‘The Odyssey’ Is Massive and Magnificent

Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time. On today’s show, Sean and Amanda cover the biggest movie event of the year, Christopher Nolan’s highly anticipated ‘The Odyssey.’ Before entering their wooden horse to ambush the gates of Troy, they react to some movie news, including ‘The Batman Part II’ being delayed (again), some fall film festival lineup announcements, and more. Then, they kick off their deep dive into this legitimately levitating epic. They make the case for why it’s the perfect Christopher Nolan movie, highlight the pivotal decision to cast Matt Damon as Odysseus, and predict its box office and Academy Awards chances. (0:00) Intro (1:11) Movie news (22:37) ‘The Odyssey’ deep dive (1:51:32) Box office and Oscar predictions Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Producer: Jack Sanders Production Support: Lucas Cavanagh It’s on Prime. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:16Sean Fennessey?

  I'm Sean Finacy. I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about a face, a fleet, a war, a man. Today, we are diving deep into Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey, the movie mega event that will no doubt be the biggest film of 2026, but will it be the best? We will discuss the scale of this Titanic feat, the adaptation of Homer's epic poem, the performances from one of the most loaded casts in recent movie history, why now for this story, and the fate of Nolan's 13th feature film at the box office, the Academy Awards, and beyond. But first, we'll talk about some movie news right after this.

• 1:52Sean Fennessey?

  This episode of The Big Picture is presented by Amazon Prime. One of the best things about streaming is that you never just pick a title, you pick a feeling. And Prime makes that easy with great entertainment and fast shipping that brings the moment to life. Prime helps you experience the feeling you're craving, shows you can't wait for, and deliveries you don't wait for. One click away from streaming to fast shipping. It's on Prime.

• 2:11Amanda Dobbins?

  You like that improv?

• 2:12Sean Fennessey?

  That was really good.

• 2:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Give me some props.

• 2:14Sean Fennessey?

  That was really good.

• 2:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Give me props.

• 2:15Sean Fennessey?

  It's called teamwork. It's teamwork. We made the dream work. Uh, let's talk about some news. I, you know, there's a lot of news. I think most people who are coming to this episode don't care about the news. They'll tell us about the Odyssey, but um, some of these things matter to us. The behemoth trailer was released. This is Tony Gilroy's new film, much discussed on our recent movie auction. And you say what?

• 2:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, very little dialogue in this movie.

• 2:36Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, I noticed that.

• 2:37Amanda Dobbins?

  For a Tony Gilroy movie, I was, I don't, you know, obviously, uh, this is a movie about a musician or several musicians and-

• 2:45Sean Fennessey?

  A cellist, it appears.

• 2:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Gilroy has commissioned a lot of original music from many different composers. So I understand why they wanted to get the score in there, but I do come to Tony Gilroy for dialogue. And so I couldn't tell whether this was just featuring something different about the film or hiding the ball. I realized also that half of this cast is sort of a black licorice cast for me.

• 3:10Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, no.

• 3:10Amanda Dobbins?

  I know, which I didn't really think through, but once they have Will Arnett at the door, you know, doing wisecracks, I don't know. We'll see.

• 3:18Sean Fennessey?

  Will Arnett got more dialogue than Pedro Pascal in this teaser trailer. You know, I was, I, it's Tony Gilroy.

• 3:25Amanda Dobbins?

  I go where Tony Gilroy goes, except, uh, he does not go to Venice, but I do. That's fine.

• 3:29Sean Fennessey?

  That's really interesting about half of the cast being black licorice. What, I'm excited about this movie. It did, I did think as I was watching it, I wonder how much more I would like this if it was Oscarized instead of Pedro Pascal, um, because he was originally meant to be cast. But you know what? We'll talk about this movie again in one moment. Um, I play Rocky. This trailer also premiered. This is a biopic of Sylvester Stallone in the moments when he, uh, was writing and attempting to be cast in the film Rocky. And our friend Tracy Letts is in this movie. We've been hearing about this movie for, I've been hearing about it from him from well over a year. And you say what?

• 4:03Amanda Dobbins?

  I look forward to seeing it. We saw some of this at CinemaCon and the casting of Sylvester Stallone matters. Great. The movie hangs on that and it was pretty plausible to me.

• 4:17Sean Fennessey?

  The actor, yeah, Anthony Appolito, who, you know, I guess most memorably played Al Pacino in the Paramount Plus series, The Offer.

• 4:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 4:25Sean Fennessey?

  And so now he's pivoting from Al Pacino to Sylvester Stallone. I would say different archetypes of Italian American actors, but I guess they're related, 70s icons. You know, Rocky, never my franchise. We've talked about that before on the pod, but the film looks familiar and a bit like a ham sandwich to me. And sometimes a ham sandwich is delicious. And sometimes I'm like, ham? Couldn't this be chicken? What about turkey?

• 4:50Amanda Dobbins?

  There were a couple old fashioned movies that we were previewed at CinemaCon that are dated for the Thanksgiving to Christmas corridor.

• 4:59Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 5:00Amanda Dobbins?

  And they seem to feature, you know, white men of a certain age set in the 70s and 80s and I-

• 5:08Sean Fennessey?

  Underdogs.

• 5:09Amanda Dobbins?

  And I think they're gonna play very well. I get it because they understand what they have and they understand when to play it, which is the holidays. And, you know, will I watch I Play Rocky with my father? Probably. Same for, I'm referencing the-

• 5:24Sean Fennessey?

  Mr. Irrelevant.

• 5:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Mr. Irrelevant starring David Kornspat, AKA Superman.

• 5:30Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 5:30Amanda Dobbins?

  AKA the star of Supergirl. Sorry.

• 5:33Sean Fennessey?

  He plays John Tuggle, who was the last man drafted in, I can't remember what year, maybe 1980. And they're very similar sounding stories.

• 5:40Amanda Dobbins?

  So I think ham sandwich is fine, but you know, as you said, once a year, you're good with a ham sandwich? Maybe twice a year, Thanksgiving and Christmas?

• 5:48Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I think that's right. It's usually the morning after a holiday and that's when most people will see these movies. Okay, the uprising trailer. This is Paul Greengrass's new feature film starring Andrew Garfield. It's gonna be an Andrew Garfield fall at the movies.

• 6:00Amanda Dobbins?

  It always is for me.

• 6:02Sean Fennessey?

  Is it?

• 6:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. I'm very open and very pro.

• 6:06Sean Fennessey?

  So this movie is, I guess it's an action film. It's about the peasants revolt in England in 1381, which I know you were a part of and helped engineer. So having seen, like, what's it like to see yourself on screen?

• 6:20Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, Andrew Garfield, a fellow Leo with an equally beautiful mane of hair. So I, we appreciate that representation. You know, how many middle age, like middle ages fight sequences do I need to see in my lifetime? I'm not sure.

• 6:37Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 6:38Amanda Dobbins?

  But for those people who are excited about it, this looks pretty good. Paul Greengrass, accomplished.

• 6:44Sean Fennessey?

  A very accomplished director. I had him on the show for News of the World during COVID, which is a film that feels like it doesn't exist anymore, but pretty good movie. And, but we have not spent a ton of time dissecting his filmography. I'm not sure if this film will be a reason to do so. Comes out September 11th. I suspect it will be a part of the Fall Film Festival conversation. And, and maybe we should have that conversation.

• 7:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 7:06Sean Fennessey?

  Quickly, before we do that, a couple of very fast movie news things. One, the Batman Part Two is delayed again to 2028.

• 7:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 7:13Sean Fennessey?

  So someone on X, the everything app, pointed out that Christopher Nolan has made like six movies between the time of Matt Reeves making one Batman movie and another Batman movie.

• 7:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 7:26Sean Fennessey?

  Not ideal.

• 7:28Amanda Dobbins?

  People work differently. I, I don't relate. I'm way more type A, I'm way more Christopher Nolan than this. But you know, some people have a elastic relationship to time, including many Christopher Nolan protagonists.

• 7:40Sean Fennessey?

  So it's true. It's a good point. J.J. Abrams' film, The Great Beyond, also moved back a year. So there was some shuffling going on for Warner Brothers. That now is opening October of 2027 instead of in November. Apparently, Jack of Spades, the Joel Cohen film is, which still does not have a distributor, will not be at the Fall Film Festivals and is probably not coming out until 2027. I have it in the auction. That's not ideal.

• 8:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, it's an ideal fear. What's going on with Thanksgiving?

• 8:05Sean Fennessey?

  With films?

• 8:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. Nobody wants it. What, why, I, again, I just, I mean, I play Rocky wants it, but that's kind of it.

• 8:13Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, Hext is coming out.

• 8:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 8:15Sean Fennessey?

  The Disney original animated film. Do I fear it?

• 8:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 8:19Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's a, it's, I think originals are a tough sell. I think Focker in Law is going to be the winner.

• 8:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 8:24Sean Fennessey?

  I think that's the big, I mean, Cliff Booth, depending on if people decide to go see that film in IMAX theaters. But I think Focker in Law, Focker in Law feels very similar to me to The Devil Wears Prada 2, where it's like, you forget the impact of these films on multiple generations of moviegoers. Not movie snobs, just moviegoers.

• 8:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, but it just, it does also seem. Like it's rich for counter programming?

• 8:47Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 8:48Amanda Dobbins?

  And I, again, I don't understand why Dune and Avengers are on the same day still. I don't understand why everyone keeps clearing things, saying something, something weird is happening.

• 8:56Sean Fennessey?

  My personal obsession is the absence of a big film on December 4th.

• 9:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 9:00Sean Fennessey?

  This is the one where I'm like, the only movie that's scheduled for December 4th right now is Violent Night Two, which is the, what if Santa were an action hero movie starring David Harbour? I actually kind of liked the original, but seems like maybe a bigger movie should be on that date.

• 9:13Amanda Dobbins?

  I, I don't understand.

• 9:16Sean Fennessey?

  Also got some news that Clockwork, the new Warner Brothers imprint that is helping to re-release, Ken Russell's The Devils, has its second original film coming at some point after Sean Baker's Tiamo. That's going to be Mary Bronstein's film Nasty, a reunion with Rose Byrne, and apparently Jenna Ortega is going to be in it.

• 9:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Wonderful.

• 9:36Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, good stuff. This is exactly what Clockwork should be doing. You know, in the newsletter this week, I wrote about Touchstone Pictures, which was once an imprint of the Walt Disney Company.

• 9:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 9:47Sean Fennessey?

  And they released movies for grownups that were not animated usually and that I do think that the studios, as we're in this time of mass conglomeration, should keep developing these, these little sub branches. Obviously, Universal has Focus. Nice to see Clockwork making more movies. Okay, speaking of fall film festivals.

• 10:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 10:08Sean Fennessey?

  Got a raft of announcements this morning. This is a very busy time of the year for us. Basically, the first week of September through November is pretty intense in terms of the number of movies that we're trying to go see.

• 10:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Exactly.

• 10:17Sean Fennessey?

  Tell people about on the show, thinking about the awards races over the, you know, ensuing three months after that. You're going to Venice this year?

• 10:24Amanda Dobbins?

  I am.

• 10:25Sean Fennessey?

  God willing.

• 10:26Amanda Dobbins?

  No, it's all, I, I got my accreditation. I almost forgot.

• 10:29Sean Fennessey?

  But what if you get struck by lightning?

• 10:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, in that case, I won't be there. Unless the lightning carries me to Venice, which is, I understand, one of its properties.

• 10:37Sean Fennessey?

  If you're Shazam, I think that is one of its properties. Uh, the opening film announced Danny Boyle's Inc.

• 10:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Cool. Pretty good. I'm excited.

• 10:46Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I think that's.

• 10:48Amanda Dobbins?

  So I had arranged my travel plans to be able to be there for opening day, which is sometimes a gamble. Because the opening night film is not always.

• 10:56Sean Fennessey?

  What were some recent ones?

• 10:57Amanda Dobbins?

  The strongest, well, um, La Grazia.

• 11:00Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, wasn't a big fan of that one.

• 11:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. And then Challengers was supposed to open, but then it was waylaid by the strikes. And so there was another, you know, I think that the Cannes opening night film festival was not totally memorable.

• 11:15Sean Fennessey?

  That's usually a French film.

• 11:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 11:17Sean Fennessey?

  Made in the French industry.

• 11:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Sometimes programming waiting for people to show up.

• 11:20Sean Fennessey?

  Right.

• 11:20Amanda Dobbins?

  So I was maybe going to adjust my schedule, but I, I will be there in, in time to see Inc., which is great.

• 11:26Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. It's a biopic of a young Rupert Murdoch. I think, is it when he's operating in Australia or is it when he moves to London?

• 11:33Amanda Dobbins?

  I think it's when he purchases The Sun.

• 11:35Sean Fennessey?

  Ah, interesting.

• 11:36Amanda Dobbins?

  I believe so, or, or one of the tabloids. So I think it involves his move to the UK and to Fleet Street.

• 11:42Sean Fennessey?

  So Jack O'Connell plays Murdoch.

• 11:44Amanda Dobbins?

  No, no, no. Jack O'Connell plays a young journalist. Guy Pearce.

• 11:48Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 11:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Plays Murdoch.

• 11:49Sean Fennessey?

  Right. Which is even better, honestly.

• 11:51Amanda Dobbins?

  And then, and then my girl Claire Foy.

• 11:53Sean Fennessey?

  Huge for you.

• 11:54Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm, listen, really, really excited. Claire Foy, you want to get in the grony, let me know.

• 11:59Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. We will need photo evidence of that if it happens. Um, this is good news for you because you, you've been taking some arrows on the Venice lineup over the last couple of weeks.

• 12:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Listen, so I, the artificial was not submitted to any film festivals, though there were oblique suggestions that maybe it will be the secret at the New York Film Festival, à la Marty Supreme. I, I think it's cowardly not to go to Venice, but that's just me.

• 12:23Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, in addition to artificial, the Social Reckoning also is not going.

• 12:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Because it looks like a disaster, which I've been saying since last year. Like, come on. I, me seeing the social network, the Social Reckoning jet lagged alone in Venice is like great comedic value, great podcast gold, but otherwise that's fine. If they need to reshoot it and make it better, okay, by me.

• 12:45Sean Fennessey?

  Is there any world where the Social Reckoning gets pushed off its October 9th date after news of those reshoots? It is July 16th.

• 12:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure. Uh, yes. I mean, everything seems very fluid. And again, I just, I don't understand what's going on with the fall schedule.

• 13:00Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, it seems a little rickety at the moment. There was also news that Behemoth, aforementioned, will not be at the Venice Film Festival, which is bully for me.

• 13:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, because then you get it at Telluride.

• 13:11Sean Fennessey?

  Seems like that means it's a Telluride movie, which is pretty exciting. Um, guesses for Venice. I wrote down a couple of movies that I just, in my gut, I'm like, I think these movies are gonna go. And what I wrote down is Cry to Heaven, Tom Ford's next film, which seems likely.

• 13:25Amanda Dobbins?

  He's been out and about. He was at Wimbledon, um, sitting next to Anna a lot, but just that, I mean, you know, Tom Ford is a man about town, but being more visible just signals to me that the film is coming.

• 13:41Sean Fennessey?

  He's about to make a run. Um, we talked about Here Comes the Flood, the upcoming Denzel Washington, Robert Pattinson thriller from Netflix recently.

• 13:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 13:48Sean Fennessey?

  That seems like a movie that could be there, very starry.

• 13:50Amanda Dobbins?

  I think so.

• 13:51Sean Fennessey?

  Cliff Booth?

• 13:52Amanda Dobbins?

  It can always happen. Fincher has taken his films there. He likes it.

• 13:56Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, The Killer played there most recently, and you saw it there. Wild Horse 9 feels like a possibility, maybe even a likely entrant. That's Martin McDonagh's new movie starring John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell. I wrote down Florian Zeller's Bunker, which Sony Pictures Classics picked up. This is the filmmaker behind The Father and the Son. This movie is not called The Holy Spirit, it's called Bunker. Wasn't a big fan of The Father and the Son.

• 14:19Amanda Dobbins?

  The Father was better than the Son, and I think if The Father had not taken away Chadwick Boseman's Oscar, then we would feel better about it. But that was, that was just...

• 14:31Sean Fennessey?

  I was on the record before that even happened of not really liking The Father. I thought it was a bit of a manipulative film. Nevertheless, Andrew Hayes, A Long Winter also feels like a possibility. That also feels like maybe a Telluride movie. All of Us Strangers, did it play both? Did it play Venice and Telluride? I can't recall.

• 14:45Amanda Dobbins?

  I can't, I didn't see it in Venice, so.

• 14:48Sean Fennessey?

  Um, and then maybe Primetime, the A24 film starring Pattinson. Telluride guesses, does feel like Behemoth is happening. It feels like Bucking Faster, the new Werner Herzog movie starring Rooney and Kate Mara as twin sisters who do everything exactly alike, which I'm very intrigued by.

• 15:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 15:05Sean Fennessey?

  Was, I guess, not rejected from Cannes, but rejected from competition.

