Christopher Nolan, known for his successful films Inception, The Dark Knight, and Oppenheimer, has been working on a new adaptation of Homer’s Greek epic, The Odyssey. The new movie which stars Matt Damon as the fabled hero Odysseus, has already attracted controversy for the recent image posted online.
The latest word on the image is how Damon’s Odysseus is depicted wearing his helmet and armor in a style that was not worn for about five hundred years after the tale supposedly takes place. The X account @WeeboJones posted,
They better not be for real. The Odyssey is set during the age of heros (aka the Mycenaean period) some time around 1200 BC and so the helmets would have been of the boar tusk style, not the corinthian style. The corinthian helmet didn’t come into use until the Archaic period, around 700 BC.
Additionally, the X account @LoTQD posted,
The Odyssey is set in the bronze age, but the helmet is based on a helmet from a later period, and it has a roman crest, which is even more anachronistic. He also has a random metal wristband and leather armor that are common movie cliches but wrong historically. Could be better.
Because Damon’s character appears to be wearing armor closer to what the Spartans wore in the film 300, some X accounts are also jokingly concerned whether Damon will use his native Boston accent to unauthentically play the Greek mythological figure. While it could be possible that Odysseus will have an additional selection of armor, one wonders if his historically inaccurate costume even matters in an adaptation of a Greek mythology that includes sea monsters, a cyclops, and Greek gods.
