What Hollywood Got WRONG in The Odyssey

- 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/house. - Christopher Nolan has brought the Odyssey to the big screen. But how accurate is the film to Homer's ancient epic? What did Christopher Nolan do better and what were the things that he missed? Well, to find out, I sat down with Dr. Jack Visnick, better known as Lantern Jack. He's the host of the YouTube channel Ancient Greece Declassified. He's got a PhD from Princeton and he studied the Odyssey in its original Greek. Jack reveals what Nolan got right, what the film changed, and which powerful moments were left behind. From anachronistic, armor, and modernized morality to the racial controversy. He even shares the surprising scenes that may have been even better than the original. This is the Odyssey through the eyes of an ancient historian. This mini episode is just an excerpt from my entire conversation with Jack. We go over two hours discussing his controversial theory that Odysseus may have discovered America. Yes, it is a fascinating episode and he lays out the entire theory in extreme detail. So make sure you check that out later this week on the main channel Camp Gagnon. And for today, if you want to hear an expert weigh in on the most debated film in America right now, well, you're in the right place. So sit back, relax, and welcome to History Camp. Now, before we go, I think we have maybe 25 minutes. Can I ask you some questions about the Odyssey, the film? - Sure. - So you saw the Odyssey, the most recent film by Christopher Nolan. - Yeah. - And what did you think about it? - Yeah, I mean, outside, I don't want to speak out of turn here, but you gave me a rating out of 10. - Yeah. - Could you share that with me now? - Six or seven out of 10. - Why? - Well, okay, first of all, being somebody who has read the Odyssey so many times, including in ancient Greek, I'm going to be more picky than most people. I mean, you can even recite the opening lines to ancient Greek. - I can. - Would you mind? - Sure. - Spin a little Greek for us? - Do you have a drum? - Yeah. - Can you do like a dum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum? There we go. Amazing. I mean, that is so cool. And so that's how it would be told. Yeah. And for how many- With a liar. How many hours would that go on for? We can't know for sure, but based on like the length of an English audio book that covers the whole thing is about 12 to 14 hours. So it's possible that that's the timeframe. Wow. That is fascinating. That recontextualizes so much of it, right? Because we read it in, you know, a class in high school or college, and it's just words on a page. It's kind of like- It's kind of like when you read Shakespeare, you get the gist, but you lose so much because this is not a book to be read. It is a play or a performance to be experienced. And I imagine that this is probably the same exact way. Yeah. And in fact, we know for sure that the Homeric rhapsodes that performed this, they could mimic different voices. They could get into like, I can remember Ron's voice and then Helen's voice. And then, you know, whatever, like they could, they would really get into character with all the different figures. And what would be- What would be the context that I would be listening to this if I'm an ancient Greek? Well, in Athens, there were like state-sponsored festivals where you'd have a superstar on stage and maybe a thousand people watching. In the age of Homer, we don't know, but probably like, you know, probably the types of scenes depicted in the actual Odyssey where you have a feast put on by a king or local warlord in a great hall and a bard as entertaining, maybe like 100 people who are feasting. Would I be drinking? Definitely. I'd be hammered. You would. Nice. Would I be on drugs? Possibly in book four of the Odyssey, when Telemachus visits Menelaus, by the way, this is a great missed opportunity for Nolan because Helen, Homer's Helen is way more formidable than Nolan's Helen. Okay. Homer's Helen drugs the whole party. Really? When she sees that Telemachus is the son of Odysseus and Menelaus is going to start like, waxing nostalgic about Odysseus and the Trojan war, which she caused in this storyline. She's like, okay, this is gonna be bad for me. Let me drug everybody's wine. And she uses an Egyptian drug that is so potent that if you take it, even if your child is being torn to pieces in front of you, you will still not shed a tear. So there we have like this type of scene where a bard might be present. He's not in this case, but, um, drugs were definitely known and, uh, described. What do you think that could be? I mean, it sounds like ecstasy. The main theory is opium. Ah, so you're just on heroin. I'm not an expert, but yeah. That's wild. I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm, I mean, I, again, I've never done heroin, not yet, but my understanding is like, that's, it's how you, it's from the