r/TopCharacterTropes • u/AporiaParadox • Sep 11 '26

Hated Tropes "Good guys" committing perfidy (fake surrender) and it's treated as a clever heroic ploy instead of a war crime or something morally dubious

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  1. Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Anakin pretends to surrender to the enemy multiple times during the Clone Wars. And no, it's not used to indicate that Anakin is falling to the Dark Side, other characters like Obi-Wan do it too.
  2. The Iliad. The Trojan Horse was a real dick move, a fake surrender compounded by a fake peace offering, followed by a massacre. I get that it was a different time, but still, most modern adaptations just treat it as a cool thing. One thing I'll give Nolan's The Odyssey credit for is that Odysseus recognizes that what his "clever plot" was wrong.

Perfidy is a serious war crime, because morality aside, in exchange for one victory, you're dooming all of your allies who might want to legitimately surrender in the future because now the enemy is just going to execute them, not to mention that now the enemy won't surrender to you and will just fight harder.

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u/keelanbarron Sep 11 '26

To be fair, i figured that "Athena" in that movie was just Odysseus's guilt and not actually her.

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u/cat_silhouette Sep 11 '26

When they sliced off Zendaya’s head in Troy they cut to the statue of Athena’s statue’s head being cut off and falling to the ground.

Which could be metaphorical but Athena is also the goddess of strategic warfare and Odysseus exemplifies everything she stands for. So it would make sense for her to favor him.

But the Gods actually exist and they didn’t keep saying that you don’t know who’s a God for nothing.

In the script the woman they kill is also described as having Athena’s famous grey eyes of wisdom.

I still think it’s ambiguous but Nolan is as subtle as a brick to the face in his movies so it was probably her.

(Loved the movie btw)

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u/AbueloOdin Sep 11 '26

They referenced the Gods travel incognito and you should treat people respectfully just in case they are gods MULTIPLE TIMES.

Like straight up: it was intended to be Athena. They cut off Athena's head. The whole trip was a punishment for the Greeks being assholes led by Odysseus's plan.

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u/schrodingers_bra Sep 11 '26

Yeah, but in the original text, Athena is the one who gives them instructions for building the horse in the first place.

It's a crazy reversal from the original. The gods were taking part in the Trojan war as much as the humans - hence the whole Judgment of Paris in the first place.

Athena and Hera were pissed because Aphrodite was judged most beautiful, so they were on the side of the Greeks, and Aphrodite was on the side of Troy.

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u/Lawlcopt0r Sep 11 '26

I'm pretty sure Athena still ends up being pissed off that the greeks desecrated her temples. The gods are very fickle in those stories, if anything it's unusual that Athena always seems to stay on Odysseus' side no matter what

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u/schrodingers_bra Sep 11 '26

Well yes, specifically she's pissed at Ajax the Lesser for the desecration, but Odysseus urges the Greeks to stone Ajax to death as punishment.

The Greeks end up not punishing him, but that's why Athena stays specifically on Odysseus's side while being pissed at the rest of the Greeks.

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u/ZealousidealComb7891 Sep 11 '26

She protects Diomedes more, helping him not only hurt 2 gods, but not get any punishment from them either.

Homegirl is just a real homie for the preferred peeps, that's all.

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u/Temeraire64 Sep 11 '26

Doesn't Diomedes suffer when he gets back home?

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u/Thejollyfrenchman Sep 12 '26

Not because of Athena.

The brother of Palamedes, a Greek commander that Diomedes murdered, spread a rumour to Aegialia, Diomedes' wife, that he was coming home with a mistress who would replace her.

Aphrodite, who had been on the Trojan side, saw the opportunity to get some payback by enhancing the beauty of the men around Aegialia and making them lust after her, after which she took multiple lovers. When Diomedes returned, the gates of Argos were closed to him.

His fate overall wasn't all that bad, though. Diomedes went to Italy and got land and a new wife in return for becoming a general to a local king, and founded several major cities. In the Aeneid he's asked to go fight the Trojans again but refuses.

