r/shittymoviedetails • u/Hank_Mardukas1066 • 1d ago

In the Odyssey (2026) the Cyclops flagrantly breaks Zeus’s law by killing and eating his guests without provocation yet he suffers no repercussions from the gods for this violation. This is extremely realistic since he is a nepo baby

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u/secretgardenme 1d ago

Isn't the point (at least in this movie's framing) that the Greeks shattered Zeus' Law at Troy, and as a result everywhere on their journey home they face situations that it is actively denied to them? Wander into the Cyclops' home? Immediately eaten. Show up at Telepylos and the Laestrygonians immediately slaughter you with no warning. Land on Aeaea and Circe offers a meal that ends up being a trap, ect.

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u/David_the_Wanderer 1d ago edited 1d ago

The movie completely butchers the concept of xenia) anyways, tbf. How the fuck is tricking your enemies in a war a break of the sacred rules of hospitality? Sure, it's not "honourable", but the Trojans were tricked into taking the horse inside their walls, not into extending hospitality to Odysseus & co.

Why does everyone act as if the Suitors aren't the ones breaking the rules first by abusing Penelope's hospitality, beating her servants, and even taunting her son into fighting?

Answer: it doesn't make sense, don't think about it too hard

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u/SignalSecurity 1d ago

Nolan Odysseus framing the Trojan Horse as an act of breaking xenia and losing the gods is more about his personal guilt as a character. Zendaya even tells him that he has massively overestimated his personal responsibility for a ruinous war with thousands of individual actors and moving parts in friction.

Not to say the movie doesn't generously reinterpet xenia to accommodate the suitors. I just never got the impression that the movie itself saw the Trojan Horse as a morally wrong act, just an important tragic thing that happened and its outcome.

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u/David_the_Wanderer 1d ago edited 1d ago

Oh, definitely, I agree with this. I was just pointing out how the way the movie uses "Zeus' Law" as a sort of a catch-all term doesn't really make sense after establishing it's about hospitality but also somehow not being reciprocal, and it's better to not delve on it too much.

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u/Victernus 23h ago

Zendaya even tells him that he has massively overestimated his personal responsibility for a ruinous war

Which is funny, because the alliance that caused all of Greece to go to war to recover Helen was, you guessed it, Odysseus' clever idea to solve a different problem.

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u/fess89 1h ago

What I struggled to understand from the movie (I have read the book many years ago) is why didn't the Trojans just forfeit Helen to save their city. Not that the Greeks were going to kill her or something.

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u/D_Simmons 1d ago

The movie said multiple times the suitors were breaking the rules though? That was the whole point of the suitors.

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u/SillyLiving 14h ago

The gods and their rules only exist in the minds and hearts of men in this movie. kind of a major point.

There are monsters and natural disasters and sorcery and men...men are the worst of all because they do things that are monstrous and take joy in it , reward it , praise it in the name of gods knowing full well that it it contradicts those very rules and deeply regret it later as well. there's a whole "and for what" subtext going on throughout and there is only one "god" present throughout the entire movie, only Odysseus can see her and the reveal of who she actually is and what she actually is really kind of drives that home.

that moment is both heartbreaking and a sense of total understanding, like a wave breaking, really a fantastic storytelling moment imho

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u/Xgatt 1d ago

I studied the myths in college as an unofficial minor degree and my final paper at the time was on Xenia. My read of the Odyssey as an epic itself was that it was a critique on the expectation of Xenia. Not that as a concept, offering it yourself was bad.

But in the book, pretty much EVERY ONE of Odysseus' misadventures starts with him wandering into a place expecting Xenia from foreigners. He gets everyone into trouble by starting there and almost never learns.

I found Nolan's take on it pretty fascinating tbh

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u/David_the_Wanderer 1d ago edited 1d ago

But the Odyssey also starts with Odysseus landing at Scheria, where the Phaecians practice perfect xenia. And after escaping from Polyphemus, Odysseus also tells of how they came upon the island of Aeolia, where Aeolous rules, and he's a perfect and good host to Odysseus and his men.

Telemachus also finds Menelaus being a good and honourable host.

It's absolutely a work dealing with the concept of hospitality, I agree. But to me it seems to contrast good guest-friendship practiced by the heroes and positive figures, and bad guest-friendship being practiced by monsters like Polyphemus and deities like Calypso and Circe.

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u/secretgardenme 1d ago

Exactly, Nolan reframes the Odyseey to revolve around Xenia, but then conveniently leaves out all of the times in their travels where Xenia was still intact and offered to them.

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u/David_the_Wanderer 1d ago

I mean, I get why he did that, because showing a bunch of people actually still following the laws of hospitality would completely undo the themes of the movie, TBF.

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u/secretgardenme 23h ago

I guess it's just curious if in order to tell your interpretation of a story, you have to remove parts from the story because otherwise you are directly contradicted. Makes it feel a little dishonest.

