Pablo Torre Finds Out - How "The Odyssey" Outsmarts Itself, with Wesley Morris

Episode Date: July 24, 2026

A three-hour puzzle in IMAX makes for great storytelling, but does Christopher Nolan make going to the movies feel like homework? The New York Times critic at large joins Pablo for a (relatively spoiler-free) cinematic sparring session: What goes wrong when an auteur plays with too many Hollywood toys? What goes right when Homeric text aligns with classic Damon? Is the casting really so "woke" after all? And why were those Greek islands so... neutered?• Subscribe to "Cannonball with Wesley Morris"• Subscribe to PTFO on YouTube• Subscribe to The Athletic Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to Pablo Torre finds out. I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is. He's telling you in the opening minutes. His movie is not going to go... Zzz! It's going to go... Right after this. We should get a drink.

It's time. It's time. It's time. We have props. I don't mean drinking in here, Pablo. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. In life. I don't know the difference between this and life anymore.

This is where I live. I live in here. By the way, I just want to say, the background makes me, it just makes me so happy. The visuals of the studio. I love that design. The design's glad to have you back. It just puts me in a great mood. I don't know if you have tested this out scientifically.

We're doing it right now. Scientists behind the glass are watching Wesley Morris, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner for criticism, smile. And I want to describe. the visuals beyond what's behind me that the audio audience may not be totally cut up on. We have some helmets that I was told were more Bronze Age than they

have turned out to be. People are getting a lot of this movie's getting a lot of helmet blowback. We like Christopher Nolan are managing expectations for historical accuracy as we have some red boa feathers sticking out of the Spirit Halloween

helmets that are on the dusk. I love these. I love these. I also want to clarify that I defer to you on spoiler policy? How do we handle this? I think you know your listeners better than I know your listeners. I tend to not... The one hand, I love talking about the whole thing. Yeah.

But I'm also sensitive, like, two weeks after a movie's been out to just be... You know, I just saw the invite fairly recently. I mean, there's no spoilers there, really. But, like, just I didn't know anything, except who was in it and what the basic premise was. So I try to just avoid information about movies. I cover my eyes during trailers.

So the point being that we are mindful of the fact that there are some people out there who have not yet seen what is apparently the most popular movie in the world, according to the latest metrics? Yeah, yeah. It's the biggest movie in the world right now. But I want to have a conversation that has value to people who have not seen it, who have already seen it. And frankly, don't give a shit maybe about Christopher Nolan in general.

But are going to see it or won't see it because they don't give a shit about Christopher Nolan? People who, on principle, already hate this premise for an episode on this show. And people who may be so peer-pressured into giving in and finding out, because this is what's happening, Wesley. A true blockbuster has once again emerged from the sea. From the sea. From the sea. And it's forcing people to figure out. I going to find out what this is all about?

I did something that I feel so privileged in getting to tell you about, which is I got an invitation from a friend. This was last week. Hey, do you want to see The Odyssey? There's a screening in Lincoln Square, 70 millimeter. Oh, yeah. Okay. This is probably where I wound up.

So I went to a fancy screening and saw it on the biggest possible and also preferred size screen. The only true IMAX in New York City is what I got to see this on in row E. Okay. And I have been thinking about it ever since, which is why I texted you, Wesley Morris. And I was like, have you seen this yet? And so where did you see it? I saw it at the same theater. Because, you know, there aren't very many places, depending on where you live on Earth.

You know, this movie was shot entirely in IMAX. That's part of its claim to fame feels a little strong. It's lore. It's one of the selling points here is that you have to see it in IMAX. So it was shot in IMAX, a whole thing, unlike, you know, what you normally get, which is like a climactic scene in IMAX, and the rest goes back to its pitiful, regular movie aspect ratio. Right. In which, you know, in the old days, when our.

Like when I was a kid, because I'm older than you are, when I was a kid, there would be somebody in the theater. There wasn't a lot of aspect ratio switching. But when you'd get two movies showing in the same theater and the aspect ratio did differ, you'd have somebody whose job it was to adjust the edge curtains. Yes. And they had to say, I'm sorry, we are a grower, not a shower.