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u/ZealousidealComb7891 29d ago

Aphrodite got her hand hurt by him, it wasn't just her being on the Trojan side.

But i guess even her isn't willing to piss of Athena.

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u/ZealousidealComb7891 29d ago

Compared to what he did ? As i recall Ares said he might have even died... and only Aphrodite does anything to him, and compared to the other guy who's wife took someone else, he gets off with a minor inconvenience.

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u/xesaie Sep 11 '26

Isn’t that one of the things that pussed the classicists off?

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u/AbueloOdin Sep 11 '26

Yes. But this is a different adaptation.

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u/[deleted] Sep 11 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/AbueloOdin Sep 11 '26

Shit. Homer didn't even come up with it himself. We're doing fanfic off someone else's fanfic.

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u/LevelStudent Sep 11 '26 edited Sep 11 '26

I disagree with this take on the movie. There's nothing to suggest that was truly Athena, and Odysseus is the one that strongly believes that Gods take human disguise, which makes him believe the executed woman could have been Athena, and then punish himself with guilt.

No one else ever sees her and she barely speaks except to question Odysseus the way a guilty man would question themselves. They don't get explicitly cursed by Athena, Odysseus decides on a different path due to his guilt and shame over having broken Zeus' Law and believing killed his wife's favorite God.

Just my take of course, so everyone is welcome to disagree.

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u/AbueloOdin Sep 11 '26

They cut the head of the Athena statue at the same time as cutting off her head.

If you want to say, ok, well technically it could just be her priest or some random person or a coincidence, sure. But the movie's intention was the beheading of the woman was, at minimum, as if they were beheading Athena.

To say there was "nothing to suggest" is plainly wrong. The suggestion was there. There is an argument to be made between literally and metaphorically.

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u/Cacafuego Sep 11 '26

"the Gods actually exist"

Do they? And if they do, do they actually talk to mortals? I thought that was one of the things the movie did pretty well. Magic exists, the underworld is real, and we know that some of the people and creatures we meet claim that they descended from gods, but the actual role of the gods in the movie is much more ambiguous than in the source. In the Iliad and the Odyssey, the gods are talking to mortals incessantly, fighting alongside them, and giving them real help.

In this movie, Athena just acts like a grief counselor, and only one man sees her. While either interpretation is valid, it makes more sense to me that she's just a figment of Odysseus' imagination, formed around a priestess of Athena he saw beheaded on the worst night of his life.

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u/cat_silhouette Sep 11 '26

I mean, if a cyclops and a witch who turns people into didn’t imply they personally are related to the existence of gods then I would be with you.

If prophecies weren’t real then I would agree.

You can’t have magic in your story but lie about it if it tangibly affects the plot.

I’m not sure if they’re meant to exist or not but those are my arguments for. My arguments against are essentially the same as yours.

But I liked the movie because you can make a case either way and have evidence for your opinion.

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u/Cacafuego Sep 11 '26

I know what you mean, but there isn't a single scene where a god tells someone something they didn't already know or helps them to do something they couldn't do by themselves. Perhaps they stay on Olympus and take a much less active role.

It's also interesting that Athena appeared to both Odysseus and Telemachus in the epic in several different guises. In the movie, it's only to Odysseus and only as the girl who symbolizes his guilt and the reason he fears to come home. If she had appeared in that form to Telemachus, case closed...but she didn't.

Of course you're right, it's great that you can see it either way.

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u/Bush_Hiders Sep 12 '26

I didn’t interpret the girl as her. I interpreted Athena taking the form of that girl, because that’s the death Odysseus felt the most guilt about, and idk, ig she wanted to fuck with him or something.

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u/Winter-Apartment-821 Sep 11 '26

It's interesting how people took it this way, that she was entirely in his head. 

Ya I interpreted it as Athena  taking on the form of the woman he watched killed infront of him. After all he didn't remember what happened/who we was until we did. 