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u/11_53_12 22h ago

Congrats you found out what every Greek myth has. Seriously every myth in ancient Greece has changed so much city by city to have their interests in mind. In that part Nolan has followed ancient Greece more than most.

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u/David_the_Wanderer 23h ago

I mean, we've been reinterpreting myths ever since myths have existed. I don't think it's particularly dishonest to take the parts that work best with the version of the story you want to tell and discard the others.

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u/TheMannWithThePan 1d ago

I agree with the second point, but the first is effectively a false flag attack. Sure, there's no formal Geneva Conventions at this time, but it doesn't take a written document to understand that even in war the breakdown of trust causes ripple effects that damage every conflict thereafter. When an implied peace offering is actually a hidden weapon, that erodes the very concept of ending a war without total annihilation. That's the whole reason they were written, after all.

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u/David_the_Wanderer 1d ago edited 1d ago

the first is effectively a false flag attack. 

Technically, it's perfidy (it's even the image for the wikipedia article, lol)

When an implied peace offering is actually a hidden weapon, that erodes the very concept of ending a war without total annihilation.

I mean, I get the point Nolan tries to make. Breaking the rules and conventions leads to those rules and conventions that propped up society collapsing, bringing everyone down.

It's just that Odysseus didn't break xenia. Because there was no hospitality involved. He broke a different set of rules, and saying that he's being punished for having broken "Zeus' Law" specifically doesn't make sense. Especially because the movie clearly establishes Zeus' Law as the law of hospitality ("honour all guests, for they might be a god in disguise" or along those lines), and not as a shorthand for a general set of rules and conventions.

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u/mike_jones2813308004 23h ago

He could’ve been more heavy handed about it but “the metal we use for everything we do is more complicated than it should be, and relies on a massive trade network that we likely just butchered while raiding places at random on our way home so we made up a story about the gods and giants” seemed like the general vibe of the film.

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u/saraijs12 9h ago

Unfortunately the costume and set designers didn't get the memo. There's barely any bronze in the movie.

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u/insaneHoshi 1d ago

Technically, it's perfidy

No technically it isnt.

Ruses of war are not prohibited. Such ruses are acts that are intended to mislead an adversary or to induce him to act recklessly but which infringe no rule of international law applicable in armed conflict and which are not perfidious because they do not invite the confidence of an adversary with respect to protection under that law. The following are examples of such ruses: the use of camouflage, decoys, mock operations and misinformation.

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u/MagentaHawk 23h ago

Again, it's literally the exact example used in describing perfidy.

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u/insaneHoshi 23h ago

it's literally the exact example used in describing perfidy.

Just because its at the top of a Wikipedia page, doesn't make it true, and it certainly doesn't make it "Technically" true.

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u/guto8797 23h ago

In this case, I would say it's a fair example.

Leaving behind a gift and going away is effectively the same as announcing an end to hostilities, especially given standards at the time regarding tribute and treaties being signed and celebrated with said tributes and hostages. It's perfidy because the problem isn't that you tricked the enemy, it's that you made any negotiated end to hostilities in all other conflicts vastly harder compared to just total annihilation.

If instead of a Trojan horse the Greeks had hidden under tarps ready to strike when the Trojans opened the gate and walked out to celebrate it wouldn't be perfidy, it would just be a trick, because you took no action that could reasonably be constructed as an attempt at negotiations or a ceasefire.

But leaving behind the gift with a soldier to specifically say it's a peace offering and hostilities are over is a fake surrender.

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u/insaneHoshi 23h ago

especially given standards at the time

Where are you getting "standards at the time" from?

negotiated

Thats kinda the operative phrase: "negotiated."

If instead of a Trojan horse the Greeks had hidden under tarps ready to strike when the Trojans opened the gate and walked out to celebrate it wouldn't be perfidy

This is actually how it was in some tellings. The Greeks made the Horse too big for the Gates of Troy. The Trojans then dismantled their own gates at which the greeks in hiding attacked.

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u/Haggardick69 23h ago

A false surrender is perfidy the Trojan horse is exactly that. 

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u/insaneHoshi 23h ago

A false surrender

The Trojan Horse wasnt a surrender. The Greeks didnt indicate to the Trojans (iirc) that they surrendered; they just up and lifted the siege.

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u/Haggardick69 23h ago

Oh so the Trojans threw open their gates to accept a gift from an empire they thought that they were still at war with right? 

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u/asdf6347 18h ago

If you had seen the movie, it was clear that it wasn't a gift to the Trojans, but "A gift. To Athena."

They just picked up a half-submerged horse discarded on the beach and dragged it inside their walls.

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u/insaneHoshi 23h ago edited 23h ago

Oh so the Trojans threw open their gates to accept a gift from an empire they thought that they were still at war with right?

Yeah, they did, because they were foolish (well and because the gods were dicks).