• 15:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 15:09Sean Fennessey?

  And so apparently Herzog said, I'm not playing in director's fortnight, I'm fucking Werner Herzog.

• 15:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 15:14Sean Fennessey?

  Um, especially given what we see, we saw at Cannes in competition. Bit of a curious choice.

• 15:19Amanda Dobbins?

  I agree.

• 15:19Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, maybe Jesse Eisenberg's the debut.

• 15:22Amanda Dobbins?

  That would make a lot of sense.

• 15:23Sean Fennessey?

  Maybe The Uprising, maybe?

• 15:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Maybe?

• 15:28Sean Fennessey?

  Looks a little intense and big, but you know Ford versus Ferrari played there occasionally. Sort of these like heavily mounted studio movies will play there. And then some of the other films that I mentioned that are also eligible.

• 15:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, they'll do the jumps, they'll do the first few days at Venice and then.

• 15:40Sean Fennessey?

  You can see Bunker or A Long Winter or Primetime Coming Over. TIFF has also been making a wave of announcements, we've just returned from Toronto. Sean Hader's first movie since Coda won Best Picture, Being Human, which is an Apple movie, was announced as the opening gala film. Then a second wave of announcements came today, Alpha Gang with Cate Blanchett. That's the Zellner Brothers' new movie. Your Mother, Your Mother, Your Mother with Mahershala Ali, Basim Tarak's Tarak's movie, which was going to be the team that was going to make Blade. Then Marvel said no to Blade, and then so they made this movie instead. And then a movie, Love of Your Life with Margaret Qualley and Patrick Schwarzenegger, directed by Rachel Morrison, which is an Amazon MGM release. Did you know this movie was happening?

• 16:24Amanda Dobbins?

  I did not.

• 16:24Sean Fennessey?

  It's coming out in October.

• 16:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 16:26Sean Fennessey?

  That's also premiering there. Guesses for TIFF.

• 16:31Sean Fennessey?

  What do you think of my guesses?

• 16:32Amanda Dobbins?

  This is really good. And number one, makes sense and lines up with what I've heard where it will not be. And it's Ben Affleck's animals. It's good. A crowd pleaser, yeah, plays big. That would be the right match.

• 16:49Sean Fennessey?

  Star power there. That's a Netflix film. If The Social Reckoning is going to play anywhere, I think it's going to be a TIFF at this point.

• 16:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, but is it going to be done?

• 16:56Sean Fennessey?

  I really don't know. It's that's, this is two months from now. I Play Rocky feels like a major TIFF movie, real classic crowd pleaser. Sense and Sensibility, the new adaptation.

• 17:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 17:07Sean Fennessey?

  I thought it could happen at Telluride, I could see that. You know, Focus has played movies there in the past and this feels like ripe for that audience, but I don't know, this feels something maybe, I think they will tell us a lot about their confidence in the film based on where it plays.

• 17:21Amanda Dobbins?

  But Telluride or TIFF?

• 17:22Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 17:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. I mean, I think it looks very nice. I just, you know, it doesn't apply to me.

• 17:28Sean Fennessey?

  It doesn't apply to you.

• 17:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Or I don't apply to it.

• 17:32Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, but you'll see it.

• 17:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, of course. And I'm sure I'll even enjoy it, but I just, I think it's important to put, you know, your own warning labels on stuff. And that's, that's my warning label, you know?

• 17:42Sean Fennessey?

  Interesting. Okay.

• 17:43Amanda Dobbins?

  It's woven into me, the 1995.

• 17:45Sean Fennessey?

  Last bit of news before we get into the Odyssey.

• 17:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Is the Anglia Sense and Sensibility available on 4K? What's the physical media status of, of that film?

• 17:55Sean Fennessey?

  I certainly own it on Blu-ray. I don't, I don't know if there's a 4K. There might be.

• 17:59Amanda Dobbins?

  And not in the criteria?

• 18:01Sean Fennessey?

  You know what? Let's look it up right now.

• 18:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 18:03Sean Fennessey?

  4K, it's not in the, it's not in the Criterion Collection.

• 18:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Disrespectful.

• 18:07Sean Fennessey?

  There are other films, there is a 4K available.

• 18:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, but you don't own it?

• 18:11Sean Fennessey?

  Haven't upgraded.

• 18:11Amanda Dobbins?

  That's called sexism.

• 18:13Sean Fennessey?

  Well, it's a rolling process of upgrading.

• 18:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 18:16Sean Fennessey?

  You know, and you can't just do it all at once. It's too expensive. So you have to make strategic choices.

• 18:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure. You don't have to explain that to me.

• 18:22Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it's right. Yeah, exactly. Um, let's see, where did, when did I buy this film on Blu-ray? Probably, tell me, I don't know, doesn't matter. Uh, New York Film Festival, quickly. Paper Tiger, James Gray's new film coming out.

• 18:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Perfect sense.

• 18:37Sean Fennessey?

  This fall is opening, is the opening film at New York Film Festival. Yes. So this is a good thing. Seems like the right place to relaunch that movie.

• 18:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. It's giving, The Irishman premiered at the New York Film Festival, I want to say, right before the pandemic.

• 18:52Sean Fennessey?

  I think that's right.

• 18:52Amanda Dobbins?

  And was sort of like a, you know, big New York homecoming for everyone. It makes a lot of sense.

• 18:58Sean Fennessey?

  I agree. The other films you mentioned, The Artificial Idea, which I think holds a lot of water. I wrote down The Basics of Philosophy, which is the name of the new Paul Schrader movie. Incredible title that is. The Basics of Philosophy. Yeah, still got it.

• 19:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 19:12Sean Fennessey?

  Mike Lee, it was announced has a new film called Tender Loving Care that Bleecker Studios is putting out in December. That I could see there. I feel like New York is missing.

• 19:23Sean Fennessey?

  One mega title?

• 19:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm hmm.

• 19:25Sean Fennessey?

  One really noisy movie? I guess maybe Artificial could slot in there. But is there anything that springs to mind? Violent Night Two? What do you think's gonna get in there?

• 19:32Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, is anything else ready? And does anything else wanna do a festival circuit? Because that, I mean, that's the other interesting part of this is we're guessing with all of the movies left on the table. But increasingly, American films and films that I hope to make any sort of money at the box office don't do festivals because it doesn't, they don't feel that it makes sense to put the movie out before general audiences can see it. I mean, it's, you know, one of many consequences of Joker Two. Also, the evil of the rest of our world, but.

• 20:09Sean Fennessey?

  It's a really good point. Let's put it all at Joker Two's feet. I think that's the right move. Um, you know, I didn't mention Werewolf. I think that's a good example of what you're describing. That's a movie that doesn't need to open at a festival. It doesn't need pre-release hype. I saw Evil Dead Burn yesterday, and I saw the Werewolf trailer on a big screen beforehand, and I got more excited.

• 20:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 20:27Sean Fennessey?

  I, it looked really, really good on a big screen. Um, Dune Part Three also almost certainly not going to a film festival. The film we're about to discuss in mere moments

• 20:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 20:38Sean Fennessey?

  did not play at a film festival. And I think there's some questions to be asked about what is the proper utility and future of these enterprises?

• 20:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Of film festivals?

• 20:50Sean Fennessey?

  Their relationship to the awards game.

• 20:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 20:52Sean Fennessey?

  Is it, is it, it's a chicken or the egg thing where like, is Cannes more powerful now because, or is, are the Oscars more international because Cannes is more powerful? Or is Cannes more powerful because the Oscars are more international? You know, and the way that that body has kind of shifted a little bit? You know what I'm saying?

• 21:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. I mean, I, I think you're right. I think that it's also.

• 21:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Another consequence just of how movies are shaking out now and you either have your giant blockbuster billion dollar or billion dollar aspirational films where that have no relationship to critics or festivals or you know, movie culture, they're going mass. And so there's no reason for them to play at a festival and you or you have really, really small indie movies that need the festival as the boost. And so I think the festivals are still a funnel for the actually successful, small movies that work in or maybe one of the only ways that you keep making those movies.

• 21:57Sean Fennessey?

  I agree.

• 21:58Amanda Dobbins?

  But it's true, you know, many of our favorite middle of the road, for instance, Michael Clayton debuted at the Venice Film Festival, however, many years ago. And you don't, much like you just don't see movies for grownups and middle road movies at festivals.

• 22:12Sean Fennessey?

  Part of the reason why we're making so much noise about Behemoth, where I'm like, this feels like a quasar. Like, I don't, you know, we don't ever hear about movies like this. And of course, like you're citing Tony Gilroy, it took Tony Gilroy 20 more years to come back to do a movie like this. He'd made other movies in between, but one of them was a fizzy rom com and one of them was a Jason Bourne movie and then he made television. So.

• 22:32Amanda Dobbins?

  So I don't know whether the festivals can subside with the goals that they've set as just being like a life support for small American film. But on the flip side, they do serve as curation for international film and as the Oscars and like, and you know, as Neon grows and is getting more aggressive in distributing international film in the US, like maybe that works.

• 22:59Sean Fennessey?

  That's an interesting, really interesting point that we probably should circle back to when we get to the end of the year, which is sort of like Neon on A24 making this bid to be mid majors. And as they're making that bid, do they need festivals as much as they used to?

• 23:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 23:13Sean Fennessey?

  To get to create awareness for their movies when they're casting Zendaya in their movies. Suddenly, it's a different mentality. I mean, they'll obviously always have these kind of broad base of different types of films at different budgets. But once those, then you're like, then it's just like Sony Pictures Classics and a couple of other smaller American distributors. And then we're much more reliant on the international fair. But we'll talk about it more as the year goes on. Let's, let's have a strong pivot. It's time. Christopher Nolan's 13th movie, The Odyssey.

• 23:44Sean Fennessey?

  I'm gonna give the listeners at home a brief recap of the film The Odyssey,

• 23:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 23:48Sean Fennessey?

  which is based on Homer's The Odyssey. Here we go.

• 23:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Should we just say right now, spoilers, spoilers,

• 23:53Sean Fennessey?

  Spoilers.

• 23:54Amanda Dobbins?

  if you don't want The Odyssey, a 3,000 year old poem and/or Christopher Nolan's Odyssey spoiled for you, turn this off right now.

• 24:04Sean Fennessey?

  That's right. The Odyssey follows Odysseus, the legendary Greek king of Ithaca, on his long and perilous journey home following the Trojan War, chronicling his encounters with mythical beings such as the Cyclops, sirens, and the nymph Calypso while attempting to reunite with his wife, Penelope. So, before we discuss our feelings about the film, I thought it'd be useful to talk about Nolan's history with this story. So, many years ago, 2004, Nolan was attached to direct the film Troy. This is fairly early on in his movie career. He'd only made two movies with Hollywood at this point. He had not yet made a Batman film. And that movie is the last movie that I can think of that tries to do what this movie tries to do.

• 24:48Sean Fennessey?

  There have been other Swords and Sandals epics. There have been other big stage stories. You know, Zack Snyder's 300 springs to mind as an example of a movie like this. But that film, which Nolan felt at the time he was maybe not quite ready to take on, eventually became a Wolfgang Peterson project. And Wolfgang Peterson, interestingly, moved off of the Batman versus Superman movie that he was developing. And Christopher Nolan moved in to direct Batman Begins.

• 25:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 25:15Sean Fennessey?

  Which is a film, I think that's a decision, this is a turning point in Hollywood history that I think radically alters where we are right now. Now Troy was a pretty big hit.

• 25:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm hmm. And a TNT classic.

• 25:25Sean Fennessey?

  It certainly is. I think it's a pretty well-liked movie. It's not bad.

• 25:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. I mean, Eric Bana is the star, so.

• 25:31Sean Fennessey?

  He is the star, but it has a lot of nice meaty roles for folks like Brian Cox and Sean Bean and Brendan Gleeson and a lot of actors who I like seeing in movies like that.

• 25:39Amanda Dobbins?

  And Brad Pitt, isn't it?

• 25:40Sean Fennessey?

  Rememberly Brad Pitt, Orlando Bloom, Diane Kruger.

• 25:45Sean Fennessey?

  And so, this is a big twist of fate that, and it also indicates that Nolan, we know Nolan always wanted to make a movie like this. And so.

• 25:56Sean Fennessey?

  I find the timing of this movie very interesting because he's coming off of

• 26:01Sean Fennessey?

  perhaps the most unbelievable success of his career in Oppenheimer, not because of what the movie is per se, but because of how successful it was insofar as it made $1 billion and it won virtually every Academy Award that it was up for.

• 26:15Amanda Dobbins?

  And cemented his status as the leader. I mean, he is the president of the DGA currently, but he is also just the statesman of this generation of filmmakers.

• 26:28Sean Fennessey?

  And I think he's pretty clearly recognized now as the director of this century, that he is the person who has defined what movie going is with his scale and execution. The other thing about this is that this movie has never been made before. And it's so interesting to me that we've been talking all year about how it's like out with the old and in with the new. And there's nothing older than The Odyssey, but there's no movie The Odyssey. There are parts of The Odyssey that have been told in movies, or there have been a lot of like influences. And if you look at Harryhausen movies, you can see some of the monsters and figures. Even 2024's The Return is sort of like the back half of The Odyssey. But The Odyssey in full, there's no movie. And Nolan describes it as an odd

• 27:13Sean Fennessey?

  gap in movie history. So what an amazing opportunity to leverage this 25 year history of him thinking about doing a big swords and sandals movie. And he steps up to the plate to do this film. It's a $250 million production. I ask you now, what did you think of The Odyssey?

• 27:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, you set me up beautifully with that Christopher Nolan context because I do think that this is a perfect Christopher Nolan movie. And the perfect Christopher Nolan movie. Now, does that mean that it is perfect? No. And does it mean that it's the best Christopher Nolan movie? I don't know.

• 27:45Sean Fennessey?

  I'm not sure yet.

• 27:46Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm not sure yet either. We're going to talk about that on Monday. I think it, you know, pays well to sit with these things. Also, you know, that's what we do on this podcast is reassess over and over. But

• 27:58Amanda Dobbins?

  I felt sort of stupid sitting there watching it when I realized that Christopher Nolan has just been making The Odyssey for 20 years. And the first shot of inception is Leonardo DiCaprio on a beach, washed up on a beach, looking longingly at the dream of his children. And then a godlike figure comes in and intervenes with him. I mean, this is quite textually a reference to The Odyssey, but in everything that he's doing, you know, thematically, a man, a hero, a burdened genius trying to get back to his family with sort of opaque wife characters throughout the land. The blueprint is there and has been there the whole time.

• 28:41Amanda Dobbins?

  I do also think that this movie is an amazing superhero movie, and I mean that as a compliment. I had the experience of watching this movie and seeing things that I had only read about done spectacularly and made real. And I sort of understand what it means then to people who have always read comic books to see Superman, or in Nolan's case, Batman, finally see their dreams realized, and dreams realized so well. So it really does work as a summation of Nolan's career. And, you know, I feel like we've had a lot of projects in the last few years where directors

• 29:23Amanda Dobbins?

  have been waiting forever and ever to make this movie, or it's their dream project. And it doesn't always live up to the expectations or to their own dreams. And on an execution level, I think he nails this out of the park. Ambition, scale, star power, you know, everything below the line. He has like a crew of close collaborators at this point. It looks beautiful. I thought it was thrilling.

• 29:50Sean Fennessey?

  I agree.

• 29:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 29:51Sean Fennessey?

  It's a pretty astounding work of art and it works in both ways. I think one of the things that distinguishes him from almost any other filmmaker, and really, no matter how I feel about him personally over the years in each individual movie, is his movies operate very interestingly as both these kind of smooth-brained rollercoaster rides and also these really deep, passionate, sincere, thematic adventures. And there's no deeper, more sincere thematic adventure than The Odyssey. And so it's fitting. I couldn't find much evidence of him saying, "I want to make The Odyssey," over the years. You know, a lot of those directors that you're talking about would say, "Well, it's been my life's journey to get to this point to make this kind of film." And he's just kind of always been making this kind of film, as you very smartly point

• 30:36Sean Fennessey?

  out. But what he is able to build into the movie does feel like something that could only happen for a filmmaker with 30 years of filmmaking under their belt. And if you read about the production of the film, you can see that the only person who seems to have the utmost confidence that it's all going to go according to plan is Christopher Nolan. The actors certainly are like, "What is this?" And it's really, it's a fun movie to read about, not nearly as much as it is to watch, but it's such an awe-inspiring production. And we're in a time when most people who would try to make a movie like this would do so many things with visual effects and computer-generated imagery. And he goes so far out of his way to avoid that wherever he can and still, without sacrificing

• 31:20Sean Fennessey?

  the grandeur that is necessary to tell this story. And so there are a dozen moments in the movie where I was like, "This is breathtaking." You know, this is just amazing that he makes me feel this way.

• 31:33Amanda Dobbins?