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u/keelanbarron Sep 11 '26

Sure, but it's the fact that no one else could see her but him.

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u/Winter-Apartment-821 Sep 11 '26

I feel that's well within the power of a god.

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u/Lucky-Paperclip-1 Sep 11 '26

In the poem, she's often appearing as Mentor, the guy who was the mentor to Telemachus.

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u/n122333 Sep 11 '26

Iirc, dyonisus did this to drunks as a party trick.

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u/keelanbarron Sep 14 '26

Fair enough.

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u/thesierratide Sep 11 '26

It’s deliberately ambiguous

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u/Avalonians Sep 11 '26

There's several ways to think about it.

What the movie tries to show is the ambiguity. She could actually be Athena, she could be a PTSD hallucination, she could be metaphorical (not even an actual vision). That's one way.

Then there's the fact that Nolan chose to depict no other god at all. He didn't know how to keep it grounded and modern, while having gods and godlike power in full display. We see rituals and discrete magical tricks but there's no actual magical bursts and divine powers with flashes of light and whatnot. So if Zendaya is Athena, why not show any other god? This makes me think she's not Athena.

And finally there's knowing that it's a Nolan film and we know he just wants to make a bait and switch like he did with the people of the sea to make us go "omg the twist". What she is matters not, he did that for the sake of doing that.

All in all I think it's deliberately unclear, but if the whole movie is worse if you choose to think she's actually Athena imo.

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u/coatimundos Sep 11 '26

Indeed it was implied, and at this point it makes you wander why is Nolan adapting the Odyssey if he doesn’t want to have the gods involved, when they are principal characters in the original story.

Imagine someone adapting Avatar the last Airbender but replacing the bending with tech. What’s the point?

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u/acur1231 Sep 11 '26

To be fair, Troy does a pretty good job of depicting the Trojan War without the gods.

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u/coatimundos Sep 11 '26 edited Sep 11 '26

That worked a bit better because it focused on he small section of the story where the gods are not as personally involved. The gods are highly involved in the setup to the war and its aftermath. During the war they are mostly doing bets on the Olympus equivalent of Polymarket.

But In the Odyssey the journey starts with injuring the son of Poseidon, and from there the gods just get more involved. The gods are kinda critical.

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u/MusicianNo3277 Sep 11 '26

Actually, it starts with Odysseus claiming the entire plan was his, and not giving Poseidon the credit he was due in having helped Odysseus come up with the plan on the beach at night. It’s at that point that Poseidon tells him that his voyage home is going to be extra long and hard to which Odysseus basically replies “yeah whatever” and it’s his ego and his arrogance that is the main focal point of the god’s wrath throughout the rest of the story.

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u/jrbcnchezbrg Sep 11 '26

Poseidon: “odysseus wtf why are you stealing my glory?”

Odysseus: “wouldnt you like to know, weatherboy?”

Poseidon: “alright fuck you, have another storm”

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u/MusicianNo3277 Sep 11 '26 edited Sep 11 '26

Odysseus: “fuck your storm I’m gonna sail across YOUR OCEAN home flipping you off the whole way”

Poseidon: “well then your arms are gonna get tired because I’m making sure you get lost as fuck! It’s my ocean you arrogant flea you ain’t never getting home!”

Odysseus proceeds to get lost as fuck lose literally all of his men one at a time in horrible ways blinds one of Poseidon‘s boys for eating a couple of his guys and then brags about it after having gotten clean away, catching himself a whole new heaping pile of shit from Poseidon. Then gets a bunch of help that does absolutely nothing for him gets kidnapped and drugged by a witch who wanted a boy toy, is eventually let go by her because he just won’t forget his wife and eventually makes it home once Poseidon‘s temper has cooled off after breaking Odysseus‘s pride over his knee like Batmans back over Banes knee.

Moral of the story: you are just a little human don’t get too cocky.

