking some ham on some ham on i'm smoking i'm smoking some ham on right i mean they smoke meat well there but uh yeah yeah i i am smoking me well here so so why do you like the cyclops because he big boy we did talk about this a little bit all right it's quite scary i think the sequence is a marvel i think it is something so uncanny to just make him a guy i think it gets to what's the opening uh title at the beginning of this film it's something like a time of of magic something like that i can't remember yes fucked up uh and this is obviously a fantastical story that uh asks you to believe that uh centuries and centuries and centuries ago magical things happened and at some point they just disappeared from the world right okay it's all true sorry the the opening title is it is a lawless time uh crime syndicates compete for resources food medicine and hyper fuel on the shipbuilding planet of corellia the foul lady proxima forces runaways into a life of crime in exchange for shelter and protection and coaxium can smoke that right you can keep it hot coaxium needs to be cool as hell so we got to keep it away from madrid right now oh yeah absolutely not yeah in paris they got no ac oh right right yeah it is funny the paris they're just like no no no the cigarettes have no filters the the apartments have no air conditioners um no air conditioners but we're gonna smoke all the time right and they take some damn naps they do they they do all of them taking siestas napping oh oh oh yeah sorry i know we were making jokes but i did look up the actual uh opening prologue line it's please it is a time of apparent magic oh there we go love that yeah um this is a thing i like about the realization of the cyclops tied to that is it feels like you're witnessing something that could they make him escape scale that clearly becomes magical right but other than that you're like am i just looking at a person with facial differences am i looking at something that could have been misinterpreted and through the oral tradition of the story being told and retold and reprocessed got more and more extreme right uh they don't i mean you know in the story he talks to the cyclops more because the whole thing is the he tricks him into thinking his name is nobody he also gets him drunk he does and that's how he ends up falling asleep right and you know that's when the cyclops is asked like who did this to you he's like nobody did this to me you know like it's the trick you know it's a classic odysseus the cunt the cunning guy right and nolan has said like i just couldn't figure out how to make that work right like it's just a different movie i guess if it's just like he's talking you know like he wanted it i guess to feel more primal which it does he does talk he makes noise and he says beside him and it made me so sad it's very it's quite effective this is the other thing it's that it makes the character more sad because you're sort of like is is he almost being bullied by these guys right they treat him like he's not you know intelligent at first they're dealing with him like he's a wild animal and then the realization that he has the ability of speech which implies obviously like deeper internal thoughts has come after they've already with him already fucked with him a bunch of times and i think that's kind of a he also crunched a bunch of them he did that's true be crunching there's some self-defense of crunching i liked that the aesthetics they went in this cave and ate his cheese jesus law says you should offer your cave cheese to anyone who shows up they made a nice fire for him yeah that's true i thought the aesthetics of the cyclops design really reminded me of 90s like i could have seen him in like the madonna bedtime stories music video that's that's a marie thought right there i like this i like that his eye is sideways yeah it's kind of vaginal and that's another marie thought right there a little bit well anyway he burns his freaking eye he does he does he lights the sword on fire and he they what they poke him to wake him up and then stab him in the eye yeah and they and then they you know they They have the hay and they pretend to be pretending to be the sheep, which is, you know, that is in the Arthur version of the Odyssey because they don't want to really show violence. The Cyclops is embodied by Buster, the rabbit, and D.W. just ties his ears around his eyes, his eye. Is the is the Odyssey episode of Arthur from the Stephen Crowder era or was he not voicing brain at that time? I have to admit that I am not super familiar with the cast and crew behind the show, Arthur. He only voiced the brain for two seasons, Griffin, out of 25. So it's hard to hard to, you know, narrow it down. I think he did do Jekyll, Jekyll, Hyde, Jekyll, Hyde, Hyde, Jekyll, Jekyll, though, if I'm not mistaken. Someone will check that. I was a little lost here, but that's I'm assuming that's an Arthur episode. There's so many musical number. Yeah. There's so many memes about children's entertainment and it's hard to keep up. So they escape. Yes. They do escape. But Odysseus. Odysseus does fire a little parting shot. Shouldn't have done that. In the story, in the poem, it's he just says his name triumphantly. And that's what gets them in trouble. But it's the same basic idea of like now they've invoked the gods. Now, I think that Nolan keeping the gods at a distance is good because it keep it keeps the men's sort of. Opinions like kind of up in the air to, you know, where they're like, no, no, the gods have cursed us. Right. And but I like the idea that it's like, well, maybe you cursed yourselves just by, you know, the way you've behaved over the years, like without it not having magic. Because Odysseus has hubris kind of throughout the story. Let's call out another thing here. One of I think it's maybe our true introduction to Odysseus in the movie. But in that first 30 minutes, we're getting so much information in different times thrown at us. We're watching Tom Holland train with Mentor, who, of course, is Ryan Hurst, our friend from the Lady Killers, who played Lump. He looks like he just walked off like the set of Sons of Anarchy or Vikings. David, would you be surprised to hear that? In fact, he was on Sons of Anarchy. Yes. Yeah. And of course, next is playing Kratos in the God of War series that everyone thinks looks perfect. Oh, everyone's grumpy about that one, which is the first time that video game fans have had some objection to an adaptation of their material. What I was going to say is we're introduced. Tom Holland is training with Mentor and they're sort of explaining the way that his father used to fight and his rules and everything. And then there's like a flashback within a flashback. And Odysseus is explaining his whole method of stringing his bow, which is sort of his like Mjolnir test of no one can take the throne unless they can string his bow. A thing that only he can do, but also that he loves to pluck the bow to sort of play the musical note. Like before, because he thinks it's the honorable thing to do to alert whatever he is about to shoot at, that he's engaging them in battle. Whether prey or opponents. That hunting is the same. Yeah. You know what? He doesn't. The Trojan horse is the complete denial of the warning. But even here with with the Cyclops, you know, he like tricks him and then he turns around and yells like another one. Yeah. And just fucking like. He does. And he does briefly slip into Khaled mode and he regrets it for the rest of his life. And he brings out like 20 guest acts. Yeah. Right. Himesh Patel! That guy you've seen in a lot of movies playing heavies! What's his name again? Can we shout out Himesh Patel for a second? Who we were introduced to obviously. Shout out to Himesh Patel. Andrew Howard is who I'm mentioning there. Okay. Yeah. And William Lee. But yeah, no, Himesh Patel, who's in Tenet. Yes. And his wonderful in Tenet. He plays kind of an Adam Goldberg, gum chewing, annoyed asshole in that. Yeah. He's in the one set piece, basically. I guess he's in two. He's but, you know, he's like a helper guy. You want me to do what? Like, he's that kind of guy. Crash a plane into a free port. Right. And then yesterday, he's obviously like doing a Hugh Grant thing, I think, incredibly well. And then in this, in this, he's just playing like ultimate straight arrow right hand man who's increasingly questioning what what is this mission? And we're on. I got, I got. Like, can I trust this guy? Yeah. I got a bone to pick with Wikipedia for the Odyssey in parentheses to 2026 film. They list Himesh Patel as Odysseus's second in command and incompetent brother-in-law. Perhaps in the, again, I have not read the poem. Yeah. In the poem, he is, he is cowardly. He is a, he's a fool. He's sort of like the emblematic thing of like the men just not listening, not like heeding the signs. Yeah. Isn't he one of the characters in the original poem that, um, he's, you know, gifted that bag that controls wind and then like he and some of the other crew members think there's gold hidden in it. Yeah. Cause they're, they're like petty, you know, silly men. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, and I think in this he is hyper-competent. I think he is usually hyper-competent in order to cast more doubt on Odysseus. Right. You know, in order for Odysseus to doubt. To doubt himself more. I also think him being such a, like, earthy, reliable character makes the ultimate loss of him. Right. He's the one you're, you're really attached to among the men. Really, really, uh, really sting. Um. You need one of those guys to really be kind of delineated and, and fleshed out in that sort of way. Yes. Um, Walt, sorry, just to rewind a bit when we're talking about the Matt Damon bow trick. Um. Uh, not the plucking of the bow, but the stringing of the bow. Yeah. Um, I'm just gonna come out and say this. I've never really been a Matt Damon is hot girly. Sure. Matt Damon's reliable. He's good. He's handsome. He's a cutie pie. He's a cutie pie. But, like, I've never been like, ooh, Matt, Matt Damon. Matt Damon takes the roles in things like Ford versus Ferrari or Air or whatever. It's like, well, he's the kind of doughy. You know, middle of the road guy. Like, he's not the sexier guy. He's become a little America's dad. We were talking about this in our True Grit episode with Stavi that, like, it's funny that Matt Damon had this big action star run with Jason Bourne. And it feels like he's firmly settled into his I am dad mode. And then we remembered, oh, right. His next movie is The Odyssey. Like, he's doing his one last seemingly I'm going to get fucking swole as hell. He's ripped, yeah. But he's ripped in a really attractive. He's sinewy. Realistic. Realistic way. Earthy. Where I was just like. I think they should have put the bodysuit from live action Moana on him. I think that would have worked better. Don't you think? Yeah. My problem with Odysseus in this movie is that he had nipples. And I wish we could just take those off and just have smooth, rubbery pecs. Have you seen it yet, David? Are you seeing it? No, I won't be seeing it. None of us are seeing it. Well, unfortunately, Ben had to see it. Unfortunately, I did see it. Why? Because he's on Critical Darlings. Critical Darlings. Oh, sure, sure, sure. Right. So you had to help out there. But no, no, my daughter. Oh, I should mention, it sucks so hard. Not good? It sucks on ice. Yeah. When I saw it, the theater smelled like vomit, which felt really right. Which theater? Which theater was it? Oh, Alamo. I've been walking around vomiting in theaters recently just to kind of like, you know, mark my character. No, my daughter has seen the trailer for multiple times and is always just kind of like, oh, I'm like, that's grown up Moana. And I'm like, yeah. And she's like, hmm. You know, she's not like, I can't wait to see that. And so I haven't even suggested it. I mean, that explains the box office. We were opening Weekend Minions and Monsters. We were right there. And she was, it was like fucking Bernie Mac at Def Comedy for her. She was just like pointing at the screen and screaming at like everything the Minions did. Good. I mean, as were many other children in the audience, obviously. And adults like Marie Barney Salinas. I was not, I was just like very touched by it. I was just watching it kind of with like my hand to my chest going like, this is so sweet. They love the movies. You got verklempt. I love James. I love James. James is an artist. I've quoted before Robert Downey Jr. saying that his performance in Jodie Foster's Home for the Holidays is the most relaxed performance in the history of cinema because of how much heroin he was on. I think The Rock's performance in live action Moana would make him jealous. Yes. I want to know what he's taking. So I can. I'm going to use it to fall asleep at night. Griffin, do you think, how about this theory, though? I'm going to throw this at you. Dwayne Johnson, as we all know, actually loves independent cinema, made The Smashing Machine. You know, he's out here supporting artists. He's saying he's making another movie with Benny Safdie, an adaptation of a Daniel Pinkwater book. We'll see if that happens. It'd be cool if it did. I mean, I think the issue there might be no one will give them the money, but we'll see. Possibly. But he brought down the Snyderverse. Okay. He did it himself. The hierarchy of power did change. Exactly. He has now brought down possibly Disney live action remakes. Is he a man on the inside? Is he actually doing God's work? Yes. Yes. I love this conspiracy. I've been viewing him as the enemy for a while, and yet I loved his performance in Smashing Machine. You and I both like that movie. I do. I like it a lot. And he has been successfully killing the things I hate the most in modern American cinema. I think he might be just like here to help. This is all I'm saying. I just think now, is this perhaps challenged by things like he's in Jumanji? 3 this year which is hard to get excited about but is i'm trying to remember uh did bella tar direct you on b3 yeah he directed that and it killed him yes it's his final film it's his eyes wide shut yeah uh and uh you know i did get served up that interview recently did you see this griff that was going around from the black adam time where the guy is like so which joker would be in black adam like jared leto or joaquin phoenix or barry keegan and he's like barry keegan and they talk about it seriously for two minutes where he's like what he's doing is and i'm just like what are you guys talking there it's like it's the ultimate just like how everyone just went insane about multiverses and didn't know what they were talking about anymore and he was acting like black adam could just like bring all the worlds together i i know i know we've already made this joke within this conversation you circle but i just need to underline it there is nothing funnier in the world than a year-long marketing campaign that was all framed around the hierarchy of power in the dc universe will change and he conclusively did do that yes it's not in the way he intended he lived up intended maybe anyway moana's dog piss yeah i believe you i won't be seeing it ever um so okay we talked about it talked about cyclops cyclops okay so then so poseidon friggin pissed poseidon mad because they fucked with his son yeah so they get driven to another island cyclops's dad which is where they meet the the large men ben that you were oh sure dude you approved of so much uh uh and i do the the nightmare of the the kid who's like laughing and yeah yeah that that little stinker he's got kind of wilder energy yeah what's that oh sure yeah yeah you're arch nemesis right right um the 10 year old that i am feuding with and so they're driven i mean the 10 year old who has your number nolan is so good at this like stark nightmare stuff yeah yes um but the when they go to the other side of the island and they're just seeing the animals you know like the tiger in the line you know like the weird just kind of looking at them that's the same island oh it's the same island yeah same island yeah um and and they right and they encounter cersei and this is i mean it was just like i know so i know that cersei will turn them into pigs right and i know that christopher nolan really tries not to use cgi obviously i mean i'm sure he used a little bit in this griff because he's you know he's making the guys big there's the big whirlpool like there's stuff there's the creature when they have to make the bargain the rock creature with yeah yeah that's the one thing that felt conclusively right where it's like what are you gonna do i mean right some of this has to be i know so much of it for him is he doesn't want these stages in the process that will degrade the film that when you run these things through optical printing and then you have to right or rather unless you do optical printing if you're running them through a computer and then you're sort of outputting it again on to film you're losing fidelity and uh so i know he tries to keep those things to an absolute minimum but it it is just sort of striking to just see guys who are big and not 80 feet tall big yeah right but just just just a little too big yes but uh the way