Greek Mythology Films

Spotlight on Greek Mythology films:

The Giants of Thessaly (1960, Italy/France, Riccardo Freda)

Jason and the Argonauts (1963, US/UK, Don Chaffey)

Troy (2004, UK/Malta/Bulgaria/US, Wolfgang Petersen)

300 (2006, US/Canada/Bulgaria, Zack Snyder)

Immortals (2011, Canada/US, Tarsem Singh)

The Return (2024, Italy/Greece/UK/France, Uberto Pasolini)

The Odyssey (2026, UK/US/Canada/New Zealand/Iceland, Christopher Nolan)

This is not a comprehensive look at all adaptations of Greek mythology movies but instead focusses on a few films based in Greece with some overlapping material. This criterion meant I opted to not include The Coen brothers’ O Brother, Where Are Thou? (2000) even though it is a very creative adaption of Homer’s The Odyssey but it is set in 1930s America.

Few common elements linking the various films:

1.  Odysseus and his journey

The Return and The Odyssey overlap the most as both follow the same core story although The Return, as indicated by the title, only focuses on Odysseus’ return and doesn’t focus on the journey itself. The final 30 min of Nolan’s film overlaps quite a bit with Pasolini’s movie. The difference comes down to dramatic depictions.

Troy overlaps in content with both The Return and The Odyssey as Odysseus features in the film and his journey is talked about. However, Troy is more about Achilles and Odysseus is a key character on the periphery and shown to be a mentor to Achilles.

2.  The Trojan war

The trojan horse and gruesome slaughter that follows unites both Troy and The Odyssey. The Return doesn’t show the Trojan war but the war is talked about, and its scars leave a deep impact on Odysseus like that shown in The Odyssey.

3.  Golden Fleece

The Giants of Thessaly and Jason and the Argonauts are closely linked as both films are about Jason’s pursuit of the Golden fleece.

4. Peril filled journeys: cyclops, sirens, Hydra, giant statues and the dead

Jason’s peril filed journey in both The Giants of Thessaly, Jason and the Argonauts overlaps with events depicted in The Odyssey as all three films show the main characters going from one adventure to another. The cyclops is featured in both The Giants of Thessaly and The Odyssey while the 1960 film also shows how Sirens convert men into animals but that man-animal transformation is shown vastly different in Nolan’s film. Jason features Hydra, gigantic bronze statue of Talos, skeleton crew while Nolan’s film shows dead soldiers but in a different form than the skeleton crew in Jason.

5. CGI enhanced war

300 and Immortals are about completely different events, The Spartans and the Battle of Thermopylae in the case of 300 and the story of Theseus, Hyperion, Olympians and the Titans in the latter. Yet, both films look the way they do thanks to a heavy dosage of CGI. Each film gets a completely digitally enhanced makeover which makes the visuals stand out. However, the difference in visuals and lighting gives clue to the director involved. 300 is an early Zack Snyder film and the darkly lit visuals in the film have been found in Snyder’s later films as well. Tarsem Singh has made visuals a cornerstone of his films from The Cell (2000) to The Fall (2006), so it isn’t a surprise that the visuals in Immortals look like paintings brought to life. The colour palette in Immortals isn’t eye-popping bright like Tarsem’s other films but the pop of colour stands out when used, such as the shining gold against white, grey or darker shades.

6. The Gods watch

Jason and the Argonauts and Immortals both feature the Gods watching over the humans and trying to not interfere in the humans’ war until certain threshold are crossed. In Jason, the Gods interfere to keep the journey going to amuse themselves (as per Zeus) while in Immortals, the Gods can only interfere once the Titans are released.

Immortals has a very creative way to show the Gods-human transformation and it works in the film’s visual context and is the only film in this Spotlight to feature such a transformation.

Ranking all films in order of preference:

These films highlight how a material changes depending on what character’s perspective is used. In the context of the material, there really aren’t any “good guys” to speak of. All the characters, no matter which kingdom or army they belong to, ruthlessly kill and slaughter their opponents without remorse. Some characters eventually show remorse with the passage of time and a personal tragedy. Even that remorse is a cinematic choice meant to depict a traditional narrative arc of a character’s growth. However, in each film, we are still given heroes to cheer for. That is commercial cinema in a nutshell which is where all these films fall under although The Return keeps its scope tight and isn’t a purely commercial film.

