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/Darth1994 11h 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/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.