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u/TUGBoat85007 Sep 11 '26

Hubris is a bitch

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u/MusicianNo3277 Sep 11 '26

Yeah pretty much

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u/ExplodiaNaxos Sep 11 '26

Are we just gonna ignore how several gods, such as Ares and Aphrodite, personally intervened numerous times during the war until Zeus told them to knock it off (only to intervene himself, the hypocritical *ss)?

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u/Kolyarut86 Sep 11 '26

Half of them were straight up there on the front ranks, fighting! Even Aphrodite is getting her Dynasty Warriors on, until Diomedes stabs her. I can never believe that directors keep taking out all the fun stuff…

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u/Howling_Fire Sep 11 '26

Actually the gods can still be inserted there and it still works. In particular, Apollo.

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u/-Mac-n-Cheese- Sep 11 '26

ones about troy, the orher is about the oddesy, the trojan war works fine without gods, the oddesy’s whole thing is that it was fuckin ridiculous at every turn because of various greek mythos/gods

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u/Burdiac Sep 11 '26

Honestly you could argue that the Gods were there just not physically represented. Just like how Achilles wasn’t “impervious “ but arrows would just miss him and he could dodge swings in uncanny ways until Paris hit his ankle.

But there were dust storms during his fight with Hector

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u/_whatever_wherever Sep 11 '26

That film was awful

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u/_whatever_wherever Sep 11 '26 edited Sep 11 '26

They were involved... they went to Hades and spoke to the dead, they encountered the son of Posiden, and faced his vengece for blinding his son

Zeus punished them for eating the cattle of Apollo

And they constantly talk Zeus' Law, the law of hospitality, and that one must always treat strangers well

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u/Heisenripbauer Sep 11 '26

exactly. what the fuck is that person talking about? there was an entire scene where a god transformed his soldiers into pigs and we saw the whole thing lmao

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u/_whatever_wherever Sep 11 '26

I bet it's because they watched a Critical Drinker video and are now parroting what he said, never watched the film themselves

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u/weedlayer Sep 11 '26

Is circe a god?  More a witch granted powers by the gods.  It doesn't really matter though.

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u/irresearch Sep 12 '26

She’s a goddess in Homer and pre-Homer. Some later sources give her a human parent(s) instead

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u/irresearch Sep 12 '26

Adding quotes, in A.S Kline’s translation, “where Circe of the lovely tresses lived, a fateful goddess with a human voice,” “Circe, a goddess skilled in magic potions,” “Then she’ll invite you to her bed, and don’t refuse the goddess’ favours,” “at the gate of the goddess of the lovely tresses,” “I have no desire to go to bed with you, goddess,” also seen in A.T. Murray’s translation, “…where dwelt fair-tressed Circe, a dread goddess of human speech…” and so forth. Those are open-source texts easy to find. Eurylochus is uncertain if she is a woman or a goddess, but Odysseus and Hermes call her a goddess again and again.

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u/coatimundos Sep 11 '26

The gods in the original story are actual characters that appear in the story. In the movie the gods were implied but never appeared, except Athena that was implied to be Odysseus’ PTSD.

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u/_whatever_wherever Sep 11 '26

Athena is an active part of the story

Just becsuse the gods actions, though clear, are not them coming down from the heavens in a Deus Ex Machine does not mean they're not omnipresent in the story

And I'm just gonna add on, anyone expecting a 1 to 1 adaptation of the story was an idiot, these things change all the time, The Aeneid changed a fuck ton and nobody gets upset about that, but ooooh no, a modern filmmaker makes things a bit more mysterious while adapting it for modern audiences (just like the Aeneid) and suddenly everyone is losing their wigs that "oh, Zeus doesn't directly come down to tell them they done goofed by eating the cattle, Cirice isn't enough of a god when she turned the crew into pigs" etc. etc.

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u/Squid_In_Exile Sep 13 '26

Circe is also a Goddess and her powers were pretty damn unambiguous.