  And exciting and, you know, you can see touches or inspiration from like other filmmakers. It really does feel omnivorous in this wonderful way, in a synthesis of everything that we've seen in the movies, both Nolan's and others. And it just is also, it plays. It is so, it is a blockbuster. Like you are going, you know, it's based on an epic poem and I think there's been so much hand-wringing about the accessibility of this from a text perspective, or we all remember being bored out of our minds. In high school, reading this, do they even teach it anymore? People in the booths? They do. Yeah, okay. But that's good to hear. I'm glad for your generation.

• 32:15Sean Fennessey?

  I read it in full in high school. In fact, going back to it, I remember read, I can feel the memory.

• 32:20Amanda Dobbins?

  I do, though, I'm excited to talk about the different translations of it. And, and I guess all of that's true, but it is just, they're just also, there are monsters. There are sex scenes. There is a lot of horror in this in a really accomplished way. The score bangs. It is very funny every time another great character actor shows up and you're like, oh, it's this person. It really, spectacle is not a bad word, even though it's sometimes used in a dismissive way. This is the, this is hefty spectacle. This is spectacle with, with weight.

• 32:55Sean Fennessey?

  One thing I felt watching the movie for the first time was that because of what you're describing, this feeling that many people who will sit down to watch the movie will know the beats. And so I do think that there was a moment in the, in the second act where it feels like he is kind of moving through the story fairly quickly. And we're hitting moments, memorable moments. We're hitting Sil and Charybdis. We're hitting Thereseus's prophecy. We're hitting the sirens.

• 33:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 33:20Sean Fennessey?

  And it's coming at this kind of breakneck pace in a way where it felt a little bit like he was checking boxes to me. Now, it's hard to make a movie of this scope, a story of this scope in under three hours, and he accomplishes that. But the movie pays off that episodic nature so profoundly in the final 40 minutes or so of the movie. And I have been very critical of Nolan's ability to end movies at times, and you were very critical of Oppenheimer's ending.

• 33:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 33:48Sean Fennessey?

  And this is the exact opposite to me. This is, I think this is the most satisfying ending of a movie that he's made.

• 33:54Amanda Dobbins?

  I completely agree. You know, there's, I would like to talk about the final three lines of the movie, you know? And, and in a way, they're more perfect because Christopher Nolan stays Christopher Nolan and completely lands the plane. I found the ending so moving and so revelatory. And, you know, then he does something else. And I was like, well, that's great. You know, it's good to know that we're still with the same guy who can't quite help himself from.

• 34:23Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, jabbing it in your eye a little bit more, what he wants to say, which may be a movie of this scale and size, both in terms of its box office ambitions and its text requires. I felt the shortcuts too. You know, I felt the, oh, okay. We did Calypso like very, very quickly. But it was interesting to then go back and, and read the text. And I did the Emily Wilson translation, which I can't say enough good things about. And that was another revelation, just of, of reading a familiar story in a different, in a different way, through a different person's eyes and interpretation. But I was surprised by how brief they are in the poem itself.

• 35:05Amanda Dobbins?

  And that there is something about what the, what the poem sees as the most important of the stories, you know, the pacing of the poem that like actually is pretty accurately reflected in parts of the film, which you didn't need to do. You know, I, I firmly believe that the more liberties an adaptation takes, the better the adaptation is.

• 35:31Sean Fennessey?

  I think there's an important point to be made about that too, because we'll talk about some of the differences from, from the texts that we've looked at. And whether or not we've lost something by changing certain things in the movie, which I think is essential to do to make it work as a movie. But, you know, this is also a story that was told in the oral tradition. And the way that the story became formed through the oral tradition is that parts of the story that were not really working with crowds around fires or in towns would be excised.

• 35:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 35:56Sean Fennessey?

  And so this is not the whole scale truthful representation of a man named Odysseus who went on the journey. It's a story that was sort of crowdsourced and eventually was kind of chiseled down and put down on paper. But it's not this irrefutable, you know, locked piece of material. It is actually meant to be interpreted and to be re-understood over time. And I really, I really, really appreciate what he did with it. And, and the thing that he did with it, to me, has less to do with what he changed or didn't change in the script, but how he tells the story. And. All of Christopher Nolan's films are about time and the loss of time and trying to desperately accomplish something before time runs out.

• 36:39Sean Fennessey?

  I just sat down to look at Following again last night, and even Following, his very first movie, which is only 69 minutes, is about that feeling. But this movie is in this neat little package with Tenet and Oppenheimer and Dunkirk to some extent. But these three films all have the same editor, Jennifer Lane. And the two of them together have, I would say, evolved his filmmaking style, where this film has such an intense flash-cutting style, and the camera very rarely holds on an image for more than 15 seconds at a time. And that sounds like it would be a chaotic Michael Bay commercial nightmare, but in fact, it is, he uses it so skillfully to show us images and then show us that same

• 37:24Sean Fennessey?

  image an hour later, and then show us that image an hour later, as we get more and more context, more and more clarity of the story, more and more depth from the characters, that it does feel like, I think, a pretty meaningful evolution in filmmaking style. And I think one of the reasons why some previous films in the 2010s, late 2000s with him was, I could feel him grasping for this style, but maybe not totally having control over it. And I don't know if it is the work with Jen Lane that has gotten him to this place, and this story is so big, and he has these recurring motifs and images throughout, that it felt like the summation of that movement that he was going towards, too. The same thing with, you know how in Oppenheimer, we kind of blow through the first 30 years of his life in 18 minutes?

• 38:09Sean Fennessey?

  And it's by using that style, using sound, score, and the way that the images are cut. And this movie does it on an even grander scale. One minute, we're in the palace in Ithaca, and then the next second, we're in a different timeline on a beach on another land with a man roaming by himself. And yet, we know that these two characters are twinned, that Telemachus and Odysseus is twinned. And I joke about this kind of thing, but it is total cinema. It is the thing that you're asking for, where you're like, bring all the tools of the trade together to make you feel something and understand it at the same time.

• 38:44Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, it is also, again, why this is kind of the perfect Nolan project, even if he wasn't dreaming and talking about his aspirations to make it his entire career. But- You know, this is a, this is a poem that, to your point, has multiple authors, or at least multiple instances of authorship and is told and created over time. So that relies on different perspectives. It's also a story told in, in people telling other stories. And so there's memory, there's perspective, there is a lot to communicate that this particular style and the cross cutting can do in terms of, you know, memory as image and things,

• 39:27Amanda Dobbins?

  you know, how memory recurs and how you group things together in your head. And also that this story, you know, does need to go from Ithaca to, you know, to Circe, to, to people at the same place trying to make their way to each other. But there are, you know, multiple timelines to put it in the crassest way possible.

• 39:46Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, there's, it's a twin narrative in the movie. It has multiple perspectives, but it's primarily through the eyes of Odysseus at various stages of his life and career as a, effectively a general in Agamemnon's army. And so we see moments from the Trojan War and the Trojan Horse. And then there is the series of incidents in which he is trying to return home from the war. And so we see all of those through his eyes, most of which come during a retelling while he is on an island for seven years with Calypso.

• 40:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 40:21Sean Fennessey?

  Which is a shift from, from the original text, but helpfully allows us to kind of experience those moments in Odysseus's story. And then there's also the Telemachus component of the story where Penelope and Telemachus are waiting 20 years for their father and husband to arrive back at Ithaca. And Telemachus, after a certain while, realizing that the suitors that have come for Penelope to rule Ithaca alongside her are eventually going to get pretty impatient and take action. And so he goes out and goes to find his father. And in going to find his father, that opens up these new portals for other people to tell him stories about his father. This is a very ornate, complicated way of telling this story.

• 41:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 41:05Sean Fennessey?

  And as I started to kind of go through my mind of like, what incident happened in what order of the movie? I was kind of marveling at the screenplay. I think it's a pretty phenomenal adaptation.

• 41:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 41:15Sean Fennessey?

  Because even though we know like, okay, there's a scene with the Cyclops, like that scene probably isn't as hard to write as, well, what comes immediately after that? And what comes immediately after that? I would be curious to know if this is like, if the film is structured exactly as it was written? Or if he found things?

• 41:30Amanda Dobbins?

  In the edit.

• 41:30Sean Fennessey?

  In the edit that allowed for this to work more effectively. But nevertheless, like, I was really blown away by it. I think you're making a great point that this is, it's a film that only he could make. And it's a film that he's clearly been working towards in a lot of ways. This is, this is for the end of the conversation, but like, where to go from here for him is like, I have no idea. I don't know that you can do something bigger and more vast than this movie. You know, it is not, it is quite a stark film. It's not very funny. There's some, a couple of laugh lines.

• 42:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, but the laugh lines almost stick out.

• 42:04Sean Fennessey?

  They do.

• 42:05Amanda Dobbins?

  As if they weren't on the page or it wasn't planned, but then you need to lean into it. And you know, they are, they are, I chuckled.

• 42:14Sean Fennessey?

  You're relying on the star personas of people too, to kind of make moments with their dialogue readings or something like that?

• 42:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. No, this is not a world of, of humor. The stakes are quite serious. This is, and again, to me, it's, it's like a great match with Nolan, a, a very serious and self-serious filmmaker has picked, has just finally gone full epic. And if there are jokes in the original Homer poem, you know, they don't, comedy doesn't translate over that many years. So I, I, I think it matches well.

• 42:47Sean Fennessey?

  Well, similarly, it's not a very silly movie because there could be a version of The Odyssey that prominently features the gods. Like the gods could be visually represented and only one god is really visually represented in this movie, Athena. But you could visually represent the gods and you could have Zeus on the mountaintop throwing lightning bolts. And you could have Poseidon rise from beneath the sea.

• 43:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 43:07Sean Fennessey?

  And he dispenses with all that.

• 43:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Which is smart.

• 43:10Sean Fennessey?

  It's very smart and it makes it feel more like a kind of cosmic doom surrounds Odysseus as opposed to an actual, you know, creature of some kind is determining their fate. And it also kind of calls into question the sanity of the characters because these are articles of faith, right? Most of what they're discussing are not these corporeal representations of power. They're just ideas that the citizens have of these communities.

• 43:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, which then also sets up something that I think the movie does incredibly well, which is, opens up what the characters are arguing about in a very temporal, you know, contemporary Greek sense to modern times. And, you know, it's about ways of living and what are your beliefs and what are your philosophies? And what do you value and what do you not value? And if you have Zeus there yelling about Zeus's law or Xenia, or you didn't wash the feet the right way, the more you literalize it, the further it, you know, seems to a modern audience. But when you just make it about how do you treat a stranger? And how do you create a world that you want to live in? It's incredibly resonant.

• 44:20Sean Fennessey?

  I totally agree. It makes the movie more, the movie's primary theme ultimately, I think, is the erosion or destruction of civilizations and how frequently aggression and war lead to these erosions and they kind of deepen them even further. The movie is very, very modern in multiple ways. It is very clearly speaking to a contemporary time with this idea. It's also using colloquial language like dad and stuff. Those are two words that appear in the movie. And I think that's probably smart to both ground a contemporary audience and also to make those same connections that you're describing, so it feels like it's legible. But by not having the gods in the movie, but also having the traditions of the gods, the ideas of the gods, the sort of morality of the gods, it means it's up to the people

• 45:04Sean Fennessey?

  to make the choices, to do the things that are right. And so the movie is very consumed by The moral stature of this Greek society. And if it's being broken, why is it being broken?

• 45:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 45:15Sean Fennessey?

  And who can save it? I think who can save it is something that amuses you a little bit.

• 45:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure. Well, who's responsible for it all? And, and I, I found that the conclusions of that part of the movie to, to be very profound. And then the, yeah, there, there's a, you know, the burden of genius runs through every single Christopher Nolan movie. And it, and it goes through this as well. I mean, that is also textually accurate. Like Odysseus is described as the most, the clever and most greatest of, of warriors. The, the poem itself is, does not communicate as much in, in internal psychology as, or no, or not that I picked up in the translation is, you know, and as we have become accustomed to, as, you know, therapized children of the modern world.

• 46:01Amanda Dobbins?

  But it, again, I just think it's, I think it's very clever that he actually picked this text where it allows him a springboard to, you know, use very, very big set pieces inspectable to interrogate the things that he is clearly quite interested in and has been.

• 46:17Sean Fennessey?

  I want to talk a bit about the actors.

• 46:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 46:19Sean Fennessey?

  And like, we'll have to figure out the best way to have this conversation because we can talk about each sequence, most of which are pretty breathtaking.

• 46:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 46:25Sean Fennessey?

  Plus this raft of movie stars.

• 46:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 46:28Sean Fennessey?

  That are, are strewn throughout the movie, some in big parts, some in very small parts. But the decision to cast Matt Damon's pretty crucial.

• 46:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 46:36Sean Fennessey?

  It does two, to me, it did two things. Aside from just casting a tremendously dependable movie star. One, it means that every single character in this movie is speaking with an American accent.

• 46:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm hmm.

• 46:49Sean Fennessey?

  Because Matt Damon is not doing an accent. And that means that everyone needs to sound like Matt Damon. And if you watch movies from the 50s or 60s or 70s where you've got one character doing a German accent, one character doing a British accent, frequently in movies like this, everyone does British.

• 47:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 47:01Sean Fennessey?

  Brad Pitt tries to do British in Troy.

• 47:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 47:03Sean Fennessey?

  That's incoherent because it's in Greece, but

• 47:07Sean Fennessey?

  this choice, I think also modernizes the movie. If this were Tom Hardy or Killian Murphy, two actors who I could very much also see playing Odysseus in totally different registers.

• 47:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 47:18Sean Fennessey?

  I think the movie's different. And I think that if the movie is British. It's weirdly not as effective because of what Nolan's intentions are. Do you agree with that?

• 47:28Amanda Dobbins?

  I do agree with that. I think also when you're, when you're casting each of those actors, I mean, you named Cillian Murphy and Tom Hardy, but they are bringing different relationships to the audience and different assumptions of how you're interpreting Odysseus than Damon does.

• 47:46Sean Fennessey?

  This was my second point, yes.

• 47:46Amanda Dobbins?

  And you're rooting for Matt Damon.

• 47:49Sean Fennessey?

  That's it.

• 47:49Amanda Dobbins?

  You're always rooting for Matt Damon, even when you're not supposed to be rooting for Matt Damon. See the talented Mr. Ripley and the informant exclamation point. And the movie uses that so well, but it's, it's, it's essential because otherwise, this is a character who otherwise makes a lot of decisions where you're like, sir, really?

• 48:12Sean Fennessey?

  It complicates the text to make him so likeable.

• 48:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 48:14Sean Fennessey?

  Matt Damon is very likeable and he's very easy to root for as a movie star. And he has played bad guys. He played a bad guy in a Christopher Nolan movie. He's very good in Interstellar. But Odysseus not only makes poor choices, but he's arrogant and he makes those poor choices out of a sense of accomplishment. And he's a, he's a trickster and he's a bit venal.

• 48:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 48:41Sean Fennessey?

  And Damon doesn't really play him that way. He plays him slightly more innocent and then ultimately faithful.

• 48:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 48:50Sean Fennessey?

  And I'll say it's a pivot from the text that is fascinating because it does strike me that this is how Nolan sees all of his protagonists. He does not see them as men with ill intention. Oppenheimer is one of the most controversial people of the 20th century.

• 49:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 49:04Sean Fennessey?

  He's responsible for creating something that led to this destruction of cities and lives, thousands and thousands of lives. But he has sincere empathy for Oppenheimer in the film.

• 49:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 49:15Sean Fennessey?

  And he ends that movie.

• 49:19Sean Fennessey?

  Portraying his regret instead of something else.

• 49:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 49:23Sean Fennessey?

  And this movie similarly, even though Odysseus is just kind of an archetypal character, he's like a wily trickster.

• 49:31Amanda Dobbins?

  But in almost every instance, it takes away the responsibility of Odysseus from his actions and/or tries to smooth them and make them more relatable.

• 49:44Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 49:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Which I think is wise, again, from trying to translate this to a modern audience, you read the original poem and it's just a, it's a picture of a completely different society that treats men, women, people who are not aristocrats, by which I mean, you know, enslaved people, like very differently, like the morals, the way, it's just, it's a, it is a foreign world. And, you know, that's, that's the way they lived and necessary, I guess, to the, to the times or to the organization. But so, but the, the Odysseus in the, in, in the poem is not someone who you could

• 50:26Amanda Dobbins?

  identify with because you would never be in a situation where you just need to like stick around on a witch's island for a year and, and have a torrid love affair because your men need to rest after being turned into pigs. You know, you're just, it's, it's, so I think it's, it's savvy. To your point, it is very much in keeping with certainly Oppenheimer and with Nolan movies in general, where they are, they are protagonists, pun intended, who take on great challenges and really do feel like both the triumphs and the ills of the world are their creation.

• 51:09Amanda Dobbins?