they so simply have her just like stretching the faces to turn into pig oh my god and just the grossness of the like what the entrail soup oh my god yeah so gross it starts forming this like waxy kind of like weird icicle coming out of their throats i wanted to throw up because did it find you all of spirited away well spirited away is referencing that i mean yeah yeah that's you know that's this is this is the first time anyone told these tales so the uh the uh tv version of the odyssey that we were talking about was being really bad do you know who plays cersei in that griffin tell me or uh fran sinclair from the tv show dinosaurs close bernadette peters oh which is so cool yes i as soon as i found that out i was like oh i could see her just like feed and slop to pigs like you know just be like all right eat my slop eat my slop oh my god she looks pretty hot yeah bernadette peters we love her um i i i but yeah cersei sequence incredible but again like so okay so in the poem odysseus does uh fuck cersei and have a couple sure it lives there for like a year they got all that out good but i just love that again the sort of simplicity of how he solves this problem of like understanding that there's something like wounded and dark about her grabbing the bird like realizing it's important to her and then the way nolan solves that puzzle so simply of like she's just like i like her better as a bird let's say it's it's her sister and it's but it's also that he breaks off from his crew he does go hunting well also because they don't like yes they're already kind of doubting him and thinking that the gods have smited him and they they have the gods have you know and but but he might be the first to defy the gods and successfully and maybe prove the gods wrong uh what's that tweet i'll look up the tweet but yeah he shoots a deer and it turns into a very very handsome naked man yes i saw some tight little tushy yeah exactly this is this is the famous tweet r.i.p to everyone killed by the gods for their hubris but i'm different and better maybe even better than the gods i'll send it along to you and that's from senator ted cruz uh while we're talking about samantha morton the great um do we think that she is in the supporting actress oscar conversation sure i think this isn't everything oscar conversation right now yeah yeah right i i think i think this is such a kind of re-emergence for her and such a scene-stealing role and even in the way that nolan's been talking about her performance in the movie she's been talking about her performance in the movie and he's been really spotlighting her in interviews yeah even though she's not part of the core like press team that they're pushing out there right and she's he said like there are two times he compared her to heath ledger's oh sorry i'm stepping on your thing yeah okay no he said there are two times in my filmmaking career where an actor has done something that when i called cut the crew broke into applause wow and it was heath ledger i think during the pencil trick scene right and and this and when john david washington said i ordered my hot sauce an hour ago that was the third time well but to be fair they applauded the hot sauce that's actually what they were applauding and when elizabeth debicki opened a car door with her foot even though she was on the other side of the car remember that yeah when she height maxes when she leg maxes i gotta watch tenet again you gotta watch tenet every single day of your life i don't have that much time uh i don't know if you noticed but there was applause in our audience when her name came up in the credits oh that's nice i did not notice that yeah um my my crowd had one guy like the not another teen movie guy who was trying so hard to get applause breaks happening throughout the movie and the movie's a little too contemplative and moody yeah our only applause breaks were for the the moment where cory uh gets the arrow to the throat upon saying you're odysseus which rocks correct that is the only time it successfully happened in my theater this guy truly tried 10 times right there were 10 times where you would hear maybe he was trying to turn on a light and he had a car he was clapping on clap on um i want to say about the cersei cersei yeah uh that uh much like the the village that burns themselves down preemptively her whole rationale is i know man they were gonna do something right that odysseus is like why did you do this to them they didn't do anything to you and she's like i know where it's going yeah that there is a time of such incredible distrust happening that that people have started defying the gods that they've started defying each other that they're defying the laws of like behavior uh and that everyone is just on the defense all the time um yes like she can't trust anything anymore as we have said already you know everyone's speaking of these invaders from the sea who don't follow zeus's law and yeah i mean could she have maybe asked five to ten questions before she served them pig soup maybe i don't know she's gone a little mad up there on her by herself she's also just got question one are you bad on the back burner all the time they are like oh you have food and she's like yep slop it up sloppies it's so gross looking it was so disgusting so she is the one who says you're gonna have to go to hell hades sorry you know and he's like nobody ever does that and she's like i don't know what to tell you man you're gonna be the first you're gonna pull it off and so they go to the underworld pretty rad oh my god it's so sick with the black beach the black beach the black icelandic beach yeah oh i need to go to iceland it's beautiful and it's a four-hour flight i know you gotta do it i'm gonna do it i've been yeah it's been on my list right over there they have hot dogs oh good okay that was the only thing holding me back i'm glad you know they have hot dogs pop over there for an icelandic hot dog okay perfect that's great and yes and this is james remar first he inquires as to like did samantha ever show up and is just like that and just like that and damon's like yeah but it was weird they clearly just kind of shot it separately and she just kind of like has a one-sided phone call and it wasn't really satisfying for anyone he tells odysseus to meet him at the top where the air is crisp that's a girl next door reference cannot wow raymar cooks in that movie he's always cooking i mean the guy cooks apart from mortal combat annihilation where the stove was broken i guess the gas was cut yeah marie did remind me on the subway ride home of the uh the other next door movie what's the jennifer lopez movie the boy next door next door where someone either either she gifts the boy next door or the boy next door gifts her a first edition of the odyssey yes a first edition of the odyssey yes iconic uh could we do a next door uh patreon series uh well okay are we doing movies with the title next door in them there's also kind of a lot of like fucked up neighbor movies you know what i mean girl next door okay he's he's on the next door next door okay uh we've also got girl next door boy next door we've got a 2020 oh no that's a tv miniseries i'm out on that um are there any other good ones the girl next there's two girls the spy next door okay jackie chan the spy next door uh-huh i'm not seeing a lot of good stuff here i think you would have to more do a neighbor series right like rear window well that but you know kind of thing right yeah exactly like what's the one where samuel jackson's the cop who doesn't like that is there white lakeview terrace lakeview terrace you know that's an insane pacific heights which is really fun pacific heights any movie where people are like kind of peeking through blinds you know and then like ah like something happens that makes them go ah wasn't there like a uh a racist uh dennis quaid bad neighbor movie recently yes where again it's like the intruder the dennis quaid plays the racist yeah yeah yeah because it's michael ely and megan good move next door he's like hi i'm your neighbor in a transformative performance dennis quaid plays like a somewhat unhinged reactionary well this is the dennis the dennis quaid thing is so funny it was this thing in the substance too where i'm like you're in this movie playing a character that is like you're in this movie playing a character that is like you're in this movie playing a character satirizing the kind of guy that you associate yourself with politically so like it's got some self-awareness are you self-aware arlington road what if your neighbor was possibly a terrorist another fun one that one yeah