Right. We're going to cover up. Yeah. Put a little fig leaf. But that no longer happens. And I think I would love to hear the exhibitor's rationale for this, but they just probably assume that we are so used to letterboxing. Because also when I was a kid, people were like,

what are those black lines? I don't like it. I'm not getting the full picture. And it wasn't until Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel did a whole segment on their show about letterboxing. I didn't know this. And the glories of letterboxing that, you know, I don't know if it'd calm people down, but I was like, I got a high, I got a new high horse to be on. Hey, man.

A wide-ass horse. Yes. That's widescreen though And we'll talk about some horses in a minute Yes but that is widescreen IMAX or 70mm are your like Primo movie going options And I saw it in IMAX

And I have to say like I was probably too close I also left not sure that I needed To have the entire three hour odyssey experience In IMAX It didn't alter Why do I care? I just wonder what Nolan, I think the achievement of it is sort of what, can I do this and how can I do it with some of the best actors and movie stars we have? Because you know, do you know about like the IMAX camera, the hassle of the IMAX camera?

How enormous it is. Yes, A, but B, it's loud. So like it's not a great, it's not a great device for capturing dialogue. So a lot of IMAX sequences have to. be looped in post, so to speak, because you're picking up a lot of noise from the camera itself. So the IMAX camera is so noisy that they built the giant blimp. So the blimp goes around the IMAX, and so the blimp is like that wide with the camera sitting in the middle.

So if I'm going to put my face next to the camera to do my scene with Steve, it's going to be way over here, which means your eye line is going to be like that, and you're not going to be, I'm not going to be seeing both of your eyes and seeing you. So the mirror system works like this. The camera's here, the big box is here. I'm here, and you're Anne Hathaway. I look into a mirror which reflects into another mirror, and my full face is in a mirror right next to the camera lens

where it needs to be for us to have that intimate view of your face. Christopher Nolan, because of course it would be either him or James Cameron or Steven Spielberg, one of those three people would have figured out a way to shoot a movie entirely in IMAX and live action movie in iMacs, sorry James Cameron, and also make sure that you can record your dialogue in situ. I mean, the question of, like, is the medium of IMAX

at its highest point, 70 millimeter, is that part of the message here? I want that to sort of also run through what we're describing as, by the way, people are struggling to find the preferred way to watch this because there just aren't that many 70-millimeter IMAX theaters at all. I mean, there are 41 in the world, 25 in the U.S., one in New York, as I said. Wait, we have 25 of the 41? Yeah. Wow.

Holy shit. Nine in Canada, three in the U.K., three across Europe, scattered somewhere, one in all of Australia. You found out. I mean, this is eight of them in California, incidentally. Yeah, that's fair. That is fair. Which feels fair. And so what we're really doing is we're talking about, like, okay, it's a true blockbuster.

Yes. And the scale of all of this for you as my friend who I think of when I want to determine like what is a person with tastes view of something that is meant to be so broadly consumed but also critically acclaimed. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For you, is the scale of this interesting? Oh, yeah, for sure. I think that any time you get a director, even one that I'm not crazy about the way I'm not crazy about Christopher Nolan, who is taking the time and care to build a world

that he thinks is so, for his purposes, visionary, that, you know, he's got to try to reinvent an old format to express it and realize it. I'm already curious about what is going on here. But having sat through it, Through this particular use of an innovation, of a piece of, you know, of technology that has been made to evolve in this part of the 21st century, I don't, I just want to say to the people who can't get to one of the 41 IMAXs. The true 70 millimeter ones, yes. You are fine watching it wherever, wherever you get your movies.

Just to have it be someplace you trust. Because, you know, even I've heard nightmare experiences just from people watching it at theaters where I know I don't want to watch The Odyssey. not name names here today. Because I still depend on some of these theaters. But I don't, I'm not going. Wait, one, let's generally describe what a terrible place to watch The Odyssey might be. Some of the great places I've seen movies, and this is, I think, key to this whole thing, is you really should see this in a theater.

Oh, for sure. We agree on this. Sure. Definitely see it in a theater for all kinds of reasons. Well, I just think of, like, one of the reasons why I wanted to talk about this on the show is because I had, while watching this at that 70 millimeter IMAX, one of my favorite movie-going experiences. And so what else is on that list? I want to pick your brain about that.