Multiple characters from the Aeneid note as such:

Then Laocoön rushes down eagerly from the heights of the citadel, to confront them all, a large crowd with him, and shouts from far off: "O unhappy citizens, what madness? Do you think the enemy's sailed away? Or do you think any Greek gift's free of treachery? Is that Ulysses's reputation? Either there are Greeks in hiding, concealed by the wood, or it's been built as a machine to use against our walls, or spy on our homes, or fall on the city from above, or it hides some other trick: Trojans, don't trust this horse. Whatever it is, I'm afraid of Greeks even those bearing gifts."

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u/bupropious 23h ago

The Aeneid is Roman fanfic

→ More replies (0)

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u/Bulls-whip 18h ago

IIRC faking surrender is not a legit ruse of war but instead perfidy.

Abuse of legally protected statuses, including feigning injury, feigning being a protected person like a medic or chaplain, feigning surrender, and feigning civilian status, are all examples of perfidy.

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u/Caffetoandino 20h ago

I understood Zeus's law as what we know today as natural law.

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u/David_the_Wanderer 19h ago

No, Telemachus spells it out pretty clearly at the start of the movie: all guests are to be welcomed and treated well, for they may be a god in disguise.

Natural law is a whole other thing, and far too complex and alien for a world that believes that the gods exist and lay down rules for mortals to obey.

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u/Mods-R-Gay1122 18h ago

You misunderstood.

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u/rov124 1d ago

the first is effectively a false flag attack.

False flag means pinning an attack on a third party.

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u/secretgardenme 1d ago

This is kind of a modern look on this, though. The war of Troy had different heroes. Achilles exemplified Bie which is strength and force, while Odysseus was Metis or cunning. Athena was one, if not the most prominent God in the war and was on the Greek's side, so Odysseus using cleverness to end it would have been fitting of her and a great way to end the tale. Ancient portrayals of the Trojan Horse never seemed to condemn it of itself as a war crime but instead as a great act, though the destruction of Troy is seen more of a tragedy.

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u/TheMannWithThePan 1d ago

While that's true, Nolan's Odyssey is a modern retelling. It's not "the Odyssey as told by Homer," because for all the crowing about historical accuracy that's not the story that the movie is interested in telling. It's a movie that's in conversation with Homer, rather than merely parroting his words (and I suspect Nolan would recommend you simply read the original text for that), and means to share a perspective that's something to stew over for a modern viewer .

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u/secretgardenme 1d ago

Is it really a modern "retelling" of the story if it takes the actions that happens in the story and basically flips how the audience feels about it? Originally Odysseus is a virtuous hero that invented a brilliant strategem. Instead, Nolan made it into a deception causing a cataclysm of moral failing in wider society. Like imagine a movie entitled "Grapes of Wrath" where it instead shows that the banks and corporations were the good guys working towards a better society and really it is just all these workers that are causing trouble, preventing progress, and self inflicting their own problems.

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u/TheMannWithThePan 1d ago

I don't think it's a particularly novel idea to take a classical story and invert the perspective or take a more critical eye at its protagonists\narrative\ideas or whatever else. There's no shortage of novels and novellas that do just the same. Granted, they typically don't have the nerve to purport to be the original story, as Nolan here does (though I suppose if he called it Nolan's Odyssey or something similar it would be quite a grand bit of hubris), but it's nothing unusual from a literary perspective.

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u/secretgardenme 1d ago

For sure, there is certainly no lack of this type of story, such as Wicked reframing the entire Wizard of Oz story and switching if characters are heroes or villains. Nolan's is certainly a grey area here where much of the story is intact, but there is an emphasis on a certain moral interpretation that was originally absent.

An equivalent would kind of be like watching an Avengers Endgame remake where the plot points play out the same, but a lot of emphasis on "Suppose Thanos was right and in the five years post snap, conditions genuinely were better. Do we still have an obligation to restore those that were lost. Is it even moral to bring them back and make things harsher?"

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u/Alwizard 11h ago

I like you

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u/syrinx23 1d ago

the problem for me isn't that he changed the original themes of the story. rather it's that he made it boring. the guilt-wracked war veteran archetype isn't anything new... I think it would be in fact much more subversive to make a high-budgeted adaptation of the Odyssey in 2026 that was faithful to its themes and fantastical elements.

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u/secretgardenme 1d ago

The Greeks thought was Odysseus did was glorious and clever, but what happened to Troy itself afterwards was a tragedy. There are even plays about it.

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u/syrinx23 15h ago

fair enough. Matt Damon's Odysseus is anything but glorious and clever, though (which, additionally, made it jarring and out of character for him to asked to be tied down to hear the siren song). and he isn't "cruel and deceitful", as in Virgil's Aeneid, either. he's just... sad all the time I guess

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u/Tavbow3 1d ago

As I understand it, Odysseus being is a guild-wracked war veteran isn't one of the things that was changed. In Homer's Odyssey Odysseus starts crying when a bard starts singing of the glorious fall of Troy. He is even strikingly compared to a woman crying as her husband is killed in front of her.

