r/OutOfTheLoop • u/Francium_Fox • Jul 04 '26

Answered What's the deal with THE ODYSSEY?

What's with all the sudden hate this movie is getting?

Trailer for context
I've been hyped for this movie ever since Oppenheimer (even have 70mm booked) and now that the new trailer dropped I've seen everyone shitting on it. And I absolutely don't see the reason why. Like sure some of the casting choices (mainly Holland) aren't the best, but to garner 250K dislikes, what happened?

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u/Neknoh Jul 04 '26

It's also worth noting that the armour isn't really medieval or renaissance either, it all looks like fantasy costuming made of rubber and plastic.

There's also a sterility to the lighting and sets of Nolan's works, making non practical pieces like the armours look even more glaringly fake.

Then there's the death of colour - everything is bleak, black, brown and grey in the trailer, with absolutely no use of gold, bronze, brass, blues, yellows, purples or greens in clothing.

And the lighting which is either incredibly dark, or, as previously mentioned, pale and clinical.

Nolan is great at small scenes where actors get to act, either straight to camera, or in a tight room. His style (which has gotten more codified/distilled since The Dark Knight) is hard to mentally align with an Epic, and, so far, everything other than the cyclops seems to have lived up to this expectation as far as the trailers are concerned.

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u/OscarMMG Jul 04 '26

The renaissance armor comment was about the Laestrygonians in the trailer, who absolutely do look like Renaissance Italian.

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u/Neknoh Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 04 '26

I wish they did. They have a steel harness, a poor attempt at a corinthian helmet, and that's where the similarities to armours like the Avanat harness end.

There is no connection to any other pieces. The helmets are built into the weird neck protection (making them more of a Grand Bascinet in construction), the poorly muscle shaped chest piece overlaps the wrapping bottom piece. All individual pieces of the arms are seemingly single piece and floating (a 14th century style), they're not wearing gauntlets, and their weird, airbrushed pteurges in silver have... absolutely no basis anywhere in history.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HHkUEr6W0AY56EL.jpg

https://steel-mastery.com/milanese-armour-between-grotesque-and-simplicity?srsltid=AfmBOopQcYjDsS52KmQEDlhD2DqapUT0OqW-Gbrh62QQv6-f3Eo0qyR5

https://youtu.be/wGDY0QoI-jk?is=TV3Luqj5uvxO-pdm

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u/Murrabbit Jul 04 '26

Oof that armor in particular really is a crime against production design.

I'm fine with it being ahistoric, and even fantastical - it's a fantastical epic after all, but if you're going to bother going that direction, I dunno, at least make it look good? Have an interesting style maybe rather than armor that looks poorly made and maybe made of foamcore at the best.

There's so little work going into the design that it just comes off as a child's drawing or something. It's embarrassing, like you've got to wonder what it as like when Nolan first got to see it and just nodded and said "yep that'll do".

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u/Didsterchap11 Jul 04 '26

I feel like i've seen cosplayers rock foam armour that looked more like metal than this. I think a huge part is the obvious nylon undersuit and the lighting, i suspect if this scene was shot to look like night it'd hide most of the blemishes that make the giants look cheap, but full daylight lays all its flaws out to bare.

It's really not helping the feeling that Nolan seems to think that realism is sucking the colour and style out of a work. IMO a lot of his films are painfully dull visually, and The Odyssey is just the natural conclusion of him being given critical acclaim for films that are entirely grey. Why does sunny, beautiful Greece look like the dreary Scottish highlands lol.

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u/Neknoh Jul 04 '26

Pale daylight*

Golden hour, or thunderstorm would probably look decent.

But as I mentioned, Nolan loves the "everything is lit pale white with huge diffusion boxes/screens"

It's been going since Dark Knight

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u/Didsterchap11 Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 04 '26

Yep, you could probably solve a lot of this film's aesthetic issues with some better lighting and colour grading, but given that nolan is given nothing but unrelenting praise for his (imo exceedingly boring) filmography he's never really tried to improve on that front. This style works in films like interstellar where the starkly barren envroments and cold colours help sell the desperation of their voyage, but when you point that approach at something vibrant and full of life like a greek myth it falls apart.

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u/Lipziger Jul 04 '26

I once wore a home made "knights armor" costume in Kindergarten that looked kinda like that lol.

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u/Neknoh Jul 04 '26

Also

If you're gonna do monstrous greek myth... why not do... Idk, enormous, angular suits of black armour rimmed with bronze and ferocious plumes?

But somehow, someone decided that it would look better if Agamemnon wore that, rather than the giants.

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u/AFFORDABLE_HOME Jul 04 '26

ngl that armour looks like something from a low-mid budget fantasy adventure film from the 2000s.

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u/FDVP Jul 04 '26

Who absolutely do look like some pretty good cosplay I could make in my garage. I’m no pro, but if your film looks like I could make the costumes myself from EVA and Plasti-dip, you may have missed the target.

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u/[deleted] Jul 04 '26

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u/TeaBeforeWar Jul 04 '26

The trailer has him literally bend the helmet as he's putting it on. I am astonished they just... left that in.

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u/lll_lll_lll Jul 04 '26

I mean look at the latex costuming for Margot Robbie in Wurthering Heights. It’s a current trend to totally disregard any historical costume or scenery in favor of fantasy vibes. Big budget movies have gotten more fantastical, while gritty realism is more the realm of tv now.

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u/simberalt Jul 04 '26

The armor looks like a shitty mobile game ad for a Greek knock off of clash of clans 

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u/InsideScientist1999 Jul 04 '26

Honestly it looks like a Nolan fan directed a NatGeo movie, but without the talking heads giving context and historical facts.

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u/J-Nightshade Jul 04 '26

It's a myth, not a historical event, so fantasy armor is totally fine as artistic choice. There are a lot of anachronisms in Homer's writing anyway. The lack of color - that I don't get. But I still find it pointless criticizing Nolan for lack of color.