you've never seen arlington road i gotta see arlington road i do think rear window is the the king and origin of it ben like i think oh yes like that's the best one i don't know have you seen have you seen the disturbia disturbia which is just rear window that simpsons episode bard of darkness is that what it is that's a great episode love that episode um that's the one where millhouse tries to write millhouse but he wants to go to the pool so he writes millpool millhouse david just smacking the table laughing so funny so good everything's coming up millhouse i think about once a day of course yes uh the simpsons did an odyssey they did episode did they yes homer's odyssey it's it's uh it's one of those anthology episodes where it's three stories in one right oh yeah sure i sent this gif to one of our group texts the other day david i think it was blank dough but of the lineup of the suitors who are coming for marge in their version of the odyssey because i remember that being the best section is just like disco stew and mo and everyone courting marge oh i see yes it was called tales from the funny the odyssey is the first and then they have a lisa simpson as jonah bark lisa's jonah bark and then a hamlet episode called do the bard man really funny and i believe the final joke in that episode is he finishes telling the story of hamlet and he goes and of course it was adapted into a movie called ghostbusters and then they play the ghostbusters theme and homer dances to the ghostbusters theme for one straight minute over the end credits maria's laughing maria's laughing i'm laughing do you the title of uh of the odyssey section is though brother where art though yeah which is that's pretty good that's pretty good but still it's like a season 14 episode i'm skeptical that this was very funny it's so funny that i have to keep bringing these back all right okay friggin homework ben ben also you're doing great thank you people have been saying lately on the reddit or whatever like wow ben's really like he's become kind of the task guys doing his job ben's doing his job that mood will persist on this he is the producer of this show and he is keeping us somewhat on uh on track just trying to help come up to ben tears in their eyes and they say thank you for producing david yes red alert uh-oh there's been an outbreak bio hazard of a new patreon series yeah it's contagious oh that's so true it's it's uh it's been cooked up in the lab for your pleasure from the fine folks at the umbrella corporation we are covering resident evil the film franchise yes we've got the first franchise six movies yes that beautiful second franchise how many six seven it's got uh the one oh it's got the one we'll be covering all of them on patreon uh doing a lot of work and we'll be covering all of them on patreon uh doing a lot of work and we'll be covering all of them on patreon uh doing a lot of work and we'll be covering all of them on yes the resident evil apocalypse extinction afterlife retribution the final chapter welcome to record sydney this is an exciting time uh zach crager friend of the podcast has a new resident evil coming out and we thought this was a good opportunity to revisit the history of resident evil movies why not why not why can't we why can't we we can check in for that august 1st and it's going to be running all the way through november 1st followed by your march madness winner drew dr acula himself that's so fun so that's great that's great thank you thank you so much endless summer escapes start here travel the worlds of netflix irl inspired by fan favorites like stranger things and squid game brave the upside down face off with the front man play leveled up arcade games shop exclusive merch and enjoy themed food and drinks beat the heat play eat and shop on repeat at netflix house at galleria dallas bring your crew and save get your tickets today at netflix.com slash house so yes the sequence on the beach speaking to the blind prophet beautifully speaking to elliot page right so like elliot page kind of emerging is like the heart of the movie as the sort of avatar of the men odysseus sacrificed for what exactly like the betrayal because basically what happened with sin on is that they they convinced in on they actually did leave correct like sin on did not know about the the trojan horse in order for the trick to work sin on needed to be tricked as well so they believed it and odysseus defends himself of like look i needed you to believe it i needed it to be real you needed it to be real you needed it to be real you yes you died and i i heard you die and i was sad about it but it meant others didn't have to die but you can tell he knows like this is a bit of a because it's like what so for what so that we could pillage a city like you know the whole reason of the trojan war is like literally the dumbest thing it's a trade routes or whatever you know come on bring up jar jar binks it was the fuck it's some guy's wife well okay the stated reason obviously yes is that uh paris of troy stole helen from uh menelaus yeah her face too pretty right and brought her but they say in this it's like agamemnon would like even if we got helen back like agamemnon wants to disrupt troy's like control over the trade republicans do they blame it on some other thing wait the republicans i thought that was like a stand-up party founded by abraham lincoln that's never done anything wrong oh you're right i'm sorry so we see they were actually the good ones all along we see agamemnon has been murdered yes this is right so then we're right we're moving over to telemachus who goes to see menelaus played by john bernthal brother of agamemnon right very good bernthal when is he bad only when he hosts a podcast i would say sometimes bernthal can did any of you guys see hit the gas a little too heavy dog day afternoon no i did not because i heard it was bad i this is what i heard as well i heard some very loud rumors that it was not good someone told me that it uh opened and people were laughing and they had not anticipated that and so then they leaned into it that doesn't sound good to me um but i bernthal's excellent in this he's excellent and it's like telemachus is seeing in bernthal bernthal's like yay i won now i'm here shit's mad helen doesn't like me you know her face is all scarred yeah my hot wife isn't even hot anymore right and then she's only gonna go 500 ships now right and helen's like and don't forget what happened to agamemnon's like i don't want to talk about that we're not even gonna talk about that but it's another thing that we had been seated it's seated very early in the story where odysseus tells penelope like agamemnon like sacrificed his daughter for favorable wins or whatever and penelope's like what and like this is like i don't you know it's a spoiler you know it's war what are you gonna do and like the minute agamemnon comes home a champion like his wife is still mad about that and murders him yeah and but both roles of course played by lupita youngo the great yeah um we also get at some point around here the fuller sequence of the trojan horse attack yeah we see that before they go to the underworld right because we've seen sort of like sinon's sacrifice more in full oh sure we also see i like that this movie answers some of the practical questions i have had about the trojan horse it was stinky in there they were just pissing puking it really reminds me of dunkirk yeah mm-hmm um i i also love that they show that anytime the horse is like turned over that all the guys inside uh-huh have to like reconfigure their bodies yeah at one point the troy soldiers are stabbing the horse and one guy gets stabbed and they all like cover up his mouth yeah the guy's just drowning at the bottom of it oh yeah don't you don't want to be at the bottom you don't want to be near like the head yeah yeah get me near the head of the horse please very jackass not that very jackass of them very jackass great jackass yes yes i'm odysseus and this is jack then it's just like the horse oh man and there'd be one point where like preston lacy would fall on top of we man inside the horse sure that would be really funny yeah uh what i was gonna say is that john burnthal another thing that was like very much out of context in the teaser for this movie of him just being like hey you want to hear about my brother like just talking like john burnthal or whatever and that was another thing in the trailer i was like all right you got tom holland whining about like my dad's coming home and then john burnthal just talking like john burnthal and i was like but it's all it's removing the distance