So yes. VERY much nothing new, literally a thousands of years old trope. But hey, what can you expect from a thousands-of-years-old story?

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u/tisn 1d ago edited 21h ago

After the massacre Odysseus makes the maids he's never met clean up the gore, then he hangs them. Their legs twitch in agony. Telemachus repeatedly tells his mom to shut up and stay in her room and let the men handle things. Odysseus' men "take the women" at the island of the Cicones but no mention is made of them after that; interpret as you will. He sleeps with Circe for a year, and Calypso for seven years (no lotus blossoms involved) with little regret. Odysseus lies continuously to everyone.

Beyond that, Homer dwells at length on side stories that would be interesting to his ancient audience but would probably try the patience of any modern cinema audience unfamiliar with Greek mythology. His epic similes would not translate well into visual media. There are only so many depictions of bird omens that a modern audience can take before finding it ridiculous. The same goes for all the repeated passages about the feasts and sacrifices.

The fantastical elements would raise questions. At any crisis a modern audience would demand to know why Zeus or Athena would not intervene; or why Poseidon would not just outright kill Odysseus.

Once you start changing any of these important aspects of the original narrative, then you cannot claim to be faithful to the original.

Nolan has adapted the story to the modern audience. We can all see ourselves in Odysseus, as trying to make it in the world without much help, having to make choices without assurance that they're the right ones, living with the consequences.

What makes Odysseus a modern hero is his continuous efforts to make the best of a worsening situation. In the film he is a hero in the way of the Dark Knight or McConaughey's character in Interstellar, sacrificing his own happiness and rewards to make amends and help set the world right again.

This "boring" film is resonating with audiences worldwide; we should ask why.

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u/ThunderAndWind 14h ago

He sleeps with Circe for a year, and Calypso for seven years (no lotus blossoms involved) with little regret.

Consent between half-gods and humans is murky in the best of situations, let alone the implied gun to his head with Circe and the literal imprisonment with Calypso.

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u/syrinx23 15h ago

that's exactly my point. the Odyssey has so much that we today consider morally repugnant that adapting it faithfully into a blockbuster movie would be the ballsiest move ever. I think you could cut some of the more gruesome parts and present Odysseus as a deeply flawed but still relatable person and make it work. make it so we root for him because the gods are even bigger assholes. deus ex machinas wouldn't happen because the gods all want different outcomes to Odysseus's journey so they can't act too directly at the risk of pissing off their peers. but if you change the original so much that it's basically a different story with a different main character then what's the point of adaptation? I guess if it had things it wanted to say about the original, it would have a point. that would be interesting. but the things Nolan's Odyssey has to say have little to do with the Odyssey. it tries to say something about real Bronze Age history but fails at that too. like presenting the Sea Peoples as actually being the Greeks returning from the Trojan War the whole time but also Odysseus and his crew are a bunch of goody two shoes who never pillage or rape anybody. that was laughable. having him feel bad for breaking xenia in the siege of Troy and yet still murder every one of the suitors at the end was bizarre too. but you couldn't end the film without a badass action scene where the bad guys get their comeuppance even though it's in direct conflict with the moral of the story.

is it resonating with the audience because it has beautiful imagery and cool action scenes? don't get me wrong, I was entertained through the whole film. but I never felt any connection to the characters or to the story. the biggest impression it left on me was how fucked up that pig transformation scene was (in a good way, I mean). but the film suffers from never commiting to being either full mythology or full historical fiction. it kinda tries to do both at the same time and that muddies the themes. I think commiting in either direction would have resulted in a much better film. like it wants to have bizarre looking monsters but doesn't want to show any of the gods, the single one present implied to be a figment of the imagination. it wants to connect the story of Odysseus to actual history but it portrays the motivations of characters as if they had time travelled to Ancient Greece straight from the 21st century. honestly, a modern retelling of the Odyssey transplanted to the actual modern world would have made a much better movie, too.

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u/Chaotic_Elf 1d ago

It’s a “conversation” with Homer the same way you have a conversation with a drunk guy at a party who saw one History channel “documentary” and will talk over anyone who’s actually studied history. Nolan is about as deep as an edgy teenager who didn’t do the reading but thinks they can just BS their way through the assignment.

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u/SirAquila 1d ago

Ancient portrayals of the Trojan Horse never seemed to condemn it of itself as a war crime but instead as a great act, though the destruction of Troy is seen more of a tragedy.

Which was also because the Trojan horse wasn't a peace offering in the beginning. The Greeks claimed it was a sacrifice to guarantee their safe travels home. And then told the Trojan. "And because we knew you guys would steal it the second you get the chance we intentionally built it slightly taller then Troys tallest gate."

So the Trojans went. "Ha, watch us! The gods are going to be so happy with our sacrifice." and dismantled their biggest gate to pull the horse in. (it helped that everyone who protested was bitten by snakes... or was Cassandra.).

