Ben Shapiro Reviews The Odyssey

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Paid for by Super Sure Insurance Agency llc, a licensed insurance agency. Alrighty, folks, the time has come. We are going to review the Odyssey. I saw it in imax and I have many, many thoughts. This this video is sponsored by friends over at PDS Death. Alrighty, so I want to begin with the Overall, on a scale 1 to 10, where does this movie lie? Somewhere for me, between an eight and a half and a nine. It's really, really, really good. It's a terrific movie. And believe you me, I'm gonna get into all of the politics specifically regarding the casting and some of the sort of stones in the shoe when it comes to this movie. There are certain flaws in the movie that feel enormous, truly, to the viewer. They feel big. It feels like a sort of chip in your tooth where everybody else looks at your tooth and they're like, ah, there's nothing wrong with your tooth. And then you feel with your tongue, you're like, oh, my gosh, there's like a canyon in my tooth. Well, there's some of those things in the film and I'll get to those things. Some of them are things that you've probably been thinking about. Some of them not as much. But overall, the movie is. Nolan's great at what he does. I mean, the movie is a masterpiece. It is. Now, it doesn't hue entirely to sort of the characterization of Odysseus in the Odyssey. If you're reading the Robert Fagel's version, for example, it takes liberties with some of the characterization. You would figure it would have to when you're talking about ancient literature. Most of the characters in ancient literature are not particularly well characterized. You don't sort of get their interior monologue, the thing that they're thinking the whole time. And the thematic, when it comes to the Odyssey, is not totally clear. You have a bunch of speeches that kind of will insert a theme here or there, but it's not as though there's some sort of overarching dramatic theme to the Odyssey other than a man trying to get home. But no one does something different here. He actually inserts a sort of overarching theme that I quite liked. Now, whether you think that's true to the theme of the Odyssey is another question. There may be hints in the original poem, but it's certainly not clear from the text of the Odyssey that what he's doing with Odysseus is actually kind of directly from the text. That's okay. You're allowed to take liberties with ancient texts as a film. Does it work? Absolutely. Now, the film starts off relatively slowly. So the first hour starts off fairly slowly and kind of episodic. And then about halfway through, it kicks in and you realize what the theme is going to be and just gets better and better. So by the time you hit the end, it actually is quite moving and quite effective. Okay, so again, we'll start from the very beginning. Nolan is great at what he does. The movie looks beautiful. It's well shot. The images are incredible and iconic. They're images you can't get out of your head after having seen the film. Particularly the Fall of Troy, which appears in the last hour of the film or so, is extraordinary. The entire incident with the Trojan Horse is filmed in dramatic fashion. Again, extraordinary. Everything with the Cyclops is amazing. The script has some flaws, and I'll get to the flaws in a second. I do have somewhat of a problem with Nolan sound mixing. He does this thing in a lot of his movies where the sound of the score sometimes overwhelms the dialogue, which is a problem because I'm trying to actually hear what the character is saying. That does happen from time to time. Particularly there's a scene where Charlize Theron, who's playing Calypso, is sort of giving you her rationale for why Odysseus was stranded and why she's allowing him to leave and all of that, and it kind of gets eaten up by the score. That's. That's a problem. But again, as a director, Nolan is unparalleled. He's the best director working today, without a doubt. He just creates iconic movie after iconic movie. The cinematography is beautiful. The score by Ludwig Goranson is, I would say, good, not great. You don't walk out sort of thinking that that was one of Goranson's best scores. I think he scored. Oppenheimer is better. The acting throughout is very good, with a few exceptions. So Matt Damon is Odysseus. I will admit I'm a big Matt Damon, Stan. I really like Matt Damon. I think he's great in nearly everything. He really sort of disappears into the part in a way that he doesn't in a lot of his other movies. He's great at Zodicias. Robert Pattinson as Antinous is an excellent antagonist. He's sleazy and gross. Tom Holland as Telemachus is excellent, well cast. Anne Hathaway does a great job as Penelope. Corey Hawkins as Polybus is great. Zendaya. My name is not Zendaya. I actually liked in this movie. I know that's a rarity. I'm not a huge Zendaya. Zendaya fan. But Zendaya, Zendaya. What does with Zendaya? I'll explain in a second. Is actually quite smart. John Bernthal is Menelaus. I, I do like John Bernthal in nearly everything. Charlize Theranos. Calypso is great. John Luizamo as you Mayus. A lot of people didn't like his performance. I, I liked it. I, I didn't have a problem with Lupita Nyongo as Helen or Clytemnestra. You know where I'm going here? You know where I'm going to say that the casting went awry and it really