The Odyssey

Worst cruise ever.

Today’s Substack is for the estimated fourteen people out there who have not seen The Odyssey. If you’re one of them, I’m sure you have your reasons. Maybe you’re just now emerging from a coma. (Congratulations! Although you picked a bad time.) Or maybe your schedule does not permit you to sit through a movie requiring roughly the same time commitment as graduate school. Fine, but you still need to know what happens in The Odyssey, because EVERYBODY is talking about it. It is, by far, the single most important cultural event of the past two or even three weeks.

Which is why today I am presenting, in its entirety, the screenplay for The Odyssey, which was written by famous director Christopher Nolan based on a story by the ancient Greek screenwriter Homer, who spent 2,700 years in development meetings but tragically died before seeing the film get made. Speaking of dying, here’s a:

SPOILER ALERT: All of Odysseus’s men get killed in the movie. You should skip over this spoiler alert if you’d rather not know that.

But enough preamble. It’s time for the complete, unedited screenplay of the film that launched a thousand tedious think pieces...

We’re on a beach. A giant wooden horse is half-buried in the sand. Sitting nearby is a Greek warrior named Sinon. Suddenly he sees a group of mounted Trojan warriors in full body armor galloping toward him. Sinon jumps up and stands in front of the wooden horse. The Trojans shoot arrows into him.

SINON: Hey! Why did you do that?

TROJAN WARRIOR LEADER: We’re very irritable because this armor is insanely hot, for beachwear. We can fry eggs on ourselves. What is this enormous wooden horse doing here?

SINON: It’s a gift from the Greeks.

TROJAN WARRIOR LEADER: You mean the same Greeks who have spent the past ten solid years trying to figure out a way to get inside the walls of Troy so they can pillage the city and kill us all?

SINON: Yes. But don’t worry! There’s nobody hiding inside.

TROJAN WARRIOR LEADER: Well OK then! We’ll take it.

(He throws a spear into Sinon.)

SINON: You’re welcome. (Dies.)

The scene shifts to Odysseus’s royal palace, ten years later. Odysseus’s wife, Penelope, is weaving a funeral shroud for her father-in-law, Laertes, although she’s been weaving it for so long now that what’s left of him could probably be enshrouded with a tea cozy. In the next room dozens of hairy, sweaty suitors with poor personal hygiene are gnawing on haunches of meat. Prince Telemachus, who is Odysseus’s and Penelope’s pouty Gen Z son, enters, pouting.

PENELOPE: Why the pouty face, son?

TELEMACHUS: Dad has been gone for 20 years. Maybe he’s dead!

PENELOPE: No, he’s just running a little late. Remember he had to do all those Bourne movies, except the one starring Jeremy Renner.

TELEMACHUS: OK, but meanwhile these suitors are eating all our meat haunches. Plus they’re gross. The palace smells like a sack of unlaundered jockstraps.

PENELOPE: Don’t worry, son. When Odysseus returns, he’ll beat the living shit out them in a climactic scene.

TELEMACHUS: I can’t wait!

PENELOPE: Well it’s going to be a few more hours. Meanwhile we need to jump backward ten years, because confusing timelines are the hallmark of Christopher Nolan films.

The scene shifts to Troy, ten years earlier. We see the interior of the wooden horse, which is inexplicably well lit. Odysseus and his men are jammed together in a sweaty, smelly, nightmarishly claustrophobic mass.

ODYSSEUS: This is definitely the last time we book with Airbnb.

(Everybody enjoys a hearty Greek laugh.)

ODYSSEUS: But seriously, men, it’s time to pillage Troy.

They exit the horse and engage in a lengthy battle scene, during which Odysseus shoots several hundred arrows, every single one of which kills a Trojan soldier. After the battle Odysseus and his men gather back on the beach.

ODYSSEUS: Well, we finally won the Trojan war. It’s time to go home!

SOLDIERS: Sir, do we have to keep wearing these helmets?

ODYSSEUS: What’s wrong with our helmets?

SOLDIERS: It looks like we have brooms on our heads.

