Is this just me, or...?

If I have personal experience with something, I can't enjoy a fictional account?

Christopher Nolan's Odyssey movie just lost me with this picture of Anne Hathaway as Penelope:

The casual reader is probably like "how the heck can you have personal experience with ancient Greece?" Well, casual reader, I have a BA in Classical Languages. I studied Attic Greek in college. I have a poster for a 24 hour performance of The Odyssey I participated in in 2008 hanging on a bookshelf in my bedroom. It was the first time I performed The Odyssey, but not the last. I've performed as both Odysseus and Penelope.

Knowing the kinds of reactions Penelope can get from a crowd, and what I was doing with my face when I got those reactions, I do have concerns that Hathaway's chemically frozen face can do the job, or look at all authentic to the time period. But who cares about that last part? As someone who has not only researched but re-created and worn clothing from the time period... that dress is a big no from me, dawg. It looks like it's from Shein, sheesh.

Now, at this point, you're probably thinking "it's a fantasy movie, did you freak out about the Lord of the Rings movies not being authentically medieval?" Coincidentally, I also have very similar experiences both studying and re-creating medieval life, and I can tell you that not only did they have better researched costume designers who knew how to nod to history properly, but fantasy-maxxing The Odyssey is like fantasy-maxxing Amazon's House of David series about the Biblical king. You're working with history so ancient it's been fused with mythology and religion. You have to be more respectful than filming a modern fantasy. Keep it kind of realistic, at least. This is The Odyssey, not Dune. That dress would be perfectly appropriate on Arrakis. And that's the problem for me.

And yes, I realize that I'm one of a handful of people in the audience who even knows what all of this is supposed to look like, or has any familiarity with the source material. I'm not who they made this movie for. But it would be a better movie if I was the person they made the movie for! So say I, at least.

And if it's "just a dress," it's going to be the whole design of the movie. And it will destroy me. I won't be able to enjoy anything else about the movie.

By the way, this is not reserved just to adaptions of Classical literature. I got maybe 30% into Donna Tartt's The Secret History before giving it up. It was absolutely nothing like my own experience as a Classics student, and I wasn't in the mood to suspend my own experience, especially when the characters were all so unlikeable. I'm still friends with my fellow Classics alumni.

And it's not just my college experience. I worked event security for IHL games from 2002-2007. I am absolutely not touching Heated Rivalry 😅😅

That security job also has me a little bit concerned for AMC's new TV adaption of The Vampire Lestat, which is sitting on my DVR waiting to be binged during my hysterectomy recovery. The job was for an arena, that hosted the city's IHL team as well as large touring shows, and I discovered and read through Anne Rice's books early in my time there - any backstage positions were allowed to have a book with them to kill time, I read Interview With The Vampire while working backstage when Barnum & Bailey was in town (boy, did that combo lead to some wild dreams), and read through The Vampire Lestat and Queen of the Damned over a few concert load-ins... which means the show needs to nail both the source material and the backstage concert vibes, or I'll be mad 😅😅

And if you think that's bad, horror movies love/hate to see me coming. I actually adore horror movies, I use them therapeutically as a release valve for my anxiety. But as someone who actually does what Lorraine Warren did, and then went on to study how to do it with Hoodoo, too, and who has the obviously documented insistence on being "realistic"... I'm critical. Especially when the movie is about witchcraft.

In conclusion: hey Hollywood, I'm right here! You have to work around my lemon body, but you get my crazy brain and backstory in exchange.