Camp Gagnon - What Hollywood Got WRONG in The Odyssey

Episode Date: August 5, 2026

​ @LanternJack  joins us in the studio today to talk about everything Christopher Nolan got wrong in the Odyssey movie...WELCOME TO HISTORY CAMP! 🏕️ Shoutout to our sponsors: Take Ultra -Don’t sleep on ULTRA Pouches. New customers get 15% Off with code CAMP at takeultra.com! #UltraPouches #ad Want the even WILDER theories? SIGN UP TO THE PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/cw/CampGagnon 👕🧢 Shop CAMP Merch: https://camp-rd.com/collections/ufo 🎟️ 🎫 Comedy Tour Tickets: https://markgagnonlive.com 🎩👽 Daily Dose Of History: https://www.dailytodayinhistory.com Timestamps: 0:00 Reciting Odyssey Opening In Greek 2:42 Helen Drugs The Entire Party 4:45 Historical Mistakes 7:00 Helens Twin + Divine Bloodline 9:15 Casting Controversies 13:19 Things Left Out of The Movie 14:46 Nolans Additions to The Odyssey 17:26 The Bow Challenge 22:15 The Civil War Ending 25:19 Signal 33 #foryou #history Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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But how accurate is the film to Homer's ancient epic? What did Christopher Nolan do better and what were the things that he missed? Well, to find out, I sat down with Dr. Jack Vizionic. Better known as Lantern Jack, he's the host of the YouTube channel Ancient Greece Declassified. He's got a PhD from Princeton and he's studied the Odyssey in its original Greek. Jack reveals what Nolan got right, what the film changed, and which powerful moments were left behind. From anachronistic armor and modernized morality to the racial controversy, he even shares the surprising scenes that may have been even better than the original.

This is the Odyssey through the eyes of an ancient historian. This mini episode is just an excerpt from my entire conversation with Jack. We go over two hours discussing his controversial theory that Odysseus may have discovered America. Yes, it is a fascinating episode, and he lays out the entire theory in extreme detail, so make sure you check that out later this week on the main channel. Camp Gagnon. But for today, if you want to hear an expert weigh in on the most debated film in America right now or you're in the right place. So sit back, relax, and welcome to History Camp. Now, before we go, I think we have maybe 25 minutes. Can I ask you some questions about the

Odyssey of the film? Sure. So, you saw The Odyssey, the most recent film by Chris Fernola. Yeah. Outside, I don't want to speak out of turn here. But you gave you. me a rating out of 10. Yeah. Could you share that with me now? Six or seven out of 10? Why? Well, first of all, being somebody who has read the Odyssey so many times, including

an ancient Greek, I'm going to be more picky than most people. I mean, you can even recite the opening lines to ancient Greek? I can. Would you mind? Spind a little Greek for us? Do you have a drum? Oh, no, but I can give you a little beat, though. Can you do like a dumb, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum.

There we go. I'm in ape mousa, Pollytropon, hosmala, Pallangthe epitroyes here, Ptoleathron

Eppertr Aptolethron Ode, Astea, Astea, Cainoanoe Pondtoe Patherauchin

Aalgea of Cautoumon. Aurno's There you know, Kainos ton hetairon. There you go. Amazing. I mean, that is so cool. And so that's how it would be told.

And for how many... How many hours would that go on for? We can't know for sure, but based on, like, the length of an English audio book that covers the whole thing is about 12 to 14 hours. So it's possible that that's the time frame. Wow. That is fascinating. That re-contextualizes so much of it, right? Because we read it in, you know, a class in high school or college.

And it's just words on a page. It's kind of like when you read Shakespeare, you get the gist, but you lose so much. because this is not a book to be read. It is a play or a performance to be experienced. And I imagine that this is probably the same exact way. Yeah. And in fact, we know for sure that the Homeric rhapsodes that perform this, they could mimic different voices.

They could get into like, like, Marlon's voice and then Helen's voice and then, you know, whatever. Like, they would really get into character with all the different figures. And what would be the context that I would be listening to this if I'm an ancient Greek? Well, in Athens, there were like state-sponsored festivals where you'd have a superstar on stage and maybe a thousand people watching. In the age of Homer, we don't know, but probably like, you know, probably the types of scenes depicted in the actual Odyssey, where you have a feast put on by a king or local warlord in a great hall and a bard as entertaining maybe like 100 people who are feasting.