ODYSSEUS: They’re not brooms! They’re horsehair crests, which make us appear larger and more intimidating in battle, according to Google AI.

SOLDIERS: With all due respect, sir, nobody is going to be intimidated by men wearing headgear festooned with what appear to be janitorial implements, as illustrated by the examples below:

ODYSSEUS: Well I’m the leader, and I say we keep the helmets. Now let’s get into this large rowboat and proceed home via a route that has us stopping on various islands, all which will be inhabited by homicidal supernatural creatures.

SOLDIERS: Good thing we have these scary broom hats.

ODYSSEUS: What was that?

SOLDIERS: Nothing, sir.

The scene shifts back to the palace, ten years later. Penelope is still weaving the shroud. The suitors are still gnawing on haunches. Telemachus is still pouting.

TELEMACHUS: Mom, when will Dad ever get home?

PENELOPE: Oh shut up.

The scene shifts to an island where Odysseus and his men have stopped to search for food. Odysseus, leading the way, comes to the entrance of a dark creepy cave that might as well have a sign saying DANGER DANGER MONSTER LAIR DO NOT ENTER!!

ODYSSEUS: OK men, let’s all just walk right into this cave.

SOLDIERS: Sir, should we maybe post somebody outside as a lookout?

ODYSSEUS: Nah.

Odysseus, with his men following, enters the cave, which gets darker and creepier. Suddenly they hear scary noises outside. They turn and look fearfully toward the cave entrance.

As the scary noises grow louder the tension in the cave becomes unbearable. And then there it is, looming in the entrance, a horrific apparition:

ODYSSEUS: Uh-oh! A cyclops! Try not to let it snatch you up and munch on you like a human corn dog, men!

Despite Odysseus’s warning, several men get eaten by the cyclops, which then lies down and falls asleep.

ODYSSEUS: This is our chance, men. We’ll poke out its eyeball with a sharp burning stake.

SOLDIERS: Won’t that upset it?

ODYSSEUS: Nah.

As everybody in the movie theater cringes, Odysseus and his men poke out the cyclops’s eyeball. This puts the cyclops in a testy mood. Nevertheless Odysseus and his men finally escape, although the cyclops kills a bunch more of them as they flee back to the boat. Frantically they shove off and head back out to sea.

ODYSSEUS: OK, lesson learned. No more creepy caves! Instead let’s find an island that has a creepy foreboding forest where we can look for food.

SOLDIERS: Sir, maybe looking for food on these creepy islands isn’t such a great idea. Couldn’t we just stay on the boat and catch fish, which abound in the Mediterranean Sea, and eat them?

ODYSSEUS: Nah.

They land on another creepy island and Odysseus leads his men into a foreboding forest, where they encounter a race of giant homicidal knights, who hack many of them to pieces as they flee back to their boat. Frantically the survivors put out to sea again.

ODYSSEUS: Whew! That was a close one! Fortunately we escaped with a loss of only about three-quarters of the men. Time to find yet another creepy island where we can look for food.

SOLDIERS: Sir, maybe we should...

ODYSSEUS: Nah.

They land on a creepy island where a witch named Circe turns Odysseus’s men into pigs. Odysseus persuades Circe to turn them back into humans, which, given future plot developments, is maybe not the optimum outcome for them. Back on the boat, they prepare to face their next deadly peril: sailing past the Sirens.

ODYSSEUS: Everybody put beeswax in your ears so you won’t hear the Sirens, whose song drives men insane. Also, tie me to the mast so I can listen to them.

SOLDIERS: Won’t that drive you insane?

ODYSSEUS: Nah.

The men tie Odysseus to the mast. As the boat nears the Sirens, Odysseus hears their voices.

SIRENS (singing): “She wrecked the car, and she was sad, and so afraid that I’d be mad, but what the heck...”

ODYSSEUS: No! Not “Honey,” by Bobby Goldsboro! MAKE IT STOP!!

SIRENS: OK, then how about this one? (Singing:) “Someone left the cake out in the rain...”

ODYSSEUS: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Finally the boat makes it past the Sirens, only to encounter a whirlpool and a sea monster, which eats several men. At this point Odysseus is running seriously low on men.

