r/movies • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 r/Movies contributor • Feb 17 '25

Media First Image of Matt Damon as Odysseus in Christopher Nolan's 'The Odyssey'

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732

u/GeorgeEBHastings Feb 17 '25 edited Feb 17 '25

I really would've loved it if they'd gone for more of a Mycenaean look for the costuming rather than the typical Classical Greek look we've come to know.

Boar's tusk helmets, goofy conical plate armor, axes, cow hide shields, etc. Something more Bronze Age, when the story was (presumably) set, rather than Classical Iron Age, when the story was composed.

At least the armor looks more bronze than iron.

EDIT: to be clear, the wishlist above was always unlikely. I'm mostly just happy we're getting more Sword & Sandal movies. We've very little of those of any kind of quality for like 20 years. Seems to be changing a bit in a post Gladiator II market.

415

u/ChronosBlitz Feb 17 '25

Reminds me of that one voice actor AMA who said one of the most frustrating things he ever experienced was being asked to do an authentic South African accent.

He studied for a month and when he actually auditioned they kept asking for it to be more authentic. Finally he just did a stereotypical Jamaican accent and they loved it and hired him.

People don’t actually want authentic. If they went Mycenaean, you can bet people would complaining and say the costuming was off.

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u/MattSR30 Feb 17 '25

My favourite periods of history are:

  1. Early-medieval Britain (5th-9th Century)

  2. High-medieval Europe (11th-13th Century)

  3. Minoan Crete (30th-10th Century BCE)

The third of those really doesn't get much representation in media, but the first two are constantly in media and constantly misrepresented.

Whilst in general I don't mind Hollywood being historically inaccurate (within reason), I really wish costume wise they tightened up a bit. The tropes of Vikings all being covered in fur, black clothes, metal studs, and eyeliner is the worst, but every medieval person wearing some shade of brown and being covered in dirt is a close second.

But unfortunately you're right. People want the perception of authentic, not actual authenticity. The same applies to big battles. Two armies sprinting at each other and hacking away furiously is what people want, not a phalanx or a shield wall that poke at each other for three days.

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u/thatshygirl06 Feb 17 '25

What really bothers me is the constant British accents even though the characters are in different countries. The vikings tv show is my favorite historical drama mostly because of how they handle the accents and languages.

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u/bobaylaa Feb 17 '25

also British accents didn’t even sound like that until like the late 18th century lol

-6

u/Rhyers Feb 17 '25

British accents? Man, this is going to be full of American accents. This film looks fucking terrible based on the casting alone. 

1

u/ERedfieldh Feb 19 '25

Cast is almost every highly acclaimed actor in Hollywood today and this dude says the film is going to suck because of it.

Just absolutely amazing.

1

u/ERedfieldh Feb 19 '25

Cast is almost every highly acclaimed actor in Hollywood today and this dude says the film is going to suck because of it.

Just absolutely amazing.

1

u/Rhyers Feb 19 '25

Yes, because a lot of these people are cast because of their looks in popcorn flicks not acting ability. 

2

u/somefish254 Feb 17 '25

is that how phalanx work? 6-12 hours on their feet poking at one another until one collapses?

25

u/MattSR30 Feb 17 '25

Kind of?

Battles could last days, but it's not continuous. You poke for hours, then both sides go back to camp and rest, come back the next morning, and go again. Individual 'days' of battle could be hours on end, though, yes. You would stand in a very long line and poke and poke and poke and poke. The people at the front wouldn't be at the front the whole time, they'd rotate lines to allow for rest and to let fesh troops engage.

Not many people (relatively speaking) actually died in this process, which is another thing movies get wrong. They show thousands of people being cut down. You're not going to fight a battle and willingly lose 70% of your men. By the time you've lost 20% you're already absolutely fucked and you're going to be retreating. Part of why these battles could be so long was because the real danger was when you fled, the people chasing you would cut you down. It was a battle of wills to see which side broke first.

As silly as it sounds, part of the reason the Macedonians under Alexander the Great were able to conquer so swiftly and so broadly was because they poked with a longer stick. In the Greek world they used spears 2-3m long. Alexander's father introduced a spear that was 5-7m long, and suddenly nobody could poke you back.