from these things and i was also talking to a friend who was saying that like you know there are a million different translations of these things and some of them are like no the wording is something more casual than father totally totally totally totally totally totally totally totally totally totally totally works for me in the context of the movie the characterization of these characters like the way that these characters are portrayed makes absolute sense and ultimately makes the story really relatable uh for you know contemporary audiences but not in a way that feels forced yeah um but yeah i was not saying hello fellow kids right i just i just re-watched uh amadeus last week which you know perfect movie but again that to me is a really good movie is like the classic version of we're going to apply sort of like modern sensibilities sensibilities to it yeah um to a you know historical story but it just it just works um to to wrap the uh yes the the the black sand beach like the scale come out of right when they all come out of the sand and start charging or it's like all the shades want is like news of people who are alive right like uh this is where it's sort of seeded for odysseus of like you're gonna need to pay tribute to the men you lost like you you know you haven't been honoring their deaths enough and then telemachus i feel like from an alias is getting the sort of the information of like you can't just walk back to your house and think everyone's gonna be happy to see you odysseus will need to survey the landscape when he arrives you know yes yeah and you got you know you got the intrigue of like pattinson and cory and all these other people who are like you know you're gonna need to pay tribute to these guys are like maybe we should kill telemachus you know whatever that's all a little bit of kind of like that's that's screenplay chaff or you know like but but pattinson's big seduction scene is pretty excellent yeah yes he does a good job of towing the line between being actually really convincing but also winking at the audience he plays the character as a fairly good actor yes which is hard to do to show that he's almost pulling it off uh and then what happens next well so he gets the prophecy and he knows odysseus knows what's to come yeah but he does not tell his men which is that they will come across a whirlpool as well as this i don't even know how to describe the monster it's like a spider different arms it's a octopus spider you know and it's a man-eating monster of you know it's sometimes it's depicted as like a maiden with like dog heads coming out of her body which is kind of a ben yeah no shit yeah punch that turns into a bite yeah he cools um but it's you know odysseus keeps being told by people like cersei and uh the the the what teresias teresias like your men are going to die yeah and odysseus is like no you know they don't you're telling me how we can avoid that and they're like that's true and you will live but they're not gonna it's not gonna happen it's not gonna happen it's not gonna happen it's not gonna work yeah and like their ultimate fallibility is like they make it to this island where they're like don't eat those juicy that's the thing juicy cow and those cows look good those cows look good they belong to the sun god apollo so you can't fucking eat them but it's just like a marshmallow test of like but the minute you're here you can't leave the winds die down and you're just gonna get hungrier and hungrier until you're like well maybe we have to eat the cows and then you know they all get struck down in the in the in a store they go in their little barbecue hole griff they do go in a secret barbecue hole they smoke those cows yeah that is true um we also see the sirens we do we do uh and again you know nolan connects this to like odysseus is like longing for what is lost like versus just like he's so horny for these hot ass singers which is sort of the classic sirens thing of him being like let me out of my world i want to get there you know instead he's just wailing and crying like a great performance moment from damon there yeah oh incredible shit when he says the thing of like it's like the tastiest itch and when you go to scratch it you realize it's under the skin it's so evocative it's good shit i it's this is some good shit i think he pulled off some good shit here nolan i'm gonna tell him that in a typed note ben i assume that you believe if you listen to the sirens everything would turn out okay and you marry all they would just be like you're so chill now you can go here's a bunch of your time they give you money yeah of course here are our wallets um and so yes uh what did you know uh what oh i wanted to ask about the boat stuff what do you think of the boat stuff because they shot boats on a freaking real ass boat man i think like the oldest available boat is what they used i think it's like the oldest available boat is what they used i think it's like the oldest available boat is what they used i think it's like the oldest it's like a viking boat piece for yes i need to read mag it's uh the boat is called the draken 115 foot boat from norway right i guess it's a it's a modern built boat yeah because obviously you're not i guess you're not allowed to take like uh items of antiquity out to the open ocean they just go buy some like london museum and they're like can i have that but it's a it's imitating obviously like a an ancient viking long ship or whatever and uh i would have thrown up yeah i mean i think a lot of people did i read some story about nolan being like do you mind if i shoot you throwing up yeah i read that too cool which is cool uh yeah i mean rowing seems relaxing i don't know it does not seem relaxing i could get into the groove of it i'm telling you oh sure like just a kind of like repetitive thing you know put on some ambient music and the in the airpods awesome afix twin it doesn't need ambient music it doesn't need ambient music it doesn't need ambient music he just listens to the sirens that's true yeah right good rowing music yeah i would i think i would have died at troy no i would have died before we even got to troy like i wouldn't have made it right i wouldn't have made it that far right exactly they would have eaten me let's be honest in this time i would have uh died in the cradle yeah exactly die right i would have died of like air allergy or some shit maybe maybe i would have been sacrificed because i am like a firstborn child you know they would have died of like air allergy or some shit maybe maybe i would have been would have tried to sacrifice me and the gods would have rejected me like no thank you what am i supposed to do with that shit um okay uh also throughout this whole time we keep flash we keep you know cutting into odysseus with calypso she keeps being like remember more what happened to your men what happened to your men and finally he breaks down yes finally calypso right and he is mad at calypso but she's kind of like look man you needed to again like you i feel like traditionally calypso is just a trickster like calypso literally means like steel drum right yeah um she who conceals you know like that she's like a liar right you know but like she's just kind of like if you wanted to go you would have remembered like you're only remembering now because you're finally ready yeah to sort of right accept the emotional truth now like would penelope be thrilled to hear this no no but um and so yes he goes home in disguise and as a beggar god bless nolan like he is very true to the tale of the odyssey which is like the last part of it is odysseus disguised as a beggar hanging out in his house, being like, hmm, you know. Yeah, I loved all the beggar stuff. I also love that Leguizamo gets to shine so much in this section. So much more legs. Because he becomes the one ally he has. Well, there's that nice old lady. Yeah, who knows just his leg scar. Also the dog. The dog. And the dog is finally rest. What's the dog's name? Argos? Argos. Oh, I'm so sad. Poor boy. Apparently it's very controversial that in this film he touches the dog. It's controversial that he touches the dog? It doesn't sound that controversial to me. I don't know. People are like, he's not supposed to touch the dog. I did find it so funny in that interview that they were asking Nolan, like, are you worried about this backlash at all? And he was like, one, I don't consider backlash from people who have not seen the film yet. Two, everyone forgets that I worked on Batman movies for a decade. I don't think people forget that, but he's right. No, but he was just. He's like, I dealt with fucking nerds