Hear me out just a bit. I know that The Odyssey has garnered a lot of criticism and flak regarding its casting. Even months ago, many were already saying that it felt like the same people were cast repeatedly: Zendaya, Tom Holland, Robert Pattinson, and then Elliot Page faced a lot of backlash because of his political views and the fact that he transitioned. To this day, many people struggle to accept that. However, when he was cast, I didn’t have any strong reaction. I accepted it because he has always been a great actor and is, in fact, one of Christopher Nolan’s trusted actors and muses. So, it didn’t surprise me at all.
Another topic of discussion is why Lupita Nyong’o was cast as Helen. Many of the criticisms come from right-wing individuals, such as Elon Musk, who claim that Christopher Nolan “desecrated Homer and groveled on his knees simply to adhere to the woke standards necessary for winning an Oscar.”
But I disagree with all the noise that has been happening around the internet since last week regarding The Odyssey. One movie reviewer, Jan Writer, mentioned that he had judged the film too hastily. He stated, “The Odyssey is a great anti-war film. The ‘woke’ controversy is mostly a distraction from the core message the film is trying to convey.”
So, I watched The Odyssey because I got curious, especially since it’s a Christopher Nolan film, and I have a lot of respect for him as a filmmaker. I don’t think he is the type to create art merely for attention; he has consistently proven that. I’m also tired of the political antics from both the right and the left, as they only serve to divide us and, worse, distract us. In the context of war, The Odyssey serves as a relevant antidote and commentary on the current US-Iran conflict, much like Apocalypse Now did for the US-Vietnam War.
Similar to how Francis Ford Coppola adapted his 1979 epic film Apocalypse Now from Joseph Conrad’s seminal novel Heart of Darkness, Christopher Nolan has based The Odyssey on Homer’s ancient myth. While maintaining the setting of the ancient civilization, Nolan presented a modern depiction of war and its impact on leaders, soldiers, and, importantly, the innocent people affected by the conflict.
Before I discuss Christopher Nolan’s intentions in The Odyssey, I want to highlight its thematic similarities to the acclaimed film Apocalypse Now. This comparison will help clarify how the criticisms surrounding the cast are merely distractions from the film’s true meaning.
I have always found it so genius how Coppola and his co-screenplay writers adapted The Heart of Darkness into the whole chaotic horror of the US-Vietnam War. The film centers around Captain Benjamin Willard (Martin Sheen) and his duty to kill Colonel Walter Kurtz (Marlon Brando), who has abandoned military rules to run his own brutal kingdom on an isolated island in Cambodia. Unlike The Odyssey, Apocalypse Now’s timeline is linear and is a river-bound road movie on their way to Kurtz’s island, where in their journey, they encounter different stops, challenges, and tests, as they navigate the Southeast Asian waters.
More than a traditional war movie, the distinctive commentary of Apocalypse Now is all the horrors that war has brought upon every person involved, and the utter hypocrisy of the US Military, where they want to kill Kurtz bot because he is brutally killing innocent people, but because he has his own cult, and that cult exposes the real brutal nature of the USA’s warfare on Vietnam, not arranged in PR skits and make it seem necessary or the “right thing to do.”
Throughout their whole journey, you see specific war atrocities being committed by them or their opponents. One significant scene I never forget was when their group passed by another fishing boat with several vegetables, it was an innocent, simple, merchant boat that they inspected, and the woman in the bost refused to open a basket because she was afraid Willard’s team would steal it from her, so because of that, there was commotion, and the youngest in the team, Clean (played by a young Laurence Fishburne), panicked, and shoot everyone in the vegetable merchant boat, only to find out in the end that the lady was only guarding her beloved puppy.
More than that, each member of Willard’s team represented how the war led to each of their madness. Clean, at just 17, got robbed of his youth. He was so young and innocent, just dancing to rock n’roll, and instead of being in school parties, he’s at a war-torn village fighting for survival. Chef (Frederic Forrest), who got robbed of his dream of becoming a pastry chef. He never wanted to be a soldier, but he got dragged on to this fight killing people. Lance (Sam Bottoms), who seems chill all the time, found his sanctuary through LSD and after adopting the puppy of the lady. Through escapism he found serenity throughout all the chaos, but in the end stripped away his American identity to join Kurtz’s cult. Chief Phillips (Albert Hall), the most disciplined and loyal to the US forces, embodying military mindset, rule, and order, still faced death because no matter what mindset you have, the war ruins you.
And of course, let’s turn to Willard. At the start of the film, he was already broken, carrying all the trauma he had with the war that went on for years. He carried out his mission as an assassin not for duty but because as sick as he was in all the chaos, he became obsessed with Kurtz. Kurtz was exposing all the atrocities of the US military, and doing so openly, unlike the US military that’s hiding in propaganda, feigning brutality with “good intentions.” In the end, Willard kills Kurtz because Kurtz wanted to, not because of the name of America. The assassination was part of the cult of Kurtz, and Willard carried it out as a ritual of the cult, not as a command of the USA. Willard refused to become the new god of the cult, but he brought upon him Kurtz’s realization of the horror of it all.