ODYSSEUS: OK, I talked to some dead people in Hades, and the plan now is, we’ll sail to an island that has cows on it, but we can’t eat them because they belong to a god, so basically we’ll just sit around starving.

The remaining men look like they might be about to say something.

ODYSSEUS: Whatever it is, nah.

They sail to the island, where the starving men eventually break down and eat the cows, which angers the gods, so when Odysseus and his men try to sail away a terrible storm destroys the boat and kills everybody except Odysseus, who is left clinging to some floating wreckage.

ODYSSEUS (pensively): I started this voyage with hundreds of men under my command, and now they’re all dead. I wonder... should I maybe have made some different tactical decisions?

He stares into the distance for a few moments.

ODYSSEUS: Nah.

The scene now shifts back to the palace, where the weaving, gnawing and pouting continue.

TELEMACHUS: Mom, I just thought of something.

PENELOPE: What is it, son?

TELEMACHUS: What if the reason Dad hasn’t come home is that he’s been hanging out for years on a private island with Charlize Theron?

PENELOPE: Don’t be ridiculous. She’s 50 years old! Whereas I’m only 43 and have had very little work done, despite what you may read on social media.

TELEMACHUS: But what if Charlize Theron is in excellent physical shape, and wearing some kind of slinky fishnet outfit?

PENELOPE: No, your father would never... How slinky is it?

TELEMACHUS: It’s pretty slinky.

The scene shifts to a beach where Odysseus, now gray and grizzled, is being fed lotus petals by Charlize Theron.

ODYSSEUS (chewing thoughtfully): Charlize Theron, it just now occurs to me to ask you this question: How long have I been on this island?

CHARLIZE THERON: Seven years.

ODYSSEUS: Whoa, no wonder I’m grizzled! Well it’s been great hanging out, and thanks for all the petals, but I really should be getting home to my beloved wife whatshername. My plan for getting there is to make a small crude raft with no provisions, lie down on it and just float away.

CHARLIZE THERON: That should definitely work.

Odysseus makes a raft and floats back to his kingdom, but nobody recognizes him because he’s grizzled and wearing a hoodie. He goes to the palace, where all the suitors have gathered for the climactic scene. Penelope stands before them holding Odysseus’s bow.

PENELOPE: I will marry whoever can string this bow!

TELEMACHUS: Mom, that seems like a pretty random way to...

PENELOPE: Shut up.

One by one, the suitors try to string the bow, but they can’t.

ODYSSEUS (from inside his hoodie): Let me try.

Everybody laughs, but Odysseus strings the bow. He plucks the bowstring.

BOW: Twang.

PENELOPE (perking up): I know that twang!

SUITORS: It’s Odysseus! Let’s kill him! We outnumber him 108 to one, so it shouldn’t take long!

A climactic fight scene ensues, lasting approximately an hour but feeling more like two. The suitors attack Odysseus with arrows, swords, spears, daggers, catapults, guillotines and a primitive Bronze Age taser, but he eventually manages to kill or maim them all. Finally, battered but victorious, surrounded by bloodied bodies, he turns to Penelope.

ODYSSEUS: Honey, I’m home!

PENELOPE: You big goof! I’d hug you, but you literally have arrow shafts protruding from your torso.

ODYSSEUS: Ha ha! I’ll have those looked at. Then we’ll leave forever on a sailboat.

TELEMACHUS: Can I go too?

ODYSSEUS: No, you have to stay here and be the king.

TELEMACHUS: But I was hoping the three of us could spend some quality...

ODYSSEUS AND PENELOPE: Oh, shut up.

In the final scene Odysseus and Penelope board a ship, and, as Telemachus waves poutily from the shore, they sail away forever. Setting aside the massive number of hideously gruesome and largely unnecessary fatalities that occurred over the course of the plot, it’s a happy ending: The two lovers, reunited at long last, are literally sailing into the sunset. As the film ends, Penelope leans close to Odysseus and whispers softly in his ear.

PENELOPE: We need to talk about Charlize Theron.

ODYSSEUS: Shit.

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