Would I be drinking? Definitely. I'd be hammered. You would. Nice. Would I be on drugs? Possibly in book four of the Odyssey, when Telemachus visits Menelaus, by the way, this is a great missed opportunity for Nolan, because Helen's Helen, Homer's Helen is way more formidable

than Nolan's Helen, okay? Homer's Helen drugs the whole party. Really? When she sees that Telemachus is the son of Odysseus and Menelaus is going to start, like, waxing nostalgic about Odysseus and of the Trojan War, which she caused in this storyline. She's like, okay, this is going to be bad for me. Let me drug everybody's wine. And she uses an Egyptian drug that is so potent that if you take it, even if your child is being torn to pieces in front of you, you will still not shed a tear. So there we have like this type of scene where

a bard might be present. He's not in this case. But drugs were definitely known and described. What do you think that could be? I mean, it sounds like ecstasy. The main theory is opium. So you're just on heroin. I'm not an expert, but yeah. That's wild. I mean, I'm, I mean, again, I've never done heroin. Not yet. But my understanding is like that's how you, it's from the poppy, right? It's not, well, again, it's not mentioned that it's poppy. It's just mentioned that it's from Egypt.

And there has been speculation that Egypt was importing opium from, you know, Central Asia or something. again, through various indirect intermediaries. Now, what are the discrepancies from the film to your understanding of the original Greek? Are you? Well, okay, the first thing is like, why are they wearing helmets when they're rowing on the boat? Hilarious. Or wandering in a forest. Like, first of all, the helmets are anachronistic.

These are much later helmets. They constrict your vision very severely. They're only useful if you are marching in a column of dudes. and you're only going to go forward. If you're walking in a forest where there might be like dangerous creatures around you, you don't want to wear this helmet, all right? I thought that the biggest problem was trying to force modern morality

onto an ancient tale. Like it's, to me, one of the main values of the Homeric epics is that they have such a different morality. And even if we find it shocking or we don't want to accept that morality, shouldn't we know how other human societies saw the world morally? What's the clearest example?

Well, the clearest example is that Odysseus kills all the suitors. Right. Right? Like, can we do spoilers here? Yeah, oh, yeah. I mean, it's a 2,000-year-old story. If you haven't heard of it now, I mean, too late.

Well, because in Nolan's version, he doesn't kill all the suitors. Okay, he spares quite a few of them. In Homer, he only spares like two or three. That's another missed opportunity, because you know how like in the final scene Odysseus, Matt Damon Odysseus prophecies that only songs will remember them?

That no writing will survive, right? Well, in the actual Odyssey, one of the few people that Homer, that Odysseus spares is the bard, the guy who's singing. Like he is one of the suitors technically, but he's also like the singer of Epic Tales to the suitors. So how cool is that,

that you spare the guy who you want to sing of your exploits. Right. You know? That's kind of a totally missed. Yeah, sort of poetic to be like, I'm going to kill everyone, except for you, go tell this tale to the next person. And then when you're watching it live at a festival, you're like, oh, that's the guy that got spared.

Like it feels, it becomes meta in a way. Yeah. Oh, that's cool. Now, my friend Alex pointed out that he thought it was weird, that Helen has a twin. Yeah. Now, I know that in some retellings and it's been disputed that there is this twin theory with Helen. But he says if she's the most beautiful woman ever that you're going to send

a thousand ships for, if she has a twin sister, doesn't that kind of nerf that whole point? Yeah. So again, in the original, they are sisters, but not twin sisters. I'm not sure why Nolan did that, maybe just to not have to find another actor, you know, but it's a little cheaper. But there's these weird cases of twins where one twin is divine and the other isn't. Okay. So, like have you heard of um castor and pollux or uh so caster and pollux and helen and cladamnestra are two cases where you have two twins two pairs of twins and in each case for some reason one twin gets the divine parentage in the other does not sorry they're not twins they're they're siblings but one of them gets the divine parentage one that them doesn't. I think it might be like, so you have this like, you know, beautiful woman and a god sleeps with her, but her husband also sleeps with her. And perhaps one of the children has the divine parentage. It's like a Moripovych. Anyway, it's a common theme in, or it's a

well-known theme in Greek mythology that you can have siblings where one of them is divine, one of them is not. So Helen is semi-divine, which is why after, which is why she and Manilaeus are never going to die in the strict sense, but they will be transported to the Isles of, to Elysium, to the Elysian field. Manilaeus is prophesied too that he will not die, but because he has a divine wife, they will be taken by the gods to the Elysian field across the ocean, another reference to a land across the ocean, where they will live there forever, basically. Okay.