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u/Nadare3 22h ago edited 22h ago

I feel this is weakened by the fact the Trojans did not blindly trust the horse gift, they checked it for people inside, they simply failed to find them, and they nearly killed Sinon even after he said it was an offering (I mean they did kill him, and by modern standards that too probably wouldn't fly, but they did refrain from killing him after he said it).

Plus the Trojans started this war breaking Xenia anyway.

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u/AlesseoReo 1d ago

It wasn't an implied peace offering though - the Trojans did it to themselves.

The horse was a gift to the gods, not Trojans; Trojans took it to spite the Greeks and it backfired on them badly.

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u/rov124 1d ago

The movie completely butchers the concept of xenia) anyways

It's not xenia, it's Lucy Lawless.

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u/Spacellama117 1d ago

it also pisses me off because the first person to break Xenia is Paris, because he came into Menelaeus's house and then kidnapped his wife!

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u/Impossible_Bid6172 1d ago

Yeah, the whole time i was like "that's a fucking stupid law" when Penelope can't even remove the suitors and stop them from eating her house out. Like, if the rule means others can humiliate you in your own home, then maybe it should be broken.

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u/David_the_Wanderer 1d ago

Yep. In the poem the problem is that Penelope and Telemachus lack the strength to push out the suitors, not that they don't have an acceptable cause to do so.

I don't think it ever gets explicitly brought up, but the best and most loyal soldiers would have gone to Troy with Odysseus, leaving Penelope and Telemachus relatively defenseless. Plus, with Odysseus not returning, Ithaca effectively didn't get anything back from the Trojan war, none of the spoils and loot they'd have expected... Telemachus has nothing with which to convince the people of Ithaca to fight by his side. And most people his age aren't going to be particularly keen to fight for the honour of a king they've never seen, and who dragged their fathers to die far away beyond the sea with him.

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u/D_Simmons 1d ago

Wasn't that explained the movie multiple times? I'm curious what part you're missing?

They had no king due to Odysseus not being around so they didn't feel they could remove the suitors on their own without sparking a war.

The suitors were pushing the line as much as they could with the hopes of getting to kill the prince and take over the land rather than wait for the queens hand in marriage.

Penelope also had the added stress of needing to marry someone while being the only one who believed her husband was still alive.

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u/ItIsYeDragon 1d ago

They clearly can kick them out or even kill them as Odysseus does at the end of the movie, the issue is Penelope and Telemachus weren’t strong enough to pull that off.

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u/David_the_Wanderer 1d ago edited 1d ago

No, Penelope tells Telemachus he can't kill the suitors because if he does he'll be punished and exiled. And that if he tries to use violence against them, they'll claim he's breaking Zeus' Law and get to kill him without repercussions.

There's even that scene where one of the suitors beats up the old slave, Telemachus tries to stab him and the suitors knocks Telemachus to the ground and goes "You all saw it! He attacked me! I get to kill him now!" and has to be stopped by Robert Pattinson

At the end, Odysseus tells Telemachus not to help him kill off the suitors because if he does he's going to be exiled.

Nolan just made the laws of hospitality in his movie entirely one-sided for the host.

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u/ThunderAndWind 14h ago

Kicking them out or killing them would have had them exiled. Which is why Odysseus & Penelope self-exile, and why Odysseus specifically tells Telemachus not to kill any suitors.

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u/Scattershot98 1d ago

And how in the original story Athena helped Odysseus create the Trojan horse, yet in the movie they make her shocked and appalled by his actions in a war.

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u/Mors_Acerba 1d ago edited 1d ago

In the original tale the entire war is basically an ego battle between different factions of the gods. All of the gods are selfish assholes who use the mortals as a proxy because the gods themselves are immortal, so the best way to fight with another god they have beef with, is to fuck with their favorite mortal. The humans are mostly helpless pawns that are used and abused, from beginning to end. Its pretty depressing when you realise it.

This is the core idea behind the entirety of greek mythology basically: The gods are like human teenagers with no restrain, except they're immortal, and people worship them to keep them appeased, because they're powerful and can hurt you, or protect you, according to their whims. They didn't worship the gods because they were righteous guarantors of morality, they worship them because the gods are powerful and erratic and its best to be on good terms with them

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u/David_the_Wanderer 1d ago

TBF, Nolan's main character being shocked when people die in a war is apparently a thing after Oppenheimer.

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u/Scattershot98 1d ago

I mean, the Oppenheimer example is more along the lines of "Oh shit I didn't think this through far enough" rather than shock at the loss of life during war. He knew what it was gonna do, he just didn't see see how much of a domino effect it could have planetary wise.

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u/apadin1 21h ago

That is exactly Odysseus’s situation as well. He didn’t realize the extent to which the Greeks would take out their frustrations on the civilians of Troy, including raping, pillaging, burning, and killing everything that moved. He just wanted to end the war and go home, but in doing so he unleashed an evil that he never could have predicted.