poppy, right? It's not, well, again, it's not mentioned that it's poppy. It's just mentioned that it's from Egypt and there has been speculation that Egypt was importing opium from, you know, Central Asia or something. Again, through various indirect intermediaries. Now, what are the discrepancies from the film to your understanding of the original Greek? Are you, uh, well, okay. The first thing is like, why are they wearing helmets when they're rowing on the boat? Hilarious. Or wandering in a forest? Like, first of all, the helmets are anachronistic. These are much later helmets. They constrict your vision very severely. They're only useful if you are marching in a column of dudes and you're only going to go forward. If you're walking in a forest where there might be like dangerous creatures around you, you don't want to wear this helmet. All right. Um, I thought that the biggest problem was trying to force modern morality onto an ancient tale. Like it's to me, one of the main values of the Homeric epics is that they have such a different morality. And even if we find it shocking or, or we don't want to accept that morality, shouldn't we know other human societies saw the world morally? What's the clearest example? Well, the clearest example is that, um, Odysseus kills all the suitors, right? Right. Like can we do spoilers here? Yeah. Oh yeah. I mean, this is a 2000 year old story. If you haven't heard of it now, I mean too late. Well, because in Nolan's version, he doesn't kill all the suitors. Okay. He spares quite a few of them in Homer. He only spares like two or three. That's another missed opportunity because. You know how, like in the final scene, Odysseus, Matt Damon, Odysseus prophecies that only songs will remember them that no writing will survive. Right. Um, well in, in the actual Odyssey, one of the few people that Homer, that, that Odysseus spares is the bard, the guy who's singing, like he is one of the suitors technically, but he's also like the, the singer of epic tales to the suitors. So how cool is that? That you spare the guy who you want to sing of your exploits. Right. You know, that's kind of a totally missed. Yeah. Sort of poetic to be like, I'm going to kill everyone except for you go tell this tale to the next person. And then when you're watching it live at a festival, you're like, Oh, that's the guy that got spared. Like it feels, it becomes meta in a way. Yeah. Oh, that's cool. Now my friend Alex pointed out that he thought it was weird that Helen has a twin. Yeah. Now I know that in some retellings and it's been disputed that there is this twin theory with Helen, but he says, if she's the most beautiful woman ever that you're going to send a thousand ships for endless summer escape, 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 theme food and drinks beat the heat play eat and shop on repeat at Netflix house at Galleria, Dallas, bring your crew and say, get your tickets today at netflix.com slash house. If she has a twin sister, doesn't that kind of nerf that whole point? Yeah. So in, again, in the original, they are sisters, but not twin sisters. I'm not sure why Nolan did that. Maybe just to not have to find another actor, you know, but but there's these weird cases of twins where one twin is divine and the other isn't. Okay. So Have you heard of Castor and Pollux? Or so Castor and Pollux and Helen and Clytemnestra are two cases where you have two twins, two pairs of twins. And in each case, for some reason, one twin gets the divine parentage and the other does not. Sorry, they're not twins, they're siblings, but one of them gets the divine parentage, one of them doesn't. I think it might be like, so you have this beautiful woman and a god sleeps with her, but her husband also sleeps with her. And perhaps one of the children has the divine parentage. It's like a Maury Povich. Anyway, it's a common theme in, or it's a well-known theme in Greek mythology that you can have siblings where one of them is divine, one of them is not. So Helen is semi-divine, which is why she and Menelaus are never going to die. In the strict sense, but they will be transported to the Isles of, to Elysium, to the Elysian field. And Menelaus is prophesied to that he will not die, but because he has a divine wife, they will be taken by the gods to the Elysian field across the ocean. Another reference to a land across the ocean where they will live there forever, basically. So Clytemnestra is, you know, a less attractive, less. Divine sibling in the original. Interesting. Now, my buddy Andrew pointed out, he said that he actually liked the casting because many people would say, like, I know there's a lot of uproar from specifically the Greeks, right? Christos, where they would say like, oh, why are they casting a black woman in the space of a, you know, an ancient Greek? This is completely anachronistic. They're erasing Greek culture. My friend Andrew says she's actually the most exotic