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Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation makes a few key changes to the classic story.
Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of The Odyssey makes several changes from the original text, including an ending that’s quite different from Homer’s classic epic.
Originally written in Homeric Greek, the Odyssey has been translated numerous times in the nearly 3,000 years since it was first composed. The story changes depending on the translator and the time period, which is part of what makes Nolan’s adaptation so compelling — not only is he participating in a centuries-old tradition of retelling the epic, he’s also adding new dimensions to the story based on his perspective. The Odyssey notably doesn’t include onscreen depictions of Greek gods, save for Athena, but a reveal in the third act complicates her identity in a profound way.
Nolan makes a few other key changes in The Odyssey, particularly to the ending of the story. Here are the major differences between the ending of the original poem and Nolan’s sprawling adaptation.
How does The Odyssey end?
After recounting his harrowing journey home from the Trojan War and remembering how he lost all of his men, Odysseus leaves Calypso (Charlize Theron), with whom he has been living as an amnesiac, on a raft crafted from the remnants of his ship. Recalling advice from Agamemnon (Benny Safdie), who appeared to him in the Underworld alongside an army of fallen soldiers, Odysseus disguises himself as an old beggar upon returning to Ithaca. In doing so, he hopes to observe the state of his kingdom before revealing his identity.
When he arrives, Odysseus finds Ithaca overrun by dozens of boorish suitors plotting to marry his wife, Penelope (Anne Hathaway), and seize the throne. His identity is revealed to his son, Telemachus (Tom Holland), after Odysseus saves him from an ambush orchestrated by the suitor Antinous (Robert Pattinson) and his allies. Telemachus agrees to keep his father’s identity a secret, and Odysseus lurks around the dining hall until Penelope calls for a meeting with the new stranger in hopes of receiving news of her long-lost husband.
While speaking with Penelope, Odysseus — pretending to be a soldier who once served under the king — recalls the violent siege of Troy and the immense shame he feels for committing what he describes as the ultimate violation of Zeus’ sacred law of hospitality: the belief that strangers should be treated as though they might be gods in disguise. In doing so, he believes he and his men destroyed one of the fundamental bonds that holds civilization together. “We violated all that’s sacred between people,” Odysseus says.
In his recollection, Odysseus watches his men decapitate a young woman played by Zendaya, leaving it ambiguous whether Athena appeared to him in that moment in the woman’s form or whether his visions of the goddess throughout the film are manifestations of the guilt he carries over her death.
Odysseus ultimately admits that part of him never wanted to return to Ithaca, where he would be forced to confront the consequences of the destruction wrought in his absence. Earlier in the film, characters repeatedly warn of “the people from the sea” who will bring about the collapse of civilization. In one of the film’s most devastating moments, Penelope expresses what Odysseus has long feared: “You’re the people from the sea.”
Penelope announces a contest to decide which suitor she will marry, challenging the men to string Odysseus’ bow and shoot an arrow through 12 crossed axes — feats only Odysseus had ever accomplished. After the other suitors try and fail, the disguised Odysseus strings the bow and successfully shoots the arrow through the axes. He then shows Penelope the golden Athena pin she had given him before he left for Troy, proving at last that he is her husband.
Odysseus and Telemachus kill the outraged suitors, but Odysseus is severely wounded. He lays his head in Penelope’s lap and revisits her dream of sailing into the sunset. This time, however, they’re heading west so that Odysseus can fulfill his promise to honor the men he lost. As Odysseus and Penelope sail away from Ithaca, Telemachus is crowned king.
How does Homer’s Odyssey end?
The biggest change Nolan makes in his film is the elimination of the gods as tangible characters. Zeus, Poseidon, Hermes, and Helios, among others, are referenced but not depicted onscreen, including during the confrontation with Penelope’s suitors. In the poem, Odysseus receives help from Athena, who uses her power to make him stronger and taller and to divert his enemies’ weapons. The film is less faithful to the source material in this way, but by making the gods an intangible concept, it presents a more grounded interpretation of the story.
“One of the things I needed to crack was how to approach mythological elements in a sort of real-world way,” Nolan explained to Empire. “The big breakthrough creatively in thinking about the gods was that everything that is now explained by science was once supernatural. Lightning, thunder, earthquakes, volcanoes... people are literally seeing gods everywhere; not even the evidence of gods, they’re seeing the actions of gods.”
Homer’s poem also presents Penelope and Odysseus’ reunion differently. In the classic telling, Penelope tests her husband by asking a servant to move their marital bed, which Odysseus protests, as only he would know the bed was carved from the trunk of an olive tree. It’s this, and not the golden Athena pin, that convinces Penelope that Odysseus is her husband.
In the poem, Telemachus orders the hanging of 12 enslaved women who served Penelope. Telemachus accuses the women of sleeping with some of the suitors and declares them disloyal and untrustworthy. Nolan’s film thankfully excises this element.
After Odysseus slays the suitors, he has to contend with their vengeful relatives. Zeus signals that the conflict should end, and Athena appears once again to order Odysseus and everyone else to lay down their weapons or else incur Zeus’ vengeance. The poem ends with the lines, “He was glad to obey her. Then Athena made the warring sides swear solemn oaths of peace for future times — still in her guise as Mentor.”
Who are “the people from the sea”?
Most of the other changes in the film are relatively minor, but Nolan makes two crucial additions. The first is the young Greek soldier Sinon (Elliot Page), who doesn’t appear in Homer’s Odyssey but is a character in ancient mythology and Virgil’s Aeneid. Nolan borrows the older stories about Sinon, who was said to have convinced the Trojans to accept the horse by posing as a defector.
Nolan also introduces the idea of “the people from the sea.” That idea doesn’t appear in Homer’s poem, but the mysterious Sea Peoples are associated with the Late Bronze Age collapse. “The people from the sea are essentially these marauders who some believe brought about the collapse of civilization, but nobody knows their lost history,” Nolan said in an interview with Vulture. “Nobody knows who they were, and there’s not a lot of information about it. There’s a lot of speculation.”
He added, “It’s a pretty credible interpretation of history to say that the people from the sea didn’t really exist and that it was really just a socioeconomic evolution.”
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Nolan’s film also alludes to the Dark Ages that followed the end of the Bronze Age, during which writing largely disappeared from Greece. At the end of the film, when Odysseus says stories of Troy’s fall will be sung, Penelope asks why he says “sung,” to which he responds, “Because songs will be all they have to remember those of us who could write.”
“There’s about 400 years of darkness where language is lost,” Nolan explained. “Homer is speaking about 400 years after these events. Ish. It’s all a bit vague.”
During that period, stories — including the tale of Odysseus — were indeed passed down through oral tradition and sung by traveling bards, like the one played by Travis Scott.
Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly
