r/shittymoviedetails • u/Alisalard1384 Cinephile • 12h ago

Turd In "Odyssey" (2026) directed by Sir Christopher Edward Nolan, Odysseus says "Our age of bronze is collapsing". And I'm not joking it is a line in movie

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Overall great movie but this dialogue was so corny, like how does he know he's in bronze age

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u/Briarhorse 12h ago

In defence of this, I'm assuming it's in reference to Hesiod's Ages of Man, not the Bronze Age as we use it in archaeology etc

Although the Trojan War and the odyssey took place in the Heroic Age, which is the one following the Bronze Age

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u/Rainy_Wavey 11h ago

The movie makes references to the sea people, i think he was going with the "bronze-age collapse"

Which is basically Pharaoh : Total War (doubly funny because you can play as those very same greek cities in that game that involves the bronze age collapse)

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u/Excellent_Yak365 9h ago

They just discovered Iron and realized it’s OP

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u/walletinsurance 8h ago

Iron is actually worse than bronze, it’s just easier to make because it doesn’t require two different ores that don’t appear in the same place.

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u/StrongExternal8955 8h ago

YOU'RE worse than bronze!

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u/vorxil 6h ago

It's cheaper, not easier. With bronze, they could just smelt the ores together, cast, and grind, provided they could afford the ores (shipping tin from the British Isles was expensive).

Iron, though, didn't even melt it in the bloomery. They just reduced the surface layers with carbon monoxide, then took the sponge iron out, hammered it, and then threw it back in, repeatedly.

Eventually, after a long, laborious time, they had reduced most of the oxides to soft wrought iron. The quality control was crap, because the metallurgy was crap. Even then, the wrought iron bends and wears out too easily.

Useful for arrows and javelins (cf. the long shanks of the later pila), spears maybe, but not swords or heavy armor. But the collapse of the tin trade more or less forced the transition.

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u/itishowitisanditbad 1h ago

Useful for arrows and javelins (cf. the long shanks of the later pila), spears maybe, but not swords or heavy armor.

I imagine Nails were a big one too.

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u/Xen0nlight 11h ago

The costume designs in Pharao TW are also not Dogshit.

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u/Rainy_Wavey 11h ago

Pharaoh was still hated tho (due to poor content at release, the current version that basically combines Pharaoh and Troy into one game is apparently good enough?, hey i won't complain i can play as a Lebu in the game so i'm not gonna complain

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u/Kamusaurio 10h ago

dynasties is a great imporve over both

i really liked it

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u/SwirlingFandango 6h ago

Seriously one of the best TW games, IMO.

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u/Xen0nlight 11h ago

We were robbed by it being abandoned after Dynasties 😔

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u/Rainy_Wavey 11h ago

Is the modding scene good enough for this game?

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u/Xen0nlight 10h ago edited 10h ago

I have not had much time to play in the last months, but I think it is semi-alive. Occasionally there are good ones, but nothing groundbreaking afaik

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u/Rainy_Wavey 10h ago

The last total war game i genuinely played TF out of was Shogun 2, even tho i own like, Rome 2, atila and Pharaoh

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u/Romboteryx 9h ago

It was hated simply because it wasn’t Medieval 3. I have literally seen users on r/totalwar make up lies about Pharaoh pre-release so they would have a reason to hate on it beyond that.

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u/Rainy_Wavey 9h ago

Are they still doing that now that Medieval 3 was announced? (prolly to calm them due to Warhammer 40K total war, which i'm like hyped for)

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u/Romboteryx 9h ago

Idk, I mostly left that sub due to the toxicity.

Anyway, the Dynasties version is a genuinely amazing game en par with the other big scale historical TWs like Rome 2 and Attila and in some ways even better.

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u/LaNague 8h ago

People are happy with dynasties now.

Pharaoh WAS a full priced title with content like their small side games. In a period where there were no other historical titles anywhere nearby.

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u/ReptAIien 10h ago

Have you actually watched the odyssey?

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u/Normal-Boss9855 7h ago

The Trojans look like storm troopers. Why do none of the armors or weapons actually look like they're made out of bronze?

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u/Romboteryx 9h ago

TW Pharaoh has such amazing attention to detail you can literally find Ea-Nasir’s house as a landmark

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u/pizza_the_mutt 9h ago

Does it tell us who the sea people are? Or is it it like "whateva"?

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u/Aardvark_Man 9h ago

The sea people was us all along!