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u/DavidKirk2000 Sep 11 '26

The gods are involved throughout the movie, it’s just more subtle.

Odysseus and his men blinding the cyclops causes Poseidon to curse them, Odysseus’ men also eat Apollo’s sacred cows, causing Zeus to punish them with the thunderstorm.

Even Athena could be a legit depiction of the goddess, it’s open to interpretation. And that’s not even mentioning all the fantastical elements of the movie like the sirens, Scylla and Charybdis, the Laestrygonians, and so on.

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u/coatimundos Sep 11 '26

I got the impression that Nolan wanted us to think the gods aren’t real or are mindless forces of nature instead of full fledged characters that they are in the original story.

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u/The_Amazing_Emu Sep 11 '26

I got the impression that he wanted to show they could be real but that mortal men can never be sure. Odysseus talks about how vague the gods are, while Athena keeps trying to tell him the messages are obvious, even if they are in non-personified forms.

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u/Important-Mine9281 Sep 11 '26

I've seen the "existence of gods was ambiguous" take on Nolan's Odyssey and I just do not understand where people are getting it from. Yeah they're supposed to be indirect and ephemeral, but I never got the impression we were supposed to believe they didn't exist, except for maybe the first 5 minutes when Telemachus jokes that the thunder is a reflection of Zeus's disapproval.

They visit an island and commune with the dead, where Odysseus is given new information he couldn't possibly have known about otherwise, and is forewarned that his crew will be killed by Zeus after they eat Helios's cattle. His crew then eats cattle which are conspicuously in the middle of fucking nowhere and then their ship is torn in half by a thunderstorm, leaving Odysseus the sole survivor.

Odysseus is told that Poseidon wants to kill him but Zeus won't let him, so he straps himself to a raft made up of scraps of his destroyed boat and floats out into a storm, and then after his raft is destroyed wakes up alive in Ithica. Where is the ambiguity here? Do people really think Nolan is implying that all this shit was plausibly happenstance? Do people think that taking a raft into a storm and surviving, to say nothing of waking up at home probably hundreds of miles away from where you set off from after you pass out during said storm, is something that could plausibly happen on its own?

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u/w311sh1t Sep 11 '26 edited Sep 11 '26

I don’t think Nolan wanted us to think one way or the other, I think the whole point is that the gods are ambiguous and mysterious. The viewer isn’t supposed to definitively know one way or another.

I’d also argue that the fact they sailed to the literal underworld and talked to dead people, including a dead prophet who told Odysseus their future, pretty heavily implies that the gods are real.

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u/ZealousidealComb7891 Sep 11 '26

The viewer seems to be supposed to be as sure of their existence as the characters are, and i think that's the actual intent.

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u/MegaIng Sep 11 '26

I think Nolan wanted to represent a potential perspective that ancient greeks may have on Gods, especially in the context of such a war.

There is a strong believe that there are gods, and that getting favor from them or at least not angering them is a good idea. Doesn't mean they like another King sacrificing his own daughter. Doesn't mean starvation isn't going to break the men's resolve.

And all of this happens despite not being able to literally see the gods, or anything supernatural, most of the time.

We know that Troy existed, and it's very believable that there was a war at about the time being discussed, and that this war lead to a major shift in society, and that this war is being told later as a story with direct acts of gods in a far more literal sense than the original warriors experienced them.

"Homer" "added" "magic" to the story, and Nolan removed a bit of it to make a guess at the underlying story. I am not sure that he was successful at that and I think he landed at a weird middle-ground where some supernatural stuff is shown uncritically while other stuff got removed that makes it difficult to argue for either position convincingly. Either position meaning "The supernatural and gods are real within the story" and "It's all just in Odysseus' head as a coping mechanisim for horrible acts against other humans". I don't know which, if any, position Nolan intended.