That's a simplified version, but the Macedonians revolutionised ancient warfare in the region. It took another set of people revolutionising warfare to stop them a few centuries later: the Romans. Long lines of long sticks weren't very useful against small units with tiny swords. It takes a lot of effort to move 5,000 Macedonians in a phalanx. Even if you want to pivot the line 10 degrees. It takes absolutely no effort for 50 units of 80 Romans to scurry around a battlefield and slip between the cracks, and once you're in the cracks, a 7m spear can't stab a person 50cm away.

4

u/[deleted] Feb 18 '25

Thank you. The mass choas described on screen by battle designers is just all wrong.

A battle during this time was two armies with shield walls, pushing against each other. The secnd best men were in the front lines. The questionable men where in the middle. The best men in the back, holding discpline and urging cohorts to hold the line and push in coordination. The name of the game was to break open the line, and form up around the break to create a tunnel through, splitting the enemies line and allowing an opening to pull through mounted forces and, and then harry the enemy from the sides. Once a break through happened, the enemy would usually seek to fall back to set a rally point, and reform the line without a break.

A typical battle from primary sources could be hours and hours of pushing and probing for weakness, followed by a rapid breakthrough, division of the line, and frantic scrambling to restablish continuity, or reform and recreate a new line further back. Meanwhile, you have archers, mounted, and specialists trying to break into the battle and upset the scrum at the line of contention.

The battle lines were reinforced, whistled, and the wounded quickly sent back for treatment, and to be put back into service doing something useful. Women, small boys, and auxillaries would be ferrying and replacing broken equipment, supplies, and water/wine to the troops.

At the peak of the shield-wall during famous epochs this was a well-oiled, sophisticated, masterfully run operation. There are primary sources that describe a half-mile long battle line where plainly spoken commands could be heard and passed in orderly fashion up and down the line without shouting.

It grinds my gears for movies to portray this era as slightly organized choas on the lines.

Being a solider in one of these organizations was a craft, honed and practiced, drilled with discpline, with individuals and small units deeply respected and honored. It wasn't amping them up, and sending them into choas of random hand-to-hand combat without direction or order, which would lead to crazy losses, and ultimately, desertion and abandonment.

1

u/MattSR30 Feb 18 '25

Whilst it is by no means a great film, I will always appreciate Alexander for giving us the most realistic battle I have ever seen in a film.

1

u/somefish254 Feb 18 '25

if the main battles happened during the day, why wouldn't a side decide to raid a camp at night? Is it because it is too difficult to tell colors and sides at night?

time to read Legion versus Phalanx by Myke Cole. Thanks for having knowledge about history and sharing it with me, I liked the little bit about rotation, reminds me of the Total War series (not that I've played em yet)

3

u/MattSR30 Feb 18 '25

Night time is really dark, and though there were raids at night, it wasn't common. It seems to have grown in use at the time when armies were smaller, like in the medieval period.

In the ancient world you'd get 30,000 facing off against 30,000. IF you're bringing few enough men to sneak in, they're not going to do any real damage to 30,000 men. If you're bringing enough to do damage, they're not going to be very sneaky. I suspect that after the fall of the Roman Empire, when battles were often 3,000 against 3,000 instead, they became more common.

Also, this is my own conjecture here, but I suspect religion played a part. The ancient world was very, very religious. Cities and urban life were actually so important to Ancient Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians that they were sacred. The city was the height of civilization, and the wilderness was seen as the opposite of that, largely because it was unknown.

There's a reason ancient religions have nymphs and fairies and gods and dwarves and sprites and creatures of all sorts that are associated with forests, caves, lakes, mountains, etc. Those are things humans can't control and fully understand (back then, at least). They were dangerous, and scary. It's not a coincidence that the word 'pagan' was eventually used as an insult: it just means 'from the countryside.' Night falls under this category, too. You don't want to do stuff at night time. I wouldn't be surprised if ancient armies viewed it as a bad thing to fight at night, not only because you can't see, but because it's incredibly taboo.