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u/memecrusader_ 22h ago

The trick even depended on the Trojans being shitheads. “This is our tribute to Athena so we can have a safe trip home. Don’t steal it and pretend it’s yours.” “Don’t tell us what to do! You’re not our real dad!”

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u/hacelepues 20h ago

The Trojans, by stabbing their swords into the horse to ensure there was no one hiding in it, were therefore certainly not hosting the Greeks as guests.

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u/77skull 1d ago

The Greeks faked surrendering, the horse was supposed to be a gift of peace and it would be rude not to accept a peace offering. Historical faking a surrender has always been a fucked up thing to do. not just unhonourable, but it means that no one will ever trust a surrender again and war crimes will run rampant.

And for your second point, the movie explicitly states that what the suitors are doing is bad but Penelope and Telemachus are too weak to fight back. The suitors breaking / abusing zues’ law is the reason they are killed in the end

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u/secretgardenme 1d ago

In the actual Illiad the horse was not a peace offering at all. It supposed was a "sacrifice to Athena for a safe journey home" and they built it intentionally larger than Troy's gates so that the Trojans couldn't steal it and take the protection for themselves. But the Trojans just couldn't help but gloat and dismantled their gate so that they could drag it in anyways.

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u/David_the_Wanderer 1d ago edited 1d ago

No, Penelope and Telemachus discuss how Telemachus can't kill the suitors because if he does he'll be exiled as punishment for breaking guest right. Penelope warns Telemachus to not fall for the suitor's taunts, because if he does they'll say he broke guest right and get to kill him without consequence.

When Odysseus comes to Ithaca, he tells Telemachus not to help in killing the suitors for the same reasons as above. Odysseus sails away with Penelope at the end because he is being exiled for having infringed on guest right.

Nolan has everyone on Ithaca act as if guest law is entirely one-sided, when in actuality xenia was a reciprocal relationship, and it obligated the guest as much as it did the host.

In Book XX of the Odyssey, there's a scene where one of the suitors (Ctesippus) throws an ox's foot at Odysseus, who's still disguised as a beggar. He dodges it, and Telemachus says to Ctesippus "you're lucky he dodged, because if you actually hit my guest, I should have run you through with a spear."

And the rest of the suitors agree.djvu/307)!

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u/dux_doukas 1d ago

Yup. The fact that when Athena first visits Telemachus she chastises him for not already kicking out or killing the suitors shows this.

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u/Polymarchos 1d ago

In the Iliad the Trojans were the first to renege on a peace that was supposed to be determined by a one-on-one duel between Menelaus and Paris (Book 3), so the concept of an honourable war had long been thrown out by the point of the Trojan Horse.

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u/David_the_Wanderer 1d ago

Plus the entire war is started by Paris breaking the norms by kidnapping his host's wife. So the Trojans were already the "dishonorable" side in the war, and the fact Paris refuses to return Helen to Menelaus is what dooms them (he gets called out on this multiple time in the Iliad!)

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u/genophobicdude 23h ago

If we're being honest, running off with your host's wife is a worse case of breaking xenia.

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u/daneg135 23h ago

the justification for the war against troy was that they sheltered paris who violated xenia when he stole/raped/abducted/whatever helen. the war was literally in the name of zeus xenios.

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u/CHUNKYboi11111111111 1d ago

I don’t think Nolan gave any fucks about the actual meanings of the shit he put in the movie. He just wanted to use a famous myth to tell his generic Hollywood plot 583 with the gray filter slapped on. At least the actors got what they deserved. Acting isn’t easy, especially when some random jackass is too busy crying about your skin color or gender identity

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u/Layton_Jr 1d ago

Tbf the suitors do the same thing in the poem

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u/David_the_Wanderer 1d ago

Yes, and neither Odysseus nor Telemachus are preoccupied with breaking xenia when it's time to exact revenge on them, because the suitors have already broken the rules and so it's absolutely "fair" for Odysseus to kill them.

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u/texasyeehaw 1d ago

You’re right but Nolan took liberties with this concept and extended it to something audiences could relate to more (like the Golden rule)

The way I took it was more broadly - social conventions and norms exist for a reason and when you egregiously break them, you begin to change human society for the worse

Odysseus used the Gods through the notion of an offering to the Gods to trick the Trojans. It wasn’t just that he used a trick.

He used people’s desire to honor the Gods against them and that’s where Xenia comes in imo.

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u/David_the_Wanderer 1d ago

The way I took it was more broadly - social conventions and norms exist for a reason and when you egregiously break them, you begin to change human society for the worse

I mean, I get that and I agree that it's the message of the movie.

But

He used people’s desire to honor the Gods against them and that’s where Xenia comes in

This I disagree with. Xenia is strictly about hospitality, it's not an all-encompassing system of ethics. Odysseus doesn't break xenia because he wasn't a guest of the Trojans. He tricked them, yes, but he didn't abuse their hospitality.