  And that involves both pride and guilt. And I turned to you as we walked out of our first screening of The Odyssey, of Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey, we've seen it twice. And I asked you, like, a little bit tongue in cheek, but also sincerely, and I went home and asked Zach this as well, like, do you as a man just walk around being like, this is all great, but it's also all my fault? Like, it, it, there is, there is something that all of his characters do that, you know, assumes some responsibility, but not all of it. And there's, there's a hubris, there's an ambition. I mean, I think. Those are twins. You can't really have one without the other, at least in a realistic world.

• 51:52Amanda Dobbins?

  That I find, I find a little amusing, but also I think I find it alien.

• 51:57Sean Fennessey?

  I don't, I don't relate because I don't see myself as a, as a great man. It's really that simple. I think if you look at Batman's burden, Batman, you know, sets out to find identity for himself. And in doing so, he feels that fighting crime and, and making the world more safe is a, is a reason to be alive. And in doing so, he draws out all these freaks who want to defeat him. And then those freaks tend to make Gotham crazy. So the inextricable relationship between Batman and the Joker is the same thing that you're describing here. The same thing is true of Oppenheimer. The same thing is true of, of Leonardo DiCaprio's character in Inception, you know, who's desperate to go back to a more innocent time with his family, but also has this extraordinary power. And that power can mean something really special for the world if he uses it correctly.

• 52:40Sean Fennessey?

  The same is true in Interstellar, a man who abandons his family to go on a journey. And by the time he returns home, he's, if not forgotten, a figure of some controversy. He does it in every movie and it's easy to psychologize. This is a guy who goes on journeys to go make movies.

• 52:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 52:56Sean Fennessey?

  Now, it's a family affair. His wife is a producer. It sounds like his kids go with him, but there's something going, maybe, maybe it was his parents, you know, maybe there's something in his life that makes him return to this structure over and over and over again. There's always a watchful, older figure, you know, Michael Caine played this role in all these films. There's always somebody who's sort of like, maybe he had an uncle who was very insightful.

• 53:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 53:14Sean Fennessey?

  Who gave him some guidance. In this film, John Leguizamo plays that character. He's this sort of like, watchful, protective, seer type figure who stays guard at the palace. Like he, these frameworks recur over and over again because he no doubt relates to them. I'm just a guy with a podcast, you know, like it's not, that's not something that I really see.

• 53:37Amanda Dobbins?

  One thing that I, I don't mean to judge him for it. And I, I mean, I guess I do judge him for it all the time. That's the history of podcasting, but.

• 53:46Amanda Dobbins?

  The great man trope is recurring and I do think it's amusing to me. I think it's fascinating. I think it's also what, you know, Western stories and movies are based on, both textually and in terms of people being like, yeah, I can make this three hour epic and not use effects and film in the craziest locations in the world. You need that ambition. So I do respect it. I thought it was interesting in this movie and a choice I liked in this movie is that some of that same ambition is applied to Penelope, his wife, his long suffering wife as a character. And, you know, it was funny, even in those moments, she

• 54:30Amanda Dobbins?

  has kind of two standoffs with her son, Telemachus. Penelope is played by Anne Hathaway, just throwing heat, and Telemachus is played by Tom Holland, using an American accent. And she's, you know, she is a frustrated person. She is a woman in a man's world and she's, you know, being pushed around by all of these people and she expresses some desire to be in charge of things herself. She also kind of tells off her son a couple of times in ways where I was like, this is a little intense. I don't, you know, but it was interesting then to realize that I don't have the great woman complex either, you know, and I was

• 55:12Amanda Dobbins?

  interested to see him assigning it to both characters. I think that's a new and positive development in what has been a pretty historically complicated character to unwind for modern audiences.

• 55:22Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I think that is them to modernize that strain of the story to make it-

• 55:29Amanda Dobbins?

  As much as you can.

• 55:30Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I think to just make it more sympathetic and to make us understand a little bit more how Penelope gets, should be operating maybe in our modern times, as someone with a little bit more agency or a little bit more desire. This sort of like, this feeling like she should have the right to, if not claim her husband, which is what she really wants. She wants her husband to come in. But if that's not going to happen, how can she secure her own fate in a life that she wants to lead?

• 55:58Sean Fennessey?

  I think if it's not Anne Hathaway, I don't know if that character works as well.

• 56:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 56:01Sean Fennessey?

  Because she really is, you know, she's a very skilled actor, one of my very favorite actors in the universe. But she is really good at going big. And like this reading of Penelope is very like sucking on your teeth and like daggers for eyes. Like staring down Tom Holland and then just kind of burning him alive with her words. And she does this a couple of times. She gets a couple of moments with Odysseus where she's sort of more open and sensitive and they show their love to each other.

• 56:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 56:28Sean Fennessey?

  But she's a very fierce character and you need a very fierce actor to do it. And in the wrong hands, I think it could have gone pretty terribly. I would say it's the writing is a little bit weaker in the Penelope scenes. And I find this in most Nolan movies. I find he kind of struggles to write women like this. And I was grateful that she was in the part. That's what I'll say.

• 56:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I mean, I do think that it's, I was giving points for improvement, you know? And, and also because I did see the intent of trying to do something different with this character. A character who in the text just like, you know, sits at home. The, the traditional, you know, Oscar nominated performance of the wife.

• 57:09Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 57:10Amanda Dobbins?

  So.

• 57:10Sean Fennessey?

  Kitty Oppenheimer.

• 57:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, totally. So I liked, I liked it and I agree that, you know, just watching Anne Hathaway cook and eat Tom Holland alive. Not literally, but pretty much.

• 57:23Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I mean, other creatures eat things alive, for sure.

• 57:27Sean Fennessey?

  We're speaking in big thematic historical structures around adaptation and ideas. But as I said, this is a, a big dumb action movie as well.

• 57:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Totally.

• 57:38Sean Fennessey?

  And after you get through the first roughly 20 minutes or so, which features a lot of exposition and kind of scene and community setting around where Penelope is at this moment in time, after Odysseus has been gone for all these years and what her relationship is to her son.

• 57:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 57:54Sean Fennessey?

  You know, we get launched into the action.

• 57:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 57:57Sean Fennessey?

  And very quickly, we are shown Odysseus on the beaches, trying to remember his life and starting to tell his own story. And is the Cyclops the really the first true adventure that we get after he leaves the shores of battle after 10 years and decides to set out with his men? And when he sets out with his men, he does so on his own terms. He doesn't follow Agamemnon.

• 58:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 58:22Sean Fennessey?

  He goes on his own path. And Himish Patel, who's wonderful in this movie as his second in command, is skeptical right from the jump.

• 58:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 58:31Sean Fennessey?

  Which I think shows us how we should regard Odysseus in the movie as someone who's a little brazen and has his own ideas and not all those ideas work. But very quickly, they start realizing that they need to hit land so that they can restock their food and water.

• 58:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 58:46Sean Fennessey?

  And every time they show up on the shore somewhere, something terrible happens. You know, I don't think he has one good landing spot across this entire journey.

• 58:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, Calypso, debatable.

• 58:57Sean Fennessey?

  Good point.

• 58:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I want to talk more about, we'll all talk more about Calypso.

• 59:00Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, we will.

• 59:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 59:01Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, she's very special. The Cyclops is, I thought this worked phenomenally well.

• 59:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 59:08Sean Fennessey?

  I've gotten some feedback from people who didn't like this as much because it's a combination of a puppet and a human performance from the actor Bill Irwin. And the Cyclops is something that is probably the single most memorable monster from all of Homer's stories and one that has been rendered on screen many times. This is the most human-esque version, I think, that I've seen in a movie. And the sequence has changed quite a bit from what's in the poem, specifically like what this character, what Odysseus does to trick the monster. But I thought it was. Very involving and I wasn't taken out of it at all by the puppetry or the effects

• 59:50Sean Fennessey?

  work or anything like that. And, you know, shooting inside of that cave with the flock of sheep, I thought was fantastic.

• 59:56Amanda Dobbins?

  I loved it. I mean, you know, it is very classical horror tropes of don't go into that cave and it is made in just that way. But, um, no, you know, we should say the film opens with a title card that says, "In a Time of Apparent Magic," um, which I, you know, I thought of in a time of great mischief and the secret agent, but also I did think was tone setting in a way that I'm not going to be seeing, you know, it is fantastical.

• 1:00:26Sean Fennessey?

  It is.

• 1:00:26Amanda Dobbins?

  And I, and, and so I guess I was sitting there thinking like, oh, wow, that's a real person. They're doing this, you know, practically or that's a puppet. And this is, I was thinking excitedly, this is not CGI. So I guess that works for people, but I will always just be pumped when I realize that something is not CGI and they tried something.

• 1:00:45Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I agree. I think, you know, choosing Bill Irwin, who in addition to being an actor, who people recognize from movies like Rachel Getting Married is also a mime. And so his ability to kind of affect, uh, is it, is it polyphemus? What is the, um, the name of the Cyclops? The Cyclops is a weird character because, you know, he's the son of Poseidon and he's this sort of half man, half creature, half god.

• 1:01:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:01:08Sean Fennessey?

  And

• 1:01:09Amanda Dobbins?

  He makes cheese.

• 1:01:09Sean Fennessey?

  He makes cheese and he can speak. Um, you know, the change from the, from the, the poem is interesting. You know, there's a famous thing where he tells the Cyclops, Odysseus, that he's, his name is nobody.

• 1:01:22Amanda Dobbins?

  No man, yeah.

• 1:01:23Sean Fennessey?

  No man. So that when he, when he pokes his eye out and he's writhing in pain on the ground, he says, "Nobody hurt me."

• 1:01:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:29Sean Fennessey?

  "No man hurt me."

• 1:01:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:01:31Sean Fennessey?

  "And no one comes to save him." And that's how they escape. And the movie dispenses with that. And it creates just, I think, actually, I think what you said is right. It's like a, more of like a horror escape sequence.

• 1:01:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:42Sean Fennessey?

  Where you're sort of like racing away from the monster. Um, but I thought was effective, but that was one of the very few things from the book.

• 1:01:48Amanda Dobbins?

  You remembered?

• 1:01:49Sean Fennessey?

  That I remembered when I was watching the movie. I was waiting for him, waiting for Matt Damon to pull some trickery. And it's much more of just like an escape from a big creature. But

• 1:01:56Amanda Dobbins?

  And then Odysseus, you know, turns back.

• 1:02:01Amanda Dobbins?

  To poke him once again and to further

• 1:02:04Sean Fennessey?

  Shoots his arrow at him, yes.

• 1:02:07Amanda Dobbins?

  The Cyclops, so that the Cyclops then chases them and, you know, and they lose some men, which also featured my favorite bit of puppetry or acting, which was just the grimace on the Cyclops's face before. And that was genuinely really funny. Really, really, really good stuff. And again, you know, they're filming in like some beautiful beach and he's throwing things and it all looks pretty real. I, you know, I was very pro.

• 1:02:35Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I mean, I think it's probably worth noting that the film, I think, is in seven countries on at least two continents, maybe three continents. It's in Morocco, Greece, Italy, Iceland, the Falls Lake water tank on the Universal Studios lot, which I've been to, and Scotland. And that it's not easy to film in places like this and not everyone can do it. But if you can do it, you should do it. It really, really helps this film on a consistent basis. There are several moments when they're out at sea, when the camera pulls way back to show the epic scale of the ships that have been constructed.

• 1:03:09Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, one of the shots looks like a Turner painting. There's another one when Odysseus is just alone on the beach and it's just like the grand scale of it. The palace in Ithaca, which I believe is in an island off Sicily, the Goat Island, is like magnificent.

• 1:03:26Sean Fennessey?

  It is.

• 1:03:26Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, and these are, these are real places.

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• 1:05:42Sean Fennessey?

  As Telemachus goes on his journey to learn more about his father, he goes to Menelaus, Agamemnon's brother, who has settled back in his throne years after the war.

• 1:05:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Love you doing Homer.

• 1:05:51Sean Fennessey?

  Thank you. This is my interpretation. Step aside, Emily Wilson. And he sits and has a meal with Menelaus and Helen. And Menelaus tells him the story of the Trojan horse. First of all, Berthol, I loved it. I wasn't sure if I was gonna love it. I was a little concerned when I saw the earliest material of this, of the hey dad and stuff and the colloquial stuff that you find throughout the movie. But his demon energy, I think, is very well suited. His aggro bro energy

• 1:06:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:23Sean Fennessey?

  is what you might think a figure like him would be like if he were transported to modern times. And so him telling this story and then the way that this-

• 1:06:31Amanda Dobbins?

  The younger cucked brother.

• 1:06:33Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, very much so. Somebody who's not totally fulfilled despite being married to Helen.

• 1:06:40Sean Fennessey?

  The Trojan War shit is unreal. Now, we saw this early on before the movie came out. But the realization of it, again, done entirely practically. And I think a lot of times when you watch representations of this story on screen, even in animation, everything seems easy. And what this movie shows you is that everything at this time in history was hard.

• 1:06:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:00Sean Fennessey?

  And that surviving inside of the horse would have been nearly impossible. That the piss and the shit that you would have been surrounded by, the way that they would check the horse when they're drawing it into the city with the blades, people would become injured and die. People would die inside of the horse. Getting the horse up into the city across these hundreds of logs that are set up from the shores would be hard. Like, there is physical toll in everything that happens in the world that the movie goes out of its way to show. It doesn't just say like, it doesn't yada yada anything. It might have a fast-cutting style that moves you through it quickly, but they built all this stuff.

• 1:07:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. And now it's on display outside the Universal CityWalk.

• 1:07:40Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:07:42Amanda Dobbins?

  This is electric. This is when I just kinda, my spirit left my body.

• 1:07:46Sean Fennessey?

  Me too.

• 1:07:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Because, you know, the Trojan Horse is a reference point, like not a pop culture, like a cultural idea that has been repeated so many times in so many different ways and has become a part of our language. So you do forget that it's a real thing that could be made and constructed and elongated. The sequence comes at like exactly one hour into the movie, which I think is so smart. Like, I checked my watch, but I just really appreciated the clockwork of that. And it's thrilling, it is upsetting to your, you know, and it uses as other movies, like the Dunkirk in the horse instead of the ship. There is this, there are these nice callbacks.

• 1:08:31Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:08:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Throughout that I found very exciting and.

• 1:08:37Amanda Dobbins?

  You just kind of can't believe what you're watching. And then it does turn into just like full blown battle sequence, right? With with Bernthal and Damon like screaming and lots of arrows and.

• 1:08:48Sean Fennessey?

  Well, it's like it's a very briefly like a like an espionage film when they break out, you know, and they set their plan to sort of open the castle gates and let their their soldiers storm in. And, you know, I didn't, I really liked the second time around, I really liked that part and showing how they sort of the geography of the movie is very coherent, where you constantly know where characters are going and what it is that they're attempting to do, which can be confusing in movies like this sometimes, especially ones that are cut this way. But then when it does tear into battle and you watch Agamemnon walk through those gates and hundreds of men streaming behind him.

• 1:09:22Amanda Dobbins?

  You had some notes about Agamemnon's armor, but I think in that that setup, when the when the gates go wide.

• 1:09:28Sean Fennessey?

  I think it looks great. I appreciate the, is it Ellen Mirajnik was the costume designer? I I I honor her efforts. I've been told it's not historically accurate. I don't I don't really care about that. I think it's very funny that he cast Benny Safdie as Agamemnon, who, if you've met Benny Safdie, you would not say he strikes the same pose that that character does. But I think that's very intentional because of Agamemnon's fate, you know, and the kind of who is ultimately behind a helmet like that during war?

• 1:09:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:56Sean Fennessey?

  And what what is a man like that represent actually?

• 1:09:59Amanda Dobbins?

  The only moment that you see the man behind the helmet is a very crucial moment.

• 1:10:04Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:10:05Amanda Dobbins?

  When he's laid bare. I did want to talk about arrows for a second.

• 1:10:08Sean Fennessey?

  Sure.

• 1:10:09Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean.

• 1:10:10Sean Fennessey?

  Arrow corner?

• 1:10:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, arrow corner. Well, I just, how are we so instantly killing everybody with an arrow until we're not, you know, there is inconsistency on that. You know, sometimes you shoot a guy and they just like fall right down. And then at other points, Odysseus has like three arrows sticking out of him and he's fine.

• 1:10:29Sean Fennessey?

  He's a great warrior, obviously.

• 1:10:30Amanda Dobbins?

  So it's really just about your own personal metal as to whether the arrow can get you? Are they dipped in any sort of poison?

• 1:10:35Sean Fennessey?

  Not seemingly not in this film.

• 1:10:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:10:37Sean Fennessey?

  I think we know that Odysseus is a great archer.

• 1:10:40Amanda Dobbins?

  We do know that and he has precision.

• 1:10:42Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:10:42Amanda Dobbins?

  And so it's just about, is it just about where you get hit?

• 1:10:46Sean Fennessey?

  I think so.

• 1:10:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, like, if you got hit right now, if you got hit in the eye with an arrow.

• 1:10:51Sean Fennessey?

  Jack, get the bow and arrow in here.

• 1:10:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Are you instantly dead? Or are you just really, really mad?

• 1:10:56Sean Fennessey?

