it's in the odyssey they cling to the bottom of sheep to escape the cave after blinding Polyphemus, he counts the sheep petting their backs but misses the men hanging on (he did eat a bunch before the aforementioned blinding)
the old Odysseus film was kinda bad but did a fairly accurate telling of this part
The argonauts is a quest to find the Golden fleece I believe but I'm not too well up on the details
From the wiki. Talos is described as being a descendant of the bronze race (χαλκοῦ γένους) who sprang from ash-trees. He is described as being bronze and also invulnerable with the exception of a vein in his ankle which was protected by only a thin layer of skin.
Even the Greeks were lazy and recycled premises /s.
I mean we don't even know if Homer is a real person. It was most likely a conglomerate of Greek tales that had morphed after the Bronze age collapse. I feel like most Greeks, modern or ancient, would say "hell ya" to artistic liberties to the story. My last name ends in -akis and my fam is pretty stoaked on the movie
No. Talos is the true god of man! Ascended from flesh, to rule the realm of spirit! The very idea is inconceivable to our Elven overlords! Sharing the heavens with us? With man? Ha! They can barely tolerate our presence on earth! Today, they take away your faith. But what of tomorrow? What then? Do the elves take your homes? Your businesses? Your children? Your very lives?
Whose vs who’s is the trickiest of all the homonyms in my opinion. Who’s = who is/has, whose is the possessive pronoun. Thank you for attending my grammar lesson for today, you’ve been a wonderfully captive audience.
No, the trickiest homonym is Read vs Read, and Lead vs Lead (the element, someone who follows is being Led, but the person theyre following is Leading.)
Because in the original Greek tells the cyclops his name is Odus which sounds like a nickname for Odysseus but the Greek word for nobody is Outis which sounds the same out loud. It is not a pun in the English translation because it is usually translated to noman or something similar which sounds nothing like Odysseus.
This actually makes a ton of sense. The cyclops is dumb, but not THAT dumb that he doesn’t realize the “nobody” thing. It’s slightly more clever wordplay.
I do think the “nobody” thing would come off pretty dumb in a movie, potentially.
But it's not like Cycplos have humanitarian classes when they learn everything about human culture to know how people name themselves, at worst he would thought " huh Nobody is a really odd name but humans are really odd after all"
...Do you have any idea how many times a cyclops (or giants in general) are painted as dumb in movies?
This doesn't seem like a dealbreaker at all considering that. "Hero defeats dumb giants through cleverness" is in everything from childrens books to LotR and it's because of myths like the Odyssey.
Literally no one who speaks English and read it in the "nobody" version seemed to have an issue with it coming off dumb...so why would you in movie form?
Do you have a source on this? AFAIK Odysseus gives his name as Outis in the Greek, and I’ve never heard of Odus as a nickname for Odysseus. Also, Odus and Outis would only sound the same in an American accent. They have very different vowels in Greek and different consonants too.
I imagine he was more referring to believable line delivery? Its the kind of pun that makes sense on paper but doesn't really work if you consider the tone of voice involved.
In the book Polyphemus was also annoyingly proud of being the son of Poseidon so the other cyclops didn’t really like him. They checked on him out of courtesy but yeah…
His name can mean either "abounding in songs and legends", "many-voiced" or "very famous"
The other cyclops were very happy for him yo have an accident where they had plausible deniability if Poseidon actually shows up looking for his bastard cyclops.
It’s sort of slapstick and cringe by today’s standards, I think. It would take a large portion of the audience out of the realism of the world to have an Abbot and Costello style pun that realistically would fool Nobody.
I think the problem is that The Odyssey is a poem that doesn't exactly fit one single tone, as it is deliberately silly in one moment and then serious the next and so forth. Nolan's attamept to make this a serious story just didn't make the pun work because he didn't want the movie to come off silly in anyway, which to me just highlights maybe he was the wrong guy for the job but idk
Wrong guy for the job but the movie is basically universally praised. I haven’t even seen it but everything criticism of the movie I’ve seen is basically nitpicking random things lol
I googled this and it’s supposedly not true. There is a pun in this part of the story but between “nobody” and “cunning”. And the plot doesn’t rely on it, it’s just thematically appropriate and funny.