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u/_whatever_wherever Sep 11 '26

The gods are the gods, they are so far above mortals that they might as well be, they work by their own rules they will often break, but still expect the mortals to follow

And most of all... they're giant dicks

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u/PoopMobile9000 Sep 11 '26

It’s not really that subtle all that stuff is said explicitly in narration

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u/heretilthemoon Sep 11 '26

Crazy take. The gods were super involved. The whole subplot was that Odysseus was a man who liked to control his destiny and held responsibility for his men, but that the gods didn’t care. They were going to do what they were going to do and Odysseus in the end had to let go of control and just ride the ocean home. He couldn’t stop them from eating Apollos cattle, because Zeus locked them on the island to starve.

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u/_Koreander Sep 11 '26

Yeah did this person even see the movie? How can such a confidently wrong take get so many likes?

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u/Ice-Cold-Basket Sep 11 '26

mob mentality

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u/Blackfyre301 Sep 11 '26

Right, to believe the gods weren’t present in Nolan’s film you have to believe that all the events that befall the crew are just bad luck. Which is insane.

You also have to ignore the line about how the gods communicate with mortals through weather and other natural phenomena.

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u/coatimundos Sep 11 '26

Yet the gods were not active characters the way they are in the original story. If they were real they operated more like the Christian idea of God than the Greek idea of gods.

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u/Reylo-Wanwalker Sep 11 '26

Worked for Troy? Well actually it didn't at the time but people love it now.

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u/EscapedFromArea51 Sep 11 '26

Like the Star Wars Prequels.

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u/MusicianNo3277 Sep 11 '26

Yeah, I remember we bashed the shit out of Troy when it came out too, but now with the Nolandessy out I’m not looking back on it quite so harshly

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u/Simple_Tip_7816 Sep 11 '26

Adaptations are just that - they are adapted for the medium they are made for.

You’re acting like it needs to be 1-to-1 to be a good film.

Doesn’t really matter if Nolan’s interpretation was to make the God’s metaphorical, if all the motivations and fantasy still occur.

A truly strange criticism of a pretty obvious thing if you have consumed any kind of art adaptation in the past. Must be a new thing for you.

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u/International-Dig411 Sep 11 '26

Adding an element of realism made it better tbh. They didn’t mention the sea people or the Bronze Age collapse in the book, but they element of grounding helped the movie a lot imo

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u/justneurostuff Sep 11 '26

... you could explore a lot of Avatar the Last Airbender's themes in a world where bending is based on tech

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u/_Koreander Sep 11 '26

I mean the gods are there, Athena just being Odysseus guilt is just an interpretation, could as well be a bit of both, and the "Zeus Law" is present all throughout the narrative, the cyclops was Poseidon's son and he cursed them which is essentially what causes most of the misfortune they suffer afterwards, I don't think it's necessary to have the gods actually show up and wave at the audience.

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u/Complete-Beach1068 Sep 11 '26

Actually it's very simple. To people at that time, the gods were real. But gods aren't real. So he depicted the subjective reality of the people at the time. Literally one of the major points of the film is that the characters take nonexistent deities very seriously and have a different sort of mental cosmology and ethics than the people of today.

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u/0bolus Sep 11 '26

How is Calypso explained then? All of that seemed very real and happpening.

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u/CX52J Sep 11 '26

Calypso is combined with the lotus eaters.

Its believed the lotus that was eaten had psychedelic properties. Some believe it wasn’t actually a lotus plant but actually a type of lettuce that can be found in the area which is known to have psychedelic effects.

So could be he was shipwrecked and high that entire time.

Circe is probably harder to explain unless it’s accepted that witches are real in the world without gods being involved.

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u/coatimundos Sep 11 '26

There’s a witch that makes men into animals, a cyclops, giants and a nymph in the movie. Are those real?

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u/bonniemick Sep 11 '26

Why use tech when they could just whitewash the whole thing!

