I guess I will be the first here to say I really didn’t like it. Some of the stuff I have come to expect from a Nolan film unfortunately, like the weak dialogue and awful sound mix, but this time the most egregious thing by far was the way the film was put together up until Odysseus returned to Ithaca. There was no nuance at all to the direction, it was like 90 - 120 minutes straight of endless noise, short shots, action sequences and that horrible, dissonant score. It desperately needed some actual quiet scenes and the music to fuck off for five seconds to break things up and give me a moment to process what was happening.

The first genuinely quiet scene in the film I can remember is when Odysseus speaks to Athena on the beach. I believe that was right before Odysseus returned to Ithaca, and everything from when he got back was great. It felt like I was watching an actual normal film and not a 2 hour sizzler trailer. I had a similar problem with Oppenheimer and Tenet, but this was a way more extreme example made a million times worse by the soundtrack being far worse than in either of those films.

I think the concept of the film was pretty interesting, I liked the way the trials almost felt like a horror film with the ratcheting up of tension followed by explosions of violence and fear. But it so badly needed some short reprieves and there just none to be found. There were scenes in the palace, on the beach with Calypso, and on the ocean that could have served this purpose but there was always something - the obnoxiously loud water fountain, the waves being too forward in the mix, the camera shaking, the score blasting away in the background, etc - that prevented them from working in this way.

Clearly I am in the minority, but at this point I think this guy has to be the most overrated director in Hollywood. His films have shared this problem for a while but it’s clearly getting worse and after three strikes in a row I don’t think I’ll bother with the cinema next time around. It’s like he has forgotten how to make a good film and has instead become obsessed with this quest to one-up the “experience” by making each film more an even more ridiculous assault on the viewer’s senses than the last.