Finally, let’s discuss the horror and the descent of Colonel Walter E. Kurtz. Kurtz was the perfect soldier; he had it all: he was brilliant, decorated, and groomed to become one of the Pentagon’s high-ranking officials. What first led to Kurtz’s madness was that he became disillusioned with the US military, and thought that is was doomed to lose the war because its strategy was hypocritical and weak.
The US military preferred to drop napalm and bombs from thousands of feet in the air. This allowed generals and pilots to kill thousands of people without ever looking them in the eye. The military wanted to win the war, but they wanted to do it while maintaining their moral vanity. They used what Kurtz calls the “exquisite, plastic lie” and the pretense of being civilized liberators. And he admired the Vietcong for doing everything just to rid themselves of the American imperialism.
Despite that, Kurtz got disillusioned by humanity in general. Once he accepted that human civilization is just a thin mask hiding a fundamentally savage species, he decided to stop lying to himself. He created his compound in Cambodia as a place stripped of all Western illusions. By allowing his followers to worship him as a god and displaying the brutal results of his violence openly, he was living out what he believed to be the raw, unfiltered truth of human existence. To Kurtz, the U.S. generals in Saigon who ordered mass slaughter from air-conditioned offices were the ones who were truly insane. He, in his dark compound, believed he was the only sane man left.
Still, in the end, he was horrified of the horror of it all: from the US military and the Vietcong’s brutalities to his own savagery, “the horror, the horror” of it all! He accepted his demise.
Apocalypse Now is a psychedelic dream that crawls into the deepest psychs of your consciousness: your choices, how the horrors of the world mean to you, not just in war, but in every piece of societal failure you encounter. It’s as deep and horrifying, as much as it is very poetic, leaning into the chaotic surreal but vicious reality that Francis Ford Coppola’s genius took you.
Now let’s discuss Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey,” It’s not as striking, poetic, or psychedelic as the art of Coppola, but it’s as haunting as it can be, in the strides of ancient Greece that never fails to reflect modern warfare.
At its surface, The Odyssey tells about Odysseus (Matt Damon) hero journey home as a “war hero” who fought for the Greeks. As the King of Ithaca, he promised his wife Penelope (Anne Hathaway), his Son Telemachus (Tom Holland), and his whole kingdom that he would return, but he never did until more than a decade later. His journey home is cursed plagued by obstacles: the Cyclops Polyphemus, the witch Circe, the Sirens, and the sea god Poseidon. The story jumps in time, drawing into his memory and guilt, particularly over the Trojan Horse deception. Meanwhile, back in Ithaca, Penelope fends off over 100 suitors, led by Antinous (Robert Pattinson).
As a non-linear film, The Odyssey leans into each part of the journey that Odysseus’ team had gone through and the seven-year pause of his life, living with Calypso (Charlize Theron), and the immense guilt and realizations (the inflictions he had on the innocent Trojans ans his own people) that he chose to forget, even after winning the Trojan war. He chose to leave the island because he himself was destroyed by the war and their journey coming home, and he felt he had no more face to save for his wife Penelope and their son Telemachus.
At the onset of the film, Nolan established that Odysseus’ hardships were consequences of his actions at Troy. The Trojan War itself was also presented as a conflict that was morally ambiguous, saying that it is fought for Helen’s love, but it was merely for trade and power. And the aftermath of the War became Odysseus’ original sin. His clever plan to use the Trojan Horse broke “Zeus’s Law” the sacred code of hospitality, or xenia. He, Menelaus (Jon Bernthal), and their soldiers hid inside the wooden horse and disguised is as a gift of peace, even though it was for war, where the Greek soldiers slaughter women and children, defile a temple, and behead a priestess of Athena.
As Odysseus and his men set sail, the voyage becomes a series of punishing encounters that strip away their humanity. First, they anger the Cyclops Polyphemus by blinding him to escape, which draws the wrath of his father, Poseidon, and curses their journey home. Desperate for sustenance, the crew lands on island after island, but each stop leads to further disaster. Their journey is a constant struggle for food and survival that leads them to disturb or desecrate the locals and the gods. When they encounter the sorceress Circe, she transforms a group of them into pigs because they were indeed acting as pigs (this scene reminded me of Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away). After this, Odysseus is forced to journey to the Underworld to seek guidance, where he meets the ghosts of his fallen comrades, including Sinon, whose sacrifice during the Trojan Horse operation haunts him deeply. He also receives a warning from the shade of Agamemnon, who tells him not to return home openly, as Agamemnon himself was betrayed and murdered by his wife.
