Homer's own narrative progressively moves from historically plausible events, like sacking a city, through legends the Greeks located in real places like Sicily (the Cyclops), to increasingly strange, otherworldly territory culminating in the land of the dead.

7:26>> And I think that that it again is true to what Homer is doing in the Odyssey. Because Odysseus, you know, he his first adventure he sacks a city and that's the kind of thing that that people did. >> Mhm. >> And then he moves on to the the Cyclops story, which the Greeks said, well, that is set in Sicily. So all even though it involves a giant with one eye, which is

7:45obviously mad. Right, so the Greeks said, well it happened in this particular place. And then he starts going to really strange places that are clearly outside the order of the mortal, and he ends up in the land of the dead. Matt Damon is off meeting these weird things, and they get weirder and weirder and weirder as it goes on. I think that's why the film works brilliantly as an

8:09adaptation of Homer. And it opens the there's kind of slogan, isn't there, at the beginning, a time of apparent magic. And so that's something again that is running throughout the film. You're never quite sure how real what you're seeing is. And I guess an obvious question for anyone who is adapting Homer is what do you do about the gods? Because in the in the in Homer's poems, the gods are not just

8:37real, but but very, very vivid. >> I know when I read the script for the first time, I was completely floored by the kind of big surprise. Again, it goes back to that conversation we just had about Matt side represents the myth, and you're never quite sure on what is reality and what is someone recounting a story, and then another person recounting a story and slightly changing a detail, and and all of a

9:02sudden 10 stories down the line it was a cyclops that they were fighting in the rather than a giant dude who wore an eye patch, you know, which kind of how I imagined that story grew. >> But there's also a sense in which perhaps you're not supposed to decide one way or the other. So that is small example it involving you at the beginning. The you have this this guy called

9:25Mentor, who in the poem is Athena in disguise. And in the in in the film he looks like Erling Haaland. He's this kind of absolute unit, isn't he? >> He's a big dude, Ryan, Yeah. >> And he's teaching you to to to fight. >> He's teaching me to fight and he's kind of trying to in some way fill the shoes that are missing of my dad. You know, I have