  In the eye?

• 1:10:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:57Sean Fennessey?

  If I caught an arrow in the eye, in all likelihood, it's going to my brain. So I think that would be problematic.

• 1:11:01Amanda Dobbins?

  So you, but do you think that's instant death? I think that's what I'm asking.

• 1:11:05Sean Fennessey?

  Uh.

• 1:11:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Why isn't there, why is there kind of more like zombie struggle?

• 1:11:08Sean Fennessey?

  Why is this important to you?

• 1:11:09Amanda Dobbins?

  I, I've found myself wondering because there was a lot of bow and arrows because they're picking people off before they can get to the gates of Troy.

• 1:11:16Sean Fennessey?

  I think neck, head and heart, you're going down for the count. Anywhere else I think is survivable.

• 1:11:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:11:21Sean Fennessey?

  Um, I think.

• 1:11:23Amanda Dobbins?

  They use what they had. I understand.

• 1:11:25Sean Fennessey?

  This is a convenience of action movie storytelling.

• 1:11:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Totally. I just.

• 1:11:27Sean Fennessey?

  I'm just like, guy gets hit with arrow and he's out.

• 1:11:29Amanda Dobbins?

  I was that engaged with the battle that I was wondering about the mechanics of bow and arrows. Also, the mechanics of bow and arrows are essential to the plot of Homer's Odyssey.

• 1:11:37Sean Fennessey?

  No doubt.

• 1:11:38Amanda Dobbins?

  And Christopher Nolan's Odyssey.

• 1:11:39Sean Fennessey?

  We will get there. Um, the Trojan Horse story, we return to that moment a few times, the head, the beheading of Athena's statue.

• 1:11:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:11:47Sean Fennessey?

  And when we're watching it the first time, we have this incredible feeling of excitement and grandeur. The good guys are about to win. They're storming the castle and they're going to take over. And then you realize as you go through the rest of the film and we return visually to those moments over and over again, that this is one of the worst things that's ever happened to Odysseus.

• 1:12:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:05Sean Fennessey?

  That him being a part of this incredible epic triumph in war has destroyed civilization.

• 1:12:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:11Sean Fennessey?

  Has destroyed his psyche, has destroyed his perception of what it is to be human. You know, as you said, like, that's not really in the poem. Like, that, that reading of the character is really interesting. It's really, it's really quite insightful and a way to change what the Odyssey can be to us because we're, we're living in a time of unjust wars right now. You know, we're living in a time of people being killed for very bad reasons. And

• 1:12:43Sean Fennessey?

  I, I love that he uses what, in, in any other Hollywood product would have just been the moment of greatest triumph for our hero. Where we just, you know, just like Achilles is the great hero of.

• 1:12:53Amanda Dobbins?

  In Nolan fashion, you, you see it twice. And so, you know, I, we can talk about like the second, the second viewing of the sacking of Troy from a slightly different perspective when we get to it. Um, but, but the fact that you have already lived through it from Menelaus's point of view and you experienced the victory and then the victory is eroded for two hours is, I think. Really special.

• 1:13:17Sean Fennessey?

  It's incredibly, incredibly smart. You know, that we eventually return back to Odysseus. Odysseus begins visiting many islands. And I like this part of the movie, but I do feel like this is the part of the movie, even the second time around, I was like, okay, we're going through the stages of each moment in the Odyssey. So we are going to see the Lestragonians, the giant soldiers who in this film are wearing this massive armor. They're not quite cannibals as portrayed in the poem, but they are these, you know, terrifying figures who are overwhelming Odysseus' men as they're seeking, I guess, a herd of, I don't know, goats to eat? Is that what they're following? Sheep? Sheep.

• 1:13:56Amanda Dobbins?

  They don't even make it to the sheep on this one. The sheep are, this one, they just, they see the one wailing child. No, no, no. This is the child who screams quite loudly. Who can relate? Me. And then all of the, the, the adult soldiers who are featured pretty prominently on the posters, and it just looked like really giant.

• 1:14:16Sean Fennessey?

  They do. I assume those are all just giant men.

• 1:14:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, I didn't know whether there was maybe some stilt and some like trench work going on. They've, they battle in a forest, so there are lots of different ways that you could... But I mean, it's, they just go nuts.

• 1:14:33Sean Fennessey?

  It's the most classically Swords and Sandals moment in the movie, I would say, where it's just like big scary guys battling little guys and chasing them down the mountain. And many men are killed. An entire ship is destroyed by these figures who are just marauding the ship. It's very exciting. It, it has like the most typically propulsive score from Ludwig Gornson. It feels like more like Tenet than it does like the rest of this film, which is using, you know, the music throughout I thought was fantastic. I really feel like he's an heir to the 1940s and 50s film composers who knew how to swell you. You know, he's using much more modern styles, but in this movie, Gornson uses like the

• 1:15:14Sean Fennessey?

  aulos, I think is what it's called, which is like a dual reeded wood, woodwind instrument. And so he cuts these two different sonic styles, one that's just like pure war drums and one that is this more like the lyre and that instrument to sort of like transport you back 3,000 years, to make you feel like you're listening to something old. And so the movie keeps doing that too, where each sequence, you know, Cersei follows the Lestragonians.

• 1:15:42Amanda Dobbins?

  And that's more goats, I think. Pigs? Yeah, I don't know.

• 1:15:47Sean Fennessey?

  There are many creatures on that.

• 1:15:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:48Sean Fennessey?

  There are lions and tigers.

• 1:15:50Amanda Dobbins?

  And bears, oh my.

• 1:15:51Sean Fennessey?

  And leopards and panthers.

• 1:15:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 1:15:54Sean Fennessey?

  Those are, of course, actually real people who have been transformed by Circe.

• 1:15:59Sean Fennessey?

  And the Circe sequence is yet another island and they're kind of crashing ashore and they're looking for food. They're lost. They're looking for food. What year are we in now in their journey? Year six, seven? You know, it's been a long time.

• 1:16:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:10Sean Fennessey?

  That they've been at sea. And this is no one's first true horror movie, this sequence. Samantha Morton plays Circe and she leads Odysseus' men. And this is also a moment where Odysseus has essentially been mutinied.

• 1:16:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. They're getting fed up.

• 1:16:25Sean Fennessey?

  They're sick of his shit and all the bad choices he's been making. And, you know, for the sickos like me, I was like, yes, yes. When the men start eating the stew.

• 1:16:36Amanda Dobbins?

  It was so gnarly in the best way.

• 1:16:38Sean Fennessey?

  Very disgusting.

• 1:16:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Like, very, very gross. And again, sort of practi-- you know, they're using--

• 1:16:46Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:16:46Amanda Dobbins?

  So it's like, it's sort of meat squid-like stuff that turns tentacles and--

• 1:16:51Sean Fennessey?

  And as Circe starts shaping the men's faces into pigs, it reminded me a lot of the transformation scene in American Werewolf in London, which is also done practically. It felt like a Rick Baker makeup sequence. And I'm sure that there were effects that were used on that in post, but doing something like that and showing you just enough to make you uncomfortable and to feel disgusted, but not so much that it breaks the illusion of what's happening, is a real feat. Now, Circe is also somewhat different in this adaptation, right?

• 1:17:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, well, abbreviated. And so Circe also, there was a bestselling, a wildly popular recontextualization, a novel in the last 10 years called Circe that is told from her point of view. And, you know, that expands and gets into, I think, you know, non-canon territory, which is fine. But I do, as previously noted, think that this film allides the year-long passionate love affair that she and Odysseus have after the pigs are turned and--

• 1:17:56Sean Fennessey?

  Why do you--

• 1:17:56Amanda Dobbins?

  The pigs are turned back to men.

• 1:17:58Sean Fennessey?

  Why do you think that is? Why do you think it allides it? Because this movie doesn't want to show Matt Damon fucking Samantha Morton.

• 1:18:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, no, you think that's it? I think it's because he's only, he has to be true to Penelope.

• 1:18:10Sean Fennessey?

  That's my point. Like, we don't see Odysseus getting down with all these ladies. There are multiple moments across this story where like, Odysseus arrives on shore and women are ogling him because he's such a beautiful epic warrior.

• 1:18:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:18:21Sean Fennessey?

  And he's like, no, no ladies, do not look upon me.

• 1:18:24Amanda Dobbins?

  For home. Yeah. And for Penelope, which if Penelope is Anne Hathaway, I get it.

• 1:18:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, you know, I guess also story time. I mean, you just mentioned they've, at this point in the story, they've been at sea for like six or seven years. We've not seen six or seven years worth of content, you know? We don't see any of the mundane of these people need to sleep and eat and do all the things that is indicated in the, in the Circe portion. But, um, yeah, they, she doesn't really get redeemed. She's, but she's not evil either. He's sympathetic to her.

• 1:18:58Sean Fennessey?

  Component of sympathy. I agree with you. There is, he, and I think this kind of extends to every character in the movie. Maybe not Scylla, but most of the characters in the movie are seen as complicated and flawed, but not evil. I would, I guess Robert Pattinson's character is the one character who is truly snidely whiplash, old school movie villain. And, you know, as we're going through these journeys, you know, eventually Odysseus travels to Hades, but before he does that, we see more from Telemachus and the more time he spends with Menelaus and him trying to figure out as he's traveling with Mentor,

• 1:19:36Sean Fennessey?

  what he should do and where he should go. And it's happening opposite Pattinson's character, Antinous, who is, I guess, a, a local nobleman who is attempting to become Penelope's husband.

• 1:19:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. He's, she's one of the most aggressive suitors, though there are dozens of them. And they're drinking all the wine and eating all the food and bullying other people.

• 1:20:01Sean Fennessey?

  Let's say Zach unexpectedly kicks the bucket. God forbid that doesn't happen. I would be devastated, but let's just say it happens. Is this what you would do?

• 1:20:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, do I know is the thing, because that's the other question. Like, they don't know what has happened to Odysseus and all they can rely on are strangers tales.

• 1:20:17Sean Fennessey?

  And Zach's been gone for 20 years. Are you hosting 12 suitors?

• 1:20:22Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, no, if I can possibly help it because Penelope also seems pretty pissed off. They're using all of her supplies. She's, I mean, the, the management system in this home is, is more archaic and relies on slave labor, but

• 1:20:40Sean Fennessey?

  Maybe don't trust me a goth as well.

• 1:20:41Amanda Dobbins?

  In my house? Then I gotta feed all these people?

• 1:20:44Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:20:45Amanda Dobbins?

  I gotta be in charge of this stuff? No, absolutely not. You know, one

• 1:20:49Sean Fennessey?

  What if Pattinson was one of the guys?

• 1:20:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, yeah.

• 1:20:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Pattinson in his skirt was just conspicuously shorter than all the other skirts.

• 1:20:56Sean Fennessey?

  You noticed that?

• 1:20:57Amanda Dobbins?

  I did. I tried to point them out to you. You can see those nice knees.

• 1:21:01Sean Fennessey?

  Is that something you're looking for in a man?

• 1:21:03Amanda Dobbins?

  I didn't know until I saw it, you know, but I think that I, not everyone has nice knees and not all the knees are on display, but he's just, he's gallivanting.

• 1:21:12Sean Fennessey?

  Not really a knee guy.

• 1:21:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Again, I didn't think I was.

• 1:21:16Sean Fennessey?

  Are fine.

• 1:21:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. I, I have no knowledge of what they look like and I don't need to know.

• 1:21:20Sean Fennessey?

  I'll give you a look later. Um, I, I do think that this, this part of the story I think is okay. I, I

• 1:21:28Amanda Dobbins?

  The suitor stuff?

• 1:21:29Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it's not my favorite. Um, I think, I think it's very broad. It's very broad. It's, it exists for a very obvious reason, which is that Zeus's law and the sort of the golden rule, which is so crucial to understanding

• 1:21:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:21:40Sean Fennessey?

  The, how, how ultimately these characters feel at the end of the story is kind of returned to over and over again. The Penelope sort of has to host these suitors because it is the nature of the community at this time. And this idea that if a beggar comes to your door, you have to welcome that person in. You can't turn them away because of Zeus's law. And we see Telemachus refer to it. You know, we see characters throughout the story say that there was a kind of politesse that is essential to hold civilization together.

• 1:22:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Xenia, which is really the only xenia. Sorry if I'm not saying it correctly, but that's the only thing they taught us when we read this in school. And I didn't, I didn't care then. And I agree with you that I don't totally relate to it in the, in the very literal terms of the movie. You know, it also exists because they need to present a challenge and a conflict to Penelope.

• 1:22:25Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Otherwise she would just either wait patiently for Odysseus and or be like, hello, Robert Pattinson and your nice knees.

• 1:22:33Sean Fennessey?

  She's just a damsel otherwise.

• 1:22:35Amanda Dobbins?

  And I think that they

• 1:22:39Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, otherwise the conflict when Odysseus, there's no conflict once Odysseus gets home and it's not, it's just a happy homecoming. I mean, like, he made it, show's over.

• 1:22:49Sean Fennessey?

  I wouldn't excise it, I don't think. It's more just that it's played very broadly, but it's a chamber piece, it's not an action set piece. And so the broad stuff in the chamber piece is maybe a little bit less effective. I do think that he makes this great choice to kind of constantly be shooting Anne Hathaway from behind these kind of veiled circumstances, the threading that she's working on, or that sort of sliding door that she sits behind.

• 1:23:11Amanda Dobbins?

  The modesty screen?

• 1:23:12Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, the modesty screen, interesting.

• 1:23:13Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't know if that's what they called it, but you know, I thought it was a very clear architectural representation of the societal divides that are forced upon, and she's only allowed to be in certain rooms and in certain places.

• 1:23:26Sean Fennessey?

  Very much.

• 1:23:27Amanda Dobbins?

  It was clever.

• 1:23:27Sean Fennessey?

  And also that

• 1:23:28Amanda Dobbins?

  And also mirrors the Trojan, you know, the Trojan Gates.

• 1:23:32Sean Fennessey?

  That's right. But also that women are meant to be desired but not engaged with, you know? So it's effective, it's just whenever the movie pivots back to those scenes, I'm like, okay, well, when are we, you know, when are we going to Hades? When are we going to meet, when are we going to see Sinan, who we have not mentioned yet, Elliot Page's character? When are we going to see his rise from the dead? When are we going to see Agamemnon come and tell his tale?

• 1:23:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:23:58Sean Fennessey?

  When are we going to see Thereseus give his prophecy? I love this scene. This is, again, like, this is the third scene in a row that you could comfortably call a horror sequence

• 1:24:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Totally.

• 1:24:07Sean Fennessey?

  in the movie. And obviously, this stuff is all in the text, but he shoots this fantastically, the sort of the blood sacrifice across the shield, and then sipping from the blood and the dirt and makeup that is applied to the actors' faces in this scene.

• 1:24:19Amanda Dobbins?

  I think this is in Iceland, so it's just kind of a barren, like

• 1:24:23Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, cold and black.

• 1:24:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, and like, very beautiful, but communicating the underworld.

• 1:24:27Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. I loved this part. I think the performances from all three of the actors in this, in this scene are fantastic. I think it's, it's a challenge in the story.

• 1:24:40Sean Fennessey?

  That you can't really get around the prophecy. And it's not a flaw of the movie, but it is just an essential part of the movie where the movie tells you what's going to happen in the movie next. And what they tell you is exactly what happens. So I don't know if you felt this way, but I certainly felt this way where Teresius gives his prophecy and he says, you will encounter the sirens.

• 1:24:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:00Sean Fennessey?

  And you should not listen to their song because it will.

• 1:25:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, I disagree, I think, for a number of reasons, because

• 1:25:09Amanda Dobbins?

  I think that including the prophecy then sets up Odysseus's attempts to subvert it, which are fruitless, but you know, an interesting wrinkle. And they, and the prophecy comes right after. The, the most direct accounting and the most emotional accounting of the ways that Odysseus has just failed people and betrayed people. You have, you know, Sinan speaking like with, with great regret and hurt about, you know, I was used and you lied to me and you, you see what have otherwise been sort of, you

• 1:25:48Amanda Dobbins?

  know, mythological exploits and decisions related on like a very person to person, human cost. And then you see, then Agamemnon is, puts forth kind of the, the uselessness of all of this in a different way. Helen has already introduced that. Lupita Nyong'o plays Helen and she contextualizes the Trojan War secrets in terms of, you know, a war done in my name, but not, not for me at all, for trade routes and for a power grab. And so.

• 1:26:24Sean Fennessey?

  And she also plays Clytemnestra.

• 1:26:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:26:26Sean Fennessey?

  Her, her sister.

• 1:26:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Who in this flashback sequence.

• 1:26:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Takes revenge for Agamemnon killing her child, sacrificing her child, murdering her child, which you are shown in a very, very bleak and upsetting way. This, it is a retelling that is, has a lot of empathy for Clytemnestra. And so you've just been presented this person who has betrayed people and made mistakes and like all for what? And, you know, Odysseus is down bad in that moment is what I would say. And kind of your affinity for him is, is down bad.

