Odysseus helped win the Trojan War, but was waylaid on his way home to Ithaca, where he serves as king and has been held captive by Calypso, a nymph who had fallen for him when his ship crashes on her island. The shipwreck is just one of several mishaps that waylays Odysseus, including Poseidon wrecking his raft (the first thing we see in the trailer), cannibal giants (more on those soon!) and an ill-timed windbag (you’ll have to wait for the movie for that one).
Did Nolan Just Sneak a Trojan Horse Into The Odyssey?
The Trojan Horse appears in the trailer for the simple reason that The Odyssey picks up after the Iliad, Homer’s story of the Trojan War. Throughout the Trojan War, the 10-year siege of Troy by various other Greek city states, Odysseus proved his resourcefulness time and again, especially compared to the anger of King Agamemnon, portrayed by Benny Safdie in the movie.
The trailer gives us bits of Odysseus’ time in the Trojan War, where he fought alongside Agamemnon’s brother Menelaus, played by Jon Bernthal. The trailer also shows off the most famous example of Odysseus’s brilliance, when he constructed a gift to give to the Trojans and then hid himself and his fellow soldiers inside of it, allowing them to breach the city’s walls. That gift was, of course, the Trojan Horse.
Why is Robert Pattinson Being Such a Jerk?
A husband separated from his wife isn’t the only thing that makes The Odyssey such an urtext for Christopher Nolan. The story also cross cuts between Odysseus’s journeys and the turmoil at Ithaca, giving the director plenty of excuse to use his favorite editing techniques.
With Odysseus missing long after the end of the Trojan War, 108 other men see their opportunity to move up the social ladder and throw a gigantic party in his home. Those 108 suitors try to win over Odysseus’s wife Penelope, whose marriage was itself an extension of the Trojan War. Chief among the suitors is Robert Pattinson’s character Antinous, who seems to spend the entire movie ensuring Penelope that he’s moving in and that Telemachus should just start calling him “Dad.” Which is, according to the trailer, a word that Telemachus would use, apparently.
The suitor plot might be the hardest element of The Odyssey for modern viewers to understand. Why don’t Penelope and Telemachus just kick these guys out? How could Antinous and the other suitors be so bold?