for a decade. I don't give a shit. So by touching the dog, Tom Holland recognizes this is my dad. Yes, that is when Telemachus puts it together. Thank God, because Telemachus would seem really dumb otherwise, I think, at a certain point. Sure. Where this guy's like, no, I'm not Odysseus, but I know him and he's coming this way soon. Okay, sorry. So the thing with the dog is the. The dog is what potentially gives him away. Yes. His identity. So the question is, does Odysseus kill the dog or does the dog die? Dog dies. The dog does die in the movie, but some people are like, actually, it should have been Odysseus killing the dog. Name an important or learned person who has said that. You cannot simply cite randos on Twitter. Is there a real person who has talked about this? Probably not. No. It is a bunch of comments. It is a bunch of comments from, and I will say this confidently, fools. So Penelope has set up this test for all of the suitors, which is the trick we see Odysseus do way earlier in the film where they line up a bunch of axes. It's basically like this incredible target trick. It's a party trick he would do, yes. He would string his bow and then he would fire the arrow along the axes and it would be really cool and everyone would say, Odysseus, you're the best, never leave. Yep. Fucking rules. And so now all these suitors are lining up. They can't even get this bow strong. It's so good. Yeah, they're fools. We got to go back a bit. No, we don't. Yes, we do. Because we have the whole scene when he talks to Penelope through the screen. And that's important. Yeah, sure. Because that's before. This is all happening in this final act. It's before the trial. But that sequence when it's finally revealed what actually he witnessed at Troy and that. Right. That is the. Right. We've talked about it a little bit already. But right. That's the emotional thing. Nolan's getting it. This is what he can't get over. And he's not revealing himself to her. He's using a fake. Again, he's going kind of like, yeah, what if a guy who knew Odysseus knew that he felt really shitty about the sack of Troy? Because it had been kind of gnarly and bad. I had a I had tears in my eyes. Oh, no. It's so good. The revelation of Zendaya, like that really just crushed me. That worked for me so well. Yeah. Like the use of her in the sack of Troy. You know, like that. And then him looking at Athena, quote unquote, you know. Yeah. Because Zendaya basically was just some peasant woman who gets struck down, but then kind of embodies Athena then throughout the rest of the film. Like his guilt, his story. Yeah. And the sequence is exciting. Like it's also genuinely thrilling to watch. Yeah. I mean, I think with these stories get passed down. And by virtue of them being passed down, you lose some of maybe the more unsavory elements. Like the fact that there is an adaptation of the Odyssey on the show, Arthur. I think that is, of course, the peak of the telling of the story. And Homer was happy about it. The cruelty of tying Buster's ears together is something that Nolan Derrent depict. But there is so much emphasis on the. The heroic moments and the moments of valor that like maybe some of the other aspects of what happened don't get passed out. Yes, but it's also a movie that's so explicitly about guilt that I think it's not like it's whitewashing the character, you know. No, no, no, no, no. I'm not saying it's whitewashing the character. I'm saying that like when there's I think of like I'm tired of hearing these stories about. Odysseus or other people that are like really, really great when it doesn't really like. Like mirror the feeling of the loss and the guilt and the tragedy. And finally, we get to see that part of the story and it breaks you. And yes, like. It's be good. It's really good. Look, Iliad in the Odyssey, the poems are about triumphant victories over barbarians like they he is. He is putting this in a completely modern context. This is not something that, you know, he is like borrowing from Homer. He's but he's putting it in very well. We should shout out that a big influence for him was a somewhat recent adaptation by Emily Wilson, which is a kind of it's important distinction. Just mention it's the first time that this poem was ever translated by a woman. Right. Which I don't approve of. To be clear. I think I think she should be translating raw food into cooked food in the kitchen. Sorry, that's a joke. Actually, the lead. The lead of my review was, which I think is very for one, I couldn't think of a fucking lead. So I use this instead. But like Emily Wilson, you know, famously, the Odyssey usually kind of begins like tell me of Odysseus, like the man of twists and turns. Right. Like that's the sort of Greek translation of and she renders it much more simply as like the complicated man. And like, I think that's what Nolan is responding to of like, this is not just a person who had twists and turns that he navigate. Like this is, you know, there is something introspective. We can find in this man. Yeah. No, there is. Yeah. The other thing this movie reminded me of a lot. And I don't know if I just I haven't been reading or watching a ton of interviews with Nolan. So I don't know if he's already called this out a bunch. Reminded me a lot of Excalibur in sort of the vibe of it being this kind of like earthy dreaminess. Even just the way he uses fog and smoke throughout the movie and sort of finding this way to make a tactile version of magical ideas. To me. He's cited Last Temptation of Christ. And that to me is also what you're talking about a little bit. That moment where he stands up and he's got like bits of the beach on him on his back. Yeah. That felt very crazy. What are some other things? I feel like he's been talking about some other movies. Andre Rublev. Sure. Hey. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Ron. Right. Right. That feels like, you know, anytime we're zooming out to a bunch of guys running on the beach. That felt very like Lake Kurosawa to me. A Girl Next Door. I've seen him. Yes. Call that out. I've seen him a couple of times. Because of the fact that she's next door and James Remar. And also, is the juice worth the squeeze is kind of a common refrain in this movie. That's the Elisha Cuthbert movie? Yes. Right. Correct. And Timothy Olyphant is there? I would put him on the supporting actor ballot for that. Right. He's the kind of like the Joey Pants who shows up late and he's like. All I remember is that Paul Dano and Emile Herscher in that movie. They're in it. Right. Yes. He's like the Ray Liotta in Something Wild. Right. Right. He's the spark plug at the third act. Right. He's really good. Yeah. Okay. He makes the five. So, yeah. So, he does the trial, reveal himself. None of those other men can string that fucking bow. He can string the bow. Pattinson is like, I won't even play the game. Like, he's trying to take the kind. He's like, I won't fall for your trick. I know what you're trying to say here, but he ain't coming back. So, you just got to pick one of us anyway. And that is, I feel like, around when Odysseus do shoot Corey Hawkins. Yeah. He do. In the throat. And his last words are, you're Odysseus. It just. It just. It was really cool. It just made me very happy. And it was really fun to see Matt Damon go apeshit. Yeah. Dude, that fight sequence is incredible. Yeah. Quiet apeshit. It does feel like this is the last time he's going to go action star mode. I mean, probably, except for maybe Odyssey 2. Oh, sure. To Odyssey 2 Furious. I just feel like Damon is not a guy who's, like, desperately holding on to his ego of, like, being a certain type of leading man. No. I mean, when's the last time he made an action movie? Exactly. Born, the last born, right? Well, actually, The Rip, which I guess was this year. Yeah, but that's a different kind of thing. That's more of, like, a thriller, that movie, but it has some action in it. Yeah. Gun action is different from this action. Yeah. Right. And I guess The Instigators, which everyone remembers so well. Jesus Christ. It took me a second to even pull what you were talking about. That was kind of capery. Like, there's, like, cars. It's capery. He spends a lot of them, like, his character is, they take his, like, therapist, played by Hong Chao, hostage with them. Yeah. I did watch that movie. So it's a lot of, like, him talking to his therapist while other people do stuff. I do think gun heist stuff is different. It's different. No, it is. I mean, like, and then obviously even, like, The Last Duel or whatever, like. A movie that I love. A great movie. Incredible movie. And it does