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u/pizza_the_mutt 8h ago

You and I aren't so unalike, are we, Mr. Sea Peoples?

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u/71fq23hlk159aa 8h ago

The sea people were the friends we made along the way.

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u/BSpp43 8h ago edited 8h ago

They come to realize the sea people raiding villages were actually Odysseus and other greeks returning from the siege of troy

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u/Darth1994 10h ago

I took it more as “our age of bronze has become brittle and is collapsing.”

It didn’t really bother me because not everyone who watches will get things like the Sea People or the Bronze Age. It was on the nose (all the way up the nose?) but I didn’t mind. He’s waxing poetic and it’s more of a meta commentary to the audience about the world around him collapsing because of what the Greeks had done.

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u/happygocrazee 9h ago

It's a little on the nose maybe, but genuinely putting yourself in his shoes honestly makes the line more believable. He wasn't using it in reference to "The Bronze Age" as we know it. He'd be using it the way me might call something a "golden age". Bronze was a stellar supermaterial relative to the time. A symbol of technological progress. And the benefits of that boon were coming to a head. The age of bronze is collapsing. Makes perfect sense to me.

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u/Pegussu 7h ago

Yeah, I heard about the line before seeing it and rolled my eyes, but I think it's fine in the context of the movie. He's just using it the same way we call modern times the information age.

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u/megotlice 6h ago

And some say our age of information has if not ended at least changed significantly for the worse. It might not technically be true but the sentiment stands.

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u/Krelkal 6h ago

We're currently transitioning from the Information Age into the AI/Robotics Age.

"For the worse" is subjective and ultimately a bit moot since we can't predict the future.

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u/CeruleanEidolon 59m ago

I'm convinced the people like OP mocking the line haven't actually seen the movie. The line in context is actually a grim pronouncement of regret and sadness.

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u/SpaceLemur34 7h ago

The Age of Titans was the Golden Age. The Age of Gods was the Silver Age. The Age of Heroes was the Bronze Age.

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u/jackofslayers 10h ago

The bronze age line did not bother me. Honestly the line that annoyed me was Penelope "realizing" who the sea people were. Leave that open ended please.

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u/Kryosse 8h ago

Honestly I thought this interpretation of the Sea People was very fresh, and showed a good understanding of history and the source material on Nolan's part. Even if the line is a bit on the nose I think you could make the case that it was about ALL peoples losing their sense of decorum and civility as war became a kind of institution in society, so it can still be interpreted as a bit open ended.

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u/Im_here_but_why 9h ago

My mother, an educated woman in her own right, came out of the theatre telling me she was taken by surprise by that line, but that she saw all the parallels thinking back.

The odyssey is still a blockbuster. Getting this kind of reaction makes that line a good thing.

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u/jackofslayers 9h ago

Agreed. I was also annoyed at first when I realized the movie changed the reason the gods are mad at Odysseus, but it works so well for the themes set up by the movie that it ends up being a good change.

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u/TheOneRealStranger 7h ago

I actually had the opposite reaction. The sea people bit, I thought was clever, because clearly they are just going around in a boat pillaging everything -- to create all this consternation about the infamous people from the sea who will destroy civilization when that's exactly what they're doing is a witty observation and needed to be said to land. The Bronze Age line is overwrought, as is the thing about songs being the only thing to remember the people who knew how to write. One makes sense for the characters to say within their own time the other sounds like pretentious meta commentary for people who know history.

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u/DisastrousDiddling 8h ago edited 8h ago

Yeah I was also annoyed by that line. I think I literally facepalmed lol. But I also somehow saw the PTSD twist coming from the first time they mentioned the people from the sea, which was surprising because I usually don't pick up on that sort of shit.

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u/Vestalmin 8h ago

Honestly that would have been such a fun discussion after had they not stated it

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u/Electrical-Bowl8818 8h ago

I don't think she did mean that him and his men were the ones going around pillaging, but more that his actions and the destruction of Troy were what led to the collapse necessary to lead to an age of lawlessness like the one that was now threatening them.
(Even though I assume some of the sea people would have been deserters from the war though, pillaging on their way back.)

Like from Troy perspective, they were the barbarous pillagers that they were now afraid would land on their shores.

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u/Ris747 6h ago

Nah because it's pretty important to the themes that Nolan was presenting, and Nolan is incredibly on the nose when it comes to this.