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u/Thin-Nerve6367 Sep 11 '26

🤔 bending with tech could be interesting. But it feels like maybe a tale better told with fan fiction tbh

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u/QuyanRonnie Sep 11 '26

In fairness, the presence of the gods seems intended to be “dubious” more than “fully absent.”

A cyclops does exist, there are a monster whirlpool and a tentacled beast haunting certain waterways (which… there’s so much ocean, how was either one ever “the only options”?), there is an island where a witch makes beasts of men, etc…. From the potentially-addled perspective of the only survivor.

Don’t have to worry about “establishing gods and having them mired in nuance” if you leave that entirely up to the viewer’s discretion.

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u/Sensitive-Initial Sep 11 '26

Wasn't Charlize Theron's character a god?

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u/Ghost-Intator10 Sep 11 '26

Well tbf, it’s not like the gods were completely absent. Zeus and Poseidon were clearly still doing their part, as well as all the other mythological stuff that happened.

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u/oxide_j Sep 11 '26

So basically Boruto? Lol your last line reminded me of that wrist gadget that mimics jutsu.

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u/pawksvolts Sep 11 '26

Are you forgetting that Calypso only reacts to lightning and decides to free Odysseus after it gets closer?

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u/Raguleader Sep 11 '26

Leaving aside whether or not the gods are in Nolan's Odyssey, if you want to see a version of Avatar: The Last Airbender but with technology replacing bending, that's a big theme in The Legend of Korra.

Also, if you are a sci-fi fan, check out "Calypso," one of the short films that CBS made as part of their "Short Treks" series, being a story about Calypso and Odysseus, but on a spaceship. It's pretty great and will only take up about twenty minutes of your time.

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u/JohnSober7 Sep 11 '26

Imagine someone adapting Avatar the last Airbender but replacing the bending with tech. What’s the point?

It is the year 4660. Avatar: The Last Airbender is being adapted for the nth time, but with a twitst, also for the nth time. The twist? No magic, just hi-tech. And it slaps.

The point is creative freedom. Answering the age old questions of "what if?" and "why not?" with daring, wit, and pomp, and an unavoidable bit of hubris admittedly.

I never understood why people so readily miss that the issue with adaptations isn't (inherently) that they took creative liberties, it's either because the adaptation is a perversion (when the original message is a good one and the new one desecrates the former) or the adaptation is just straight cheeks when the original is gas. Yeah, sometimes what's desired is just a remaster to bring it up to modern standards, but c'mon, variety is the spice of life and sometimes we just need the spice more, y'know?

1

u/pembunuhUpahan Sep 11 '26

So Zhu Li, don't do that thing?

1

u/MilkJiggle Sep 11 '26

But avatar isn’t based on historical events or people. Presumably, when the events of the Trojan war happened, however they happened, gods weren’t real then either. A dude did a thing and a guy told a story about it and added gods to make it extra hype. Because that’s what we do

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u/coatimundos Sep 11 '26

The Trojan war myth is based on true events in the same way retelling a of Jesus’ resurrection, or game of thrones as a retelling of War of the Roses are based on true events. Sure there’s likely some historical core to some of the characters having real historical analogies, but the story as is written is so far removed from whatever reality it is based on that he original reality barely matters.

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u/MilkJiggle Sep 11 '26

Everything you just said is kind of the reason Nolan can also do what he wants with it.

It’s a collection of classic tropes and archetypes that people relate to. Telling it with our without emphasis on elements… emphasizes certain elements for thematic intent.

He clearly wants us to view gods as something more internal and human rather than grandiose and less relatable.

Do you think gods are real and stories should be told about them like Thor in marvel movies? Or do you think that it’s a more internal psychological relationship?

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u/strandedbaby Sep 11 '26

To tell a story relevant to modern audiences. Every sword and sandals movie does it.

The first major wave of old world epics were released in the 1950s, following the Second World War and America's ascension to empire status. Many of them contained warnings of the need to wield this power responsibly, emphasizing the importance of Christian morality.

