Transcription
The comment section here is the gift that keeps on giving, always. Oh my god, you guys. It just keeps getting worse. It just keeps getting worse. The more they show of this movie, the more people seem to hate it.
So, they released a final countdown trailer for the Odyssey. I'm not sure why. I probably wouldn't have done it. It seems that the more they show of Nolan's controversial choices, the worse it gets for them. But, they released this trailer anyway. It's been up for about 2 days and it is heavily heavily heavily ratioed. At the time of me recording this video, it's got about 50,000 likes and 230,000 dislikes.
>> A few moments later. >> That's that's not good. But, this is a lot of fun for me because I have a little game that I love to play with myself. I call it the comments turned against them.
>> This is sport for me. It's my sport. >> And that's where just whenever I'm doom scrolling and I see a post where I'm like Mhm, probably shouldn't have posted that. You probably just wanted attention and it's going to backfire on you. And I go into the comments and it always backfires on them. So much fun. Pure entertainment. Highly recommend this game. And I did the same thing on this trailer where I just went through and I perused what the comments had to say and they did not disappoint because let's face it, guys. We're all thinking the same thing. And there's not even when you scroll through the comments on the trailer, there's not even like a single positive comment. Like a lot of the negative comments, some of them are redundant, but none of them are positive. Absolutely none of them. It is astounding. There is no one defending Nolan in this case.
These are just These are just some of the the more golden ones. The face that emptied a thousand seats. I'm surprised they forgot the rap music. Apparently, they hired Travis Scott to play the Bard because Nolan's reasoning was that rap music is like, you know, the modern version of like oral storytelling. Again, guys, like there's no there's just it's very, very questionable creative choices going on here. We're all thinking it. The comments are saying it. I'm here for it. Shout out to Universal for leaving the comments on. Yeah, I don't know how they did that either. My favorite part of the trailer was the part at the end where it ended. Same, honestly. No Greeks were harmed or hired for this Greek tale. Accurate. Facts. Official countdown. Is that a threat? Got to be a humiliation ritual for Nolan. We're all thinking it.
Yeah, honestly, I'm going to be very, very interested in the box office results of this movie. I think it will be at surface level raking a ton of money opening weekend, but I think that we're going to expect to see major declines week over week if this is the movie that it turns out to be. And this is the other part of it, too, you guys. Like there are a lot of questionable choices that are getting the most attention. Lupita Nyong'o as Helen of Troy, you know, Elliot Page as at least a soldier. I don't think he's actually playing Achilles, but like they're questionable more like woke, obvious, really questionable choices. But there's also just things like this. Like do we really need Matt Damon? Was he the best role for Odysseus? A lot of people don't think so. And that has nothing to do with wokeness or DEI. It's just really, that was the one you picked? Same thing Same goes for like the color correction. It's bland. It's boring. It's not just the the wokeness that is coming through in some of these choices. It's also just like other very like basic decisions that don't seem to be in the best interest of the film.
The comment section here is the gift that keeps on giving. Always. Always, always, always the comments are where it's at. Here's my big takeaway. Here's the big problem that I am having with the Odyssey so far. And it's not entirely all of these woke choices that Nolan has made. They're they're very controversial. They're confusing, theoretically. Theoretically, you should be able to overcome all of this with a really good story. The problem is that all of these choices that everybody's noticing and everybody's talking about are in fact the most interesting parts of the trailer. If you had gender swaps or if you had race swaps for certain characters, but that didn't like change the course of the story, if the course of the story was so fantastic and compelling that people wanted to go see it regardless, then it would be a like a sort of sub conversation where people are like, "I don't really like that he did this. I don't really like that he did that, but like I'm really looking forward to X, Y, and Z." There's nothing in this trailer, in any of these trailers, that has hinted at what makes the story so compelling that we have to go and see it. And so therefore, all of the talk about the divisive choices he's made has swallowed up the conversation because the trailer isn't good. It doesn't point to a good, compelling story.
And And I just have to give you guys a little bit of a disclaimer here. Like, I am not up-to-date on the story of the Odyssey. I didn't read that or the Iliad since middle school. Uh I didn't watch the 1997 Odyssey with Armand Assante. I probably should. I should probably go back and watch that. Um it's been forever even since I've seen Troy. So, I'm not coming from a perspective of somebody who is so familiar with the source material that I'm able to nitpick these little things. And I thought about going back and doing some of this back research, even just doing like a detailed Wikipedia dive on the plot. And then I kind of stepped back and I thought, "You know what? No, I have an objective, visceral reaction to this trailer. And I don't need to be connected to the source material to understand what's going on or to like what I'm seeing. That is on the movie to sell me. It's on the movie to tell me why I should want to watch this movie. And the trailer hasn't done that. It repeatedly has failed to do that, and I think that's really a big part of the backlash, which is like, "Nolan, you're making all of these like modern decisions, and nobody's interested in the story that you're selling in the trailer."