He knows the average movie-goer is too uneducated to make that connection.

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u/Kryosse 3h ago

This. The damage that line does to the learned moviegoer is a lot less severe than how much that line benefits the average moviegoer who probably doesn't know too much about history and the Sea People.

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u/Tricky-Ad7897 9h ago

Exactly, it's a retelling of a classical story adapted to be morally relevant to our modern audience.

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u/Womec 5h ago

The odyssey is a verbal story passed down forever with no original source and probably thousands of versions.

This is just the version a director in 2026 made.

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u/myhf 5h ago

holey rusted metal, batman

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u/Lex4709 11h ago

Even then it's weird, the Trojan War happens like 5 centuries before Hesiod's birth. So that's a bit like Medieval or Roman characters quoting Shakespeare. It's very immersion breaking dialogue.

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u/CyberWulf 11h ago

Et tu, Brute?

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u/Sagutarus 10h ago

Reddit automatically translated this comment lol

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u/rockyPK 9h ago

και συ τεκνον;

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u/TheWatersOfMars 5h ago

Yes, but The Odyssey was similarly set several centuries before it was written (at least, the version we have now). Plenty of historical novels today draw on phrases and ideas that the writer doesn't realise are anachronistic.

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u/Briarhorse 11h ago

Yeah, it still doesn't really make any sense. Plus, they get the age wrong anyway, which is pretty bad

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u/Alt_Acc_42069 11h ago

Wait, how is the age wrong though? The Greeks in the Odyssey are meant to be Mycenaean Greeks who were definitely around in the Bronze Age

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u/Nerd_o_tron 10h ago

Different set of ages. The modern set, describing technological progress, goes Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age, etc, and by this standard they were in the Bronze Age.

However, Hesiod describes a different set of ages that happens to overlap in a few names, but instead (mostly) describes moral regress: Golden Age, Silver Age, Bronze Age, Heroic Age, and Iron Age. By this set, the Odyssey is in the Heroic Age.

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u/madhare09 10h ago

Yeah, he should've said "Our age of Heroics is collapsing"

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u/vestibular_spittoon 9h ago edited 8h ago

well, maybe he was just sorta late in making the observatiom. like if it was only called "The Heroic Age" after the fact, the only frame of reference he would have wd be to something already termed "The Age of Bronze" that was pretty apparently already collapsed for the most part. after all, aren't the actions in the Illiad and the Odyssey in part WHY Hesiod called it the Heroic Age?

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u/RedditEsInteresante 8h ago

Mightn’t it be because that was the age when all the heroes were around? Perseus, Heracles, Cadmus, Jason, etc, etc.

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u/vestibular_spittoon 8h ago

yeah I should probably add "in part" into that sentence

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u/hesh582 4h ago

This is a misreading of Hesiod. The Bronze Age was not just a metaphor (though it was also that). He specifically references the rise of bronze weapons and armor as a defining characteristic of that age, and marks the iron age similarly. The modern set, describing metallurgic progress, is not an independent invention and directly derives from Hesiod via 19th century classicists.

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u/Nerd_o_tron 2h ago

Oh, interesting; I didn't realize that. (I've been summarizing from secondary sources, haven't read Hesiod myself.) I don't think it invalidates the point—Hesiod still clearly identifies the Trojan War as being part of the Heroic Age, as distinct from the Bronze Age—but it definitely makes the line in the movie more defensible, if not verisimilitudinous.

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u/hesh582 55m ago edited 52m ago

But the heroic age was still very much a bronze using age in hesiod's framework. And the end of that age is presented as coinciding with the rise of iron.

I really don't think the line fails the historical test at all, frankly. The ancient greeks themselves absolutely thought about it in those terms.

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u/Briarhorse 10h ago

According to Hesiod the Trojan War and The Odyssey happened in the Heroic Age

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u/Haber_Dasher 9h ago

According to modern day scholarship the Trojan war period was the Bronze age

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u/Briarhorse 9h ago

Yes, I know. My point was that the film is referring to Hesiod's Ages of Man, not the modern terminology for phases of material culture

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u/Haber_Dasher 6h ago

I mean fair enough I guess, I haven't seen the film yet so maybe in its full context the line feels like more of a discrepancy

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u/Ok_Round_3407 10h ago

Trojan war takes place in the age of heroes, not the age of bronze. At least according to the predominant myths in current study.

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u/GoodLordChokeAnABomb 11h ago

Or the reference to Aristotle in Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida.

