Getting real weird in here. In all honesty, as much as we've butted heads on some threads and gone round and round, if I gave you the impression it's personal, that was my mistake. I have issues with some things on here, but you're an Ag out in LA living your dream and I got nothing but love for you (despite annoying you). Mea culpa for being a jerk to you.

Thread back to the movie, 3 of my better friends from back home saw it last night and we were all texting back and forth. It was split. 1 of them said it was his favorite movie of the year, 1 of them liked it but said it was mid-tier Nolan for him, and one of them just didn't enjoy it. None of them are particularly political so the wokeness/lack thereof probably didn't factor in. One thing that stuck out was the one who enjoyed it the least still said he was glad he saw it, just for the visuals. Compared it to Avatar in saying he didn't connect with the characters or care about the narrative going on very much so just kind of basked in the Nolan visuals.

ETA one thing they all agreed on was at times the sound being overpowering, to the point of having to plug their ears.

bump

ttt

Cliff, I have been following your posts in this thread. I agree with most of them, and I have no respect whatsoever for TCTTS due to his years of absolute **** posting here and defending every piece of subversive left wing propaganda that comes out of Hollywood. I also hate the blatant lie that is the trans agenda, as well as DEI in all contexts.

That being said, my wife (who is as conservative, anti-feminist, anti-trans, and anti-DEI as a woman can possibly be) and I saw it this afternoon. We both thought it was really, really good. I would have to give it about an 8.5/10 honestly.

Caveat: I think Nolan deserves to be excoriated for the Paige casting even more now that I've seen the movie. The way Sinon played into the plot was good, and it deserved an actual young male actor that they would have been comfortable giving more screen time to and developing more, because the end would have hit even harder when it paid off. But since they cast Paige, I'm glad she didn't get any more screen time than necessary because she's awful. I just wish somebody else had gotten that role. That's the only obviously bad casting choice and most of the reason I don't give this a 10/10. But it wasn't enough to ruin the movie.

I did not think the movie dragged. I thought it was cohesive, and it was a lot more faithful to the original poem than I expected. Great movie other than the Paige casting. There were audio issues, but again it didn't ruin the movie.

Edit: after some reflection, I'll go 8.5 instead of 9. Still a great movie.

Interesting observations, glad y'all ended up liking it! From what they were describing last night I think I'll likely be on the same page as my friend who liked it / didn't love it.

Part of my deal with movies like this is that I can't help but not just judge the movie it is, but the movie I think it could have been, if that makes sense. Nolan's talent, with the budget, with the source material, with the ability to cast whomever he wants, for me I can envision a different type of Odyssey that I would have preferred, but obviously a director is going to make what they want to make.

This movie may be great but is it really Return of the King Great? Are we honestly expected to believe this?

The Odyssey has officially overtaken The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King on Rotten Tomatoes.

Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey sits at 95% reviews, edging past The Return of the King, which holds 94%.

On the audience side, The Odyssey also leads so far with a 97%… pic.twitter.com/Gfrjd8qnVt

— Pirat_Nation 🔴 (@Pirat_Nation) July 18, 2026

Return of the King isn't even the best LOTR movie.

AozorAg said:

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and I have no respect whatsoever for TCTTS due to his years of absolute **** posting here and defending every piece of subversive left wing propaganda that comes out of Hollywood.

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Cliff.Booth said:

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Interesting observations, glad y'all ended up liking it! From what they were describing last night I think I'll likely be on the same page as my friend who liked it / didn't love it.

Part of my deal with movies like this is that I can't help but not just judge the movie it is, but the movie I think it could have been, if that makes sense. Nolan's talent, with the budget, with the source material, with the ability to cast whomever he wants, for me I can envision a different type of Odyssey that I would have preferred, but obviously a director is going to make what they want to make.

---

If you want to go down that road, there was certainly an opportunity to make this one of the greatest movies of all time. It would have involved casting unknown actors who could have really become the characters instead of Damon, Hathaway, Paige, and Bernthal, and probably others. It's for sure a missed opportunity o make a movie that would live in Hollywood lore for decades, but still a great summer blockbuster.

I find it funny how seriously some people take Rotten Tomatoes. It's a simple binary scoring system: Bad or Good. That's it. If you had 400 reviews of 3/5 stars versus another movie with 5/5 stars, they would be basically ranked the same on Rotten Tomatoes.

The audience score needs time to settle in. The critic score is basically irrelevant, for me. The difference between a 90% and a 96% can simply be a few blowhards who didn't like the "lack of representation" in the LotR, or some other bull**** like that.

But also, I agree with the above poster, Return of the King is not the best movie of the trilogy.

CharleyKerfeld said:

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Return of the King isn't even the best LOTR movie.

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Dos Towers no doubt...

Return of the King was the best until the 45 minute ending.