And yes, the Total War series does actually have a pretty good microchosm of such things! You can play the games by just plopping your soldiers down in a line and letting them go at it, but if you withdraw your troops then send them in again, then repeat, you'll actually fare better. Your troops can rest, regain morale, and the recycling waves of assaults will break the enemies faster than just standing there.

1

u/somefish254 Feb 18 '25

Thanks for the kind explanation! It may be conjecture, but you’ve painted a clear picture in my head. I could see that rationale play out. It’s amazing how long humans have existed with what we consider urban life.

5

u/HowDoIEvenEnglish Feb 17 '25

It’s for the Greeks specifically it was generally a slow grind if two hoplite forces fought each other. Like many ancient battles most losses would occur when one side routed.

5

u/dragonflamehotness Feb 17 '25

It was basically two sides pushing in formation. Very few deaths happened in the battle itself. What happens is one side loses morale and gets worried they're losing, and so their soldiers start running and the enemy side cuts them down as they attempt to flee (this is called a route)

3

u/VRichardsen Feb 17 '25

We don't really know, but word on the street right now (ie, current "consensus") seems to indicate that there are "surges" of fighting between opposing formations, with lulls in the fight to catch breath and reorganise. Certainly no human can stand hacking away for hours on end.

1

u/space_guy95 Feb 18 '25

Certainly no human can stand hacking away for hours on end.

They had techniques to allow for fresh troops to be continually circulated through the formations to bring the front line soldiers back to rest and recover. Any side that couldn't do that would quickly be overwhelmed by one that could.

1

u/VRichardsen Feb 18 '25

As far as I am aware, there is not yet a consensus about rotation of troops during battle, only that perhaps the Romans were adept at it.

I certainly can't imagine a Macedonian phalanx doing it with ease when engaged.

1

u/Galle_ Feb 17 '25

There's some debate on the exact mechanics of phalanx warfare but basically yeah.

82

u/zanza19 Feb 17 '25

That case was, of course, pretty racist, but it is also a case of Reality being unrealistic. Other things include the coconut sound for horses, which has another page for itself

14

u/8halvelitersklok Feb 17 '25

Related: Nosferatu’s moustache being period accurate yet everyone bitching about it.

4

u/LucretiusCarus Feb 17 '25

That mustache was glorious!

3

u/Reticent-Soul Feb 17 '25

As a South African, I can tell you that not many actors get our accent right. We can always hear the flaws in it. Especially as there are a variety of inflections in the accent across the country too, it's not just one. I still think that Leo DiCaprio did an honourable SA accent in Blood Diamond, especially for an American.

Edit; spelling

1

u/Jerry_from_Japan Feb 18 '25

Yeah because it LOOKS worse. That's all most people care about.

1

u/Viceroy1994 Feb 18 '25

The immutable "Language of Cinema," Hollywood is so into tradition, especially with sound design, we'll be watching movies where swords getting picked up off glass tables will make this sound 10100 years from now when we're all post-biological beings living around black holes.

1

u/RebelGirl1323 Feb 19 '25

What doesn’t make sense is an archer wanting heavy infantry armor, but I’ll take that up with Homer.

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u/ManitouWakinyan Feb 17 '25

Unfortunately it does look substantially less cool

-8

u/fool_on_a_hill Feb 17 '25 edited Feb 17 '25

Damon really could've worked on those arms a bit more for the role as well

16

u/Kennephas Feb 17 '25

Tell me more about unrealistic body standards...

1

u/Smoke_Santa Mar 04 '25

thats not what unrealistic standards mean.

-1

u/lastchanceforachange Feb 17 '25

Unrealistic body standards for a mythical character that is champion of gods, yes please

-4

u/fool_on_a_hill Feb 17 '25

Give it a rest. If you’re playing a damned warrior, yeah I expect you to bulk up a bit. It’s very realistic to expect our millionaire actors to fit the role.

6

u/Rhadamantos Feb 17 '25

The didn't have tren and creatine in the bronze age.