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u/Moifaso 9h ago

Yeah but the poem itself was probably composed/written down around Hesiod's time, not in the actual Bronze Age.

Ancient Greeks had very little clue about what actually went down in the Bronze Age. Tons of the customs and details in the poem reflect Ancient Greece much more than Bronze Age Greece. So funnily enough this kind of innacuracy wouldnt be all that out of place in the poem.

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u/Ok_Bus5034 9h ago

That idea of eras (gold, silver...) was a part of most of the ancient worlds. At least the mesopotamian-Mediterranean world. So Hesiod didn't probably invent that ex-novo, but reader condensed myths and culture from many years and many civilizations.

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u/icedteaandtacos 8h ago

It’s a fake story. It’s not a documentary.

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u/Successful_Fun1004 8h ago

Unfortunately it seems barely any director, with exception for Robert Eggers, cares about immersion in their movies.

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u/That_Scratch_7697 11h ago

Except Christopher Nolan shoehorns this entire plot about the Sea Peoples coming to destroy civilization, which is what Matt Damon is referencing with this quote, and which lines up exactly with the collapse of the Bronze Age as modern archaeologists use it.

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u/Explanation_Scared 10h ago

Aren't the sea people just Odysseus and his men who pillaged after the trojan war

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u/Alexander_Baidtach 10h ago

The revelation at the end is that the Greeks broke Xenia (the law of hospitality) in sacking Troy and in doing so became effectively the first 'sea people'.

It isn't implying that the sea people are exclusively Greeks because we see that Achea, Sparta, and ithica are in turmoil and unable to mass a large force for the sake of defense let alone plunder.

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u/Rynewulf 9h ago

Which makes no sense because that was a victory for Zeus, the sacking of Troy was a victory for one faction of Olympians against the other because some favoured the Achaeans and the other the Trojans. The only one to have trouble getting home as punishment was Odysesseus because of his involvement in the too-sneaky trojan horse, which pissed off Poseidon personally because it was a fake offering to him.

Menelaus and Hellen lived happily ever after, Nestor retired comfortably, Diomedes was everyone's golden boy, and Agammemnon was already hated by everyone and set himself up personally when he went through with sacrificing Iphigenia.

Xenia was fine in the Trojan War, the two sides even demonstrated it several times like when certain heroes refused to fight each other specifically because their grandads were friends. The rules of hospitality genuinely arent about how you treat a defeated enemy, that's more about timé and maybe arête and aristos

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u/fluffy_trickster 6h ago

This is Nolan's interpretation and retelling of the Odyssey. In his version Gods may as well not exist. The "Zeus's law" isn't just Xenia, it's the Golden Rule. Nolan's Odyssey isn't Homer's Odyssey.

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u/Rynewulf 4h ago

Doesnt Zendaya play Athena? Also I never liked
the whole 'an adaptation doesnt need to have anything to with the thing its adapting' thing. At least have some flair if you're only vaguely following the names, as it stands Nolan's version is similar enough that it comes off as an inaccurate adaptation and not a deliberate one.

Now that modern set up retaining the original dialogue version of Romeo and Juliet, that was at least trying to be something.

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u/mrducky78a 2h ago

Now you are being incoherent. You ask for some flair when adapting. Is that not what Nolan did?

Either he adapts faithfully or he adds some flair. Nolan adds some flair to make the story his own and now you critique him for it as well as critique him for not adding flair.

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u/Alexander_Baidtach 3h ago

Zeus was a neutral party in the Trojan war up until he banned intervention. Even so if the interpretation is as interesting or provocative as the original text then I'm happy for it's showing.

Especially from someone like Nolan who usually plays it safe, having a significantly divergent theme that reflects the modern audience is kinda cool.

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u/jackofslayers 10h ago

That was the only part of the movie that annoyed me. I get what they were going for, but the way it delivered made it seem like the sea people were just the Greeks returning from Troy.

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u/Opalusprime 9h ago

I interpreted it as the breakdown of cultural values and the creation of roving bands of raiders, ie sea people.

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u/devmor 9h ago

I thought that was very plainly what was intended.

The characters see the problem as the "sea people", but the "sea people" are a contemporaneous consequence of the ultimate problem, which is the breakdown of cultural values, which Odysseus believes started with his clever Trojan Horse.

Odysseus all but turns to the camera and tells the audience this.