TyHolden said:

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CharleyKerfeld said:

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Return of the King isn't even the best LOTR movie.

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Dos Towers no doubt...

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TTT has my favorite character in abundance (Theoden) and my favorite track (King of the Golden Hall), but FOTR is the most complete movie IMO.

I think all the rating systems are so skewed they're basically pointless. When movies become political lightning rods like this one, a lot of people want to establish it RIGHT AWAY as movie of the decade or absolute trash, and it's usually neither. I feel like these days you can really only tell a movie's true worth 3-4 years out when you can start to get a sense of its cultural impact, rewatchability, etc. Hoping to see it mid-week if I can.

TyHolden said:

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CharleyKerfeld said:

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Return of the King isn't even the best LOTR movie.

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Dos Towers no doubt...

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Try again.

TyHolden said:

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CharleyKerfeld said:

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Return of the King isn't even the best LOTR movie.

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Dos Towers no doubt...

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FOTR is easily the best.

Brian Earl Spilner said:

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TyHolden said:

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CharleyKerfeld said:

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Return of the King isn't even the best LOTR movie.

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Dos Towers no doubt...

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Try again.

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Is this how this works?

Scoreboard baby!!!

Most people complaining about the casting in Nolan’s Odyssey don’t fully understand what they’re objecting to because it's deeper than they realize: As such, I'll explain.

The unease they feel runs deeper than superficial complaints about “realism” or skin tone. What they can't… https://t.co/B8RpsMF6zC

— Dvorstone (@dvorstone) July 18, 2026

Cliff.Booth said:

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Getting real weird in here. In all honesty, as much as we've butted heads on some threads and gone round and round, if I gave you the impression it's personal, that was my mistake. I have issues with some things on here, but you're an Ag out in LA living your dream and I got nothing but love for you (despite annoying you). Mea culpa for being a jerk to you.

---

AozorAg said:

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Cliff.Booth said:

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Interesting observations, glad y'all ended up liking it! From what they were describing last night I think I'll likely be on the same page as my friend who liked it / didn't love it.

Part of my deal with movies like this is that I can't help but not just judge the movie it is, but the movie I think it could have been, if that makes sense. Nolan's talent, with the budget, with the source material, with the ability to cast whomever he wants, for me I can envision a different type of Odyssey that I would have preferred, but obviously a director is going to make what they want to make.

---

If you want to go down that road, there was certainly an opportunity to make this one of the greatest movies of all time. It would have involved casting unknown actors who could have really become the characters instead of Damon, Hathaway, Paige, and Bernthal, and probably others. It's for sure a missed opportunity o make a movie that would live in Hollywood lore for decades, but still a great summer blockbuster.

---

I had to put my review on the Spoilers thread, but I didn't make this comment but thought it. I think this movie had too many brand names in it. It was hard at times to stay immersed simply because these actors are so well known.

In the theater... see yall after 9.

AozorAg said:

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Cliff, I have been following your posts in this thread. I agree with most of them, and I have no respect whatsoever for TCTTS due to his years of absolute **** posting here and defending every piece of subversive left wing propaganda that comes out of Hollywood. I also hate the blatant lie that is the trans agenda, as well as DEI in all contexts.

That being said, my wife (who is as conservative, anti-feminist, anti-trans, and anti-DEI as a woman can possibly be) and I saw it this afternoon. We both thought it was really, really good. I would have to give it a 9/10 honestly.

Caveat: I think Nolan deserves to be excoriated for the Paige casting even more now that I've seen the movie. The way Sinon played into the plot was good, and it deserved an actual young male actor that they would have been comfortable giving more screen time to and developing more, because the end would have hit even harder when it paid off. But since they cast Paige, I'm glad she didn't get any more screen time than necessary because she's awful. I just wish somebody else had gotten that role. That's the only obviously bad casting choice and most of the reason I don't give this a 10/10. But it wasn't enough to ruin the movie.

I did not think the movie dragged. I thought it was cohesive, and it was a lot more faithful to the original poem than I expected. Great movie other than the Paige casting. There were audio issues, but again it didn't ruin the movie.

---

Complete and utter fever dream nonsense. Good lord, dude. And people think I'm overly dramatic.

This is what happens when you frequent one of the most devout, right-leaning havens on the internet. Your worldview becomes so distorted that anyone who either isn't 100% in line with your ideology, or is even perceived as being halfway sympathetic to two or three center-left social issues, is basically seen as the devil.

What's even more hilarious is that, just a few days ago, in this very thread, I literally talked all about how I'm vehemently opposed to extreme trans ideology and think DEI quotas are worthless/performative. Never mind that I've said countless times on this board I primarily vote Republican. I just didn't vote for Trump, that's all.

But because, in your extremely online, extremely conservative worldview, you're capable only of seeing me as some crazed Hollywood lib, and thus you're basically incapable of processing my reality, which is grounded far more nuance, subtlety, and certain grays, while also ultimately more right-leaning than left.