person and that like her ethnicity or her skin tone. She creates a distinction where she looks unique to the people. As far as the like the racial dynamic, it feels like it was a little bit overblown. But I'm curious your perspective as a historian on this specific time. Well, I think that there were. I think. There were so many more important issues that Nolan got wrong. You're worried about the helmets. It's very niche. Yeah. I mean, like the only. Person in the cast who either was Greek or spoke Greek was a person who played a non Greek hilarious. So, uh, the first stop after Troy is, is Morris. It's not mentioned by name and the movie, but the first stop they make where they plunder this coastal village and there's this survivor and he's this old man. And he, and he tells them they're like, we're Greeks from Ithaca. And he speaks modern Greek to them is like the, the, the actor is, is a Greek. Okay. And in the movie, he's speaking. Modern Greek. And he's saying, if you go west troubles await you. And then he has to be translated to these so-called Greeks. Hilarious. It's just like, seriously. Yeah. That is a good distinction, right? Like Matt Damon is equally not Greek as Lupita. Yeah. Like they're both not Greek and we're kind of putting like a modern racialized lens on a period where race wasn't really a thing, right? Like it was just sort of nationality. Is that fair to say? Well, I mean, I don't know how much race was a thing. I think, um, I think Greece was definitely not as multicultural as it appears to be in the, in the film, you know, but, uh, there's a lot we don't know. So they also weren't speaking English. Yeah. Hey guys, we're gonna take a break really quick because I got to tell you something. If you know me, you know, I'm obsessed with finding ways to cheat biology without accidentally ruining my biology. And for a long time, I associated putting a pouch in with being focused and energized and like ready to attack the day. But the thing is, nicotine is a vasoconstrictor, which means it literally narrows your blood vessels and restricts oxygen delivery to your muscles. 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Now, another element that I mentioned before, that is my favorite part of the books. I'm at least when I read it in high school, I was like, oh, that's so clever. Is when he tells the Cyclops that he's nobody. Yeah. What like, do you have a theory as to why that was cut out? Did it bother you that that element was removed? Well, I did see that Nolan was asked this, I think by Jon Stewart in an interview. And he says, Yeah, I mean, before we get to that, I just want to know if there's any other details you were like, ah, this is a missed opportunity. This is the best part, dah, dah, dah, dah. Things that people don't know. I mean, the land of the dead where he holds his mother three times and she like evaporates and moves through him. And she dies of, you know, a broken heart waiting for him. That's like the most beautiful part of the whole poem. Yeah. And it's also omitted. So I'm like, ah. I mean, look, if you're going to take a, what was a 14 hour performance and make it into a three hour film. Fair. You have to cut things that are going to be really sad to cut. Fair. Okay. Um, at the same time, I think Nolan could have done some really awesome things that he didn't do. You know, like, uh, one is to actually show the ancient morality in all its shocking alien. Uh, aspects. Right. Um, and, but I will say that there were some really, really clever things that he did. Tell me. Okay. Like, uh, when Odysseus in the land of, in Circe's Isle, when he, when he, um, goes hunting and he shoots the deer and then he goes to retrieve the body and it's a human body. That's not in Homer. It's a brilliant touch, uh, to give Odysseus a way of understanding what's happening on this island. Uh. You have a witch turning humans into beasts. And then here's one that he did that I think Aristotle would have approved. Um, cause Aristotle said that the power of tragedy and Homer, he takes to be a kind of related form of art to tragedy. The power of tragedy is most vividly seen in moments of reversal and recognition. So when, when, uh, when fortunes suddenly change or when somebody recognizes. Somebody, those are the powerful moments. And he says the best, the best tragedies combine them. So the moment of recognition is also the moment of reversal of fortune. And in this case, Nolan, it's not in the, it's not in the original, but Nolan made the moment where the dog Argos recognizes Odysseus to coincide with the moment where Telemachus recognizes Odysseus, which also then marks the reversal because now Telemachus knows that things are different. Right. So. I'm not sure. I'm not gonna get killed. Things are turning around. Exactly. So that would have been, uh, that would have the stamp of approval of Aristotle on it. Wow. Yeah, that's a great way to look at this. I think so many people are trying