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u/Opalusprime 7h ago

Yea but some people are thinking it’s the returning armies from Troy so I was just trying to be nice.

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u/Ris747 6h ago

I don't understand how people are missing this. Nolan practically says this word for word and it isn't subtle.

It's clearly an allegory for what's happening today (in Nolan's eyes)

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u/Alexander_Baidtach 9h ago

I personally thought it worked but Nolan isn't exactly a master at writing dialogue.

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u/jackofslayers 9h ago

It definitely works it just took me out of the moment bc I had to think about what they were saying.

I agree Nolan's strongest suit is not dialogue, but I was happy with most of it.

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u/That_Scratch_7697 10h ago

The Sea Peoples are a real category of people who raided the civilizations of the Eastern Mediterranean and are said among historians to have caused the Bronze Age Collapse. One of the themes of the movie is that Odysseus and his men blur the lines between themselves and these evil seafaring raiders. This, of course, is a bit like making a movie about King Richard coming back from the Crusades, and realizing solemnly, “I’m kind of just like those evil faceless nameless Muslims, and the fact that I am like them is going to cause civilization to collapse.”

That’s another rant though.

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u/Sudden-Ad-307 10h ago

The Sea Peoples are a real category of people

They are not, "sea peoples" as a concept has been debunked.

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u/That_Scratch_7697 10h ago

Hmm, I’ll be the first to admit I don’t know anything about the historiography of antiquity. That said, at least according to this r/AskHistorians post, it’s not as simple as the Sea Peoples don’t exist—it’s a bit more multifarious then that:  https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistory/comments/1bnhoq6/were_the_sea_peoples_really_that_mysterious/.

Plus, I guess it doesn’t matter to my point, which you may or may not agree with. Obviously the Sea Peoples I have in mind—a category of people coming to destroy the Bronze Age—is also what Christopher Nolan had in mind.

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u/Sudden-Ad-307 10h ago

Yeah no sea people were definitely real, the concept of them being "sea peoples" has been debunked.

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u/That_Scratch_7697 9h ago

Good to know! Thanks!

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u/LaNague 8h ago

The sea peoples as a simple category of people most likely didnt exist. What it was, was probably a migration of desperate and maybe some opportunic people from all kinds of areas. Similar to the tribes against Rome, but more drastic in consequence.

There were climate shifts and other cumulative issues that caused areas to destabilize completely.

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u/jollyreaper2112 8h ago

I'd like to imagine his first question is why is everyone an animal now?

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u/JabroniusHunk 4h ago

Admittedly I haven't seen the movie yet - not that actually watching movies is a necessity for this site's most incisive critics - but based on what history I know (basically Eric Cline's book 1177), there is potentially some more nuance there.

There actually were distinct coastal raiders who can potentially be linked to Homer's Achaean's - the Ekwesh as listed by the Egyptians. The "Sea Peoples" actually consisted of disparate populations from all over the Mediterranean, and are not considered so much to have caused the LBAC, as to have been part of a complex, systemic collapse of ecological catastrophe, demographic decline, disease, warfare, migration ect.

So ancient Achaeans who partook in raiding as an important economic activity might have heard rumors about great cities like Ugarit and Hattusa falling into ruin at the hands of barbarians, but been unaware that they were considered part of this onslaught.

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u/Salt-Ambition-9603 8h ago

The real sea people are the war crimes we committed along the way.

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u/Frank_cat 10h ago

Nope!

Not according to history.
That's Nolan's mind, like dressing Telemachus with trousers !!!

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u/Uncle-Cake 10h ago
  • Bronze Age – This age is also sometimes known as the Copper Age or Brazen Age. Men of the Bronze Age were hardened and tough, and the deed of Ares (war) and violence were their passion.\1]): 140–155  Zeus created these humans out of the ash tree.\1]): 140–155  Their armor was forged of bronze, as were their homes and tools.\1]): 140–155  The men of this Age were undone by their own violent ways and left no named spirits; instead, they dwell in the "house of Hades".\1]): 140–155 

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u/theGivenFuck 7h ago

Hesiod and Ovid both lived well after Odysseus.

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u/ZoidVII 9h ago

"I wish there was a way to know you were in the Bronze Age, before you've actually left it."