So Clytemnestra is, you know, a less attractive. less divine sibling in the original. Interesting. Now, my buddy Andrew pointed out, he said that he actually liked the casting because many people would say, like, I know there's a lot of uproar from specifically the Greeks, right, Christos? Where they would say like, oh, why are they casting a black woman

in the space of an ancient Greek? This is completely anachronistic. They're erasing Greek culture. My friend Andrew says, she's actually the most exotic person. And that like her ethnicity or her skin intone actually creates a distinction where she looks unique to the people. As far as the, like the racial dynamic, it feels like it was a little bit overblown, but I'm curious your perspective as a historian on this specific time. Well, I think that there were, I think, um,

there were so many more important issues that Nolan got wrong. You're worried about the helmets. It's very niche. Yeah. I mean, like, the, the, the, The only person in the cast who either was Greek or spoke Greek was a person who played a non-Greek. Hilarious. So the first stop after Troy is Ismaris. It's not mentioned by name in the movie, but the first stop they make where they plunder this coastal village. And there's this survivor, and he's this old man. And he tells them, they're like, we're Greeks from Ithaca.

And he speaks modern Greek to them. It's like the actor is a Greek. okay and in the movie he's speaking modern greek and he's saying if you go west troubles await you and then he has to be translated to these so-called greeks hilarious it's just like seriously yeah that is a good distinction right like mad damon is equally not greek yeah as lupita yeah like they're both not greek and we're kind of putting like a modern racialized lens on a period where race wasn't really a thing right like it was just sort of nationality is that fair to say I mean, I don't know how much race was a thing.

I think Greece was definitely not as multicultural as it appears to be in the film, you know, but there's a lot we don't know. They also weren't speaking English. Yeah. Hey, guys, we're going to take a break really quick because I got to tell you something. If you know me, you know I'm obsessed with finding ways to cheat biology without accidentally ruining my biology. And for a long time, I associated putting a pouch in with being focused and energized and, like, ready to attack the day. But the thing is, nicotine is a vasoconstrictor, which means it literally narrows your blood vessels and restricts oxygen delivery to your muscles. So I'm taking something

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you will get 15% off when you go to take ultra.com. That is take ultra.com. Use the code camp for 15% off. And after you purchase, they're going to ask where you heard about them. Tell them that Mark and Christos from the campsite sent you. Now, let's get back to the show. Now, another element that I mentioned before that is my favorite part of the books, at least when I read it in high school, I was like, oh, that's so clever.

Is when he tells the Cyclops that he's nobody. Yeah. Like, do you have a theory as to why that was cut out? Did it bother you that that element was removed? Well, I did see that Nolan was asked to this, I think, by John Stewart in an interview. And he says, we just couldn't work it in. It was impossible. So I don't know.

I mean, look, there's a lot of unfortunate choices. I think maybe I should tell you, like, what I thought was done well, though. Yeah, I mean, before we get to that, I was one enough. If there's any other details here, like, ah, this is a missed opportunity. This is the best part. Da-da-da-da. Things that people don't know. I mean, the land of the dead where he holds his mother three times and she, like, evaporates and moves through him.

and she dies of, you know, a broken heart waiting for him. That's like the most beautiful part of the whole poem. Yeah. And it's also omitted. So I'm like, ugh. I mean, look, if you're going to take a, what was a 14-hour performance and make it into a three-hour film, you have to cut things that are going to be really sad to cut. Fair.

Okay. At the same time, I think Nolan could have done some really awesome things that he didn't do, you know, like one is to actually. show the ancient morality in all its shocking alien aspects, right? And, but I will say that there were some really, really clever things that he did.

Tell me. Like, when Odysseus in the land of, in Circe's Isle, when he goes hunting and he shoots the deer, and then he goes to retrieve the body and it's a human body, that's not in Homer. It's a brilliant touch. to give Odysseus a way of understanding what's happening on this island, that you have a witch turning humans into beasts.