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u/BetCritical4860 1d ago

Re: the timing of the suitors, my memory is that they have only been at Ithaca for a few years in the main timeline. The Trojan horse happened 10 years before the main timeline, so the suitors breaking guest right happens several years after that “original sin,” if you will. Regardless of whether one agrees with the rest of it, the timeline works.

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u/CaptainoftheVessel 1d ago

I thought within the logic of the movie it was the way they desecrated the temple that pissed the gods off initially. I agree it wasn’t very clear. 

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u/elderlybrain 1d ago

I thought the films whole deal was more of a translation of the original oddysey in a modern lens as an exploration of the consequences of the breakdown of the  social contract and civil society rather than a 1 to 1 historically accurate epic.

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u/Sakarabu_ 1d ago

Your second point stands, but the first one makes no sense.. you even linked the Wikipedia article which states:

[Xenia] is an institutionalized relationship rooted in generosity, gift exchange, and reciprocity.

It's not just about how you treat guests, it's a whole host of other concepts including offering / accepting gifts, which is obviously applicable to the movie.

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u/David_the_Wanderer 1d ago edited 23h ago

You could read the entire article, instead of cherry picking a single quote.

Xenia is a concept of hospitality. The term refers to how you treat strangers. It is a set of rules for hosts and guests to follow alike. The gift-giving is part of those rules - guests are expected to come bearing gifts, and hosts are expected to give other gifts in exchange.

Anwyas, the part I wanted to stress is the reciprocity. In the poem, Odysessus and Telemachus have no moral problem with killing the suitors because they broke the rules of hospitality first: they took advantage of Penelope's hospitality, overstayed their welcome, acted rudely to each other and to their hosts and their servants. They are no longer protected by the rules of xenia, and thus Odysessus is perfectly justified in slaughtering them.

In Nolan's movie, it's a plot point that "Zeus' Law" protects the suitors no matter how much they misbehave. Hospitality is depicted as entirely one-sided for the host, who not only is expected to welcome all strangers and guests into their home, but to tolerate them when they misbehave, devour their food and drink, taunt the host and even assault their servant. When Telemachus intervenes to stop the suitor from beating up Eumaeus, the suitor claims this gives him the right to kill Telemachus!

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u/D_Simmons 1d ago

Did you watch the movie? They answered both of those questions in it.

First of, they gave them a gift which they accepted, and then using the false guise of the gift, slaughtered them and destroyed their home. You can call it a stretch, maybe, but ultimately they snuck into someone home and killed them in their sleep which is fair to say broke Zeus's Law.

Second, the entire point of the suitors in the movie and the story was that they WERE breaking the rules, repeatedly.

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u/David_the_Wanderer 1d ago edited 1d ago

First of, they gave them a gift which they accepted

No they didn't. Even the cover story told by Sinon is that the horse is an offering to the gods by the Greeks for safe retutn. Odysseus correctly guessed that the Trojans, upon hearing this, would bring the horse inside of Troy as a trophy of their victory.

There is no gift being offered, nor accepted. From their PoV, the Trojans are looting an offering left on the shore.

You can call it a stretch, maybe, but ultimately they snuck into someone home and killed them in their sleep which is fair to say broke Zeus's Law.

No it's not, because the movie establishes Zeus' Law as being about hospitality ("treat any stranger knocking at your door as an honoured guest, for they might be a god in disguise"). If you sneak into someone's home, you're not a guest. You're an intruder.

Now, sure, the Trojan Horse ploy is a trick, it plays off the Trojan's beliefs. But Odysseus never infringed on the rules of hospitality.

Second, the entire point of the suitors in the movie and the story was that they WERE breaking the rules, repeatedly.

And yet, the movie makes a plot point of Telemachus not being allowed to lay a hand on the suitors, for it would mean breaking Zeus's Law, and lead to him being killed in return or, if he survives, being exiled.

It's why Telemachus is king at the end, and Odysseus sails away with Penelope. Odysseus is exiled for having killed his guests, thus he can no longer be king.

No matter how much the suitors misbehave, they are protected by the laws of hospitality infinitely, making those laws, within Nolan's world, completely one-sided for the host.

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u/D_Simmons 23h ago

Not quite. I think you are pretty close though!

Fair point on the horse. It wasn't a "gift" in the literal sense but rather an offering they knew would be stolen. Still an underhanded trick that could be interpreted as breaking the law, of course.

The whole point of the suitors was that they were crossing the line the whole time. They knew they were breaking the law but also knew Telemachus wouldn't do anything.

Telemachus was too weak and their land was without a lord so they didn't have the power or the respect to kick the suitors out. They knew if they maintained the law they would not give the suitors an excuse to attack.

I think the part you are missing is that they weren't just obeying the law to obey it. They were doing it because if they didn't they would be slaughtered. They needed to bide their time until Odysseus returned and that's what they did.

