Disappointing. I tried to like it more for the kid. It's not terrible. But it was disappointing in:
- 1. Setting. Drab as fk. Where's that cool Mediterranean cave & island world?
- 2. Casting. Killing me in the suspension of disbelief department.
- 3. Historical accuracy in look. Killing me in the suspension of disbelief department.
- 4. Modern day dialog, dear lord. Killing me in the suspension of disbelief department.
- 5. The monsters were not cool, they went for gross.
- The cyclops was passable, maybe, but... I lie, I did not like the design look, a twisted face and nose with a "missing" eye, though the actor/CGI was fine (but gross).
- Scylla... lol, you will never see a picture of it online b/c it was so.... meh. It's a damn sock puppet in the movie. I've got a picture, check below. And this picture looks "better" as a still than in motion... was a split second piece of the film, you barely saw it at all, and not in a "cool reveal" way either.
- Charybdis the whirlpool monster was completely missing.
- The Sea serpent sent by Poseidon was missing.
- Gods were missing.
- 6. Body horror, yes body horror in this tale is about as weird as you would imagine. BTW,Circe in Nolan's version apparently hates men (despite her being an Earthgirls-are-Easy-type in the original poem).
- 7. Audio sucked. Whispering dialog all day, hard to hear. Then super loud terribly distorted sounds during action.
2026 movie Scylla is darn sad. Rock skinned tube worm style. Elbow joints in its neck(s). Toothless, eyeless. Just gross, nasty, and uncool. When you first see it, it looks like a sock puppet, 100%.
And this reddit
post , the first couple of paragraphs, knocks it out of the park on what it did incorrectly. Once it rants about Matt Damon's Odysseus as being too "above reproach" i disagree. I can get past that because in a MOVIE I do like a hero who is a good guy. The kids were flipping out about how in class, they taught how bad Odysseus was, etc. While, yeah, as a kid myself I was completely pissed at him for leaving his family for 10-20 years, and shacking up with the Nymph and witch, ... I hate all hero types in most stories when I think about them in a realistic way b/c they are ALWAYS screwing over their family ... when I want entertainment, I like the hero to be likeable. That's all.
And then the post says what they did to Odysseus is "This downgrading of the moral architecture of the original work reminds me of what Guillermo del Toro did to Frankenstein." I say wrong wrong wrong, it is an UPGRADE of the moral architecture. I hate it when critics think being morally a shitbag is a better story. F*ck 'em. Well I'll excuse this b/c it is perhaps the main point of the original story, for some reason. I guess it as a story has endured for two reasons 1) supernatural coolness for my brain types and 2) shitbag morals for the gossip crowd brain types.
And this dude gives details on all the good parts of the movie, which I seem to agree with mostly (except I hate not seeing real Greece, not seeing cool monsters, etc.): by thigerlel
"There's no Greece in the movie because it's not about Greece. It uses Odysseus's journey to talk about the 20th Century, which is also why there' s the Bronze Age line. By coming up with the Horse, Odysseus breaks the implicit mythical trust humanity had on each other, a la Pandora or Eve unleashing sin. The veterans of Troy become the Sea People, who spread arround genocide in Troy, pillaging in other islands, rape if Cercei hadn't been prepared. Odysseus isn't curious in this version because he's guilty, and his delay in getting home is reframed as him having become so twisted he can't look at his old family in the eyes again. He listens to the sirens not because he's full of whimsy, but to suffer for all that he's done. He created an atomic bomb, there's no putting it back in the box, and their civilization will crumble until another one rises that will forget their mistakes and repeat them (us). It's an origin story for our current affairs. Odysseus is certainly a story teller. The structure of the film is less about him being passive and more about him orally narrating events to Calypso just as the story was originally spread around. In fact, there are no fantastical elements in the movie; creatures only appear in stories told to other characters. The landscapes in these tales often lack delineation, becoming surreal, endless beaches reminiscent of the Freudian sea of the unconscious as Odysseus's tale is nothing but a way for him to work though his feelings. Athena, who seems the most tangible mythical element, is revealed to be the face of the child Odysseus caused to be beheaded in Troy, just Odysseus's conscience. The actors look modern and the armors look out of place because it's a story about all time periods, extending into the future perpetually (they still look like shit)"