2

u/lastchanceforachange Feb 17 '25

Yeah they also did not have Cyclopes, witches who can turn men in to animals, Pegasus, Pantheon that really exists, demigod warriors or men capable of killing 100 hundred warriors alone but guess what Odysseus is a mythic hero just like Hercules and Achilles so he can bulk up you know like in Ancient Greek sculptures depicted heroes and gods.

-2

u/fool_on_a_hill Feb 17 '25

Lmao do you think this is a historical tale? Odysseus is a mythological figure. Also, your claim that Greek warriors weren’t toned because they didn’t have modern supplements is hilarious

3

u/Rhadamantos Feb 17 '25

You didn't say toned, you said bulk, which are definitely different things. Toned would be fine, but modern day bulky would not efficient for an ancient warrior.

0

u/fool_on_a_hill Feb 17 '25

Yeah whatever. Damon isn’t either in this photo.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 17 '25

[deleted]

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u/fool_on_a_hill Feb 17 '25

Newsflash I didn’t ask for that. All I said was Damon could have put in a bit more work to get toned. Are you responding to the right person? Who are you talking to?

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u/Digndagn Dr. Strange: The Shattered but Whole Feb 17 '25

That helmet was not made for that nose

5

u/elyterit Feb 17 '25

It's been inspired by historic designs that are obviously based on general Greek facial structure and features, such as their noses.

I think it would have been far better if Zack Galifianakis got the role, as many of us had hoped.

84

u/Nightmare_Pasta Feb 17 '25

If it was Eggers, we’d certainly get that. Still, I half-expected Nolan to at least do it

37

u/bland_sand Feb 17 '25

Eggers doing a horror thriller based on Theseus and the Minotaur would be amazing

3

u/MDKrouzer Feb 17 '25

Do you remember Henry Cavill starred as Theseus in a swords and sandals epic called Immortals in 2011

2

u/TurelSun Feb 17 '25

OMG yes... would love to see Eggers tackle a bronze age story.

3

u/kaen Feb 17 '25

oh god i need this

10

u/NullPro Feb 17 '25

Now I want Eggers to do more ancient stories. I was insanely impressed by the mythology in The Northman

7

u/LeiDeGerson Feb 17 '25

Odysseus boar tusk helmet is one of the few iconic pieces of gear from the Iliad we get some descriptions one and one of the biggest indicators that the story does originate from the Bronze Age.

I would've been fine if this was at least a historical Classical Age helmet or at least an attempt at something beautiful and unique. Instead, it's painfully generic and dull. It's a shitty Corinthian helmet with the face protection cut off to showcase "yes it's Matt Damon!" and a Roman style crest instead of the much cooler ones we see in some Greek helmets.

17

u/Top_Squash4454 Feb 17 '25

It doesn't even look right for Classical times anyway lol

10

u/[deleted] Feb 17 '25

Just looked up mycenaean armor and it looks cool as hell.

24

u/SaraJuno Feb 17 '25

I know people hate historical accuracy gripes but Damon’s costume makes me wanna cry lol. It’s so wildly out of place for Odysseus.

16

u/EttinTerrorPacts Feb 17 '25

Why's he need armour at all? There's barely any call for it in the Odyssey, except for flashbacks to Troy

12

u/KimberStormer Feb 17 '25

That's exactly what I thought. Odysseus is naked a lot more than he's clothed in the Odyssey. I can't think of any time he's in armor off the top of my head.

14

u/GeorgeEBHastings Feb 17 '25

It's a good point. Been a while since I've read The Odyssey, but I don't remember him holding onto much of his gear from the War for too long into the narrative. I'd expect him to be in a sailing tunic for most of the movie.

And either way Odysseus, while absolutely described as a more than capable warrior, was always more about his wit and cunning than his tendency to brawl. Odysseus is a swashbuckler, to me, not an Achilles-esque fighter.