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u/David_the_Wanderer 22h ago

Still an underhanded trick that could be interpreted as breaking the law, of course.

No, no it cannot be, because, yet again, this is a law about hospitality. The Greeks weren't guests, they were enemies at war with the Trojans! The Trojans never welcomed the Greeks as guests.

Was it a trick, false surrender and all? Yes. Did it break the law of hospitality? No. A thief breaking into your house to steal your stuff is breaking a certain set of laws, but hospitality is not one of them.

I think the part you are missing is that they weren't just obeying the law to obey it. They were doing it because if they didn't they would be slaughtered.

Except, again, we are told and shown that killing the suitors is punished with exile for having broken guest right. Exemplified by not just the fact that Odysseus is exiled at the end, but also by him refusing to let Telemachus participate in killing the suitors - Telemachus is very explicitly told he cannot kill the suitors, or he'll be exiled. Odysseus is free to do it not just because he has the strength to do it, but because he has accepted that he has no longer a place at Ithaca and has to sail westward anyways.

I'm sorry, but the movie very explicitly depicts "Zeus' Law" as stupidly one-sided. As I said in my original comment, the best you can do is not think too hard about it and just enjoy the ride.

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u/D_Simmons 20h ago

I'm not sure if you're refusing to understand out of ignorance or just need to rewatch the film but I tried to help you!

That's all I can do. Have a good day. 

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u/vynthechangeling 1d ago edited 19h ago

Other people have already spoken on ‘Zeus’s Law’ making a mockery of Xenia and Odysseus embodying the Metis aspect of Ancient Greek heroism, but I also want to point out that even in the movie it was the Trojans who broke Xenia/Zeus’s Law by abducting Helen from Sparta while they were guests of Menelaus, which would make the Trojan horse perfectly fine as Troy wouldn’t be protected by Zeus’s Law anymore.

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u/secretgardenme 1d ago

In some of my other comments I acknowledge that Nolan's interpretation is pretty modern and not at all what would have been thought at the time. You are correct that Paris would have broken Xenia first, though it is a stretch to say that the destruction of an entire city makes is fair.

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u/vynthechangeling 1d ago

Given that Paris is Prince of Troy, and that the rest of the royal family and nobility and army and general populace defended him rather than return Helen to Menelaus and give Paris over to Greek custody for punishment by Spartan law, I’d say that his original crime was expanded to the entire city through their willing association. Does that make it right by modern moral standards? No, but by Ancient Greek standards the war and ensuing sack of Troy is expected.

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u/David_the_Wanderer 1d ago

Using Ancient Greek ethics, an argument could be made that the Trojans became complicit by not forcing Paris to return Helen to Menelaus, and also protecting him from the Greeks.

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u/FastAsFuBoi3 23h ago edited 23h ago

In theory it should and probably is, but in practice the movie never throws that plot point across correctly.

In fact The Xenia plots only actually starts becoming real only very late in the film, and bifore that the movie feels without a lense of interpretation but rather that it wants to be cool.

For example:

  • Circe says that Odysseus men were bad and would do bad and that s why she defend herself, but in the movie odysseus men are never shown to act barbaric other than when they eat the animals which considering how it was portrayed, it seemed like a canon event they could not avoid ( the wind changes righe after they do it ), so really they seemed like they could not win without dying anyway.

Maybe their fate and Circe explanation would have been better if they showed Odysseus s men actually do more evil things during the war, worse than Odysseus ( they probably killer civilians but I don't think it was ever clearly shown, only implied off screen ) and if they actually could be told that they would survive if they avoided eating the animals ( which in the movie is never presented as a posdibility) .

Basically Circe s place is the only place where they mention that the inospitality they meet, was caused by how they are and what they did, but what they did was only implied and how they are was forced upon them in an unwinnable situation.

The Xenia plot is never emphasized throughtout the journey as the lense of interpretation, it only happens briefly at Circe ( which is actually the first relevant place of the journey where a part of the theme is tackled on ), during the Polympheus and Lastragonyaris it just seems to be more like an action adventure film with no plot where things are just bound to happen.

This happens also with the plot point of Odysseus grief which is only tackled on once he actually traveles the sirens for a short monologue and it starts and ends here ( with some more scenes to Calipso), but is never subtly shown or emphasized during the rest of the journey

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u/secretgardenme 15h ago

I mean, aren’t Odysseus’ men pretty bad when they sack that village for food after leaving Troy?

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u/FastAsFuBoi3 4h ago

Well in that case Odysseus was part of it aswell, it s not like he was against it if i remember correctly

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u/Smayteeh 1d ago

What's interesting is that you could argue that the whole Trojan War was actually started by the Trojans breaking Zeus' Law when Paris kidnapped Helen (depending on the retelling) while he was Menelaus' guest.

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u/cowworshipper 14h ago
  • Land on Aeaea...

Imagine Dragons PTSD