Because for me, I mean, I watched, my brain immediately goes to watching Django Unchained in downtown Brooklyn. Oh, S-H-I-T. Okay, I see where you're doing. And I'm like, something was so essential about watching this with others in this setting. man do you have a favorite movie going experience where you're like if i could recreate what it felt like to be in this room watching this film how old were you when you saw jango it was when it came

out so 2012 yeah so that was 14 years ago that was 26 okay i think that if you were alive while tarantino was alive in making movies it's going to be a tarantino movie is my guess because even if you didn't like jango and i live a lot of people in my life who did not like Django. Sure. They remember the experience of watching it with other people. And part of the thrill of the movie, I can't speak for the people who hate it because I don't hate it.

But the I Hate Django movie in my life is Green Book. And I will tell you, I watched Green Book in a packed theater three times because for a variety of reasons we don't need to get into. Sure. I've seen it, I saw it in the theater three times. And every time I saw it with an audience that just loved it. And that was thrilling to me. I loved watching it with people who love that terrible movie.

Tarantino, for me, is the person who gives you that because you're high. You're in suspense. And I mean, like, the movie is making you high. You're on a high. There's suspense. There's comedy. There's uncertainty. And there's also the permission that you're seeking from others maybe to enjoy the part.

that you're not sure if you should be enjoying. Well, maybe yes, but you're definitely all in whatever this is physically together. And the great thing about Tarantino is you're mostly on the same page in a lot of cases. So I would say the answer to your question is Pulp Fiction. Because I think you never forget your first... I mean, I'd seen Reservoir Dogs in the movie theater,

but Pulp Fiction was the one where I was like, I got to go see the Reservoir Dogs Guys' new movie. And it was that. And, like, that first sequence where, you know, Amanda Plummer and Tim Rolf jump up on the counter and, you know, hand over all your mother, mother, everybody, be cool, this is a robbery. You fucking pricks me. One of you. And they free, he freezes the frame on them.

Yes. And her line still, Amanda Plummer's line is still going. But she is frozen. And you're, and that surf guitar starts. So that is a level of formal. I just got to chill. Oh, no, it's formal invention. Yeah.

That Tarantina was doing as well. like this comedic. But energy. And energy. This is, to be very clear, this is not that. No. But I want to point out that like, and maybe this is a mini spoiler, but I don't think it is. The first words that you see on screen are a disclosure.

The text on screen says, a time of apparent magic. And now you're into Christopher Nolan's version of Greek mythology. You're not in Greece, Greece? You're remembering stuff vaguely from school. Like, okay, I kind of know what happens with the Cyclops. I remember the sheep stuff. I remember some parts about Penelope, you know, who's played by Anne Hathaway, his wife,

who's left behind on, you know, his fucking land. Ithaca. His castle, Ithaca. His kingdom of Ithaca. His kingdom. His little kingdom. This is how articulate I am about what I learned throughout high school. But the point being that once you've gotten the terms and conditions

about what might happen, apparent magic. Yeah. Suspension of your disbelief is to come. Pablo, we are so past suspension of disbelief. I mean, every once in a while I wind up in a Reddit thread. You wind up in a Reddit thread for like a movie. The comment sections, just like as a person who works at the New York Times,

you sometimes get a person who just can't, can't, like, doesn't have the physical strength to like, like can't put the disbelief on the hook, like can't put it in the overhead bin? Hey, can you help me? I, my disbelief is too, I packed too much. No, can you help me? The disbelief has, can you pick it up for me?

They have the extender seatbelt on it and it's taken up the most space to the inconvenience of all around them. You should have checked it. I don't even know how you got it on the plane. This is my emotional support disbelief. I'm not checking this. I am legally obligated to complain.

I needed to hold it the whole thing. whole flight. Yeah, no, that hell of... How much did you know going in about what you could possibly experience? I thought so little about this going in to the point where I was like, okay, I didn't even really register that the whole 70 millimeter thing was this big a deal. I knew generally, frankly, about the discourse on my Twitter feed. Okay.

About how mad people were about casting. Oh, Lord. I didn't even want to indulge that, but go on. But it's just... The Odyssey is woke. I'm sorry, MFs. This is also a movie with giant cyclopses. I did not read it before I saw this movie,

but I've read it a couple of times. And, you know, this is like, he can do whatever he wants with this. Everybody here on Delta Airlines needs to know that Helen of Troy needs to be white. Lupita Nyango cannot play her. Not only can Academy Award winner and truly one of Earth's most stunning, births of all time.

By any golden symmetry, mathematical. What are we even? It's just not even. The science, the science supports this. Even a eugenicist would be like... Damn, I can't do nothing about her. I see... You guys got a point.