Holy hell, dude.

Prettay

Prettay

Prettay

Pretty good.

Top-tier gif work.

Christopher Nolan considered giving the gods a much larger presence in THE ODYSSEY before deciding against it.

“It’s not so much about trying to be realistic. It’s just trying to see the gods the way these characters would have seen them.” pic.twitter.com/30ueftLTO0

— cinesthetic. (@TheCinesthetic) July 18, 2026

That's one of the aspects that I most wondered how a dude like Nolan would handle (or avoid handling). Depicting a deity the way the ancients would have imagined them is tough to pull off. One of the only ones I've ever like was the way Eggers did it in Northman. That went from a gritty, real world to balls-tripping visuals of their gods in an awesome way.

This same Rotten Tomatoes Paul? https://t.co/Tz7VcdG5RY pic.twitter.com/LyKcL36FMR

— Perma Banned ထ🔨 (@GiveMeBanHammer) July 18, 2026

TCTTS said:

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AozorAg said:

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Cliff, I have been following your posts in this thread. I agree with most of them, and I have no respect whatsoever for TCTTS due to his years of absolute **** posting here and defending every piece of subversive left wing propaganda that comes out of Hollywood. I also hate the blatant lie that is the trans agenda, as well as DEI in all contexts.

That being said, my wife (who is as conservative, anti-feminist, anti-trans, and anti-DEI as a woman can possibly be) and I saw it this afternoon. We both thought it was really, really good. I would have to give it a 9/10 honestly.

Caveat: I think Nolan deserves to be excoriated for the Paige casting even more now that I've seen the movie. The way Sinon played into the plot was good, and it deserved an actual young male actor that they would have been comfortable giving more screen time to and developing more, because the end would have hit even harder when it paid off. But since they cast Paige, I'm glad she didn't get any more screen time than necessary because she's awful. I just wish somebody else had gotten that role. That's the only obviously bad casting choice and most of the reason I don't give this a 10/10. But it wasn't enough to ruin the movie.

I did not think the movie dragged. I thought it was cohesive, and it was a lot more faithful to the original poem than I expected. Great movie other than the Paige casting. There were audio issues, but again it didn't ruin the movie.

---

Complete and utter fever dream nonsense. Good lord, dude. And people think I'm overly dramatic.

This is what happens when you frequent one of the most devout, right-leaning havens on the internet. Your worldview becomes so distorted that anyone who either isn't 100% in line with your ideology, or is even perceived as being halfway sympathetic to two or three center-left social issues, is basically seen as the devil.

What's even more hilarious is that, just a few days ago, in this very thread, I literally talked all about how I'm vehemently opposed to extreme trans ideology and think DEI quotas are worthless/performative. Never mind that I've said countless times on this board I primarily vote Republican. I just didn't vote for Trump, that's all.

But because, in your extremely online, extremely conservative worldview, you're capable only of seeing me as some crazed Hollywood lib, and thus you're basically incapable of processing my reality, which is grounded far more nuance, subtlety, and certain grays, while also ultimately more right-leaning than left.

Holy hell, dude.

---

I have an objective, truth-based worldview, which is why I am conservative.

You don't have your own reality. There is only one reality. I've seen enough of your posts over the years to know that you don't live in it.

Holy *****

easily the best performance in The Odyssey pic.twitter.com/v5oIqjvQip

— Trung Phan (@TrungTPhan) July 18, 2026

Okay.

Oh yeah….one other issue I have with this movie and why I can't say it's a 10/10. Without spoiling anything, whatever Nolan was attempting to do with Athena/Zendaya appeared to serve basically no purpose. Again, didn't ruin the movie at all, but I don't know what she was supposed to contribute to the story. She was unnecessary.

Look Cliff & TC, you guys can't suddenly start getting along on Page 104 and ruin the thread for everyone else.

AzorAg isn't going to be able to be a worthy foil for TC. it's like in Blade when Wesley Snipes fights Deacon Frost in the rirst one and you have no idea who will win, but then in the second one they roll out Jared Nomak. Nomak has some creepy powers, but he's a sequel villain. We're here for the original.

You know the movie is shit when they are paying people to say its good 🤣 https://t.co/wdIRhdfYfc pic.twitter.com/NKHUSMhTxF

— 0HOUR1 (@__0HOUR1_) July 18, 2026

I enjoy arguing, and sometimes I say **** in jest that probably comes across the wrong way, but I am not cut out to play that part because IRL even if I disagree with someone on a lot of things I really don't get a bang out of tearing someone down personally. I did some of that on this thread at times and I shouldn't have. Charles, you will have to create a new handle and be the TC nemesis you dream of.

Couldn't disagree with this take more. What they do with Athena in the movie is A+ storytelling, IMO.