1. The Return (2024, Uberto Pasolini)

This film edges slightly to first place only due to its narrow scope. By focusing only on the actual return of Odysseus, the film feels more humanistic and away from myth territory. The emotions of the characters truly come across and a large part of that is due to the acting brilliance of Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche. It is a treat to see the two actors in a film again and this material is a long way from the days of The English Patient (1996) and Wuthering Heights (1992).

2. The Odyssey (2026, Christopher Nolan)

3. Troy (2004, Wolfgang Petersen)

 This film feels like a traditional Hollywood production, complete with action, romance, drama and plenty of emotion. This is the only film out of these 7 to stand-out due to the romantic element.

4. Immortals (2011, Tarsem Singh)

5. Jason and the Argonauts (1963, Don Chaffey)

This is a highly watchable film and still stands the test of time despite being released almost 6 decades ago (59 years).  The stop-motion animation used in the film by Ray Harryhausen is still a reference point in discussing evolution of visual effects in films.

6. The Giants of Thessaly (1960, Riccardo Freda)

The film freely mixes elements from various Greek myths including The Odyssey and is effective for its 1960 release date. This is also the first film out of these 7 to be released and was released three years before Jason and the Argonauts.

7. 300 (2006, Zack Snyder)

All style and no substance.

Dunkirk

Dunkirk (70 mm, of course): deserted town. No civilians. Just soldiers. Why? Because a war is being fought. Money and resources poured into saving the land from the other. And then, more money to get soldiers back home and to feed them.

The film is an immersive experience that places the viewer in the chaos and noise of war but there are some moments which quietly highlight the logistics around war that are not as apparent in other war movies. These moments are the best aspect of the film as they emphasize that when WWII took place, nations and cities shut down. Daily lives were disrupted and resources were diverted towards the all consuming war. Regular industries were converted into making gears for war. However, these quiet moments won’t be praised. Instead, the accolades will be directed at the thrill ride that has been made, complete with a video game perspective, a ticking clock embedded in the soundtrack with a few edits meant to heighten the experience. Real lives were lost but now it is entertainment. In the IMAX cinema screening, people stuffed their face with popcorn, drank pop and took it all in.

Have we learned anything from history? Of course, not. And on it goes. Real wars continue, more horrific than the past. War movies get made. Their technical qualities improve, their point of view gets refined but no one actually cares for the lessons that lay between the cuts. No large scale war has taken place since WWII but many small scale wars have taken place and are continuing to do so. The machines that were put in place in WWII were never shut down but grew into different segments.

Inception

Dream within a dream within a dream

Inception (2010, USA/UK, Christopher Nolan)

Alejandro Amenábar beautifully explored the complex world of dreams and reality in Open Your Eyes, later remade into Vanilla Sky. However, the story of both films only explored one level of a dream world. Christopher Nolan has taken that core concept of dreams vs reality and gone two/three levels deeper, thereby creating a hyperlink dream maze that requires multiple hops to exit. Even though Inception traverses multiple dream levels and is bursting with fascinating ideas, it is a remarkably accessible film that manages to explains its ideas in a fluid manner without halting the plot progression. Ofcourse, since it is also a summer film, it contains the mandatory action sequences and explosions, without which the film might not have gotten booked in a multiplex in the first place. Thankfully, a majority of the explosive scenes shot in the Canadian snow-capped mountains arrive in the finale and don't derail the film too much.

Rating: 9/10

note: The story presented in Inception would certainly have made Jorge Luis Borges smile, given that Borges was a master of labyrinths and dreams within dreams.

The Dark Knight

A bank robbery. A lone man, with a hunched back, a bag in one hand and a mask in another.

During the robbery, the robbers start killing each other. A robber points the gun towards his fellow robber, the Joker, and wonders if the Joker is instructed to kill him as well.