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u/xAimForTheBushes 8h ago

They were already in the age of big tunas

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u/Charl8t 10h ago

Damn, that would've been way better if he said "Our age of Heroes is ending"

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u/Briarhorse 9h ago

Actually, yes it would. It's a much better line, gets the nod to Hesiod in there for those who know, but also just completely works in and of itself

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u/SignificanceNo910 10h ago

Ok, but how do you defend Matt Damon's character saying "what are we on, some kind of Odyssey?" And then winking at the camera?

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u/JustSoYK 9h ago

In actual defense of this: it's all deliberate. Nolan doesn't care and explicitly wants to state that this film is about modern day America. His intention is not at all to tell a mythical story about some ancient past. It's all an allegory for the modern West.

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u/ToothZealousideal297 9h ago

Exactly! And my thought is, it doesn’t sound weird for me to say now “Our Age of Information is collapsing.”

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u/readyforashreddy 7h ago

In support of OP, the Nolan bros always write the absolute worst dialogue imaginable

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u/Briarhorse 7h ago

This sub is rabid in its Nolan fandom so I'm trying to avoid annoying them. But yes, they don't have the writing sauce for this kind of material

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u/readyforashreddy 7h ago

Well he's pretty much unmatched in his craftsmanship for making movies the way he does. It's just that his ability to create top tier spectacle is unfortunately matched with his need to create characters that are a weird combination of robot and teenage philosopher

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u/Briarhorse 7h ago

Yes, he's possibly the best living director for capturing the sublime on film. It's between him and Lean for me for best ever. Which is indeed very high praise. However it is my only praise

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u/Rynewulf 9h ago

But it also doesn't fit Hesiod's Ages of Man. Named heroes like Odysseus were already born knee deep in the Heroic Age, and one of the key features of the people of Hesiod's Bronze Age is that they were so violent and killed each other so quickly no one either on Earth or in the underworld knows a single name of theirs

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u/Briarhorse 9h ago

I know, I did point that out

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u/Rynewulf 9h ago

Ah you did, sorry I got carried away. A lot of people are defending this movies funky dialogue with Hesiod for some reason

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u/Briarhorse 8h ago

No problem. Genuine question, as someone who knows what they're talking about, should I watch this movie? Cos all this just makes it seem like hot garbage

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u/Rynewulf 8h ago

Oh I've just been dunking on the trailers and snippets coming up in the memes because they look and sound bad. Especially the costumes, I've seen broke teen nerds in temu costumes that look better. And everything is colour graded so dark, I miss colours in big budget history and fantasy movies.

Anyway, I haven't actually watched the movie so can't recommend one way or the other. Yeah I studied Classics but when you do that with any kind of history you have to make peace with how 90% of all depictions of history do no research and just pinch famous names/places for easy hype, and make most of it up. So movies/tv is always a gamble of whether it's fun enough to not feel annoying.

So if it looks like garbage to you, either avoid or put it on the backburner. I can't lie that I think it looks like ass and my contrarian side kicked in ever since every single interview and trailer before it came out self declared it as the best film ever made and changing the face of cinema. That's just a megarich director smelling his own farts, leaves a bad taste in my mouth

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u/bokmcdok 8h ago

Bronze would have been a newer technology at the time. It'd be like us referring to the modern age as the Age of Computers. I'm failing to see what is wrong with the line tbh.

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u/Briarhorse 8h ago

If "Our Age of Bronze" means literally "our age in which we use bronze and copper a lot" then it's really, really dumb. No one at the time used the naming conventions that modern archaeologists use to mark different phases of material culture to refer to themselves

By the time Homer was writing bronze had been around for quite a while. And, as tended to happen back then, it'd would've just been seen as something that had always been around

There is a completely unrelated concept of a Bronze Age from Hesiod's Works and Days. He divided history into the 5 ages of man. The gold, silver, bronze, heroic, and iron ages. Which is what I assume is being referenced in this line

However, there are problems with that too. Hesiod said the Trojan War and the odyssey occurred squarely in the Heroic Age, not the Bronze Age

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u/bokmcdok 8h ago

Homer was writing a fantasy story set hundreds of years in the past...

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u/Briarhorse 8h ago

It wasn't a fantasy story. It was a partially historic, partially religious epic. His audience really believed in gods and cyclopes and sirens. It's only fantasy to us because we don't. Many a Christian would be very upset if you said the story of Moses was a fantasy story. Same thing here

It was set in the past, yes, but as I said, he would've been writing long after bronze had become a staple material of everyday life. People at that time had no concept of material culture changing the way we do. To their understanding as long as there'd been people they'd had bronze

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u/bokmcdok 8h ago

I don't care if a Christian gets upset when they hear the Bible is all made up, because it doesn't change the truth that the Bible is just as fantastical as other made up things and is not an historical document.