The final leg of the journey is defined by impossible choices and ultimate failure. Odysseus is forced to choose between the monsters Scylla and Charybdis, knowing that whichever path he takes will cost the lives of six of his men. He makes the choice but cannot save them, and his men die terrified and confused. The final blow comes when his surviving crew, starving and stranded, slaughter the sacred cattle of the god Apollo despite his warnings. This act of defiance brings down divine punishment from Zeus, who unleashes a storm that destroys their ship, killing every remaining crew member and leaving Odysseus as the only survivor.
The culmination of these events is that Odysseus came out as a broken man, riddled with guilt. His genius idea to use the Trojan horse led to the destruction and death of Troy.
What I like about the film, despite not directly showcasing it, is its commentary on Imperialism. When Odysseus and his men were looking for food in different islands, I would see myself rooting for them against Cyclops Polyphemus or the witch Circe, but since this is a war film, as a politically aware individual, I wasn’t surprised that Nolan questions who the real threat is. The “people from the sea” feared as foreign invaders are actually Odysseus and his Greek soldiers, who claim to defend civilisation but also violently destabilise it. This serves as an allegory for modern anxieties about outsiders and “us vs. them” thinking.
Odysseus’ guilt is so profound that when he arrives in Ithaca, he does not even use his own name, instead adopting the identity of “Sinon,” the soldier he feels responsible for killing. He confesses to his wife, Penelope, while still in disguise, that the man who left for Troy died there; he is merely a ghost weighed down by the sins of war and his own hubris. In a crucial departure from Homer’s original, Nolan’s Odysseus does not simply reclaim his throne. After revealing his identity and defeating the suitors who had overrun his palace, he and Penelope set sail into the unknown West. This final act is not a return home but an eternal voyage of penance, a way to mourn his fallen men and confront the darkness he unleashed upon the world.
In The Odyssey, Nolan showcases a modern idea of warfare: those involved in the war can never truly go home. Odysseus has been changed by his 20 years away, and he tells Penelope that the husband she once knew is gone. The film is about a man trying to return to a life that no longer exists and confronting the person he has become after all the atrocities he has commited upon Troy.
The Odyssey completely mirrors the current US-Iran war. As with the violation of xenia (Zeus’ Law). As discussed, Odysseus wooden horse “gift” was a trap to slaughter the soldiers and the innocent people of Troy. An article by Fact Keepers argues that when US envoys met with Iranian officials and then bombed a compound where further negotiations were to take place, it was viewed in the region as a modern violation of this ancient law, and a betrayal of trust that brought fury and retaliation.
One of Odysseus’ realizations regarding the war was that because of the ambiguity of the reasons for the war, he told Penelope that “he fought for a ghost.” The reasons were truly as hollow as a ghost. As Odysseus admits later, “We burned a city for a woman most of us never even saw.” Even if they got her back, it was never worth 10 years and thousands of lives. It wasn’t even for love, but for a man, King Menelaus’ ego, pride, and power. It was to take economic control over the Hellespont strait, which was a key trade route.
The USA’s war with Iran is triggered by control over the oil-rich Strait of Hormuz, Iran’s nuclear program, and retaliation for attacks on US ships and personnel. But overall, it’s still about American Imperialism. USA’s claim to waging war with Iran it to protect shipping lanes, stop nuclear weapons. and defend allies, but in reality, they want to secure oil routes and maintain their military foothold in the Middle East. Iran’s independence and regional power is seen as threats to US control over global energy markets and Israeli security.
The Odyssey’s ending is a metaphor for contemporary American military adventurism. Politicians gamble with innocent lives and regional stability for political gain and imperial arrogance, and they’ve neen doing this for the longest time, inflicting upon innocent lives in different countries, not just Vietnam and Iran. And I’ve always abhorred the whole idea of Imperialism, as many of my country’s heroes fought and died for our land to be free.
Imperialism always promises glory to its war-laden leaders and soldiers, but it always delivers ashes and guilt. Odysseus comes home as a broken, guilt-laden man after destroying a civilization for nothing, just like the US veterans of Vietnam, Iran, Iraq, etc.
We’ve heard a lot about it. Several war veterans descending into madness. They were robbed of years fighting for their lives and losing comrades. Even after they retire and survive, they are laden with trauma, others needing years of healing, trying out several cures, including LSD, spirituality. But of course, perhaps there was discipline that cannot be matched, but they can gain that discipline without having to kill innocents. And even if they believe in the motives of the war or not: one thing’s for certain: they have seen and felt things, all the chaos, the guilt, the numbness, the hollowness.
NeP-C Ledesma is a millennial writer and entrepreneur full of curiosity about our abstract world. She devours Psychology, food, Philosophy, and prefer cats as her all-time company. Pop Culture is her kryptonite.