“No, no, no. I kill the bus driver.” As the Joker looks at his watch.

“Bus Driver. What bus driver?”

Bus smashes through the door, right on time, and the robber falls and gets killed with a piece of wood and some shattered glass. In fact, the robber falls to the ground even before the piece of wood comes at him. But all a quick cut. Chop. Chop.

Very impressive planning though. What if the robber had merely shot the Joker and not bothered to ask a question? All a matter of chance really. Heads, tails, flip a coin.

Planning. Scheming. Mobsters. Enter the Joker with a proposition.

“I’m gonna make this pencil disappear.”

“Ta-da. It’s..It’s gone”. Fast cut. In slow motion, there is no pencil but as the mobster falls to the ground, a dark pencil like object appears stuck to his eye.

So what is the grand plan?

“It’s simple. We, uh, kill the Batman.”

“You wanna know how I got these scars.” No, not really. But I am sure you are going to tell me, over and over.

”Why so serious”? Silence.

Killings. Explosions. Terror. Chaos. No planning but random acts of terror. The Joker is the new terrorist of Gotham. Although, if the acts of terror are actually random then why are there clues as to the next victim or even the next location?

The girl gets captured in the fund raiser.

“Let her go”. says the Batman.

“Very poor choice of words.” Indeed.

Revenge. Fast action. Bat mobile self-destructs. But look slowly. As a man in a parked car attempts to look at his teeth in his side view mirror, the mirror gets taken out by a speeding Batman on his bike. Then there are two kids pretending to fire an imaginary machine gun at some parked cars. The cars then explode and one can detect awe and surprize in the kids eye. These two humor scenes are an ode to Spider Man 3, scenes one would find in any bad Hollywood summer movie but here they are presented in a “dark” movie. Even though the scenes halt the tension and expose the film for what it is really is. But shhhh...listen.

More explosions. Bullets. Blast. The Capture. Mission accomplished. The arrest and then the interrogation with the terrorist, err the Joker.

“No, you..you complete me.”

No. The war is not over. Corruption. And the terrorist’s henchmen carry out their plan. Insurgency?

“You see, I’m a guy of simple taste.” “I enjoy...dynamite..and gun powder...and gasoline. And you know the thing that they have in common? They’re cheap.”

Is gasoline that cheap? Not what the papers were saying a few months ago. Ok, ok cheaper than guns. But shhh...Money burning. A new boss is in town.

“Beautiful. Unethical. Dangerous. You’ve turned every cell phone in Gotham into a microphone.”

Spying. Power. Resignation. “null-key encryption.” Audio match. What kind of software would be able to get a direct match with live streaming audio data from millions of cell phones against one audio sample? No idea that the Batman was an expert computer programmer as well.

Ethics, choice -- criminals vs innocent citizens. “Social-experiment”. Turn all good into evil or merely pull off the mask of innocence to expose the savage animal that lurks within everyone? Two-face. Fallen white knight Harvey Dent. And even bigger apparent fall of the Dark Knight. The Batman has to take the blame, all for the greater good. Dent was a Hero. Must preserve people’s faith. You see, the ordinary citizens have no hope so they need to believe. Otherwise, they might not believe in anything. So they must be fed lies, white lies, so that they can continue to believe in their white knight.

Oh the hype. The greatness. There is so much greatness here that even the contrived script events are not noticeable. The cuts are so fast that that one does not notice the few nods to B-grade Hollywood films. Ah so much greatness. The film moves from act of terror to another. Lights, ok, fine no lights. Camera and action, lots of it. Just another Hollywood summer blockbuster, shot better and shrouded in darkness. Heath Ledger steals the show as the Joker, Christian Bale seems to get a deep cold everytime he puts on the Bat Suit, Maggie Gyllenhaal does a great impression of Katie Holmes and Aaron Eckhart takes his No Smoking lobbying role and turns it into a lobbying for justice role before his character seeks solace in evil. A few phrases here and there about ethics and chaos and a story about jewels in Burma. Burn the forest. Smoke him out. And can’t forget those scars?

“You wanna know how I got these scars.” Spare me.

Rating: 7/10