And then here's one that he did that I think Aristotle would have approved. Because Aristotle said that the power of tragedy, and Homer, he takes to be a kind of related form of art to tragedy. The power of tragedy is most vividly seen in moments of reversal, and recognition. So when a, when fortune suddenly change or when somebody recognizes somebody, those are the powerful moments. And he says the best, the best tragedies combine them.

So the moment of recognition is also the moment of reversal of fortune. And in this case, Nolan, it's not in the original, but Nolan made the moment where the dog Argos recognizes Odysseus to coincide with the moment where Telemachus recognizes Odysseus, which also then marks the reversal because now Telemachus knows that things are different, right? So I'm not going to get killed, things are turning around. Exactly. So that would have been an aristotle,

that would have the stamp of approval of Aristotle on it. Wow. That's a great way to look at this. I think so many people are trying to skewer the original and say like, oh, they ruined it and destroyed it and Hollywood effed up the whole movie. Well, there are elements that are changed and perhaps some of those criticisms are legitimate.

But it is also possible that in certain elements, Nolan did better than Homer. And that is a, is a quite an achievement, even if he does at once. I mean, I know this is probably breaking Chrysos's hard. He's like, no, Homer's the best. No one could ever be Homer. But that part right there, it's not something I even considered. Like, in that one single moment, it does two things at once that even the rhapsodes of old didn't do. Wow. That's a great point. And that is also maybe the most beautiful part, Argo seeing his owner and being like, and then dying immediately after, and Odysseus shedding one single tear and wiping it away.

Yeah. It's perfect. I mean, truly perfect. It's gold. Right. It's also a great name for a dog that I feel like not enough people are using. Right? Like, I always meet Fido's all the time.

How many lunas have I met in the last year? Give me an Argos. That's the best dog name I've ever heard. I think there's going to be a big explosion. There's going to be a big explosion of Argoses in the next two years. Watch. Now, anything else that you saw in the film that you thought could have been different, was a deviation, but you didn't mind.

or was even better than the original. Well, I like to think of the positive things because there's a lot of negatives. I don't want to, you know, do that. But one more thing that was cool is the sound that the bow makes when you plug it. Now, that's totally unrealistic. Okay, a bow of that tension

would have sounded like, bink, you know? Yeah, you want bass. What you hear is like the thickest, biggest string of a harp with that whole resonating chamber available to, right? Feels like a, like a tool intro, you know? Yeah. Yeah. That's what you want.

That was obviously like, you know, the sound was overlaid with carp or something. But what I like there is that in the scene with the challenge of the bow, right? Oh, another missed opportunity. The interview between Penelope and Odysseus, right? The original is way better, man. Like, she's so much smarter. And they kind of speak in codes. And he kind of signals to her that he's Odysseus without saying it outright.

And then she kind of gets it. And then she says, so what should I do? And then he says, well, I think you should announce the Boe challenge, which is totally not in the movie, right? Right. And then she's like, okay, sounds good. So like you can read. It's not like, you know, it's not uncontroversial,

but you can read into that scene in Homer that he's giving her a signal. She's getting it. She's asking for advice. he gives it and it's okay and it's like they've they've conspired together that's totally missed in the in the movie but then what what is cool is so he he starts stringing the bow and all these suitors are angry and they're jeering and they're insulting him and like you feel like at any moment they might just charge him and beat him up right and the and the music is growing and tension and growing and growing and then at the moment of the climax of the musical crescendo he goes bang yeah and then the music stops right like

it just got real and it's like, pshu, pshu, right? It's awesome. Yeah. But now also in the Homeric, it's not something I ever understood in from my reading of the excerpts of the original where it's like, okay, he's talking to Penelope. He's like, let's do this bow thing. She's like, all right, let's do it. Yeah.

And then even after he does that, she still is not sure. And she's like, move my bed out of the chamber. Yeah. And then he's like, well, you can't move the bed. I've made that bed. It's an olive tree. It's like this whole thing. It's like, it makes me think that she still didn't believe.

it even after this whole feat and threading the bow and shooting through the axe handles all that so in your interpretation from the original homeric did she at what point does she know odysseus is really him well i think that i think the purpose of her at least feigning disbelief and making him prove himself is because homer wants her to be an equal to him in cunning if she had just said oh you're home honey think oh right so much like no approve it with the axe handles. That would be. But after you do that, then she got to come down and be like, all right, it's you.

