Christopher Nolan responds to rightwing bigots' backlash to his film "The Odyssey"

[Magical Realist]

Learn some literature:

"What are The Odyssey's origins?

I’m pretty firmly in the camp of scholars who understand the Homeric epics as the end product of a very long oral tradition that stretches back into the Bronze Age. Let’s put the origins of this story somewhere in the second millennium BCE."

"The Old Testament was written over a span of about 1,000 to 1,500 years, with the oldest texts originating around 1400 B.C. and the final books completed around 400 B.C."

[Yazata]

I think that while the Odyssey reached its current written form attributed to Homer around the 8th century, it is based on earlier oral tradition that might date back to the Mycenean Greeks well into the second millennium BC.

Just as the earlier books of the Old Testament were based on older oral tradition that was composed in its current form much later. Genesis is generally believed to have been composed in written form after the Babylonian captivity, in the fifth century more or less.

Little is known about the oral traditions that predated the written Iliad, Odyssey or the Hebrew scriptures, since they left no archaeological traces, so it's probably a fool's errand to try to assign precise dates to their origins.

If the Portland movie theater is claiming that the written Odyssey is older than the Jews as a people, that's almost certainly false. There is abundant archaeological evidence of the Hebrews before the 8th century BC. In fact the Greek alphabetic writing system (perhaps inspired by the Phoenicians who used an alphabetic system) is younger than the Hebrews. (Prior to adopting the alphabetic writing system, the Greeks used a variety of heiroglyphs called 'linear B'.

But I do think that it's likely that the Greeks as a people are older than the Hebrews, having migrated south into what now is Greece between 1500BC and 2000BC, where they went on to establish the Mycenean civilization.

[Magical Realist]

"What are The Odyssey's origins?

I’m pretty firmly in the camp of scholars who understand the Homeric epics as the end product of a very long oral tradition that stretches back into the Bronze Age. Let’s put the origins of this story somewhere in the second millennium BCE."

"Historians frequently connect the earliest biblical Hebrews with the "Habiru" or "Apiru," a term found in ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian texts from the 18th to 12th centuries BCE. These Habiru were often described as nomadic, semi-nomadic, or marginalized groups of pastoralists living in the Levant and surrounding areas."

[Syne]

The Odyssey did not exist before the Jewish people.
The Jewish people emerged as an ethno-religious group in the ancient Near East during the 2nd millennium BCE, tracing their history back to the biblical patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) and the Exodus from Egypt.
By contrast:

The Oral Stories: The core legends of the Trojan War and Odysseus's journey originate from the Late Bronze Age (around 1200 BCE) but were preserved as an oral tradition for centuries.

The Written Poem: The Odyssey was not written down in its famous poetic form by the Greek poet Homer until the late 8th century BCE (around 750–700 BCE).

Therefore, the foundational history and culture of the Jewish people predate the creation and writing of The Odyssey by hundreds of years.
- gemini

Only the biased would fail to realize that Jewish history also existed as oral history long before it was written down.

Since Israel was on the main crossroads of the migration out of Africa and up into Europe, before seafaring peoples, it is just more likely that Jew existed prior to Greeks, much more so the Odyssey as such.

[Syne]

Saw it. It's ugly and muddy, in both visuals and sound design. The most part of it is a farce and fever dream that could have been better executed, if it were set in a different era or Nolan could give up on his "grounded realism." It fails to be grounded, but the attempt means it also fails to be fantastical in the way it deserves. The encounters along the way are as muted as the color palette. While it has a good, but superhero-like ending, the payoff is not worth the time. And that's not even touching on the casting choices or modern language.

There was a much better movie buried in this. One where the most fantastical parts are narrated over a different style, whether of cinema or animation, to allow them their proper due while giving the implication of exaggeration, oral-storytelling-wise.

It will not warrant rewatching until it's on cable and I can half-watch while scrolling online.

[Magical Realist]

"What are The Odyssey's origins?

I’m pretty firmly in the camp of scholars who understand the Homeric epics as the end product of a very long oral tradition that stretches back into the Bronze Age. Let’s put the origins of this story somewhere in the second millennium BCE."

"Historians frequently connect the earliest biblical Hebrews with the "Habiru" or "Apiru," a term found in ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian texts from the 18th to 12th centuries BCE. These Habiru were often described as nomadic, semi-nomadic, or marginalized groups of pastoralists living in the Levant and surrounding areas."

Since Israel was on the main crossroads of the migration out of Africa and up into Europe, before seafaring peoples, it is just more likely that Jew existed prior to Greeks, much more so the Odyssey as such

LOL You mean when they left Noah's ark?.

[Syne]

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/uP9H3d8AUkg

[Magical Realist]

Ben Shapiro praises Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” as a “masterpiece” and defends Lupita Nyong'o playing Helen of Troy amid MAGA outrage.

“Nolan is unparalleled. He’s the best director working today, without a doubt. He just creates iconic movie after iconic movie... So, I know a lot of people were like, ‘Oh my god, Lupita Nyong’o is supposed to look like Diane Kruger [from "Troy"].’ I don’t know. Diane Krueger doesn’t look very Greek. She’s German. 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.”

[Syne]

Shapiro is a long-time Nolan fanboy. 9_9

[C C]

Ben Shapiro praises Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” as a “masterpiece” and defends Lupita Nyong'o playing Helen of Troy amid MAGA outrage.

“Nolan is unparalleled. He’s the best director working today, without a doubt. He just creates iconic movie after iconic movie... So, I know a lot of people were like, ‘Oh my god, Lupita Nyong’o is supposed to look like Diane Kruger [from "Troy"].’ I don’t know. Diane Krueger doesn’t look very Greek. She’s German. 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.”

And as Film Threat's Gore and Ng initially revealed, the whole identity-flipping furor over Helen of Troy and Clytemnestra (her sister) turned out to be ridiculously irrelevant because Lupita Nyong's parts are barely more than cameos. Any other supposed woke bits in the movie[1] are actually at the 20th-century level back when nobody complained because diverse roles were usually not identity-flipped ones. (Like the regular cast of Deep Space Nine being completely new characters, not politically revised ones. Excluding O'Brien and later Worf, who existed earlier in Next Generation.)

- - - footnote - - -

[1] I keep forgetting Elliot Page (Sinon wasn't mentioned by Homer), but that's also another fleeting role. And Zendaya as Athena, though it's actually a priestess that was killed in Troy that Odysseus's traumatized imagination is using for the likeness of Athena.