did. Okay. So I'm going to talk about the themes and then I'm gonna get to the flaws. So the theme of the movie, the way that, that Nolan unspools it is basically that Odysseus is an almost a self imposed exile. Yes, he wants to get home, but he suffers tremendous guilt over the loss of his men during the Trojan War. He doesn't think the Trojan War should have been fought. He's sort of strong armed into it by Agamemnon and by Menelaus. He has to abandon his wife. He has to take a draft of his people and then he has to go and he's there for 10 years and then he's missing for another seven years. All of that is stuff that he regrets. So he's racked by regret over the loss of his men. But as it turns out, he's also wracked with regret over the end of the Trojan War itself. So one of the conceits of the film is that there is this rule that is essentially a biblical rule smuggled into Greek theology. Treat people as you would want to be treated. I mean, this comes up multiple times in the film. That rule is put into the guise of. Because that person may turn out to be a God. Right? Because if you're treating a person in a certain way, that person may turn out to be a God in disguise. It's called Zeus's law. They keep saying it over and over in the film. And so the basic idea is that Zeus's law was violated by offering a gift in order to get inside the walls of Troy. And then a slaughter was carried out. Essentially holocaust of Troy was carried out. And so he has regrets over both the slaughter that was carried out, but mostly over his crucial role in violating Zeus's law. Because he as a character is not someone who tends to fear the gods. He's not someone who tends to think that fate is in the hands of the gods. He's constantly rebelling against fate as he's informed by one of the other characters, Athena. It turns out that actually he's not rebelling against fate as much as he's rebelling against human nature. In any case, because of those regrets, he is sort of sidetracked. And he has to learn that human nature is venal and greedy and bad and that he's not in control of everything. But the idea also is that's why you have things like Zeus's law. And when Zeus's law is violated, then it is very difficult to put back together. There's a threat that is sort of materialized into the script that there are these sea people who you never see who are violating all the laws of war and they're going ashore in places like Ithaca in order to invade it. And they're not paying attention to any of Zeus's law. And it turns out that Odysseus believes that the reason why that's happening is because he violated Zeus's law. And now you've unleashed upon the world this violation of the natural order. Again, very conservative messaging that once you violate the natural law, that has infectious effects. The idea that human beings are greedy and venal. You see that in the scene with Cersei where the men are turned into pigs which, by the way, is one of the creepier scenes ever filmed. I mean, really creepy. The way that he films that is that Cersei physically manipulates these men, get addicted to eating, and then she physically manipulates their bodies into the bodies of pigs. It's super creepy and weird. Yeah. Again, really well filmed and thematically pretty interesting. And the idea is that he has to violate Zeus's law essentially one last time and then go into exile in order to preserve the city. That's Samantha Morton, who plays Cersei, by the way. The basic idea here is that in the very last battle, he comes back, obviously, and now he has to kill all the suitors. Now, in the Odyssey, he just kills all the suitors and retakes the crown. And then he has to sort of broker a piece with all of the remaining lords. Here. The idea is that he's gonna violate Zeus's law one last time in order to take out all the enemies. And then he's gonna go into exile with Penelope and Telemachus is gonna become the king because he hasn't actually violated the law of Zeus. And that means that he essentially has to take on everybody by himself. Again, the thematic, I think is kind of great. I kind of love it a little bit. And the movie is beautiful. And now on to the actual flaws. So there have been a bunch of flaws that have been pointed out, particularly by people on the political right. And again, I'm trying to be objective about these films. I like. This is why I wasn't going to jump to conclusions about the film based on a bunch of sort of online rumors. I wanted to see it and then review it. I know. A weirdness, an oddity. Okay, so there are essentially, I would say, five flaws that have been presented by people on the right when it comes to casting and all the rest. Those flaws would be in order. Travis Scott, who's a rapper, playing the Bard. Lupita Nyong' o playing Helen, the most beautiful woman ever to have lived. The use of the terms dad and mom in the film. The sort of modern language of the film. Zendaya. Zendaya as Athena and Elliot Page as Sinon. So I'm going to go through those in order. So starting with Travis Scott as the Bard. He's in it for about five seconds. Okay, so this goes to. Why isn't everybody in the movie Greek? I'm just gonna point out at this point, no one in the movie is Greek. Literally no one. Matt Damon is of Nordic extraction. Okay. Matt Damon is a very white guy. He is not Greek. Tom Holland does not look Greek. Anne Hathaway does