68/100
[NOTE: Saw it in 70mm, but not IMAX. Knew I'd likely be going back—Dark Knight Rises is the only Nolan film in over 20 years not to place in the Skandies—so decided to wait and catch an IMAX screening after demand dies down. It looks fine at 2.39:1, for the record.]
SPOILERS ahoy, which you might think is unnecessary but there's a major divergence from the text that occurs very late.
My stance on adapting classics of world lit that have been dramatized for centuries is pretty simple: Have a reason. Offer something that no one else previously has. That can be fundamentally technical, I suppose—here, we get modern-F/X versions of Polyphemus (amazing) and Scylla (rather less so imo), plus Circe turning Odysseus' men into pigs via a method that caught me shudderingly off guard—but I prefer a new or oblique angle, and Nolan by god provides one, buried so deep in the movie that I'd long since given up hope. Not that this Odyssey doesn't do right by a yarn with so many thrilling episodic adventures involving fantastic creatures and diabolical spells and (to a fairly limited degree in this telling) angry gods; odds are it'll be a while before three hours in a movie theater zip by so quickly for me. (Slow part's actually frontloaded, as neither Nolan nor Tom Holland found a way to make Telemachus remotely interesting.) Still, hard to get truly excited about the latest rendition of Homer's Greatest Hits. I did mostly like Nolan's offbeat structure, which conflates Calypso with the Lotus Eaters and uses that seven-year stretch as a sort of anchor, flashing back to previous events as Odysseus slowly remembers them...but I did not foresee that he was withholding the Trojan War (which of course is part of the Iliad Aeneid, not the Odyssey) as an anti-textual bomb that equates the siege of Troy with (say) My Lai, positioning Odysseus as a blend of Calley and Thompson. The Trojan horse as original sin is a radically provocative idea that retroactively reconfigures the entire movie (including Zendaya's Athena, who had previously seemed kinda useless)...or would have, had Nolan been bold and creative enough to end on that note. Instead, it wallops those of us inclined to be walloped and then we're back to Homer for the contest (didn't love how Pattinson's used but did laugh heartily when his Designated Shittiest Of The Suitors tries to run for it the instant he sees the beggar successfully string Odysseus' bow; also kudos to Hathaway for a reaction shot that suggests Penelope suspected but was not sure until that moment) and the ensuing slaughter (which mostly confirms that Nolan still isn't a great director of close-quarters action). My late-breaking enthusiasm wound up feeling like a false alarm. Still, better a studio throw gazillions of dollars at this sort of old-school spectacle than at more superheroes zapping each other with digital energy bolts or whatever.
Stupid controversies! (Other than Odysseus' guilt, which I imagine will rile up some folks but that hasn't yet reached me) Lupita Nyong'o as Helen of Troy (and also Clytemnestra, turns out): Who fucking cares? Elliot Page as Sinon: Who fucking cares? Telemachus constantly saying "my dad": Okay, I actually did find that a distraction. Not because it's historically inaccurate (a. the original's in Ancient Greek, b. "Dad" is an older English word than people assume), but because it does in fact kinda clang, maybe simply because period pieces generally use "father" to the exclusion of all else.
Also I did not recognize Leguizamo. Literally had no idea who that was, spent the whole damn movie wondering.