Second of all, and this is just me, but I feel like the Iliad and the Odyssey were like two parts. They were like two separate books. The Odyssey in itself screams epic, right? This movie feels like it should be multiple parts. Like it shouldn't be just one movie. They didn't do that with the Dark Knight trilogy. They certainly didn't do that with Lord of the Rings. Like they haven't done that with Dune. Everything is a multi-part movie series. And it feels like if you really wanted to do the story its due diligence, that you would invest in multiple parts. That's just me. Again, I'm not familiar with the source material, but if you're trying to sell me on the fact that this is an ancient Greek epic, I feel like two or more movies would be justifiable. Y'all can feel free to debate me in the comments about that.
What I did do is I went back through the trailer a couple times, and I analyzed all of the shots and the shot sequences, which are kind of like groups of shots that kind of tell one little scene. And I put the shots and the shot sequences into two buckets. Action, not action. The action sequences or shots that I found, I counted about eight. The non-action shots or sequences, I counted 34. The action shots included burning buildings, Odysseus's son taking on suitors and losing, what looks like an assassination attempt maybe on Odysseus's son, Odysseus leading an army screaming, "Let's go." That scene itself was hardly motivating, but moving on, counts as action. Their boat about to be sucked into the whirlpool, drawing their swords against like the giant guys, and then there's some kind of rebellion or fight it looks like in Odysseus's house. Those are all the action sequences that I could find. Action to me does not include sailing. There was lots and lots of sailing, just sailing. There was a shot where he had like a bunch of empty suits of all the dead guys. Again, that's not action, that's just kind of reflective. There was lots of talking, there was talking, there was more talking, there was Anne Hathaway talking, there was Twilight guy talking, there was Tom can never remember his name, Tom Holland just talking. There was so much talking with bad dialogue. None of that counts as action. There were shots of the puppy, there were shots of a puppy as the dog. That does not count as action. There's a shot of Tom Holland crying, that's not action. Lupita Nyong'o screaming, that may possibly be some kind of dramatic scene where like somebody's about to get killed, I don't know, but it's just a shot of her screaming.
At a certain point you've dug yourself a hole with all of these creative choices that you have to dig your way out of. Like she would have to deliver such an unbelievably stellar performance as Helen of Troy for any of us to even suspend the disbelief and buy into her as the role. You're not setting yourself up for success with any of this. But, you know, just going back to this trailer analysis, like this is not a complete and comprehensive analysis, just kind of sorting these shots and shot sequences into buckets. It's not entirely fair because a lot of the action sequences are sequences and I counted those as like one, when in fact there are three or four shots and there's just a whole bunch of random shots in the non-action. So, just by definition, by default, the action sequences are going to be lower than the non-action sequences. However, when you pair this with the meandering reflective voiceover, "I remember a wife. I remember a son." It It doesn't go anywhere. It doesn't lead up to or build anything the same way that the voiceover does in Gladiator's trailer. And it opens up with him talking about his murdered wife and son and seeking vengeance. Theoretically, the stakes should be so much higher for Odysseus because he's trying to make it home. And Maximus is just avenging his dead wife and son, but yet it's so much more of a gripping trailer right off the bat. You can feel the emotion in it. There is no emotion or any sort of forward momentum in the voiceover that's being paired with all of these very boring basic shots that are going on. It is not a comprehensive story that's being told that is giving me a sense of urgency, that's putting me on the edge of my seat, that is making me feel compelled to know what happens next. And on top of that, it just alludes that we all know the story of Odysseus, which you could argue, yes, it's basic middle school or high school education to know these backstories, but again, this is not on me. I shouldn't have to do any research or homework or refresh myself as to the story, it's on the story to tell me the story, and it hasn't done that either.
Here's the last thing I'll say on this. I have a suspicion, and this could be completely and totally wrong, but here is my suspicion that this movie is emasculating to male characters. It feels dialogue-heavy. It feels like Anne Hathaway is one of the anchors in the movie. It No one's even said so much that she's the emotional heart of the film. You have a lot of this narrative seems to rest on Tom Holland and Anne Hathaway's characters as opposed to the story of Odysseus trying to make it home and the stakes that rest in him getting home and the obstacles he has to face to get there. It's not really what I'm getting from the trailer. I'm getting from the trailer that like their world is collapsing and it won't be the same and they're and they're fighting to retain hope, and it doesn't feel action-male driven. I'm not asking for a just a blind action film with a bunch of explosions and all this and that. What I'm asking for is like, where is the drive? Where is is focus on Odysseus? It doesn't feel like his story, you know?
And then coupled with that, Nolan has outwardly said that this version of the Odyssey is based on, I think it's Emily Wilson's translation, which is a modern feminist take. So, I I don't have high hopes for this to be a story about masculine heroism, about a protagonist that we're going to look up to who drives the story forward and inspires audiences both male and female. I don't think we're going to get that. I think we're going to get a lot of introspective dialogue, reflection and it's just going to drag on and talk it down to us. I hope that's not the case. I'm still trying to keep an open mind, but these are the main problems that I have with this trailer, just outside of all of the weird choices that Nolan has made so far. These are just my thoughts. Would love to know what you guys think in the comments, and please, if you like this video, like, hype, and subscribe so that you can get more of my content. Thanks, you guys. I'll see you in the next one.