I love knowing what upsets us about adaptation and the idea that, you know, I mean, why is Bernfall here? You want to complain about a Jew being in this thing? Like, what are we doing? A New York accent. old like pseudo-Puccino like Jew?

Ah, come on. What are we doing? Right. John Leguizamo? John Leguizamo is literally Marlon Brando. A key character as like a blind Greek man. He's great though.

He is great. He's really good. Can I, can I, I feel like we have a choice right now as people talking about this doing our own, uh, adaptation. Sorry, I'm like hurting a cat.

No, but it's, but it's like, should we say whether you, you liked it or not? I think it's fine. I didn't love it. I think the Christopher Nolan movie-going experience,

I used to call him a fraud, right? I used to say, you like... Oh, I love that I've inadvertently invited the guy who called... The Pulitzer Prize winner, excuse me, who called Christopher Nolan a fraud. I've totally overlooked this part of your Uvra. But please, I did not mean to interrupt.

I love this. I just never believed him as in terms of the themes and sometimes when you'd get an idea the ideas I just because they're not successfully or fulfillingly at least for me explored enough

and you know a smart person can do the work of connecting something like what is happening in his version of the Odyssey to other depictions of war and war as we've experienced it you know in the last 3,000 years

and I'm not saying that those things are not there these ideas. Some of them are very, are quite obvious. I've only seen it once. But I think that, you know, my problems with Christopher Nolan are very present in this movie. I mean, like my actual, what makes him frustrating as a filmmaker who makes movies about people who, but they're not about people, right? They're about an idea. But they're never really about an idea. They're about a theme. We reach concept. We reach themes. But we don't ever really. get psychologies,

sexualities, you know, because there's a version of the Odyssey that is just, you know, we are watching, we're watching

Penelope really make some choices. We're watching Odysseus make some choice. I mean, I'm sorry. Circe, Calypso.

Yeah. I don't know what we're, we're not going to take any, we're really not going to take any sex risks here. I was going to say,

at all, Mr. Nolan. I have a feeling that Wesley is going to point out how little faking there was in this adabre of the Odyssey. I guess my reputation precedes me.

But I should say, so again, Matt Damon as Odysseus when he shows up on these magical islands and he encounters these women who in lore, and this is not even

wishcasting, it's literally what fucking Homer wrote. Yeah, well, I mean, allegedly. Quote unquote. Yeah, collectively, through the concept,

the theme of Homer put down through an oral tradition that carries through 2026. Odysseus is supposed to have sex with all these people, very graphically. And in this case, we're fairly neutered, actually. Yeah. I mean, the day took the Bob Barker approach. Make sure you have your pet spayed and neutered.

We'll see you tomorrow. I, you know, but that didn't bother me too much because I understand the world that I'm going into. I definitely enjoy the experience of watching it. I think that there are a lot of, there are a lot of wonderful moments in this film. I was impressed that for a movie, and this is true in Nolan, because I watched, one, two, three, four. I watched four Nolan's in the,

like before and after I watched The Odyssey for the first time. It is not the journey that appeals to him, although he has been making The Odyssey the entire time. Christopher Nolan, every movie is about a man trying to get somewhere. Back to himself. Yes, who is alienated from his family and is grappling. with what he has done.

Yes. And I guess something that I'd never considered until this movie was just how much his characters speak expositionally. It works in this movie.

This is the first time it's made sense, right? Because it's actually part of the premise. Yes, exactly. It's the spoken oral tradition. But I also think that one of the draws for him

is how, like what are some ways in which I can tell this story? I can use a device that I love using. I don't even know that he knows he's using it. But like, let's have Odysseus talk to Calypso about things that happened

that transpired before he arrived on her island. Yes. And then we're going to see it. And now we're going to see it. I don't know. It's such a great use of what, to me, is a tick in a filmmaker's style. I love that you're pointing this out.

I should say that I am not here to convince you to love this film as much as I loved it. Oh, please speak. But I adore Christopher Nolan for the very reason that you have identified as his tick, which is not the exposition, but I think of him as an architect, as an engineer. Oh, a thousand percent. And so the reliance on device is to me, like, it's always a question of how is he going to end this thing and how is he going to make it so that that ending catches you by surprise. and makes you feel something and makes you think

that was fucking clever. And admittedly, those are all pretty inhuman standards of success. Yes, yes. But they are feats of engineering to me. And I love how consistently he tries and succeeds

to make his ending leave this, sound in your head where you're like, you got me again. Well, say more about that because, I mean, you know, for me, I find his endings, I kind of roll my eyes a little bit.