That’s exactly it. The Greek is ‘Outis’, which has a structure similar to a name with the suffix -is even though it’s built of ‘ou’ (not) and ‘tis’ (in this context the pronoun ‘someone’). It’s also short: lots of Greek names end in -tis and this just has a diphthong (in Homeric Greek) before that. Might not jump out at first.
It’s also not super far in sound from ‘Odysseus’, which is often pointed out, though I’m not convinced this is part of the rationale.
But in English saying ‘My name is Nobody’ is just too obviously a setup for not-even-a-pun, and makes the payoff lame and dumb.
It’s also not super far in sound from ‘Odysseus’, which is often pointed out, though I’m not convinced this is part of the rationale.
It reads to me like a newly verbal child whose older sibling is named “Odysseus” trying to say it.
Which given Polyphemus’ role in the story and social symbology he clearly stands in for, it seems pretty plausible he’d be given a toddler voice in a performance.
And Odysseus does give full name and title when he leaves, so Polyphemus could easily communicate who blinded him using smaller words.
Probably more like its a joke that works in writing because youre intentionally being descriptive, but in film, you dont need to be as descriptive, so it just feels like wierd dialogue.
If I was watching a attack b and be looked at me and said "a is attacking me" it would feel redundant
Nolan consistently has some the stupidest flexes and takes every time he makes a new movie. He's not a hack but he often comes across like a 12 year old with a gift for filmmaking who has spent too much time thinking "deep thoughts".
Everyone today seems to be pretending that it didn't happen, but this is the guy who, despite already being a mature filmmaker at the time, gave us TDKR, one of the silliest movies ever made that is also fascinatingly unaware of how utterly silly it is.
yeah that's a weird thing to cut while calling it a "classic joke": it's classic because it still works.
My guess is that they have made Odysseus sober as a judge serious and the joke just does not fit the character aesthetic.
ETA: it's been literal decades since Ive read either epic poem but my impression of Odysseus is that he was high-spirited and probably hilarious. he was described again and again as clever and fox-like so yeah he would probably do terrible puns that everyone else hates so he just tells them to himself
it's also his way of keeping it together as disaster after disaster elongates his trip home
THEN his moment to shine comes
ok it's pretty corny but I think it could be done without it being camp
Odysseus making marvel style quips would actually be pretty true to the original Greek. His quick wit, and always having the perfect response are defining parts of his character. He is a trickster and a shit talker.
I want Matt Damon to shout "d'oh" and then look directly down the barrel of the camera, and explain "you know, because Homer the poet wrote... Get it?"
It is kind of silly, but it’s part of the tradition of the greek myths. Heroes cannot defeat the gods, they can only outsmart them or outplay them. Greek stories and myths are rife with heroes who won by contriving to fool their enemies, that’s where the concept of the Trojan Horse comes from. Defeat impossible odds by using your brain.
In that sense, I see this as a disservice, but I understand that this is an epic action film, and less focussed on being a faithful treatise on greek myths.
When I was in college in a class on classical literature we read The Odyssey and my teacher introduced Odisseus saying that, while Aquiles was a hero of strength, Odisseus was a hero of inteligence and word.
The funny thing about Lupita’s casting is that she actually barely has a role in the entire story. I haven’t seen the film yet, but judging by the story, a lot of these great actors are going to have very small roles. Helen of Troy specifically barely has any dialogue.
The casting backlash is so forced. If anything, the goofy dialogue is a bigger issue. Also, the casting choice that deserves to be clowned on is definitely Travis Scott.
I’m not watching it because The Odyssey is academically considered the greatest story ever told, and Nolan is too dumb to incorporate its most iconic moment.
I couldn’t understand a word of what he was saying. It just reminded me of inaudible Bane. “Nobody cared who I was until I put on the mask.” But certainly not, “Nobody has blinded me.”
Yea guys.... I just don't know. Dozens of soldiers hidden inside a horse? Wouldn't the Trojans just hear them? This is stupid, let's skip it. - a true visionary
“Since Odysseus loves his wife, he simply does not spend years fucking other women. He goes straight home, pets his young dog, kisses his wife, and lives happily ever after.”
This is exactly the kind of cringe Hollywood blockbuster dialogue that would be in a movie like this, and I'm all for it. It's already a trainwreck, why not be consistent. Also fits with the all American accents.