• 1:27:09Amanda Dobbins?

  And so it then gives the audience and you and Odysseus the motivation of, well, at least he's going to try to fight for the last few men. At least he's going to try, he's, you know, it's folly to try to overturn what the gods have faded. But also he, he wants to, and that's like a mark in his favor, I guess. So I think it, to me, the characterization, and then I had just also, like, I thought the sirens was one of the best three minutes of a movie I've seen in some time.

• 1:27:38Sean Fennessey?

  I completely agree.

• 1:27:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Believe how good it was. So I didn't really, and, and it does go by quickly. So some, some context, I mean, you're right that it's just expositional.

• 1:27:47Sean Fennessey?

  I think what it does is it just, it makes the, it's not, it's not a flaw of the story. Like it is the story.

• 1:27:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:53Sean Fennessey?

  It is the story that the prophecy is delivered and then these three things happen. I think it's more like, even though we know Odysseus is going to make these choices to try to subvert the prophecy.

• 1:28:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:04Sean Fennessey?

  We also know as readers of the story or just knowers of the story.

• 1:28:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:08Sean Fennessey?

  Or having seen the movie a second time, you're like, the incident is too clearly enunciated.

• 1:28:16Amanda Dobbins?

  It's a little too tell them what you're going to tell them, tell them and then tell them what you told them.

• 1:28:19Sean Fennessey?

  It's not a bad thing.

• 1:28:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Which is good journalism.

• 1:28:21Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:21Amanda Dobbins?

  You know?

• 1:28:22Sean Fennessey?

  It's very direct. I agree with you completely about the siren sequence, which is very hard to capture because it's another, it's like, like the cyclops. It's something people know very well. It's gone into the language as meaning other things.

• 1:28:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:28:32Sean Fennessey?

  It's become very metaphorical for us. The sirens are barely seen. He makes a very wise choice to kind of shoot them at a distance on the island and. It is a moment of pure agony for Damon and Damon kind of turning himself over so intensely in his performance when he chooses to hear the song that it's like it's a standout moment in the movie.

• 1:28:53Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, the performance is amazing because also when he chooses to hear the song, which from the Emily Wilson translation at least is is different than than in the in the poem. I think Cersei tells him to listen to it and instead it's Damon, you know, with a little mischief in his eye. And so, and you know, it's Matt Damon doing Damon, but also once again, getting you really back on his side. Because why wouldn't you want to hear it? And then, you know, transforming into that total agony. And I also felt that the just the writing, the screenwriting and the description of what that song

• 1:29:32Amanda Dobbins?

  was and what he heard is wholly Nolan and some of the best explication of what's going on in his work and some of the best writing that he's done about longing and guilt and what you've lost.

• 1:29:47Sean Fennessey?

  I it's Yeah, no, he says that the thing that you desire the most is the thing that you had and can no longer have.

• 1:29:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:52Sean Fennessey?

  And it him, the way he's cut together, him retelling the experience of what he heard and understood while showing Damon in that absolute agony is just again, like it's in the total cinema thing where you're like, you've kind of figured out how to most beautifully represent one of the most famous sequences in all of stories.

• 1:30:11Amanda Dobbins?

  It's sublime.

• 1:30:12Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:12Amanda Dobbins?

  And it just and it really all comes together and it and it really is only it's three minutes. But you just that was I think that was the second time that I sort of, you know, my soul left my body.

• 1:30:22Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I love that sequence as well.

• 1:30:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Two times in a movie already and we're not to the third act.

• 1:30:26Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, we speedrun Silas and Caribb.

• 1:30:29Amanda Dobbins?

  As they do.

• 1:30:30Sean Fennessey?

  As they do in the story. It's just a few pages. Yeah.

• 1:30:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, but also just, you know, as they do in the film.

• 1:30:35Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:30:35Amanda Dobbins?

  You don't want to take your time.

• 1:30:37Sean Fennessey?

  No, you got to get past that that whirlpool. And I think it's pretty, this is the most fantastical sequence in the entire movie, because it's a monster and a massive whirlpool that has a mind of its own. And I think it looks good. You know, I think his attempts to save everyone are foolhardy. I think Hamish Patel, at this point in the film, has become almost like the audience surrogate, where we're with him and his frustration with Odysseus's pride and arrogance in all of these gestures. We move quickly to Helios's cattle and the final fate of the fleet. We don't even really see the final fate of the fleet, but we see them eat that cattle, which they were told not to do.

• 1:31:18Amanda Dobbins?

  I just wanted to say that on this one, the Scylla of it all, you really don't see all of Scylla very much, which is-

• 1:31:26Sean Fennessey?

  Just the tentacles.

• 1:31:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Just the tentacles, which is a very smart, you know, Spielberg 101 decision, but I loved it.

• 1:31:32Sean Fennessey?

  I agree.

• 1:31:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Nice cliffs.

• 1:31:36Sean Fennessey?

  Now, throughout the movie, we've been seeing Calypso.

• 1:31:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:40Sean Fennessey?

  Odysseus and Calypso are on an island together. She's feeding him lotus flower.

• 1:31:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:45Sean Fennessey?

  He clearly can't remember everything about his life.

• 1:31:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, and he keeps saying, "Why can't I remember? Do you remember?"

• 1:31:50Sean Fennessey?

  And so the movie is told through these phases of his memory. And after his fleet finally perishes and he washes ashore on this island, we see that it's all been kind of leading to this moment where the timelines are starting to settle in together. And this is about where we're entering the third act here of the movie, and we've gotten through all the kind of classical odyssey incidents. And Charlize Theron.

• 1:32:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:20Sean Fennessey?

  Inspired casting.

• 1:32:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure, you know what?

• 1:32:24Sean Fennessey?

  If you had to be trapped by-

• 1:32:25Amanda Dobbins?

  I agree 100%. Well, yeah, no, I mean-

• 1:32:28Sean Fennessey?

  You had to be trapped by a demigod on an island and have sex with her every day for seven years.

• 1:32:33Amanda Dobbins?

  And, well, they don't show any of that.

• 1:32:34Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, well, it's implied.

• 1:32:36Amanda Dobbins?

  It sure is implied, the way that they, the way that they dress her, the way that they shoot her. There's, you know, one shot from behind that is quite spectacular and going on my inspiration board, you know, along with Emily Blunt's arms from Edge of Tomorrow, but-

• 1:32:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, she's wonderful. And I think casting her is great and covers as much of the problems with, you know, the character, the writing, the characterization as you possibly can. Listen, it's a tough, tough character. It's in-

• 1:33:10Sean Fennessey?

  I like what she does specifically in the performance because she plays it, and I'm sure this is in the screenplay as well.

• 1:33:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:15Sean Fennessey?

  She plays it with a lot of regret and confusion. She doesn't play it as this kind of like spider lady, you know, who's kind of like taken him away from his real life and love and using him for his beautiful body and the desire that she has for him. That's there, you understand that. But she's kind of mournful about what she's done. And she's kind of gotten to the end of this period of time with this man who she's become, who she's been obsessed with and who she's tricked into staying with her. And Charlize is such, is a good enough actor that,

• 1:33:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 1:33:44Sean Fennessey?

  you know, you're like, oh, I see that you've, you've done the wrong thing. You've kept this man from his ultimate fate and that that actually is against the gods as well. And I think you're right that it's a very simplistic character. And it's a character that like really flatters a male protagonist than a male author.

• 1:33:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Totally, which, which again is in the original text. I, you know, I think it relatively speaking, updates and modernizes and makes her more sympathetic. And I agree with you in the performance. You know, she says over and over again, we were happy. We like, we were really happy.

• 1:34:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Which is at least trying to forge some sort of emotional connection or characterize, you know, give her some interiority. But, you know, it's, it's just like a woman who traps a guy and it's all her fault. You know, not exactly second wave.

• 1:34:32Sean Fennessey?

  It's not. That being said, I would submit. I would submit.

• 1:34:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, and so that's the one thing where I didn't know if the adaptation went far enough. I thought, I thought it could have been a little bit more provocative because it doesn't-

• 1:34:47Amanda Dobbins?

  At any point suggest that the Odysseus character was if not submitting than like maybe did want to stay there's there's no ambiguity. It's attributed to the to the lotus flower and he was either, you know, drugged and didn't remember or or wants to go home. And there's another point in the movie where he where someone asks him, why don't you want to go home? Is it is it at the sirens? But like there, there is a little bit a hint of a complication of is there something holding you back? Like, is it true that you're this totally pure person who wants to go home? Yeah, you know, and

• 1:35:25Sean Fennessey?

  I'll tell you what we made this list of things that we think this movie is really about. Yeah. And one of the things that I think it's about is dad goes on a work trip. Yeah, like, that's really what this movie is, is that Odysseus goes on a work trip. And I go on a lot of work trips. And here's my feelings on my work trips. First day, I'm a little disoriented, as everyone is. Second day, I'm like, I'm free. Yeah, I have no responsibilities. I don't have to take care of my child. Yeah, I don't have to make sure everything's okay in my house. I don't have to go to work. Yeah, I'm free. Third day, I'm like, I got a lot of work here. I'm doing stuff. I came here for a reason, and I have all these responsibilities. Fourth day, I'm like, when am I going to see my family? Where is my family? And I think that that is Odysseus's story over

• 1:36:06Sean Fennessey?

  20 years. Sure, it's just transport that four day feeling I have to 20 years. And so we see in various times, there are periods where he's like, Yeah, I'm a fucking war hero. And I'm hot. And I deserve to hear the siren song and then bang Calypso. I deserve it.

• 1:36:22Amanda Dobbins?

  But I don't think that the presentation of Calypso and the the way that resolves ends with any acknowledgement that he is like, I deserve this, you know, I and or even I had the tiniest bit of longing or I participated in any way in extending this like, a little bit longer than I should. No, no, I mean, sure, that would be great, you know? In that instance, unlike the Penelope scene, a child wouldn't be in the room with them, which, you know, I know that's how it goes in ancient Greece, or do I know? But he is absolved of all responsibility in that decision. And it's not, there's no day two, like, hey, this is awesome.

• 1:37:07Amanda Dobbins?

  I can do whatever I want with Calypso. And, you know,

• 1:37:11Sean Fennessey?

  You're right. That doesn't happen in the movie.

• 1:37:12Amanda Dobbins?

  I think it could have been a bit, it could have gone a bit further.

• 1:37:16Sean Fennessey?

  Do you think a man of his stature deserves to have that experience?

• 1:37:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Between him and Penelope and/or Christopher Nolan and his,

• 1:37:24Sean Fennessey?

  Again, a very modern reading.

• 1:37:25Amanda Dobbins?

  And his Penelope.

• 1:37:25Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Emma Thomas, who was there every step of the way. You start to wonder whether, no, I mean,

• 1:37:32Sean Fennessey?

  You're suggesting polyamory? What are you?

• 1:37:33Amanda Dobbins?

  No, no, no. I'm suggesting that maybe he doesn't, you know, that's not allowed in the script because he's got someone right there on his work with him.

• 1:37:41Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Good point. Good point.

• 1:37:45Sean Fennessey?

  The final 45 minutes of the movie is all about Odysseus's return. He rebuilds a raft from the remains of his ship. He leaves Calypso. He sets out to go back to Ithaca.

• 1:37:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:58Sean Fennessey?

  At this time,

• 1:37:59Amanda Dobbins?

  He passes out for a while and Athena just kinda,

• 1:38:02Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, shuttles him along.

• 1:38:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Zips him.

• 1:38:04Sean Fennessey?

  We'll get to Athena momentarily. This all leads to Penelope's sense that the moment has come where the suitors are going to become more agitated. Antonus has made strong movements towards filling Odysseus's shoes.

• 1:38:24Sean Fennessey?

  Telemachus thinks he's making moves, but he's just kind of a buffoon. And I'll just say plainly, I don't think Tom Holland is great in this movie. I think he's getting some good reviews. I think he struggles a little bit. I kept waiting for him to say, Mr. Stark, Mr. Stark. Like, I couldn't get Peter Parker out of my head when I was watching him.

• 1:38:42Amanda Dobbins?

  The accent with him is noticeable.

• 1:38:46Sean Fennessey?

  It's noticeable. You know, he's a good screen presence and he's actually quite a good action hero and he's a wonderful Spider-Man.

• 1:38:53Sean Fennessey?

  Stuck out a little bit to me in the movie, if I'm, if I'm giving some, some negative notes on it. But when he becomes together with Matt Damon, when at first Matt Damon introduces himself in the temple as a beggar.

• 1:39:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:39:06Sean Fennessey?

  And then saves his life by eliminating all of Antonus's terrible henchmen. And then we see the plan to sort of take back the palace.

• 1:39:16Amanda Dobbins?

  You forgot about the dog.

• 1:39:18Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. What's the Hargus? Is that the dog's name?

• 1:39:20Amanda Dobbins?

  I didn't learn the dog's name, but the dog has been waiting for Odysseus.

• 1:39:24Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, on a pile of dung.

• 1:39:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:26Sean Fennessey?

  Fortunately, unfortunately put there by Antonus.

• 1:39:30Sean Fennessey?

  Eventually, this beggar enters the halls and Penelope decides after a long evening and a conversation with the beggar, that the moment is now that if Odysseus is in fact still alive, he will emerge at this time and emerge in this challenge that she sets up. And if not, she'll accept the fate from one of the suitors. And what she sets up is a challenge only Odysseus can win.

• 1:39:56Sean Fennessey?

  And this part of the movie fucking rocks. This is the absolute, this is classical John Wick.

• 1:40:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, so, but you, but you just skipped their conversation and the flashbacks. Which to me is the pinnacle of the movie.

• 1:40:11Sean Fennessey?

  Where he tells the story of the war and what he experienced.

• 1:40:14Amanda Dobbins?

  And so, and he's recognized by his nanny and, but tells her not to, and it's unclear he and.

• 1:40:21Sean Fennessey?

  A wonderful moment of, of, it's, it's before the callback of the Trojan War where early in the film, we see Odysseus hunting and he's gored in his ankle by a, by a boar.

• 1:40:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:40:30Sean Fennessey?

  And he's, his wound is cleaned by this nanny.

• 1:40:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:40:36Sean Fennessey?

  And it's when his leg, his feet are being cleaned by this woman some 30 years later that she realizes who he is. And there's this, that's a great little movie moment of recognition between them.

• 1:40:45Amanda Dobbins?

  He's gored, by the way, because he always gives like a warning shot with his bow.

• 1:40:50Sean Fennessey?

  He plucks his bow.

• 1:40:50Amanda Dobbins?

  He plucks his bow, which is just like an incredible sonic setup for another great movie moment. A plus stuff, but so he.

• 1:40:59Sean Fennessey?

  There's like 20 of these in the movie.

• 1:41:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:41:01Sean Fennessey?

  Somebody does something in the first hour and then they do it in the third hour and you're like, yes.

• 1:41:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:04Sean Fennessey?

  God, I love that.

• 1:41:05Amanda Dobbins?

  But that one is just, like, the whole movie turns and it like brings in your John Wick in that way. But before we get to that, he and Penelope, Odysseus is the stranger and Penelope have a conversation through the, the screen.

• 1:41:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Where he tells his version of the Trojan horse story and he's telling it as a stranger, but with Odysseus' revisionist, you know, hard-earned understanding of what happened and what it did to the world. And it's really, and it's the thesis of the movie in terms of its thoughts about war, how we treat other people, what is our duty to, you know, to another man and the world at large in an incredibly beautiful way. And it is interspersed with like a second total run of the sacking of Troy and they're lighting things on fire and the, and beheading Athena's statue and-

• 1:42:04Sean Fennessey?

  Their savagery is foreground.

• 1:42:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. And it is, um, there's so much Oppenheimer in this while also it being just like a dramatic swords and sandal, again, lighting multiple things on fire, which is exciting, but also appalling.

• 1:42:21Sean Fennessey?

  We see women and children in a way that we didn't in the first rendition of the story.

• 1:42:25Amanda Dobbins?

  And there's a similar, there's a shot that really mirrors that one shot from the like, the pep rally or whatever in Oppenheimer of the young woman with the, her face disintegrating. In, in this film, I thought it was really genius that it's, um, instead of a, you know, a slave girl, it's Athena's face transported right on. And, and then there is that same exact moment framed in the same way of just like, this is the cost. This is, you know, this is what you're doing and what you're responsible for. I, really, really transcendent stuff. And to me, kind of like the fullest representation and achievement of what Nolan's trying to do with, you know, certainly revisionist American history and broader

• 1:43:10Amanda Dobbins?

  social commentary about, like, I, really, really powerful.

• 1:43:14Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I completely agree. It's, it's genuine thematic storytelling. Um, and it, it, it does also, I think, make- Athena coherent in the film.

• 1:43:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:24Sean Fennessey?