Because, you know, we spend all this time here and really, this is just about a, this is about a guy who misses his daddy and feels, it's always about, daddy is such an issue for him, right? Like, Inception really just annoyed me because we find out the whole point of this thing was this old,

this old money bags. But I, you know, because also, we know, we know where you got this, sir. It's, you didn't, you could, you could not have it be a sled, but. Exactly. So the whole, the whole rose budding of, of the payoff. This is the inception that we're talking about,

or at least I'm talking about. Yeah, yeah, but it's also. But it happens, it recurs. It's how do you, how do you catch people at the end in a way that makes you think I should have seen it, it was there the whole time, and now it's clicking in it.

You like that. So I am a simple... No, no, no, no, but as somebody who appreciates story, I'm always... I fetishize endings. Often, as I have learned over the years, at the expense of character development, at the expense of the humanity of even the characters who are really, you know,

a wheel spinning to get us to that last reveal. And so for this, I should say that like, we all know how the Odyssey generally ends. That's great of you to think that. He gets back home. Oh, that's what you mean. Sure. Yeah. He's back home.

I'm sorry. I thought you meant the... But the film, the film, like... of course, the theme of it, the big takeaway, which is funny to say out loud, because it is, now that I see through your lens, not the most original insight, is that people who kill other people

should probably feel guilty about it. Uh-huh. Yeah. But when you enter the world of apparent magic and you go through and you watch him, and he gets us, the audience, broadly speaking, the royal we, to root for Odysseus, only to realize far too late that, wait a minute, he's war-crimining?

Yes. We're the bad guys? I mean, for me, I would have liked more of that. Because it's too subtle in the movie. One of the ingenious things about the casting is that this very astute observation that you have perceived in Nolan's text is completely overridden by ingenious casting. he gets away with a lot of these choices because it's such shrewd casting.

Like, you'll forgive this movie a lot because we've been with Matt Damon for like 30 years. Matt Damon's the oldest person in this movie, by the way. Crazy. Crazy. And he means something to us

and what he does not mean. If this was Michael Douglas playing Odysseus, we'd have a different story running at Jamie Fox. I think the theme though that that Nolan is getting at is is in communication with the audience and the theme is you know that meme this is this is a terrible way to to make a point that I hope has some level of insight but you know that meme from euphoria where they're watching the play and the thing and it's like wait a minute this fucking play is about us yeah that's what I felt watching

this where it was like, surprise, the reason that we can't have nice things anymore as a civilization is because the thing we valorized, the Trojan War, the Trojan horse was both genius and also the breaking of what has been framed in this film as Zeus's law, but is fundamentally the Christian principle of... Do unto others. Do unto others. Jesus was a beggar, right? That whole notion. And in our celebration of that, we have caused the downfall of our own civilization and infected everyone who perpetrated those war crimes with fundamentally a PTSD, which would have been more apparent from the start if the setting was not a time of apparent magic, but Vietnam. Oh, man, I just wish the movie had more thoroughly excavated and explored that. I'm going to see it again. And I think,

you know, I think my second viewing is probably going to focus a lot more on what some of these actors are doing. Lupita Nyango is playing Helena Troy and Clythamestra and... Her twin sister. I don't... I don't...

But not real... I mean, Nolan is clearly making some choices here with these texts. You know, importing this woman from the Iliad. Yeah. And then giving her a twin that's really just her very complicated sister.

There are choices being made here. I wish one of the choices was like, give Lupita 15 minutes. Just 15 minutes more. Literally say a second line. I should point out that one of the funny things about people being like, Helen of Troy can't be black,

is that like, and this is a throughline in all of these sort of like allegedly woke casting choices, Lupita Njango is essentially a possession. She's an object in this. film. There is no interiority. Yes. Yes. She is effectively a captured creature

that serves this larger masculine plotline. Yes, yes. So the idea of like you cast a black woman to do that, I'm like there's a world in which the opposite argument is being made of like how dare you cast Lupita Diango to play this

role. Pablo, I give that argument 15 more minutes until the gates go up. And by the way, so parallel, parallel argument, right? Elliot Page, trans actor, plays Sinan, who is in the film, the paragon of the weak soldier.

