When Spectacle Isn't Enough: What The Odyssey Asked and Spider-Man Quietly Answered

I’ve always had a deep fascination with storytelling. Whether it's a lyric that somehow puts words to something I've never been able to explain, a video game that keeps me up long past midnight, or a screenplay that lingers in my mind for days after reading, I've come to realise that what interests me most isn't simply how stories are told, but why they affect us so deeply.

Over the past few weeks I've spent several evenings at my local cinema soaking up some of the summer's biggest releases. As the credits rolled on Spider-Man: Brand New Day, I found myself thinking over an idea I'd learned years ago. It wasn't something I'd picked up in a screenwriting class or development room. It came from somewhere far more unexpected.

The idea is this: spectacle, in and of itself, is never really the point. When it comes down to it, spectacle is the payoff. 

It's a lesson I first learned from professional wrestling. Now, I know what you may be thinking, but just hear me out for a moment. Beneath the theatrics and sequins, wrestling is storytelling in its purest form.

Anyone who loves wrestling knows the biggest moments only matter if we've first been given a reason to care. A chair shot in the opening minute of a match is just that: a chair shot. But the very same move after forty minutes of betrayal, sacrifice, revenge and near victories… can bring an arena to its feet.

I believe that cinema works the same way.

A few weeks ago, I went to see Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey. I left convinced I'd just witnessed one of the greatest technical achievements of cinema in recent years. Ironic, I know, given everything I've just said about spectacle not being the point, but stay with me. Nolan’s approach is often described as resembling independent filmmaking. Which is nice when you have a $250 million budget behind you. But his commitment to capturing as much as possible in camera gives the film a tangible, almost tactile authenticity. It feels physical. Real.

As a result, you feel completely immersed in the world he creates. You’re right there alongside the characters as they cross the unforgiving waters of the Aegean Sea, stand in the shadows of a towering Cyclops, or bear witness to the devastation of Troy.

In an era where so much spectacle is created digitally, The Odyssey is a reminder of what physical filmmaking can still achieve.

And yet, as I made my way home, I couldn't shake the feeling that something was missing. A niggling feeling lingered with me for a few days before eventually evolving into a question: 

"Why didn't I feel more?"

It wasn't that I hadn't admired the film. I had. Every department seemed to be operating at the highest level. The cinematography, production design and practical effects were all simply breathtaking.

It wasn’t that I disagreed with what it was trying to explore. The Odyssey invites us to ponder profound questions about humanity: violence, guilt, regret and the moral cost of war. Through Odysseus, we’re asked to embark on the journey of a man desperate to return home to his loving wife Penelope, his loyal son Telemachus and his beloved kingdom of Ithaca.

I understood all of it. I just didn't feel enough of it.

For days afterwards, I found myself returning to the same question: What was it that stopped me from connecting with Odysseus? What kept me from wholeheartedly cheering him on, willing him home?

As I replayed the film in my mind, it wasn't the Cyclops, the storms or the siege of Troy that stayed with me.

It was what I hadn't felt.

There's an important difference between understanding what a character wants…

…and desperately wanting it alongside them.

And it took another film to help me understand that difference.

A couple of weeks later, I found myself back in the cinema. This time for Spider-Man: Brand New Day. What surprised me was that I wasn't expecting Spider-Man to answer the question I'd been carrying around since The Odyssey. The revelation didn't arrive during an action sequence or a multiverse spectacle. Not even during the film's climax. It happened during one quiet conversation. Just two people opposite one another.

MJ discovers a letter Peter wrote after Doctor Strange's spell erased him from everyone's memory. In it, Peter explains who they were to each other, what they meant to one another and that he was still in love with her. She tells him she understands the relationship they supposedly shared. She understands why the girl in the letter could love him...but she doesn't. Because she doesn't know him.

That was the moment everything clicked.

It wasn't that Spider-Man made me emotional while The Odyssey hadn't. That would be far too simplistic, and I don't think it would even be true. It was that I wasn't simply watching Peter Parker long for the life he had lost. I found myself longing alongside him. I wanted him to succeed. I wanted him to be known again, to find his way back to the woman he loved, for the spell to be lifted and for Peter and MJ to somehow find their way back to one another. 

His longing had become my own.

Nolan gave me every intellectual reason to support Odysseus' journey. I understood why he wanted to get home. I understood what Penelope and Telemachus meant to him. I understood the weight he carried after years of war. But emotionally, I never found myself longing for his return in the same way that I longed for Peter’s. At no point did I find myself aching for him to reach Ithaca, to hold Penelope in his arms or to reunite with Telemachus. Instead, I found myself waiting to see how extraordinary the next set piece would be.

That was the answer I'd been searching for since leaving The Odyssey. I had spent weeks believing something was missing from Nolan's film, but looking back, I don't think that's true anymore.

The Odyssey didn't fail to make me think. Quite the opposite. It left me with questions I couldn't stop asking.

I realised Peter Parker and Odysseus weren't as different as they first appeared. Both are heroes. Both are defined by the consequences of their own actions. Both have been separated from the people they love. Both are trying to find their way back to lives that no longer exist in the form they remember. In many ways, they are mirror images of one another and yet, they invited me into their stories, into their worlds, in very different ways.

Peter Parker is fundamentally selfless. He continually chooses to sacrifice the life he wants for the good of everyone else, even when it costs him the people he loves most.

Odysseus is far more morally complicated. He is a king, a soldier, a leader of men, and throughout his journey he makes choices that leave devastation in their wake.

So perhaps Nolan never wanted me to sympathise with Odysseus as instinctively as I sympathised with Peter Parker. After all, on a deeper level, Odysseus’ return home isn’t simply about love; it’s also about guilt. His journey forces him to confront the consequences of his actions, to come to terms with the man he has become after years spent at war and wonder whether he deserves to return at all.

Or perhaps it's simply me?

Maybe, because of his complications, I didn't actually want Odysseus to succeed. Maybe what I really wanted was to understand, to feel why getting home mattered to him as deeply as getting home mattered to Peter?

Whatever the reason, The Odyssey didn't leave me disappointed.

It left me curious.

I don't believe Spider-Man gave me a more emotional story than The Odyssey. What it gave me was a different relationship with its protagonist. It invited me to participate in Peter Parker's longing rather than simply observe it, and in doing so, it changed the way I understood my experience of The Odyssey.

Walking out of The Odyssey, I thought something was missing, but it wasn't. I simply hadn't yet found the words for it.

Great cinema doesn't ask us to witness someone else's journey. 

It asks us to embark on it alongside them.