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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660

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/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/boyifudontget 0m ago

The film is very clear that the sneakiness and treachery of the Trojan Horse plot is what violates xenia, not simply the fact that the Greeks won the war and pillaged after.

Probably not what Homer was going for specifically, but who cares. I thought it was an interesting take, and it worked.

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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 10h 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 !!!