I have no problem with the way people are used in this film. Oh, yeah, I'm just pointing out that there's another way to argue the opposite. Right, right, right. But I'm ready for the trans community comments about, I just want to hear the conversation about Senan because I think this character is really interesting and, you know, he dies. He's the first death.

Yes. Right? And I'm like, oh, my, I don't get to see Elliot Page do much of anything. So this is the question I have for you. For you, the consistent lack of character development. Yes. Which, admittedly, now that you put it like this, I had underweighted in my viewing and I am struggling to spin in a positive direction.

Well, I wonder what I'm going to enjoy about it the second time I watch it is really my question. But you sort of see in bursts these characters come to life, and in the case of Sinan, it's in literal the afterlife, in which they finally get to be interesting, really, or vocalize their own interiority. But that's a deal breaker for you.

Character development as a feature of cinema. This is a great question. No, because I also believe that there is a way to be the kind of artist that you like Christopher Nolan for being, right? I love your and appreciate and understand your love of him as an engineer and architect. And that was a memento that radicalized me to him and I was just like, oh, I mean, and that is a movie where you come to understand, hey, the movies do not have to go from point A to point B. be to every other chronological spot on the spectrum, you can skip letters. He's telling you in the opening minutes.

His movie is not going to go... It's going to go... And people are going to be like, oh. But he's also not James Cameron, who can also be like, okay, here's what I'm about to do. You're about to spend three hours with... I'm going to tell you in the first 10 minutes.

I am sinking this boat. I'm going to show you how... I'm going to sink the boat. Here's the, is it actually the boat? And just zoop. Here's our, here's how the Titanic sank. And then two and a half hours pass and you're like, oh my God, this boat is going to, he's going to do it. He's not quite to me, the magician that James Cameron is in terms of making you forget

that something wild is about to happen or you're saying something you've never seen before in part because the people are just pieces on a board to him. This is, I think, the fairest criticism of Christopher Nolan is that the main character in a Christopher Nolan film is Christopher Nolan. Sure, yeah, yeah. You're like marveling at, like, even the whole notion of this is an experience that you must appreciate in the way that I am basically incentivizing you, forcing you even to consume is about the auteur.

Yeah, and even that. is enough for me. You know, even that is enough for me. I think that like one of the virtues of this movie really is the thing that's a, that's a vice as far as or like a weakness for me in the other movies, which is all the, all the expository talking to me here is about the power of the story itself. There's real belief in the power of these assorted people telling each other stories of how what happened happened. Right. Right.

The myth within the myth, the myth making within the myth making is a huge part of the Odyssey as a Homeric text and as a Nolanistic text. Yes. Yes. And that part works for me here. I like the Dark Night. The Dark Night really works for me. I think parts of the, what's the third Batman movie?

of his The Dark Night Rises. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I loved all the Catwoman stuff in that. Whatever Anne Hathaway is doing in that movie, Bain is also the use of Bain is simultaneously ridiculous and, like, it's,

that is a scary character. Like, it gets me viscerally what Nolan and Tom already come up with for Bain in that movie. But Dunkirk was the movie where I was like, okay, this guy is a classicist. he really has only ever wanted to be making old Hollywood genre movies, right? And I just feel like this is the truest depiction of his soul,

which is I've got a bunch of toys that make a kind of historical sense and I can just play with them. Not quite ad nauseum because I'm dealing with a real historical event here. I can play by history's rules and use my own personal style. So that movie, maybe it worked for you, maybe it didn't. I don't know. I enjoyed Dunkirk.

I loved that his signature formal ideas with respect to time and space are operating full steam ahead in Dunkirk. I love that. I love the way that he takes that mode of expression and applies it to the Odyssey, where for more than two hours, you've got one, two, three, four,

maybe four different moments in time operating, you know, he's juggling these four time zones. And you're involved in all of them. I love that. I love the engineering and problem solving and puzzle making aspect of him. It does cost you something as a moviegoer. It really depends case by case whether it was enough for me to have enjoyed it when I don't get some other things I want because the priorities here are really involving the puzzle. You know, again, I am the sort of person

who, until quite recently, had seen everything in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Okay. And then... Until quite recently. Yeah, yeah. That's a like... I think it was like the, it was the whole multiverse saga where I was like, there are no stakes. Nothing matters. There are no stakes. Nothing matters. There are no stakes.