  Throughout the films, Zendaya crops up at moments of great doubt for Odysseus. Moments when he's made a choice that feels like the wrong choice. And she comes in, she's sort of, she's the skeptical god. You know, she's somebody who's like, is this really what you're going to do in this? Are you not a man who believes in this, this and this? And then when we see her in this state of vulnerability at the end of the story, you kind of see the way that he has turned himself over to the faithfulness of the gods. And that that is, that's the, that's the true code of life. That like the decency that is woven into, and, and the gods are fractious and they're difficult and they, they, they're mercurial, but they do have this kind of like divining, straightforward idea of how to be alive in this time in Greece. And that he subscribes to it.

• 1:44:06Sean Fennessey?

  It is his faith, like it is his, it is the structure of his life, his code. And the movie communicates that. And in doing so, effectively Penelope realizes like, who's back?

• 1:44:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:18Sean Fennessey?

  You know, and like what's happened?

• 1:44:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:20Sean Fennessey?

  And it sets up this just truly dramatic realization of his return. It's not a simple, she could have just slid the doors open. But, you know, there's a moment where, what is, what, what is the sequence where we learn that you can't just re-enter the halls? Like you have to take it back to, to.

• 1:44:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, that's, oh, isn't it from Agamemnon?

• 1:44:45Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, exactly. Thank you.

• 1:44:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, like, you know, beware, don't walk in the front door.

• 1:44:50Sean Fennessey?

  Exactly.

• 1:44:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Essentially.

• 1:44:51Sean Fennessey?

  It's Agamemnon's wisdom. That he's following and that allows for this family, even though, you know, they've effectively been reunited, but they can't reunite in a clean way without there being some sort of attempt to thwart their power. And so they set up this elaborate challenge. And yeah, I think this, this part of the movie is incredible.

• 1:45:10Amanda Dobbins?

  And then the boepluck and then just everyone going to town. Damon, Holland gets in the mix.

• 1:45:16Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, he gets to fight Logan Marshall Green.

• 1:45:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:19Sean Fennessey?

  Upstairs, who is throwing swords through the roof.

• 1:45:21Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, listen, ingenuity.

• 1:45:23Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, truly.

• 1:45:25Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, very old fashioned style, battle style of, you know, fight movie stuff. There's like a little John Woo in this part of the movie. There's definitely a lot of John Wick. The cutaways to Pattinson being like, get the swords, get the shields. Like, it's so hokey, but so good. Like, it's so satisfying because you just want him to die so bad. And he's doing everything he can to tell people to do his bidding. And he's such an unlikable weasel of a character. But yeah, that moment pays off tremendously well.

• 1:45:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Going.

• 1:45:57Sean Fennessey?

  The music is crazy.

• 1:45:59Amanda Dobbins?

  And you kind of think that, that like the drums can't get any more intense. And then they somehow do, sort of like tantric drums. It's really, really amazing.

• 1:46:07Sean Fennessey?

  My heart was just racing for the last 20 minutes of this movie through that entire sequence, the way that it's edited together, the way that it's told. And it's like, I know what's gonna happen. That's, that's the great thing.

• 1:46:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:15Sean Fennessey?

  You know, like this has happened with a few Nolan movies for me where I'm like, I know what's gonna happen and I'm still really, really caught up. And that is a testament to adaptation that you would still be so caught up in how this story plays out. Of course, Odysseus is triumphant.

• 1:46:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:29Sean Fennessey?

  He kills everybody and those who he doesn't kill eventually bend the knee to him. They realize their king has returned. And so tell me how you feel about the final, final moments of the movie.

• 1:46:39Amanda Dobbins?

  So it's a quick wrap up. I mean, he and Penelope have like the unmasked, you know, walls, modesty wall open reunion. And he presents his Athena pen. So she knows it's really him and he's held on to it this whole time. And, you know, it's very beautiful and I think they're good, they're very good in it. And he sets up what is a pretty quick denouement. And explains what's gonna happen, which is that they give Ithaca to Telemachus. And there is a recurring bit in the film of how, you know, Odysseus is not properly

• 1:47:16Amanda Dobbins?

  honoring the, the dead in the, in the ritual way that Greeks, you know, treat a dead body. And he keeps saying, when I'm done, I'll sail west, like, and honor all my men. And so.

• 1:47:31Sean Fennessey?

  After he has given Sinan back his shame.

• 1:47:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:47:34Sean Fennessey?

  To, to Antinous, yeah.

• 1:47:36Amanda Dobbins?

  And. He is, so he reveals his plan to, um, to Penelope, which is also a callback before he leaves for Troy. She says, let's just, you know, sail west, chase the, the sun, beautiful, beautiful sunsets. And so in the end, they are on the boat together chasing, you know, going west, chasing the sun. Um, and then for, for some reason, they feel the need to gild the lily with the last three lines of the film, which are something about how, you know, men will forget to write or speak or whatever. And just like, you know, previews the dark ages. And then Penelope reassures Odysseus that civilization will ride, will rise again, and then cut to black.

• 1:48:22Sean Fennessey?

  I thought it was a hopeful note. I, I could not help but think about Christopher Nolan and Emma Thomas leaving the country after a presidential election. That was the vibe that that sailing on the ship was giving me. A little bit of like, I can't fucking deal with whatever's going on over here.

• 1:48:35Amanda Dobbins?

  I thought, I thought everything up until the dark ages, history lesson and civilization will rise again. If you just cut those two lines of dialogue and just feature them sailing west. I think it is, you know, hopeful, but also that they are still leaving home. Like not everything is rough. There is something.

• 1:48:55Sean Fennessey?

  They were going to Boca, you know, they're retiring.

• 1:48:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, but like, you know.

• 1:48:58Sean Fennessey?

  Coming to LA.

• 1:49:00Amanda Dobbins?

  But there, but there's something about civilization will rise again. That is also just like the classic Oppenheimer. So a lot of this was my fault, but also not all of it. Right? You know? And it's like, it's gonna be okay. And.

• 1:49:12Sean Fennessey?

  A little bit of the Bruce Wayne and Alfred, like cheersing each other from across the tables at the end of the Batman movie.

• 1:49:18Amanda Dobbins?

  And obviously just, you know, it's terrible dialogue and also so obvious and great meme stuff.

• 1:49:25Sean Fennessey?

  I didn't, it didn't bother me.

• 1:49:26Amanda Dobbins?

  I guess I enjoyed it in that, like, I'm always looking for some Christopher Nolan moment. And I was like, there's my guy. You did it.

• 1:49:33Sean Fennessey?

  I thought it was.

• 1:49:36Sean Fennessey?

  Look, this is not a subtle film. Not at all. I mean, it would defeat the purpose for it to be subtle. And I think it's very obvious that one of the reasons he wanted to make it is it feels like he felt like the world is falling apart around him and that human decency is at an all time low and that we treat each other like shit publicly all the time.

• 1:49:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:49:53Sean Fennessey?

  And you can look back to 3,000 years and think about it in the same register. So I think it's very effective.

• 1:50:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Communicates that much more artfully for the, you know,

• 1:50:03Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:50:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Other three hours of the movie, except for that one minute. But nice ship.

• 1:50:09Sean Fennessey?

  Nice ship.

• 1:50:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:09Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, good take. You know, we've already mentioned most of the actors in Below the Line, folks. You know, we haven't spoken about how we saw the film. We saw it in IMAX 70mm at the same theater, the Universal City Walk, which is Nolan's home court, the film, the theater that he likes to go to to screen his films, to see other people's movies. It's one of the great screens.

• 1:50:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:31Sean Fennessey?

  In the United States.

• 1:50:33Amanda Dobbins?

  He's a tall man. I wonder how he fits in those chairs.

• 1:50:36Sean Fennessey?

  It's a little bit narrow in the seating. I had a little bit of a tough time when I saw it. Yeah, it's European. I thought he used the scale tremendously well. This is the first film that was entirely shot on IMAX 70 cameras. And they had to build all kinds of technology to accommodate this because those cameras are so big and so loud. They had to build these sound blimps around them so that the actors could do their dialogue. But then they also had to build a mirroring system. So with the blimps, they would obscure the other actors in sequences so that you would have to give your performance looking into a mirror, which looked into another mirror, which then showed you the actor you were speaking to. Fairly complex.

• 1:51:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:12Sean Fennessey?

  You don't feel any of that in the movie.

• 1:51:14Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 1:51:15Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, it is a very well acted movie. It's a big, the acting is big.

• 1:51:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:19Sean Fennessey?

  But when there needs to be moments of intimacy, they are there for sure. Like when Calypso and Damon are in a tent on the beach, it feels.

• 1:51:28Amanda Dobbins?

  It's very true that you don't see that many shots of the two of them in the same frame, speaking to each other.

• 1:51:35Sean Fennessey?

  That's true.

• 1:51:36Amanda Dobbins?

  But that's okay. You don't miss it.

• 1:51:37Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, that's a decision that he's clearly made too. Where he's not showing, he's just not doing typical coverage. You know, he's not doing that thing where you're like, oh, here's a clear establishing shot of two people and they've just entered the kitchen. Like, he's totally dispensed with that as a filmmaker at this point. We mentioned Ludwig Gornson. We mentioned Jennifer Lame. Mentioned Ellen Mirajnik.

• 1:52:01Sean Fennessey?

  The incredible location scouting of this movie and the decision to travel around the world to do it. Ruth De Jong is the production designer. This is the Oppenheimer team.

• 1:52:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:11Sean Fennessey?

  This is the people and the tenant team, the people who all worked on that movie. These are among the best heads of department in all of movies right now. And there's a reason why these last two films especially are so extraordinary, so captivating, because you need people on his level, I think, to help him realize his vision. Like, it really is, when you're working at this scale, this isn't just like some little guy with a good idea in his room.

• 1:52:35Amanda Dobbins?

  No, it's-

• 1:52:36Sean Fennessey?

  Thousands of people worked on this movie.

• 1:52:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Totally.

• 1:52:38Sean Fennessey?

  Um, I, is there anything else about the script that you want to note? Because one thing I'll cite before we get into our Oscars conversation is Christopher Nolan has never won an Academy Award for a screenplay. His first nomination was for a screenplay.

• 1:52:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:54Sean Fennessey?

  But he's not one for his writing. And his writing has taken some dings over the years, for me especially. So-

• 1:53:00Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, for me, in the last five minutes.

• 1:53:01Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:02Amanda Dobbins?

  But just the, but also, I think it features some of the best writing.

• 1:53:05Sean Fennessey?

  I agree.

• 1:53:06Amanda Dobbins?

  On, like, just on a purely dialogue level. And I think as a, as we said, as a work of adaptation, and being both faithful to one of the most recognizable stories in my, in history.

• 1:53:21Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:53:21Amanda Dobbins?

  But also infusing not just his own ideas and like, you know, pet theories about what it means to be a great man or whatever, but some, just some very resonant commentary about the world that we live in.

• 1:53:34Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:53:35Amanda Dobbins?

  And being able to tie those two things. To me, it's a, it's a significant leap in terms of, um, which, you know, who am I to tell Christopher Nolan, like, good job, you made a leap. This isn't a development talk, but I, like-

• 1:53:48Sean Fennessey?

  It's something he's been working towards, though.

• 1:53:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:49Sean Fennessey?

  It's a realization of something that really interests him, obviously.

• 1:53:52Amanda Dobbins?

  I just, I think it's an incredible accomplishment.

• 1:53:53Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I agree with you. Um, is there anything else about the film you want to say? Travis Scott? This film opens with Travis Scott.

• 1:53:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Travis Scott. I mean, it's really funny.

• 1:54:01Sean Fennessey?

  It's just very funny.

• 1:54:02Amanda Dobbins?

  That is really funny. We started giggling.

• 1:54:03Sean Fennessey?

  The film is really loud.

• 1:54:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:06Sean Fennessey?

  Frequently. It's especially loud in the opening moments of the movie. It does not have the problem that many of his films have where you can't understand the dialogue. I was a little worried about this in the first 10 minutes of the film, because there's a lot of, you know, shuttling around the castle in Ithaca, but- I found it to be quite legible. It certainly doesn't have the Tenet issue of like, you can't understand half of what these people are saying in the movie.

• 1:54:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, well, I think that's purposeful in Tenet because it doesn't matter, you know, just let it flow over you. And this, I think he wants you to know what he's saying.

• 1:54:36Sean Fennessey?

  We'll talk about the movie more and the text of the movie on Monday with CR, who's also seen the movie. Spoiler alert, he liked it.

• 1:54:45Sean Fennessey?

  Box office.

• 1:54:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:47Sean Fennessey?

  It's tracking for a $200 million opening worldwide. I feel like it's going to go above that.

• 1:54:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:54:53Sean Fennessey?

  It will make it his highest grossing non-Batman movie opening weekend ever.

• 1:54:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:54:57Sean Fennessey?

  Oppenheimer opened at 174 million. I'd just like to say that's fucking insane.

• 1:55:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Because that was the same weekend as Barbie.

• 1:55:03Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, which obviously it was helped by Barbie. They helped each other in a lot of ways.

• 1:55:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, but I mean, still, at some point, you, most people couldn't fit both into one weekend, so.

• 1:55:10Sean Fennessey?

  This movie, at least in Los Angeles, is screening at all hours of the day, including at 11:00 PM and 3:00 AM. There are screenings running in theaters across the city.

• 1:55:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Who in the booth wants to go at 3:00 AM and report back?

• 1:55:24Speaker 04

  Absolutely not.

• 1:55:25Sean Fennessey?

  No.

• 1:55:25Amanda Dobbins?

  I do, Luca, oh, all right, I got a thumbs up from Lucas. Okay, we'll discuss later. I'll obviously be buying your ticket.

• 1:55:31Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, there are no tickets for the IMAX 70, that's the thing. Everything is sold out. All the screenings are sold out. So, and you know, I think there's a conversation to be had about the eventization and also the sort of like, the FOMO that is being created around the movie that I think has some real downsides. Do you think this movie is a movie that people see three and four times in theaters?

• 1:55:56Amanda Dobbins?

  I hope that people who are interested see it twice, at least because you and I both, I think, found a lot more the second time.

• 1:56:04Sean Fennessey?

  Very rewarding on the second watch.

• 1:56:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. I, so sure, you know, I don't know how the Nolan heads are going to feel about this. Do you think that they're just gonna be in lockstep? My guy, he did it again? Or do you think that there is something?

• 1:56:19Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I think the culture war stuff is nonsense. Like, I think that's not a, I think that's just internet bullshit. Nobody cares about that. So anybody who's like a hyper conservative, like this isn't my Helen of Troy stuff. I think that doesn't matter. I think general like cinephilia Nolan super fans. I think they'll probably love it.

• 1:56:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:38Sean Fennessey?

  It's an ancient tale, but it's told in a modern way with extraordinary filmmaking style. And so with huge stars, you know, like it's a very, and it's just a very satisfying watch. Like it's a big old meal of a movie.

• 1:56:51Amanda Dobbins?

  I totally agree. I do wonder whether the kind of, not the looky loos, but the people who go to see movies because it's a pop culture event.

• 1:57:00Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Are gonna be locked in in the same way.

• 1:57:02Sean Fennessey?

  And I, I think so. It's a good question.

• 1:57:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I think so. And I'm, and I'm, this is a little bit anecdotal and, you know, speaking with the civilians in my life who are aware of things and they're certainly aware of the press tour. And which is very charming, but, and, and his, I think you do have to do with this cast and with this amount of money on the line. But, you know, if you can watch Matt Damon and Tom Holland in the New York Times cooking kitchen, making gluten free pizza, then are you racing out in this? Do you feel like you've already participated in some cultural part of it?

• 1:57:37Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, that's interesting. I don't, I hadn't thought about that.

• 1:57:40Amanda Dobbins?

  This is, this is an old Matt Bellamy point of discussion, which I, which I think is insightful is, which is a what point does the?

• 1:57:47Sean Fennessey?

  I think this movie is such a spectacle that it transcends that.

• 1:57:49Amanda Dobbins?

  I completely agree. I just, I do wonder how much of, people who are interested in the movie are really gonna go see it. People who are drawn to the, like the star power and the, oh, it's the thing of it all. I can't tell how it's gonna convert.

• 1:58:05Speaker 04

  Can I, can I ask you guys a question? Do you think word of mouth has never been more important to the box office, say post COVID? Cause I'm thinking like Mandalorian Grogu comes out, it's horrible, drastically underperforms. Same thing with Supergirl and conversely, you know, backrooms mania obsession. It's obviously not a one to one, but it's hard for me to imagine people who see this not having it have great word of mouth.

• 1:58:29Sean Fennessey?

  It's an unusual version of that because everyone's already aware of this movie. And. I'm sure that word of mouth, word of mouth always matters to films, but it doesn't have the same challenges that a movie like Obsession or Backrooms had, where anybody who's normie and not invested in those worlds of horror, or, you know, the YouTube copy creepypasta storytelling.

• 1:58:53Sean Fennessey?

  It's definitely not going to have a negative effect. I don't think people are going to come out, I mean, it's a massive critical sensation already. I think this is basically his best reviewed movie ever. And we can dovetail that with the Oscars a little bit too, because I find this to be such an interesting test case for, that has effectively never happened before, maybe one other time in movie history. But I, to me, I'm asking about the three to four things, Jack, because that's the, that's the way to make a movie make a billion or a billion point five dollars. And I don't, it's really long.