Spartacus is about a slave revolt, but its final scenes are written in a way that is meant to evoke HUAC and the Hollywood blacklist.

Caligula reflects anxieties about decadence, immoral leadership, and the breakdown of social order Americans wer grappling with in the 70s.

Gladiator was released after the end of the Cold War and showed an empire that had lost its sense of purpose after conquering the last of its enemies, turning to bread and circuses to occupy the masses.

300 shows the heroic last stand of warriors representing Western Civilization against the wicked forces of Persia, just as America was expanding its War on Terror into Iraq and the surrounding regions.

The Odyssey is about the deterioration of norms, especially those governing international relations, leading to a decline into a new age of barbarism. That's deliberately meant to call to mind the state of the modern world, and that's OK. A straight adaptation with no themes relevant to our world would actually be more of an anomaly than the version Christopher Nolan gave us.

1

u/PhobicDestroyer Sep 11 '26

That’s so interesting I didn’t get that read at all. I took it as the gods were “real” and I loved the fact that in this telling Odysseus regrets the Trojan Horse.

1

u/GonzoTheGreat93 Sep 11 '26

To be fair, 90% of what Nolan writes has all the subtlety of a hammer to the skull, so looking for 'implied' seems pretty redundant.

"Our age of Bronze is ending" isn't exactly the kind of line that makes you think "this movie has subtext."

0

u/MusicianNo3277 Sep 11 '26

Because Nolan thinks he’s the best ever and can make any story anything and everybody will eat it up and unfortunately, he’s right about at least the last part.

Personally I think it would be even cooler if he managed to do an actual one-to-one recreation and still pulled it off. Of course it’s old. That’s the point that’s the challenge. You don’t have to add a bunch of modern shit. You just have to smooth out the rough patches.

0

u/brockton_af Sep 11 '26

because he wanted to lay the blame on mans shoulders. it doesnt hit though because man exhaunerates himself at the end.

-2

u/-Mac-n-Cheese- Sep 11 '26

yeah i agree, theree were a lot of design choices that made me cringe ngl,

also im tired of zendaya being in every fucking movie ever, can we please get a new “young beautiful girl” that doesnt get shoehorned into every movie for 10 years

3

u/TalShar Sep 11 '26

I did enjoy that that was ambiguous. Was Athena appearing to him as the priestess he murdered, or was he seeing her ghost, either literally or metaphorically, and attributing it to Athena? I also like that the last time he sees her is when he is finished confessing to Penelope. Delightful narrative devices abound in that movie. 

2

u/SuperFanboysTV Sep 11 '26

Yeah I got that impression too as some form of guilt and PTSD over the horrors he saw/helped unleash

2

u/YourEvilKiller Sep 11 '26

I think it's a mix of both, since it's clear that the greek gods are watching Odysseus and they work in mysterious ways in the movie. Athena also gave him information that he wouldn't know on his own.

1

u/keelanbarron Sep 11 '26

Fair enough.

2

u/themolestedsliver Sep 11 '26

I think its left to be ambiguous.

Like i definitely understand and agree with a bit of that interpretation. But there was also a lot of focus on "Zeus' Law. The stranger asking for food could be a god in disguise"

So the female priestess could be Athena in disguise.

Also there is enough fantascal stuff him actually seeing athena in that form truly wouldnt be that impossible.

1

u/Jelly__Cloud Sep 11 '26

I'm still on the verge. Sometimes I think it was Athena appearing in the form of one of her killed priestesses to remind Odysseus of his sin, and sometimes I think "Athena" is the manifestation of his guilt.

1

u/International-Dig411 Sep 11 '26

I was arguing with myself about this while on a date. She was confused about why zendaya kept showing up and it took like 30 mins to explain how it could be one or the other

1

u/Android_mk Sep 11 '26

I always interpreted it as that was his guilt of killing the priest

1

u/MikasSlime Sep 11 '26

which is lowkey worse because Odysseus was a little shit and considered the horse thing his magnum opus of war strategy