Letterboxd
I last read the odyssey in high school. I have no idea which edition of it that was. This is something different.
I think two things really distracted me in the film.
On Odysseus's cognition:
In the book Neuromancer there are two AI's, Wintermute and Neuromancer. Neuromancer is designed for long term planning, where Wintermute is designed for improvisation in the moment. I think that might be the first book I ever read where I genuinely thought about there being different types of intelligence. When I read the Odyssey, I remember thinking that Odysseus has more of a Wintermute type of intelligence. He is "clever" in the moment. He is fast to act and react. You could feel it in the book: this was a guy who would act rather than wait and see in many situations. Odysseus would opportunistically deal with problems as they occured, rather than debate them. Not that he was flippant; he did have the ability to keep long term goals in mind (good job on those sacred cattle). He has restraint, but I felt his core intelligence is that he is GREAT in the moment.
My mental image of Nolan's Odysseus felt like an old man kicking a broken air conditioner. It's hot, he's tired, he just wants to get home. I just couldn't feel his raw opportunistic intelligence, it felt more like a war veteran story than the story of a man who takes life by the throat at every opportunity. Who relishes the intimacy of close quarter decision making.
On Playmobilling his personality:
In the book, I'm pretty sue he basically just kills everyone in the hall. I'm pretty sure he even kills the women who slept with the men who were in the hall. Odysseus, was not a nice man. He was honorable and perhaps even ethical by his society's standards (I'm not sure that had the same meaning as it does in modern times), but he was really brutal.
When you put the book and character's actions in this context but attempt to explore them with a modern worldview it just comes off a little confusing. I think they should have either given Odyseus a modern worldview and also updated his actions to reflect modern sensibilities or kept his brutality, honor and worldview intact and done their best to get us to understand how people at that time thought (even if we disagree). The compromise leaves you feeling a "negative space" that is hard to ignore.