• 1:59:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:27Sean Fennessey?

  I want to see it again, but I won't be racing out to see it a third time. You know, I saw Oppenheimer in theaters three times. Because I felt like I was trying to understand Oppenheimer, you know? I felt like he was doing something in the first half of that movie that I'd not really seen before. And I really flipped for it. And the second time I saw it, I liked it even more. And the third time I saw it, I liked it even more than that. I guess that's certainly possible for this movie, but it's, I, no one's going to be like, I fucking hated The Odyssey, right?

• 1:59:56Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't think so, though people do always surprise me.

• 1:59:58Sean Fennessey?

  That's true.

• 1:59:58Amanda Dobbins?

  And your reaction after the first screening was interesting to me. I think you, your esteem went up after the second time.

• 2:00:05Sean Fennessey?

  It definitely did.

• 2:00:06Amanda Dobbins?

  And

• 2:00:07Sean Fennessey?

  The things that I was, I mean, I wasn't crazy about Tom Holland. I did feel like it was a little episodic to a fault in act two. Like, that stuff still exists, but a lot of the sort of like,

• 2:00:17Sean Fennessey?

  very intentional, structural imagery that is foregrounded in the movie, and then that recurs later in the movie. That was the stuff that, something you were really recommending. I'm like, you can't deny how sophisticated and exciting this kind of filmmaking is.

• 2:00:35Amanda Dobbins?

  And it rips.

• 2:00:36Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:36Amanda Dobbins?

  It just does. It rips.

• 2:00:37Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, when it's going hard, it goes really, really hard. The Academy Awards.

• 2:00:44Sean Fennessey?

  I think this movie is locked in 12 categories. Is that crazy?

• 2:00:48Amanda Dobbins?

  No, that makes perfect sense. Let's go through them. Let's so and I'm doing, I'm not looking at your doctor. Okay, so best picture, best director. So that's two. I think best actress.

• 2:00:59Sean Fennessey?

  I didn't put any acting categories.

• 2:01:01Amanda Dobbins?

  You didn't? Oh, interesting.

• 2:01:02Sean Fennessey?

  So if you want it, we can add acting categories as well.

• 2:01:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, we'll come back to that. So adapted screenplay.

• 2:01:08Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 2:01:08Amanda Dobbins?

  That's three. Cinematography, four. Score, five. Production design, six. Costume design, seven. Editing, eight. Sorry, Jen Liam, for leaving you at number eight. Second Oscar incoming. Okay, so that's, that's eight. What are the other? Sound, nine. What other categories? James Blake original song?

• 2:01:29Sean Fennessey?

  I didn't add that, but I thought about it. James Blake and Travis Scott have an original song in the end credits. Yes. That's on the table.

• 2:01:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure, I just, it's so funny. Okay, so.

• 2:01:39Sean Fennessey?

  I like the use of James Blake's voice in the film, too. Something I didn't pick up on the first time around.

• 2:01:43Amanda Dobbins?

  It's totally great. It just is.

• 2:01:45Sean Fennessey?

  It's funny.

• 2:01:45Amanda Dobbins?

  When you turn to me during the credits, the first time, I'm like, is this James Blake? Okay, so.

• 2:01:50Sean Fennessey?

  You've got nine.

• 2:01:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Effects, obviously.

• 2:01:51Sean Fennessey?

  Effects is 10.

• 2:01:52Amanda Dobbins?

  10. And then, so you have two more non-acting. What are the other? Oh, casting.

• 2:01:57Sean Fennessey?

  Casting.

• 2:01:58Amanda Dobbins?

  11. And what are other categories that I don't say anything, anyone? I'm going through it. We've done music. We've done cinematography. We've done editing. We've done script. We've done.

• 2:02:09Sean Fennessey?

  This is something near and dear to your heart.

• 2:02:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Makeup?

• 2:02:13Sean Fennessey?

  Makeup and hairstyling.

• 2:02:15Amanda Dobbins?

  It's not near and dear to my heart. It's just a necessity of the work that I do.

• 2:02:19Sean Fennessey?

  Well, it matters.

• 2:02:21Amanda Dobbins?

  That's 12.

• 2:02:22Sean Fennessey?

  That's 12 nominations. Not to mention, I do think that there is a Matt Damon, Tom Cruise death war coming for best actor. Now, neither of them, they win. But these are two of the most beloved movie stars of the last three decades. Neither of whom have ever won an acting Academy Award.

• 2:02:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, and Damon's on the campaign trail and I love it. And so.

• 2:02:44Sean Fennessey?

  And I think his performance is genuinely special. Because this is a weird part. It's a reinterpretation of a classic character. And he is bringing a lot of his classic. Charms, but also he's got to play a man over long periods of time. His physical transformation is unbelievable.

• 2:03:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:01Sean Fennessey?

  For a man of his age. So he's very worthy. It's not just like, oh, he's the star of the biggest movie of the year. That's going to be nominated for best picture. It's a great performance.

• 2:03:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Is Anne Hathaway running in best actress or supporting?

• 2:03:12Sean Fennessey?

  I presume supporting.

• 2:03:13Amanda Dobbins?

  I would assume as well, although she already has a supporting actress. She doesn't have a best actress yet.

• 2:03:19Sean Fennessey?

  That's very true. And she's also in many films this year.

• 2:03:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 2:03:22Sean Fennessey?

  This is probably the one to honor her for.

• 2:03:26Amanda Dobbins?

  I would, I would think so as well. Okay, so that is, any other acting performances on the board?

• 2:03:32Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I don't know. I mean, is there a case to be made? The movie's going to be really big, right? If it's insanely big and it becomes a world historic movie that is gunning for 16 nominations. Like Holland is going to run.

• 2:03:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:46Sean Fennessey?

  You know?

• 2:03:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Holland is running.

• 2:03:47Sean Fennessey?

  That's a thing that's going to happen. Regardless of whatever my opinion or your opinion is of his performance. I think people are going to come away liking him for the most part in the movie.

• 2:03:57Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know. Is there a case for Charlize? I, you know.

• 2:04:00Speaker 04

  What about Samantha Morton?

• 2:04:02Sean Fennessey?

  Samantha Morton, definitely.

• 2:04:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I mean, it's like eight minutes. Um, I think Pattinson will run for other films, though he's running.

• 2:04:09Sean Fennessey?

  I agree.

• 2:04:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Which is just, that's a great time for all of us.

• 2:04:13Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:13Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, it's nine months from now, but whatever.

• 2:04:16Sean Fennessey?

  I, I would love to see a campaign for Hemish Patel. You know, I think that there's like a lot of performances in the movie that, you know, I don't know if Burnthall's getting an Oscar for this one, but I enjoyed the energy that he brought to the movie. And so I guess what I'm saying is if you take these 12 nominations, maybe they're not all locked, maybe I'm wrong, but I do think that they are. And then you add four acting nominations on top. 16, that's the record.

• 2:04:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. Great.

• 2:04:38Sean Fennessey?

  Will it happen?

• 2:04:41Amanda Dobbins?

  I think nominations seems pretty likely. I mean, just, we are always befuddled at this point in the Oscar season, which is, you know, the entire year now.

• 2:04:51Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 2:04:52Amanda Dobbins?

  But mid summer, we're always kind of scratching our heads, being like, so where are all the, you know, where are all the pieces going to fall and what's going to happen? And why isn't this film at Telluride and this film at Venice? But I think this is just absolutely colossal. And they, you know, and is as good in all the different categories as Oppenheimer was. So nominations, yes. Wins?

• 2:05:18Sean Fennessey?

  No director has ever had best picture and best director in consecutive films. Francis Ford Coppola, The Godfather won best picture and The Godfather 2 won best picture, but he did not win best director for The Godfather. Bob Fosse won that year. He won for The Godfather Part 2.

• 2:05:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, and you want to take that Oscar from Bob Fosse?

• 2:05:40Sean Fennessey?

  No, I love Cabaret. I think it's a wonderful movie. Do I think Francis Ford Coppola should have won? You know, it's implied. There's a discussion. John Gorman directed Deliverance that year. There's a discussion.

• 2:05:53Sean Fennessey?

  Ken Nolan do this? Forget that. Will he do it?

• 2:05:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Will he do it? So who else is going to be in director? Because best picture seems a lot easier to me. And you could see a split, even though we haven't had that many splits in recent years, or the last couple of years, anyway, which is as far back as you can go predictably with the Oscars at the rate at which they are changing.

• 2:06:16Sean Fennessey?

  Good point.

• 2:06:17Amanda Dobbins?

  So, but you know.

• 2:06:21Sean Fennessey?

  Denis Villeneuve is going to be up there.

• 2:06:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Exactly.

• 2:06:25Sean Fennessey?

  Christian Monje is going to be up there. After that, I don't know. Alejandro González Iñárritu is an Oscar favorite. That seems very plausible.

• 2:06:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Any women making movies this year?

• 2:06:38Sean Fennessey?

  Nope, they decided against it.

• 2:06:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Yep, thanks so much, guys.

• 2:06:40Sean Fennessey?

  You guys had a meeting, it sounds like? You said, "No movies for us. We're gonna work on our threading."

• 2:06:48Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know. Are there any female contenders? I mean, Greta was making a movie and then she wasn't. It's coming out next year.

• 2:06:54Amanda Dobbins?

  She is, but it's coming out for Easter. Well, I guess for Valentine's Day and then for Easter. I don't know.

• 2:06:59Sean Fennessey?

  Exciting.

• 2:07:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Yikes. I love her forever. She's my number one, except for Sofia, who's also my number one. No, I can't think of any.

• 2:07:09Sean Fennessey?

  Speaking of polyamory.

• 2:07:16Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's gonna win both right now. I mean, I haven't seen 60% of the movies that be competing for Oscars.

• 2:07:22Amanda Dobbins?

  That's good. So remember this, okay? Do we need to like tape it up on the wall so you don't F1 yourself?

• 2:07:28Sean Fennessey?

  You make sure I don't F1 myself?

• 2:07:29Speaker 04

  I'll be on top of it.

• 2:07:30Amanda Dobbins?

  I have tried every single time.

• 2:07:32Sean Fennessey?

  Jack, what'd you think of the movie?

• 2:07:34Speaker 04

  I thought it was following, as I told you, the opening 15 minutes, which I thought was really a dreadful exposition slug. Just absolutely levitating, truly, truly amazing.

• 2:07:45Sean Fennessey?

  I think movie lovers are really gonna love it.

• 2:07:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:48Sean Fennessey?

  It is the total package as far as going to the movies.

• 2:07:53Speaker 04

  Do you think it's gonna make a billion dollars?

• 2:07:56Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:57Speaker 04

  I agree.

• 2:07:58Sean Fennessey?

  I do. I think it's interesting that Spider-Man comes two weeks later. They're not exactly the same audience, but they're pretty close. And both of those movies can't hold all the premium format screens at the same time. You know, this isn't like Project Hail Mary, which got like the run of show.

• 2:08:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:17Sean Fennessey?

  For a very long stretch.

• 2:08:20Sean Fennessey?

  But I do, I think the number one thing that it has going for it, this is probably the best way to end this conversation, is it's a Christopher Nolan movie. He is in a class of his own in terms of marketing the movie against his name. He's a draw. He's a draw that is bigger than Marvel now. Straight up. He just, he matters more to movies than any IP? Is there any IP that is more powerful than Christopher Nolan's name?

• 2:08:49Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, I guess if you wanna say Spider-Man or Batman, maybe?

• 2:08:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:53Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, this movie's gonna make more than the Batman or the Batman Part Two.

• 2:08:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, which is never coming out, so.

• 2:08:58Sean Fennessey?

  Right.

• 2:08:58Speaker 04

  Minecraft versus Christopher Nolan?

• 2:09:01Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I mean, that's a fairly new entrant, right? We'll see with Minecraft 2, but, and there's all this new stuff coming up, obviously.

• 2:09:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Super Mario.

• 2:09:08Sean Fennessey?

  And we're mindful of that, Super Mario. Yeah, I think it's just the consistency. Like, let's circle back on the fifth Super Mario movie.

• 2:09:15Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I don't think we need to. I think we're done.

• 2:09:18Sean Fennessey?

  They're gonna make more.

• 2:09:19Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, I know they're gonna make more, but I think we know.

• 2:09:21Sean Fennessey?

  You know?

• 2:09:22Amanda Dobbins?

  But Yoshi was in the mix. He didn't do anything.

• 2:09:23Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, we gotta get Wario in the mix.

• 2:09:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 2:09:25Sean Fennessey?

  What'd you think of our conversation about?

• 2:09:27Amanda Dobbins?

  I was gonna say, have you figured out who my Wario is?

• 2:09:30Sean Fennessey?

  No, but I'd like to ask the listeners of the show.

• 2:09:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 2:09:33Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I think some people will find you to be the Wario of other people. Are you comfortable with that?

• 2:09:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, well, you have already given me the greatest compliment you've ever given me.

• 2:09:40Sean Fennessey?

  That you're Anne Hathaway's Wario.

• 2:09:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, which I just like absolutely.

• 2:09:43Sean Fennessey?

  You enjoy that.

• 2:09:43Amanda Dobbins?

  It's like the nicest thing you've ever said.

• 2:09:45Sean Fennessey?

  Photograph of Wario?

• 2:09:46Amanda Dobbins?

  I still don't care. You know, I'm in the same sentence as Anne Hathaway. It's like a Daily Mail tabloid, but positive, you know, where they just try to get you. You just wanna get someone in the sentence with whatever scandal. You got me in the sentence with Anne Hathaway.

• 2:10:00Sean Fennessey?

  I should correct, uh, photograph of Wario because he's not a real person, so he's never been photographed. Have you seen an illustration of Wario?

• 2:10:07Amanda Dobbins?

  I Googled it.

• 2:10:08Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 2:10:08Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, I'm turning 42. What can you do?

• 2:10:12Sean Fennessey?

  Wow. Birthday weeks.

• 2:10:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:14Sean Fennessey?

  Birthday weeks upcoming. It's pretty exciting.

• 2:10:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, Leo season.

• 2:10:17Sean Fennessey?

  We got the Odyssey for us. Uh, that's it. I think what we'll do on Monday is certainly want to hear Chris's thoughts at length of the movie. I'm trying to figure out if I'm gonna see it again. I don't know. I'd like to, because I do feel like more will be revealed the more times you take a look. And then we're gonna rank the Nolan movies, and I think we might have to just do two separate rankings. I think you and Chris can work together and be the normal Nolan people. And then I'll do whatever journey I'm on with trying to figure out how I feel about his movies.

• 2:10:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 2:10:46Sean Fennessey?

  That seems fair, right? Like, so you guys don't have to be poisoned by the takes of mine that you don't agree with?

• 2:10:51Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't think that that's in the spirit of this podcast.

• 2:10:54Sean Fennessey?

  It's not.

• 2:10:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Or the future content and material.

• 2:10:57Sean Fennessey?

  You wanna broker with me about, well, brokering with Chris over inception is tough.

• 2:11:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Brokering with me over inception is tough.

• 2:11:04Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:05Amanda Dobbins?

  But, you know, you just don't listen.

• 2:11:07Sean Fennessey?

  But I like Interstellar more than you do.

• 2:11:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, that's all your dad stuff.

• 2:11:12Sean Fennessey?

  What dad stuff?

• 2:11:16Sean Fennessey?

  What? I love being a dad.

• 2:11:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 2:11:18Sean Fennessey?

  I love being a son.

• 2:11:18Amanda Dobbins?

  That's really beautiful.

• 2:11:19Sean Fennessey?

  Thank you. Thanks for saying that. This is a movie about a dad and his son.

• 2:11:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:24Sean Fennessey?

  Thanks to Jack Sanders for his production work on this episode. Thanks to Lucas Cavanagh for work behind the scenes. We'll see you next week. Go see The Odyssey.

• 2:11:51Speaker 05

  Streaming October 30th on Paramount Plus.

• 2:11:54Speaker 06

  I'm Dexter Morgan. I've been killing killers for half my life. It gets to you. You're having a midlife crisis. I'm not ready for this.

• 2:12:02Speaker 05

  He's back.

• 2:12:03Speaker 06

  I'm older. I'm wiser.

• 2:12:06Speaker 05

  And sharper than ever.

• 2:12:08Speaker 06

  Things are gonna get messy. But if I can't believe in myself, I can't believe in anything.

• 2:12:15Speaker 05

  Dexter Resurrection. New season October 30th on the Paramount Plus Premium Plan.

• 2:12:22Speaker 03

  When everyone's finally together, what makes mornings even brighter? Keeping things deliciously simple. Whether you're pouring up a glass of morning refreshment or topping off festive drinks for a family brunch, Simply Orange brings that 100% fresh squeezed taste to every moment. Deliciously bright and delightfully easy, Simply Orange is made for all your seasonal gatherings. Simply Orange. Say yes to simple.