by Apostolos Kotsabasis
It’s Friday night in Los Angeles. Or Paris. Or Tokyo. The IMAX auditorium is freezing, the air smells of butter and expensive perfume, and the screen devours the darkness. Christopher Nolan has decided to direct “The Odyssey”.
Hollywood is doing what it knows best: taking the dust of ancient Greek mythology, mixing it with 70mm film, deafening Dolby surround sound, attractive actors and an endless social media frenzy, and transforming Odysseus’ homecoming into an addictive, digital spectacle. Millions of Gen Z kids suddenly discover Homer somewhere between two TikTok scrolls. Studio box offices will fill with billions of dollars. Cynical? Perhaps. But at the same time, utterly mesmerizing.
Greece is transformed into a pop-culture icon. For the country itself, all this publicity is the ultimate, unimaginable piece of free marketing. No PR agency — no matter how many millions of euros a Publicis might charge — could achieve what a star director with a $200 million budget can. Without spending a single cent, the country once again becomes the center of the global narrative.
Its culture is transformed into a consumer product through images of the highest cinematic craftsmanship. Ancient tragedy is packaged as the season’s next must-see trend. Ithaca becomes an exorbitantly expensive digital illusion, and we simply sink into our velvet seats. We consume the eternal return of a hero, hypnotized by the light of the screen, knowing that no matter how much technology Hollywood brings to bear, the true myth will always belong to those who were the first to look out at the sea.