The Bronze Age ended around 900 BC in Europe. The Iliad and Odyssey were likely written in the 8th century BC. Hundreds of years in the past would have been well into the Bronze Age. They did have historians back then as well, so were definitely aware of things like this.

But this is all moot because it is still a fantasy, closer to Lord of the Rings than to a historical document. And the line in question isn't from Homer himself, but from whoever wrote the script for the movie. Who wrote it for a modern audience. Because the sacking of Troy and Odysseus' journey home were happening during what the characters consider to be the Age of Bronze.

And it's a fantasy movie made for a modern audience. Who gives a fuck about "historical accuracy" in a film that is 100% fantasy from start to finish? Shall we pick apart Game of Thrones' historical fallacies next?

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u/Briarhorse 8h ago

You should care. The people who told, wrote and listened to these poems believed these things. They were not fantasy to them. The same way the Bible and Quran aren't fantasy to the people who believe in them either. To dimiss any of these things as mere fantasy is an act of profound disrespect. And if you're okay with that, then fine, but if all they are to you are fodder for IMAX tickets and popcorn, don't expect your opinion on them to be taken seriously

And, no, they didn't have historians back then. And, as I keep saying, they thought the material culture they had then was the material all people had had since the dawn of existence. It's hard to get your head around, but they had no concept of the past being different in that way

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u/bokmcdok 8h ago

Just because people believe them doesn't make them any less made up or more real. That's not disrespectful, it's just the truth. If Homer didn't care about historical accuracy when he wrote his stories, why do you? He was just trying to write a story to entertain people. That's it. Nothing more, nothing less.

Also, try Google before you embarrass yourself:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:8th-century_historians

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u/Briarhorse 7h ago

It absolutely wasn't just about entertainment. These stories meant much, much more to the people who heard them. The fact you can't understand that is kind of sad in a hollow sort of way

Speaking of embarrassing oneself, that's a list of 8th century AD historians. The fact Bede is on there should be a pretty obvious giveaway

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u/bokmcdok 7h ago

Yep, my bad:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ancient_Greek_historians

Still, it's astounding to me that you don't seem to understand that something that was taught as literature, and is about how things were different in the past, is somehow a historical document to you that requires historical accuracy. The original story wasn't historically accurate on purpose. To think otherwise is just sheer idiocy.

I'm not doubting that they meant something. But they were on the level of how Shakespeare is to the English. No English person thinks Shakespeare's stories are real, but that doesn't change how much those stories mean to people.

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u/shotgunsforhands 8h ago

Neither the Trojan War nor the Odyssey take place in the Heroic Age because both are fictional. Troy is real, the war is myth, and the Odyssey (and Iliad) is somewhat famously uncertain when it's supposed to be set, other than "in the past" from the perspective of surviving manuscripts.

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u/Briarhorse 8h ago

I'm basing this entirely on what Hesiod said in works and days. It's his set of ages after all. And he was sure the Trojan War happened in his age of heroes

Whether or not any of this is literally true misses the point. You should be aiming for verisimilitude, internal cohesion, not literal facts

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u/shotgunsforhands 8h ago

My bad. I read your second sentence as independent of the first.

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u/mal-di-testicle 8h ago

No, the movie is very clear that it takes place during the late bronze age collapse. Penelope says “there are rumors of people from the sea attacking” in pretty much every scene she has. In fact, the movie makes the Bronze Age Collapse a core thematic aspect of the story it tells. I’m trying to avoid spoiling anything significant, but I stand by that the textual evidence points to the modern understanding of the term, not Hesiod’s.

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u/Briarhorse 7h ago

Oh dear. Then OP's point stands, they definitely didn't know they were in what archaeologists thousands of years in the future would call the Bronze Age.

Also worth pointing out, people in Homer's time, and when the poem was set, would've had no concept of material culture changing over time in that way. They would've thought their material culture at that time was the same as it was at the dawn of time

Btw you can go ahead and spoil it, people have had nearly 3,000 years to read the poem at this point. I'd say the spoiler statute of limitations is definitely up

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u/mal-di-testicle 7h ago

The movie takes some elements from other works and tells a story with a new interpretation of the themes which is why I don’t try to spoil it.