For shame. I’m sure the movie will be amazing, but the Nobody exchange really enhances the story beyond just the joke. It shows odysseus’ guile, but it also brings more depth to the Cyclopes. It shows Poly has neighbors and a community who care to check in on him. It enriches the narrative to show the complexity of Odysseus. Poly is not some mindless savage. He is a foreigner whom the Greeks look down on as a primitive herdsman through the gaze of colonizers. The relationship mirrors that between the Greeks and Sicilians of the time who the Cyclopes are identified with.
Poly having a community and interacting with them however briefly is essential to a greater theme of the Greeks raiding, pillaging, tricking, and enslaving foreign cultures who they see as lesser barbarians.
Side note reminder that in the context of Homer and Greek myth, to be a hero does not imply virtue. Heroes are warriors who accomplish great feats. Morality and chivalry don’t even factor into it.
The Nobody thing is also important because part of the question becomes "why would Odysseus blind Polyphemus knowing Poseidon would curse him?" Polyphemus can only curse him if he knows his name, so it's perfect cover. It's only when Odysseus gets to safety that he gets full of himself and too proud and boastful and slips up, being like "aha! You have been bested by Odysseus, King of Ithaca, social security number 527!"
Instead he just blinds Polyphemus and gets cursed like a dumbass.
Poly is not some mindless savage. He is a foreigner whom the Greeks look down on as a privative herdsman through the gaze of a colonizers.
Nonononono. The term “colonizer” can only apply to British and French people in 17th and 18th century North America, and 19th and 20th century Africa. No other places and times.
And nobody who was involved in “colonizing” would ever reflect on it.
When I was in high school and we were reading The Odyssey in English Lit class, the translation used in class changed it to where Odysseus says his name is "Nobdy". Nobdy sounds like nobody. If the great Chris Nolan couldn't figure out this simple work around, then what the fuck is he doing making movies?
"Nobdy" doesn't sound like a name though, it doesn't help that much
It might be better to have it be "Norman" in an accent where it sounds like "No man"
Now I'm thinking of the Kids in the Hall bit where they do Who's on First but he explains in laborious detail how the first baseman is a Chinese guy named "Hu", the second baseman is named "Watt", etc
“My name is Christopher Nolan.”
“Christopher Nolan blinded me!”
There. Now it’s modernized and meta. Have Matt Damon address the camera while doing it too.
I love Nolan, but I feel like he’s at a point in his career where he’s taking too many liberties because he can. This is clearly an iconic line from the story. Include it. We would have loved it.
Nah this actually makes perfect sense to leave out. It doesn't translate to modern dialogue.
While direct translations of the Odyssey convey the meaning well enough, it is odd that the cyclops accepts that Odysseus' name is "Nobody," and shouts "Nobody is attacking me!" But the other Cyclopes know the word and it's meaning well enough to interpret it as "Nobody." Does the original cyclops not understand what "nobody" means? Why doesn't he just say, "Somebody is attacking me?"
One of the proposed theories is that in the original Greek, the word for "nobody" is ούτις, which sounds very similar to ωτις, which is a kind of bird. So the pun originally may have been more like Odysseus introducing himself as "Outis," and the cyclops hearing "Ōtis," which makes a lot more sense and makes the Cyclopes seem a lot less buffoonish and moronic. This could also be a play on ODYSseus' actual name, which comes from οδός, meaning "road, path, journey."
So even though modern English translators can absolutely translate the meaning of the trick, they can't replicate the exact wordplay of the ούτις/ωτις/οδός that is natural in Greek, so it feels stilted and makes the Cyclops seem comically stupid rather than terrifying and threatening, and it doesn't speak anything to Odysseus' renowned wit.
Consider for a moment that the Cyclops is indeed a moron. He got dead drunk, and when he gets eye gouged and shouts "Nobody is attacking me!" the other Cyclops recommend prayer because if his eye was crushed by nobody it's clearly a divine punishment.
And that the point isn't that Odysseus was being super clever here, but that he was being a bit of a dick and it continues to bite him in the ass when he can't help himself but show off later.
Nah, Odysseus got him drunk first. Makes perfect sense why he didn’t get the pun but the other Cyclops did, and if you just made it sound like he’s drunk in the movie….. pretty easy modern interpretation
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u/Grizzled_Ghost 15h ago
Is the Odyssey the one where they hide from it as sheep and a bunch of them get eaten or is that the Argonauts?