I get it. Odysseus himself does this, right? Like when Odysseus goes, like Odysseus doesn't just check people's intentions. He double checks and triple checks and triple tests, right? Like after he kills the suitors and he goes to see his father, his father is like plowing the earth all muddy and dirty. And you'd think he would just say, dad, I'm home. But instead, he makes up yet another tale of who he is.

which is a lie. And he says, oh, yeah, I saw Odysseus. He's dead. And his dad, like, collapses, almost dies of, like, a heart attack. It's like, oh, just kidding. It's me, dad. Right. Yeah, just pump things on for no reason.

And you might be like, again, somebody with modern morality coming in. It's like, that's so cruel. It's like, but this is why Odysseus survived because he's that kind of person who tests even the people that he should trust. He's that suspicious and that crafty. that cunning that of all the people that went on this long, you know, saga, only he made it home, right? Right. And then Penelope, I think the poet, Homer, other bards, they want her to be his match in cunning. And so she has to do the same thing. She has to, like, test him and double test him

and triple test him. Right. And then finally they're united. And when they're united, they have homo frosune. They have like-minded relationship, which Odysseus says is the greatest thing earth. So don't look at it as, you know, a great hero that's godlike and a damsel in distress. Look at it almost like spy versus spy. Yes. Where it's like they're both testing each other the entire time all the way up until the very end. Now in the disputed ending of the original Homer, there's a great civil war. And all the families of the suitors start fighting and there's a whole thing. And then Athena comes down and Zeus is like, guys, stop and wipes everybody's memory. I've heard it said that that's not really accepted.

What say you on that rendition? What do you mean it's not accepted? I've heard that a lot of scholars have said, no, no, it ends after the olive tree, bed situation, and then happily ever after. But that additional ending where there's a civil war and Zeus has to throw a thunderbolt, is that part accepted by Homer's?

There's always some scholars who think, well, maybe the original ending was here or maybe Homer should have ended it there. you know, but I mean, the manuscripts agree that it ends after the divine intervention. And I think to me that I think the existing ending we have is the best ending because to me, the Odyssey, in the same way that the Iliad is a faint, altered memory of the coalition warfare that attended the Bronze Age collapse. The Odyssey to me is a faint memory of the chaotic migrations that also followed the Bronze Age collapse. And so, when, like, there is a sense in the ending of this epic poem that Ithaca will never be the powerful state it was once before, right? Like, Odysseus regains his throne, but at a huge cost to the community. And he's not happy about killing them. Like, there's this great line where after he kills all the suitors, except for, like, three, the nurse Heriglia, who recognizes scar, she comes into the hall, right?

and she's about to like she opens her mouth to be like woohoo and Odysseus like grabs her throat and says it is not right to rejoice over slain men so he the poem is at great pains to make it

feel like he did this out of necessity in order to establish order to establish his rightful place so forth but it's not a good it's not a happy ending it's not a good thing for Ithaca it will never be the same just like after the Bronze Age collapse the Greek, a lot of the Greek areas, they went on. They survived in a sense, but they never achieved

their former glory until the end of the Dark Ages, four centuries later. And so there's a sense in this poem, like, yeah, order was restored, but this is now a kind of fallen world. Right. And the fact that the gods had to come down and wipe everyone's memory. Yeah. Is that necessary? Like, sometimes it feels a little deus ex machina to me. It's a bit of a, They have six Machino. Okay, fair. We agree on that. All right.

Well, Dr. Jack, this has been fantastic. Thank you so much for the time, truly. I am always honored to be in the presence of someone that is a scholar that is willing to come down to my level and explain the details and answer all my frivolous question. So truly, it means the world. And I would love to do it again. Thanks so much. I've been following your show for a while.

So it's an honor to be here. And I hope to be back. Let's do it. Hey, guys. If you love conspiracies and hypothetical history, well, I want to invite you to check out Signal 33. This is a companion pod to our podcast here at Camp. It's made and edited by the same team that runs all of our shows, and I choose the topics every single week.

So check it out, subscribe, and start the dialogue in the comment section.