not look Greek. None of these people look Greek. So we can start with that. So I'm not super bothered by, you know, Travis Scott playing the Bard. It didn't really take me out of the story in any sense, significant way. Okay, so maybe the Bard is just a traveler from Northern Africa in this particular version. I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna go crazy over that. It doesn't. Doesn't. Doesn't change the story in a fundamental way. I feel the same thing about Lupita Nyong'. O. So I know a lot of people were like, oh, my God, Lupita Nyong' o is supposed to look like Diane Krueger. I don't know. Diane Krueger doesn't look very Greek. She's German. So Lupita Nyong' o is a beautiful woman. But here's the thing, actually, in the script, Nolan goes out of his way to explain that the war wasn't really launched over Helen being gorgeous. There's a line where he actually has Odysseus explain to Penelope the reason the war is being launched is that Helen is a pretext. Helen is an excuse. Actually, Troy just exists on the trade routes, and Agamemnon and Menelaus want to seize control of the trade routes. The Greeks want control of that trade route, and they're going to use the abduction or flight of Helen as the excuse for the battle. So it's not really about Lupita Nyong' o being, like, extraordinarily beautiful as much as it is an excuse for why they did this thing in the first place. And by the way, I think that's also why Nolan is trying to underscore that by having Helen and Clytemnestra actually be twins. The goal there is to say her beauty is not unique. It was a pretext. So he actually solves the problem that people were complaining about. Again, I'm not sure it was a huge problem to begin with, but okay, so Travis Scott didn't bother me. Lupita Nyong' o didn't bother me. How about Zendaya? Zendaya. Okay. Third casting thing that people were upset about was Zendaya as Athena. This is actually in the script. Nolan does something super clever here. I actually really love what he does with Zendaya as Athena here. Why? Why does Matt Damon. Again, the idea is that the gods appear to Matt Damon as he sees them, and not that, objectively speaking, Athena looks like Zendaya. Why does that happen? Okay, so there's a flashback near the end of the film where he is flashing back to the sack of Troy and they're slaughtering everyone. He says it's 10 years of rage and anger being taken out on the population, and it's a slaughter. I mean, they're killing men, they're killing women, they're killing children, all of it. He watches as soldiers, as Greek soldiers take Zendaya, who's a young woman living in Troy, and behead her in front of him at the same exact time he is watching a statue of Athena be beheaded. Right. Again, Zeus's law has been violated. And so now, forever in his mind, this young woman who's been beheaded and Athena are tied and they're the same. The idea is that any God can be a human being, right? That's part of Zeus's law, which is actually a super clever device. Casting Zendaya in that role doesn't change anything. The point isn't that Athena is supposed to be the most beautiful woman who has ever lived, and she's supposed to look Greek or like. The idea is that he sees the humanity in the goddess Athena. Right? That's the idea. There so it's actually cleverly woven into the script. I think Zendaya does a fine job. She doesn't bother me at all. So again, those three problems don't have a problem. Then there are the two that are a problem. Here are the actual stones in the shoe. One of them is the use of language like dad or daddy and mom. It takes you out of it. Just a reality. It takes you out of it and there's no reason for it. You could have just said father and mother and it would have not taken you out of it. Anything that takes me out of the film is a thing that should not have happened in the film is my basic rule here. So it takes you way out of the film. Again, it doesn't take me out of the film that there's a multiracial cast. If you want to make the case, everybody needs to be Greek to be authentic. I think you can make that case. If you want to make the case, everybody has to be white. I think that that is a lesser case because white people in Greek are not quite the same thing. And if you want to make the case that males should play males and females should play females, I'm very much into that. That makes sense to me. Well, folks, in the Odyssey, Odysseus spends a lot of time treading water. But here's the thing. If your credit card balance is going down by 20 bucks a month, you are also just treading water. You're not making progress. I know a lot of people listening to the show are responsible people. You pay your bills, make your payments every month. But if you're carrying credit card debt, personal loans or medical bills, interest is quietly working against you every single day. That's why I want you to know about PDS debt. It can reduce up to half of what you owe on credit cards, personal loans and medical bills. It starts with a free 30 second assessment at pdsdebt.com/shapiro. Debt isn't just financial, it's mental. 