to, uh, skewer the original and say like, oh, they ruined it and destroyed it. And Hollywood effed up the whole movie. Well, there are elements that are changed and perhaps some of those criticisms are legitimate, but it is also possible that in certain elements, Nolan did better than Homer. And that is a, is a quite an achievement, even if he does it once. I mean, I know this is probably breaking Christos' heart. He's like, no, dude, Homer's the best. No one could ever be Homer, but that, that part right there, it's not something I even considered. Like in that one single moment, it does two things at once that even the rhapsodes of old didn't do. Yeah. Wow. That's a great point. And that is also maybe the most beautiful part. Argos seeing his owner and being like, and then dying immediately after and Odysseus shedding one single tear and wiping it away. Yeah. It's perfect. I mean, truly perfect. It's gold. Right. It's also a great name for a dog that I feel like not enough people are using. Right. Like I always meet Fido's all the time. How many Lunas have I met in the last year? Give me an Argos. That's the best dog name I've ever heard. I think there's going to be a big explosion. There's going to be a big explosion of Argos in the next two years. Watch. Now, anything else that you saw in the film that you thought could have been different, was a deviation, but you didn't mind, or was even better than the original. Endless summer escapes start here. Travel the worlds of Netflix. 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 well i like to think of the positive things because there's a lot of negatives i don't want to you know do that but um one more thing that was cool is the sound that the bow makes when you pluck it yeah yeah now that's totally unrealistic okay uh a bow of that tension would have sounded like you know hilarious yeah you want you want bass what what you hear is like the the thickest biggest string of a harp with that whole resonating chamber available yeah right feels like a like a tool intro you know you that's what you want that was obviously like you know the sound was overlaid with right or something but what i like there is that in the scene with um the challenge of the bow right oh another missed opportunity uh the interview between penelope and odysseus right the original is way better man like she's so much smarter and they they kind of speak in codes and he kind of signals to her that he's odysseus without saying it outright and then she kind of gets it and then she says so what should i do and then he says well i think you should announce the bow challenge which is totally not in the movie right right and then she's okay sounds good so like you can read it's not like you know it's not uh uncontroversial but you can read into that scene in homer that he's giving her a signal she's getting it she's asking for advice he gives it and then she's okay and it's like they've they've conspired together that's totally missed in the in the movie uh but then what is cool is so he he starts stringing the bow and all these suitors are angry and they're jeering and they're insulting him and like you feel like at any moment they might just charge him and beat him up right and the and the music is growing in tension and growing and growing and growing and then at the moment of the climax of the musical crescendo he goes bang yeah and then the music stops right like shit just got real and it's like yeah it's awesome yeah but now i'm i it's not something i ever understood and from my reading of the excerpts of the original where it's like okay he's talking to penelope he's like let's do this bow thing she's like all right let's do it yeah and then even after he does that she still is not sure and she's like move my bed out of the chamber yeah and then he's like well you can't move the bed i made that bed it's an attitude on olive tree it's like this whole thing it's like it makes me think that she still didn't believe it even after this whole feat and threading the bow and shooting through the axe handles all right so in your interpretation from the original homeric did she at what point does she know odysseus is really him well i think that i think the purpose of her at least feigning disbelief and making him prove himself is because homer wants her to be an equal to him in cunning if she had just said oh you're home honey thank oh right so much like no prove it with the axe handles that that would be but after you do that then she got to come down and be like all right you i guess odysseus himself does this right like when odysseus goes like odysseus doesn't just check people's intentions he double checks and triple checks and triple tests right like when after he kills the suitors and he goes to see his father his father is like plowing the earth all muddy and dirty and you'd think he would just say dad i'm home but instead he makes up yet another tale of who he is which is a lie and he says oh yeah i saw this he's dead and his dad like collapses almost dies of like a heart attack it's like oh just kidding it's me dead right yeah just pump things on for no reason you might be like again somebody with modern morality coming in it's like that's so cruel it's like but but this is why odysseus survived because he's that kind of person who tests even the people that he should trust he's that suspicious and that crafty and that cunning that of all the people that went on this long you know saga only he made it home right right and then penelope i think the the poet homer or other bards they want her to be his match in cunning and so she has to do the same thing she has to like test him and double test him and triple test him right and then finally they're united and when they're united they have uh homo frosune they have a like-minded relationship 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 which odysseus says is the greatest thing on earth so don't look at it as you know a great that's godlike and a damsel in distress look at it almost like spy versus spy yes where it's like they're both testing each other the entire time all the way up until the very end yeah now in the disputed ending of the original homer there's a great civil war and all the families of the suitor start fighting and there's a whole thing and then athena comes down and zeus is like guys stop and wipes everybody's memory i've heard it said that that's not really accepted what what say you on that rendition what do you mean it's not accepted i've heard that like a lot of people have said that that's not really accepted i've heard that like a lot of people have uh the scholars have said like no no it ends after the olive tree bed situation and then happily ever after but that additional ending where there's a civil war and zeus has to like throw a little thunderbolt is that part accepted by homers there's always some scholars who think well maybe the the original ending was here or maybe homer should have ended it there you know but i mean the manuscripts agreed that it ends after the divine intervention and i think to me that i i think the existing ending we have is the best ending because to me the odyssey in the same way that the iliad is a faint altered memory of the coalition warfare that attended the bronze age collapse the odyssey to me is a faint memory of the chaotic migrations that also followed the bronze age collapse and so um when like there there is a sense in the ending of this epic poem that ithaca will never be able to come back to its original state as it was once before right like odysseus regains his throne but at a huge cost to the community and he's not happy about killing them like there's this great line where after he kills all the suitors except for like three uh the nurse hericlia who recognizes scar she comes into the hall right and she's about to like she opens her mouth to be like and odysseus like grabs her throat and says it is not right to rejoice over slain men so he the poem is at great pains to make it feel like he did this out of necessity in order to establish order to establish his rightful place so forth but it's not a good it's not a happy ending it's not a good thing for ithaca i think it will never be the same just like after the bronze age collapse the greek a lot of the greek uh areas they they went on they they survived in a sense but they never achieved their former glory until the end of the dark ages four centuries later and so i think it's a good thing that it's a good thing that it's a good thing that it's a good thing that it's a good thing that it's a good thing that it's a good thing later and so there's a sense in this poem like yeah uh order was restored but this is now a kind of fallen world right and the fact that the gods had to come down and wipe everyone's memory yeah is that necessary like sometimes it feels a little deus ex machina to me it's it's a bit of a deus ex machina okay fair if we can we agree on that all right well dr jack this has been fantastic thank you so much for the time truly i am uh i'm always honored to be in the presence of someone that is a scholar that i've known for a long time and i've known him for a long time and i've known that is willing to come down to my level and explain the details and answer all my frivolous questions so truly it means the world and uh i would love to do it again thanks so much i've been following your show for a while so it's an honor to be here and i hope to be back let's do it hey guys if you love conspiracies and hypothetical history well i want to invite you to check out signal 33 this is a companion pod to our podcast here at camp it's made and edited by the same team that runs all of our shows and i choose the topics every single week so check it out subscribe and start the dialogue in the comments below 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 house Thanks for watching!