And that was familiar to me from comic book fandom where it's like you've run out of ways to create stakes because you've broken all of the, again, our disbelief and the suspension they're in, we have maxed out. Like, we can't, I can't believe that this matters to anyone. anymore. And that was my superhero cinematic universe experience. Okay. And so this, part of it was like, how is Christopher Nolan going to bring to life the Cyclops? How is he going to bring to life all of these apparent magical creatures and villains and horror, figures from horror, it turns out, as he approached Circe's Island.

And how you do that, I was like, I want to know how Christopher Nolan tackles these. And I found it all quite satisfying. The sound design, the whole close encounters ness of the Cyclops, the alien noise that's like drilling

into you. Yeah, I love that. Yeah. I love that. I mean, there's some real great choices here. I love when the priorities of the Homeric text, the Nolan text, and the Matt Damon text completely align. There are a couple

just real there's a great moment during the sirens call when they're on the ship I love this scene and this is just every Matt like a really great Matt Damon moviegoing experience

involves something that I describe as classic Damon and here it's when all the men have sort of put wax in their ears to avoid the sirens call so they don't crash the ship or you know

all die because they've gone to try to to jump in the ocean to have sex with these ladies. Damon's like, I want to be the one who survives their call. By the way, when I watched that sequence, I was like, you're a movie critic who's running down like lines that like you're going to put into into the paper record. Yeah, I'm just going to... What I was doing was being like, oh, this Asian guy that people are mad at.

He's the first to go! He's redshirted! I am him for Halloween. I'm going to wear this helmet. I'm going to be the Asian guy. Everyone's mad at for being Greek who takes the wax out of his ears and runs towards the ocean. He's like, I'm getting in.

I am fucking these white women. And that's, if that's how this ends, I'm cool. It's funny because we know that guy. What's that? That's an actor we know. Yes, Will Yunn Lee. Oh, yeah, I mean. Pardon me, Will, for being your Halloween costume now.

Sorry to see him go because, not that this movie needs all the beauty you can get, but like, you're just sorry to see a high. person leave the movie. A hot multiracial, a rainbow coalition of Greeks. I think one of the reasons that this is going to be such a big hit is people like me are going to go back to it and be like, okay, change my mind, change my mind, expand my mind. What did I miss, you know, did I miss something? And think about Nolan is, I don't really ever think I missed anything. The question is, did I understand what I saw the first time?

Well, I think that's a fascinating way to judge a movie. Like, is it the job of the autore to communicate? Oh, no. No. I don't know. Well, again, to communicate. With the audience such that they get what you're going for. Oh, sure.

Does the puzzle need to be solved by the audience member in order for it to have worked? I actually, a practice that I've got now is I watch these movies and I'm like, Wesley, write the plot down. Like, just write, like, right in your... your notebook what the plot of, like if you were reviewing this, how would you describe the plot of this thing? And that's one question, but then the other question is like, what does the plot mean, say, or speak to or allude to? Sometimes it is the filmmaker's fault for being unclear. And then sometimes, you know, you know, the way I know with a movie like Oppenheimer, like, where do I begin to dislike it?

And that's a movie that is such a, for me, confused coalition of theme, idea, and vision, right? Because when you're doing a movie biography, how do we get these visions, if we're talking about, you know, Robert Oppenheimer, how do we get his vision to correspond to Nolan's vision? I don't think you can do Oppenheimer with the, text a time of apparent magic. I don't think you have the same license

for non-fiction adaptation. But that is the problem with Oppenheimer, right? And I didn't, frankly, I didn't love Oppenheimer. Well, there is apparent magic. It's just a moral atrocity. And by the way, that is also in this, the magic being the moral atrocity.

And part of what, you know, what you're describing, and you mentioned Reddit before, brings it all together for me, because what Christopher Nolan does is make movies that compel you to not only show up in the IMAX theater that he has prescribed for you.

Yes, you want to run... He sends you to Reddit. Run, tell them. Run tell them. He sends you to message board threads that are pointing out all the things you missed because everyone becomes Sherlock Holmes. Do you like that experience? I have come to appreciate

that I am one of these people that will go, and I don't do this literally four escape rooms, but I feel like I am a puzzle solver when I'm watching Christopher Nolan, and that has been what stuck with me. Did I appreciate what the puzzle was? Did I catch all of the things, the breadcrumbs he dropped?