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Okay, so Elliot Page does not in fact play Achilles. I know there were lots of rumors that Elliot Page plays plays Achilles. Nope, nope, that's stupid. Elliot Page is not playing Achilles. Elliot Page, who is a woman with mental issues who believes that she is a man and has had surgeries to make her appear more man like, but still, she is about 5 foot 2 and 105 pounds soaking wet and has the voice of a woman. It doesn't work. So Elliot Page plays a character named Sinon. The character arc of this character is you see Sinon as a young boy, a pudgy young boy who's maybe 10 or 11 years old. And Robert Pattinson's character is selected to be drafted to go to the Trojan War and essentially threatens this young boy to go to the Trojan War instead or he's gonna kill the family. And so Sinon ends up going to the war in place of Robert Pattinson. It's just kind of a crucial plot point. Okay, Sinon, this young pudgy boy then turns out to be a 39 year old woman dressed as a man. Which again, that's weird. It's especially weird because the person they got to cast as kind of young Robert Pattinson looks like Robert Pattinson. The person they cast as young Elliot Page looks like a pudgy boy. So it doesn't work. Sinon is supposed to be the soldier who's stationed outside the Trojan Horse to tell the Trojans that this is actually a giant gift. In the film, Sinon is told by Odysseus that you're going to explain this to the Trojans. And instead of Sinon explaining to the Trojans what's going on with the horse, the Trojans just kill Sinon right away. That's the one scene with Eliot Page. And then there is a second crucial scene. This scene is drawn originally in the Odyssey from I believe, book 11 of the Odyssey, which is the part where Odysseus visits Hades, right? Visits hell and has a conversation with Achilles. Now again, in the Aeneid, Sinon is a character who actually appears in in Hades. So this part, the Elliot Page part, is not supposed to be Achilles. In the movie, he takes his crew Odysseus to Hades. And in Hades, he has a conversation with Sinon in which Sinon explains that Odysseus must have lied to him about not dying, about living through that. That particular affair. And also Sinon warns him that he is going to. That his crew members are likely going to die, and talks about heroism in battle and how heroism isn't really worth it. So much coming out of the mouth of Elliot Page just doesn't land. The shots are beautiful, the dialogue is good, and it's coming out of the mouth of a woman. There's just no other way to put it. Elliot Page is still a woman, and the voice is the voice of a woman. And having a woman pretending to be a youngish man telling you these things does not land in the way that it should. Does it kill the movie? No, of course not. But is it a flaw in the movie that is utterly unnecessary to me, this falls into totally the same category as dad and mom and Mommy and like, it's just. It's a. It's a stone in the shoe of the movie that is totally unnecessary and takes you out of it. And that's annoying. It's an unforced error. Now, I'm not going to speculate as to why Nolan did this. Maybe it's because he's personally friendly with Elliot Page. Feels bad for Elliot Page because Elliot Page is a certain person, was friends with that person from the time they had Inception together. Maybe it is, in fact some sort of Oscar bait attempt. Although I'm not sure why Nolan would need to do that, considering that, again, Nolan's already won Oscars for Oppenheimer. In any case, it's a puzzling and nonsensical decision and he shouldn't have made that decision. It's a real flaw overall. The. The action scenes are unbelievably well staged. The scenes in which they face down the Cyclops, beautifully staged. The scenes in which they face down giants, incredibly well staged, very scary. The scene with Cersei, again, Nolan is a master of his craft. I would say that this movie, it's definitely top tier. Nolan. When you think of the best Nolan films, like the best ones, you're talking Dark Knight. Interstellar prestige is up there on the list. And then you get to sort of the. Just under that tier. I put this in the just under that tier. I put this in like the Odyssey, Inception, Oppenheimer, Dark Knight Rises. I kind of go. It's like. It's like top of the second tier is where I put the Odyssey it's not as good as, like, the movies, I think, are his very best, but it is better than pretty much anything else anybody else is making. I think there's a message here for conservatives. I know there are a lot of conservatives who are getting pre whipped up about the film because it is stupid to cast Elliot Page as a dude. It's just stupid. But people on the right were saying, oh, the movie's gonna bomb because of that. No, the movie's not gonna bomb because of that. It turns out that when people want to be entertained, they are willing to entertain even bad flaws in the tooth. If it turns out that smile is nice, it turns out that the people are willing to undergo some bad politics and some bad decision making if the film is great. But if conservatives want to be effective in the culture, you can't just label the entire piece of art bad because a decision in the art is bad. This movie's gonna make a fortune. It should make a fortune. It's creative, it's interesting, it's visually incredible. I think the broader theme of the movie is actually very much in line with many things that conservatives think. And if you let Elliot Page kill that for you, I think you're missing out on an incredible moviegoing experience. And you can do all of that while still being annoy.