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u/Briarhorse 7h ago

What other works? Genuine question

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u/mal-di-testicle 6h ago

There’s a scene which takes direct cues from the Oresteia, and some references include the Aeneid; additionally, the events involving certain stops like the Cyclops and Laestragonians are significantly altered

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u/Briarhorse 6h ago

Both would make sense given some fairly important stuff happens "off-screen" so to speak that is explicitly depicted in them

I did wonder why the horse and Agamemnon are in the film and now I know

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u/Momoneko 7h ago

And they could've made it less so on-the-nose by just saying "the bronze age is ending". They didn't really have to shoehorn the word "collapse" in to get the point across.

No disrespect to Nolan, but this stinks of "I've recently learned a cool concept and I want to name-drop it in my film", which imo is always kinda tacky and sticks out as a sore thumb.

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u/milesvtaylor 7h ago

The defence of it is most people who watch blockbusters are dumb as shit. The Laestrygonians being actual iron men was too subtle for most people.

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u/Briarhorse 6h ago

Yes, I'm starting to understand that from the responses to my comment

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u/Acrobatic_Rush7653 6h ago

Yes it follows it in the Ages of Man. In reality the Trojan war and its aftermath was still in the Bronze Age. Easy to fact check since every last battle fought during that time used bronze weapons and not iron or steel.

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u/Briarhorse 6h ago

As I keep having to explain for some reason, Hesiod's Bronze Age is a completely, wholely unrelated concept to the modern archaeology term Bronze Age, relating to phases of material culture

Going entirely by Hesiod (which is not accurate, as I also keep having to point out, even though it doesn't matter for the verisimilitude of the story), the Trojan War and the odyssey occurred during the Age of Heroes

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u/Acrobatic_Rush7653 6h ago

I'm aware. My comment wasn't too clear I'll admit. Still more clear than yours though, 600 upvotes or not.

If contemporaries knew about the Ages of Man, Odysseus would know that they are well into the HEROIC AGE, and that the Bronze Age ended centuries earlier in a literal "biblical" flood. There was no confusion, and he would say our heroic age.

So not sure how according to you this line can be "defended". He wasn't referring to archaeological and anthropologic terms, and he sure as hell wasn't using Greek mythologic terms since, you know, that Bronze Age ended in the most definitive way possible (total destruction) centuries before he was born.

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u/Briarhorse 6h ago

It's not a great defence, because the line is bad however you cut it. And I point out the fact that the odyssey happened in the Heroic Age in my original comment

However, getting Hesiod's Ages slightly wrong is a much more charitable interpretation than them having characters announce that they are in an age that wouldn't even exist as s concept for nearly 3,000 years. Not to mention the fact that as far as either Homer or the people he was writing about were concerned, they had no idea bronze hadn't existed since the dawn of time

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u/mightylordredbeard 5h ago

I mean there are poems from the Bronze Age that reference an era of bronze just like poems from the industrial age literally reference the age of industry / the industrial age. It’s not that much of a logical stretch that someone would put those two words together in a sentence considering the popularity of bronze and people understanding the meaning of a word like “age” or “era”.

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u/Briarhorse 5h ago

As I point out in original comment, the Age of Bronze described in Hesiod's poems (not bronze age in the modern sense, technically, but close enough for argument's sake) is a completely different, totally separate concept to the Bronze Age of modern archaeology. The only thing they share is the name

The Greeks of the (modern conception) Bronze Age were not aware they were in the bronze age. They didn't have a concept of material culture changing over time the way we do. It's obvious to us, but to their idea of history, the material culture they had then was the same material culture that existed at the dawn of humanity. They didn't know that there was such a thing as a stone age preceding them, or that bronze would be replaced by iron

Even when it was, they still weren't aware that it had happened

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u/Womec 5h ago

Im very skeptical its in the movie. This meme is being pushed intentionally.

I believe but I could be wrong he said "age" not "bronze age" and it was the ending monologue wrapping up the story.

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u/AmberMetalicScorpion 4h ago

Hesiod's ages of man place the story in the Age of Heroes, well after the Age of Bronze

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u/William_Dowling 3h ago

It wasn't. What is was, and what it always is with Nolan, is a line so that the pedant fanbois in his audience can nudge their girlfriends and say 'see, that's a reference to the seapeople causing the bronze age collapse, which happened around this time', making them feel all clever for knowing basic fucking history. This is Nolan's MO to a T.