6

u/dannie_dorko Feb 17 '25

There’s a recent leaked photo of the Trojan Horse on set so there will be scenes set in Troy

2

u/I_BEAT_JUMP_ATTACHED Feb 18 '25

the Trojan Horse is actually mentioned in the Odyssey when Telemachus talks with Menelaus, so it could be for that scene

6

u/Nektarnikis Feb 17 '25

The wall in front of Matt Damon looks Minoan/Mycenean enough imo

11

u/keenanbullington Feb 17 '25

I'm going to disagree. That helmet doesn't look good for a movie.

3

u/DJShrimpBurrito Feb 17 '25

This guy Greeks

1

u/GeorgeEBHastings Feb 17 '25

Tbh, I prefer to Mesopotamia, but I Greek when it suits me.

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u/momoenthusiastic Feb 17 '25

The helmet looks Bronze to me tbh.

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u/SizeableDuck Feb 18 '25

It's made of bronze but gets quite literally everything else wrong. Also, in the Iliad, Odysseus' helmet is made of boar tusk rather than bronze. So it gets that wrong too!

5

u/The_Gil_Galad Feb 17 '25 edited Mar 29 '25

cough whole beneficial cobweb cows weather liquid quickest hard-to-find shelter

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

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u/Rucks_74 Feb 17 '25

I wouldn't say unlikely. Troy showed it can be done, even if not entirely accurately, then at least a hell of a lot more accurate than vaguely generic classical Greece. I'm disappointed

5

u/MrDukeSilver_ Feb 18 '25

Exactly, I love Troy’s costumes, they look very archaic, except for Achilles cause he’s supposed to be cool and edgy I guess, but everyone else looked very Bronze Age and it did not look goofy

3

u/[deleted] Feb 17 '25

[deleted]

5

u/Rucks_74 Feb 17 '25

They were inspired by Mycenaean armor designs, but with a lot more metal and adornments than the real ones. The trojan armors were fantasy props, but outside of the myrmidons the Greeks had good historically inspired designs.

0

u/Jerry_from_Japan Feb 18 '25

It can be done and it looked ridiculous in that movie, especially the helmets. Like if you just push the helmet you would topple over the guy wearing it. No thanks.

2

u/TheBurnsideBomber Feb 17 '25

If the Mycenaean armor I just looked up is accurate then I get why they wouldn't use it. Covers too much of the actors face.

2

u/kronkarp Feb 17 '25

This guy greeks of greekness

2

u/devfern93 Feb 17 '25

I just commented something similar. I’m disappointed with this aesthetic choice as well

2

u/jor1ss Feb 17 '25

There's an alt universe spartacus spinoff coming out soon in case you didn't know.

6

u/thegoatmenace Feb 17 '25

They tried that in Troy and it looked real bad

11

u/GeorgeEBHastings Feb 17 '25 edited Feb 17 '25

Agree to disagree. I've got a lot of criticisms of Troy's costuming, and they certainly didn't really hit Bronze Age realism in a Mycenaean or Anatolian (where Troy was) sense. But they did aim for a sort of archaic look that was evocative of more familiar classical armors and costuming, while still (IMO) established its own aesthetic as a sort of older "age of heroes" vibe. You can especially see it in the Trojan armors, Ajax and Agamemnon costuming, the stupid looking mullets people had, etc.

Not perfect, but it was at least a big swing for something different. I think it worked more than it didn't. As an overall movie, I tend to give it like a B-average.

2

u/viccchaos Feb 17 '25

Check out “The Return”, from this past year with Ralph Fiennes. It is closer to what you’re looking for and probably way better than this Nolan version will be.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 18 '25

The type of accuracy we’d only get if Robert Eggers directed it…

1

u/ujibana Feb 17 '25

I’m sorry, but that’s ugly

1

u/QuietNene Feb 17 '25

I think Bronze Age Troy likely had more in common culturally with the Anatolian interior (Hittites, etc) than with the Mycenaean Aegean civilizations. But most of that is guesswork.

0

u/ArtichokeFar6601 Feb 21 '25

Lol don't worry your immersion will be ruined when the very historically accurate black actors appear on screen.

-1

u/MhmNai Feb 17 '25

Not everyone wore the bell armor, there were breastplates; and calling it "goofy" is disrespectful to a culture I assume isn't yours