And also, I think this is the thing that I was feeling towards the end when I'm watching Will Hunting grapple with post-traumatic stress disorder was this sort of reveal of the intelligence that has historically been ascribed to Odysseus as being this clever trickster. His intelligence in the climax of this film, he's revealed to be not the strategic deviousness of like, ooh, the guy who came up with the Trojan horse,

because that part is actually kind of like underplayed. You're not really getting like the blackboard in which he's writing all the plans. There's a whole other book for y'all out there that'll explain how the Trojan horse... That's right. How he comes up with that plot. That's not in this.

But what is is the reveal, so to speak, that Odysseus's real intelligence was all along the self-awareness he had along the way. And it was guilt. It was this relatably Catholic guilt around, oh, no, I can't. I am fucked up. Yeah. By how I've treated others. And that self-awareness ends up being the thing of like, oh, man, that's what, he was ahead of us on that.

The audience, for me, he was ahead of me on that. Nolan. Nolan was. And I was like, oh, yeah, I should have seen that earlier. So here's the question at the end, Wesley Morris. All right, as we tried to, as the foremost movie critic has won a couple of surprises. I'm going to sit with Gil. Who has called previously Christopher Nolan,

my favorite director, I think, quote unquote, a fraud. But I don't feel that way anymore. Well, that's the question, is did this film do anything? If we're going to consider him the main character of this film, what does this do for your estimation of his work?

I love that this movie is what it's popularity. And, you know, I knew we've known, known, because we now live in an age where there's one or two movies a year that we are told as moviegoers are going to be the movies that conquer the box office. That save movies.

Right, right, right. I mean, in Christopher Nolan's case, it's a Christopher Nolan movie, like, shocker. But I kind of love as a person who loves storytelling. Nolan has never He might be a virgin He might only see the world

According to whether or not it can be diagramed He might not really even Have left the house to buy a coffee on his own In 20 years But He can make a movie that is operating according to a very complicated formal design that someone will give him two and, you know,

some company will give him a quarter of a billion dollars to make. And we, the first weekend it comes out, will erase the $250 million debt that this, or gamble that the studio is taken on this man. And, you know, plus additional money. marketing costs, which I'm sure this movie will make up next weekend. I love that he has taken this old-ass, ancient-ass, classics-oriented-ass, you know, great text.

And he's got us all on his timelines. He has got us all understanding his visual language. I think the people like you, the Nolan fans, are also. conversant in a particular kind of cinema that is it makes me so happy that it exists I don't need to like this man's movies I don't need for him to be my favorite filmmaker to appreciate the importance of what it means to get us

feeling like we are watching something that really is formally complicated I just wish there are more going on in the complication than what is actually happening. But sometimes I'm here for the math. I'm here for the math. Oh, no. I'm here for the math. The most devastating dismount from Wesley Morris.

I mean, I'm here for the math is the least romantic, least. But where's the romance here? I mean, what I'm hearing you say at the end here, if I may allude to the way we started in Christopher Nolan fashion, when you're talking about that scene in Pulp Fiction, you know,

someone's pointing a gun at you and saying, if you fucking pricks move, I'm going to execute every last one of you. And you're like, if I'm going to have to sit here, at least, why don't you have a little more sex, a little more skin,

a little more heart, a little more human stuff. And instead, it's just like, I'm hearing you say, it's just like, this is a whole, This is a whole lot of homework. Yeah, but for some people, the homework is the sex.

And this is the most devastating criticism that has ever been made of me. Wesley Morris, I hate and love you. Thank you for cutting to the core of what me and this show apparently has been all along. Oh, I don't believe that. Not as a regular listener of the show. I definitely don't believe that. Thanks for having me. I'll see you on Reddit.

I'll see you on Reddit. Pablo Torre finds out is produced by Walter Avaroma, Maxwell Carney, Ryan Cortez, Juan Galindo, Patrick Kim, Neely Lohman, Rob McCray, Matt Sullivan, Claire Taylor, and Chris Tuminello. Studio engineering by RG Systems, sound design by Andrew Bersick, Digital Strategy by Bailey Carlin and Andrew Northern, theme song, as always, by John Bravo. And we'll talk to you next time.