have, you know, action in it, but it's brutal and kind of, you know, and he's, I mean, he's playing a guy who has a gun. He has to go to court to argue he gave his wife an orgasm. What? I'm sure he will do action sequence. is again but i'm saying i think this feels like yeah his his final like big action hero movie although i don't know although anything about this daniels movie yeah no one does that is his next project like what is that the rumors i have heard do not make it sound like that's what it is and in fact i think a lot of why there was such a musical chairs of which a-list star was going to play that role is that that role is a little secondary to the narrative that he's in a lot of the movie but he doesn't get to like have the big wins i feel like that's something damon is happy to do exactly yeah that's what i'm saying i think he's happy to like surrender that and go like i'll let the younger cast sort of drive the story and i'll just service the plot wait i'm so sorry i i just clicked on the reddit did you fucking see this yeah i was with the highway signs yes do you know what happened a highway exit in georgia that just says griffin newman no no but it's what it's no noon noon griffin oh okay but from far away it literally just says griffin newman why is this happening is that the name of the town or something it's very it's it's really upsetting i feel like i'm witnessing some sort of glitch in the fact it's a little back grovesy okay and you know the best thing about it about that sign you can eat it too uh yes here i will tell you the answer it appears to me that there are two separate places griffin georgia and noonan georgia and i guess you can access them both from this exit that is wild all right i should move to that intersection i think you need to move there we gotta go there maybe when we drive eventually to disney world live show and in griffin noonan live show let me get in touch with the bookers down here the griffin noonan sign okay sorry back to the odyssey um yeah he kill everyone he kill everyone and you know there there's some it's just like a fun sequence where you got tom holland and uh what's his fucking what's his name the guy who used to logan marshall green logan marshall i'm like the three-name guy three-name guy who used to look like tom hardy right i was gonna say when tom hardy and cosmo jarvis have not worked together in a while you can at least get logan marshall green uh i think that role was supposed to be cosmo jarvis but it's cosmo jarvis and cosmo jarvis probably had to go film uh go to japan right um but uh you know they're upstairs and there's a hole in the the floor the weapons before the suitors showed up so now but then he goes and he tries to put him through the hole right so yeah there's that moment where patents just go spears he's not even doing anything in that scene is so funny he's so funny he's so good at playing this kind of like desperation and this like faffishness you know i cannot wait to see him play uh chris hansen i i just think it's like such genius casting and i'm really excited it's really cool i want to see it um but uh yeah and odysseus it's like him versus like 60 guys and when he finally is victorious at the end of the battle he's just got spears poking out of his body he does get a couple yeah well a couple he doesn't make it through scott free he takes he takes some some else no one has a little bit of fun making you think like maybe he's gonna die yeah and he's like he's not a superhero no no we're gonna do dark knight rises it's like what we talked about we're gonna fucking retire we'll go off he's gonna he and anne hathaway are going to go off into the sunset together telemachus king he's proved himself he's done great and then when he gets on the boat is when he might finally reveal like by the way i did eight years on the island with charlie's throne anyway let's go and we might have hooked up a little bit yeah yeah just over the clothes stuff yeah no totally she always had her fishnet thing hat on like and and it was it was the lotus look what can i tell you it was all lotus i feel like back in ancient greek times there was like an understanding that like sex is different i think over the jeans doesn't really count i mean they had so many jeans then it was such a dungaree movie it is funny it's the last thing i expected for it to be so heavy on the levi's product although the costuming is awesome it is and i love that it's very interesting like corny like sandal and sword like over the top no it's it's very like simple and kind of rough hues like even literally wears like a cut off t-shirt at one point uh but it's just like you don't need the over the top robes and and all the nonsense you know what movie's costuming is dog uh dog ass troy nominated for an oscar they they made all the costumes out of dog's asses that's why it was impressive they got brad pitt wearing crop tops like cerulean blue crop tops and sarongs it was devils product era where does this come from in history like it's actually before they beat them to the cerulean punch i was i was researching ancient greece crop tops i could nothing oh yeah you couldn't find anything when you google that i could find nothing although it is funny how in bushwick right now caesar haircuts and crop tops i mean they're so popular yes yes hot odyssey summer yeah yeah there you go uh i remember troy being a very naval forward movie yeah a lot of boat not a boat no i meant like belly buttons oh yes you're right you're right it does have it's both naval with an a and naval with an e yeah yeah yes i'm not sure if you see innie or outie i'm not sure what i wish i'd love to tickle that i'm a little worried about googling eric banna belly button i don't know what what what that'll do to my algorithm looks like an innie a classic okay a classic innie that was just one of those movies where everyone i think was just like i need biggest arms on this set you know like everyone's just like hitting the gym constantly no they're not that bulky like they're not that bulky like you see uh what's orlando bloom a lot and it is it is peak twink look at this very male model yeah banna looks good banna looks banna looks good it's the heftiest and it looks good um final thoughts on christopher nolan's the odyssey very good really fucking good um i can't wait to see it again i just i'm like there's so much more to just unpack and notice i think it'll be a very rewarding second viewer yeah yeah um i you know i think it kind of had i think it kind of had a very rewarding second viewer yeah i think it kind of had a little bit of everything sure you know a little bit of this a little bit of that really firing on all cylinders i thought it was well paced i was never bored no same with oppenheimer just kind of moves look like tight 250 yeah uh david your wife wants the bucket she does how do i get that fucking bucket god the horse i'm keeping my eyes on the orders if it goes back in stock anywhere i'll send it to you i am so i am really looking forward to your wife's review i'm really excited for her to see it because she's been somewhat skeptical she's not like a diehard nolan fan anyway but i we're gonna go see it yeah and her review will be on a patreon tier that doesn't exist and will never exist we haven't we haven't come up with a tier that high yes yeah maybe the bucket is huge the bucket's really big it's really big and then there's also the imax camera bucket yeah which is cool so i think that one one of them is regal and one of them is amc um can we say quickly they had to i mean um i think that one one of them is regal and one of them is amc i want both of them um can we say quickly they had to i mean nolan basically threw the challenge down to imax they've been refining the technology to help him make these movies not just in terms of the filming but even in terms of the projection because there was a time limit on how long an imax movie could be there's sort of a three hour cap right yeah right but it he helped them work up to three i think it used to be two something right um but they finally made the smallest version of an imax camera possible for this movie and they also developed what they called the blimp which is a case that goes around the camera that suffocates the sound yes because that's everyone says it's so goddamn loud you can't hear yourself think the dialogue scenes that's why usually he only shoots the more visual scenes in imax and the dialogue scenes aren't and this because he was going to do the whole thing they had to blimp it up it was all it was all imax i'm that aspect ratio never changed i'm very curious because i am seeing it in 35 millimeter like it really did feel like he was using the entire imax frame i'm curious i mean there have been the infographics that have been going around at the different formats and some people complaining that if you don't see it in a perfect square is the framing all going to look weird no to me that only looks bad if you're watching the next it only looks bad if you know what you're missing but if you don't know what you're what you're missing you don't know what you're missing i'm sure it works yeah no i'm sure i'm sure it'll look great it would be funny if it's like you don't see demon's eyes like it's horrible like they did no work thinking about it his head is out of frame his head is out of frame his head is out of frame talking to each other but no it's very good i think it's gonna make a ton of money i think it'll do very well my father-in-law has texted me you know being like you heard of this and i'm like oh i've seen it manny i've seen the movie and it is phenomenal you should you should go and griff do you have a box office predictions i mean we assume moana will jump 100 so it'll be number one and then odyssey number two 80 no i think people are assuming that this is going to open over a hundred yeah right i mean oppenheimer opened to 80 against barbie yes because we should mention we're recording this thursday after the day before we're recording this yes the the night it's coming out basically Right. But I think it's probably going to open to like one hundred, one hundred ten. The thing with these format forward movies is the opening weekend cannot be totally humongous because a lot of people wait until they can get the ticket they want. Yeah. Yeah. So you have a lot of people who are going to wait two or three weekends, which means this thing is going to hold incredibly well. But I think it's probably going to open to like one hundred or one hundred ten would be my guess. Two hundred. I think I end up at like. Yeah. Yeah. I'm guessing it ends up around three fifty domestic. I don't know. I bet this plays well in Greece. A billion worldwide. Yeah. It'll play well in Greece. Yeah. I think that's true. We should demerit, you know, offer some demerits for this. No Stavi. No Stavi. No Manzoukas. Right. No Stamos. The big three. No Stamos. Who does Stamos could have. He could have been one of the suitors. Yeah. He could have been the horse. He's in there. And, you know, who are the other guys from Full House? Oh, well, Bob Saget isn't with us anymore. Who's the third? Joey. Dave Coulier. Coulier. He could be there. He's suffering from health problems. Yeah. He could have had a puppet. Lori Loughlin. Convicted felon. Yeah. Geez. Wait. What's going on with Full House, actually? It's bad. It's bad over there. House too full. I mean, and Penelope does have a full house. It's a good. Right. That's a point. Yeah. David. That house has too many people in it. Sometimes you remind us that you're the film critic, that you're the one real professional in this field. That is a great point. Penelope. Penelope. Penelope. Penelope does have, as I'm being like taken out of my office by security, you have been fired. I'm like, no, no, no. Let me, let me. My friend, I think you finally found your lead. I think it'll be Odyssey, Moana, Minions. I don't know what else is out there. Evil Dead. I would not be surprised if there is a Moana drop that is so significant that Minions or Toy Story are actually ahead of Second Week in Moana. Yeah. Yes. The Invite has been growing quite nicely. I think that might, that might continue to do well. Have you seen that one yet, Griffin? I know. It is not playing in Spain. I think it maybe doesn't come out for another month or two. I'm trying to see it while I'm here in London. So I may go see it after this record or I may go see it tomorrow. I really, I really enjoyed it. You should just watch The People Upstairs, the Spanish film that it's based on in Spain. This is true. But I mean, which should I watch first? I don't know which one I should watch first. I don't think it matters. I think you're fine no matter what. Well, well, well. Well, well, well. Yeah, let's wrap it up. I mean, you know, you can't be cooking in there forever. This is one of the most relevant films of 2026. It's one of the biggest films of 2026. It will certainly go down in history as one of the films that represents this year, which of course means that next week we're talking about In the Blink of an Eye. No. Yes, yes, yes. That's true. That is true. But hey, my brother's on that episode. I remember us having a lot of fun. Your brother, Joey Sims, is cooking. Yeah. We have a good time on that ep. Maybe not talking about In the Blink of an Eye that much. Yeah. It's a new release that you might be hearing about for the first time right now. Yeah, right. I'm excited to watch it. Are you? No. Okay. Yeah, Maria, I like one of the three sections in that movie a lot, and I'm curious when you watch it. Don't tell me which one. I'm not going to tell you, but I'm curious when you watch it if you have the same response. I think you will. And yeah, so we've got two more Stanton films, right, to fill out that little mini. So we've got In the Blink of an Eye and Toy Story 5, two films he directed in 2026. And then over on. Let's also. No, I was just going to call out, you say the Patreon, David. Yeah, on Patreon, we've got the final RoboCop entry, which is RoboCop 2014. Five stars. A triumph. From what I remember. Yeah. Illegal. It should be. Yeah. Right. No suicide is contemplated on that episode. I'm kidding. Kidding. I was just going to call out, we have announced our John Carter screening, which sold out really fast, in which Andrew Stanton is going to. He's going to be doing a Q&A with us. What a fool he is. We are not sure if we will be able to record and or release that, but we are going to be doing a sit-down with him in studio. That's the plan. So that will be coming later, and we will figure out the deal with the Q&A. But for a number of factors that we can talk about later, we're not totally sure what form that will have down the line. But look forward to a release on the main feed as just a bonus episode. Yeah. So it'll be. It'll be a kind of old-school Thursday bonus, I think, is the plan. And on that note, Griffin. Wait, wait. Oh, sorry. Please. Wait, no. There was one thing. Griffin, before we started recording, you said you had a big joke you wanted to make. Did you make that joke? Oh, it was the joke about how funny is it that I left New York and everyone has diarrhea now. I made the joke. Very good joke. Oh, that was the joke. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank God we got that in there. Because you did tell us to put a pin in that, and so often we put pins in things that never get unpinned. I want to start a new segment called The Corkboard, in which any time we say we're going to put a pin in something, Ben, you write it down, and at the end we check the corkboard. What do you think about that? That's a good idea. That's a good idea, right? I also see that working as a fun social media asset, too. So I'll write down corkboard for the corkboard idea. Yeah. Corkboard for the corkboard. So we're announcing the corkboard. Unfortunately, the next two months of episodes have largely been recorded. Get ready for a bunch of episodes that don't have the corkboard in them. No, and probably have a lot of unfinished tangents, let's be honest. There are a bunch of Mark Scorsese episodes. Well, tell us what to add. Anything we missed in the upcoming episodes. Throw it on the corkboard and be polite. And for all the Arthur talk in this episode, I must say, and as always, Jekyll, Jekyll, Hyde, Jekyll, Hyde, Hyde, Jekyll, Jekyll, Jekyll, Jekyll, Hyde, Jekyll, Hyde. What is that? Three people will be so happy. I'm going to get a seltzer. One sec. Yeah. David, can you get me a seltzer, too? David, can you grab Griffin a seltzer? He almost did it. He did a double take. Okay, good. Can I do a little port towards the camera? Yeah, if you port into the soundboard, it will come through my headphones. All right, let's do it. Special thanks to David Cho, Jordan Fish, and Nate Patterson for their production help. Head over to blankcheckpod.com for links to all of the real nerdy shit. Join our Patreon, Blank Check Special Features, for exclusive franchise commentaries and bonus episodes. Follow us on social at Blank Check Pod. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter. Checkbook on Substack. This podcast is created and produced by Blank Check Production. Beat the heat. Get your tickets today at Netflix.com slash house.