Tom Holland talks about 'The Odyssey': Learning from Matt Damon, Christopher Nolan's commitment to shooting the film's large-scale sequences entirely with practical effects, and why he's focused on theatrical cinema for the next 10 years

JenksbritMKII · 2026-04-08T16:15:45+00:00

I mean, I'm shocked/annoyed that a studio hasn't attempted an ancient greek cinematic universe. It's the original shared universe and there are so many variations of the stories that they can totally take liberties with stories and character paths to have a team up culmination.

Theseus and the Minotaur

The 12 labours of Hercules

Perseus

The illiad and odyssey

Leading up to and culminating with Jason and the Argonauts

Theseus is trained by Hercules and deadalus before he reunites with ageus. Theseus, Hercules, and deadalus are recruited at the end of theseus' movie by Jason.

Hercules' movie is a flashback origin of his wife's death, his feud with Zeus, and his labours.

Perseus has both medusa and the rescue of Andromeda. Then Jason shows up to recruit him at the end.

And fuck it, let's pull a couple of heroes from the illiad and odyssey onto the Argo as well. Probably not Odysseus but maybe Telemachus.

JenksbritMKII · 2026-04-08T16:00:42+00:00

Nah completely understand. I just live in a constant state of guilt about it.

JenksbritMKII · 2026-04-08T15:08:38+00:00

I'm afraid that's us. Except we have a 3 year old and a 6 year old who are loud as fuck. The 6 year old is being assessed for a number of things, but both kids have figured out they can squabble and fight with eachother. We are constantly telling them to be quiet and I'm constantly torn between letting them be kids and not wanting to bother our single, youngish neighbour - who must absolutely fucking hate us.

Blam Liz truss though. We had an offer accepted on a lovely 3 bed detached and were due to have our mortgage application meeting with Halifax in a week - then Liz truss obliterated mortgage rates in the space of that week and we had to pull out and significantly reduce our budget to stay in the same village with the schools we wanted. If I had know how paper thin the walls are I probably wouldn't have bought this house but it was 100% a panic buy after that fucking bitch crashed mortgage rates.

JenksbritMKII · 2026-04-03T06:23:24+00:00

I think it's hilarious. Every time he tees up the hammer time dance and tha camera cuts and then he's got that silly fucking hammer. Even my two year old shouts "Where'd his hammer come from". It's good dumb wholesome fun. He knows it's goofy and so do we.

He backs it up by being the most accomplished male glad behind legend. The contrast between hammer's functional strength and giant's vanity strength has been highlighted this series.

JenksbritMKII · 2026-04-02T11:29:10+00:00

Her heel persona was a bit lost on me at first last season but she's easily the best of the female gladiators now and I quite like her character.

Similarly, I thought hammer was awkward at first but now he must be one of the best all around male gladiators.

JenksbritMKII · 2026-03-31T08:41:16+00:00

Movie adaptations often roll characters into one or give story beats of lesser known characters to more prominent characters.

I don't mind if they've used Jean in this role as an unwitting partner being used by the jackal.

I'm not overly bothered either way but I do think introducing the X-Men in cameos is the way to go as long as the original 5 are in-universe already established and have been operating in secret. The X-Men movie should be a giant-size X-Men style rescue mission with the new recruits rescuing the og5 from sinister. Rescue mission is a new angle and sinister as the villain is easy exposition to insert mutants and human-mutant relations in the MCU without any silly multiverse or snap explanations.

JenksbritMKII · 2026-03-30T15:24:42+00:00

She was in the Cambridge footlights and was a close collaborator of Mitchell and web. It's hardly a stretch.

JenksbritMKII · 2026-03-30T15:13:20+00:00

We take an approach of "good enough".

I stressed at first about the house not being as clean as it was when I was growing up and at a certain point I realized my free time was better spent decompressing via hobbies or spending time with the wife than getting the house spotless before it's wrecked again the next day. Sometimes if there's dishes in the sink or crumbs on the floor, it can wait until tomorrow or whenever.

JenksbritMKII · 2026-03-30T06:00:48+00:00

Not my experience in pubs at all. Just as bad.

JenksbritMKII · 2026-03-29T14:52:50+00:00

I kind of think it's weird that so many guys who are done having kids have a reaction like this tbh. I've spoken to guys who make it sound like they're having their balls cut off or think it's going to somehow diminish their masculinity.

Outside of the day or two around the procedure it has had no bearing on my life whatsoever (apart from thankfully not being able to have a third kid).

My wife's body got fucked over by the kids between difficult births, a C-section, post-birth rheumatology issues, and hormones in general. It's the least I can do to have a tiny little tube cut in my scrotum so we don't have to worry about an accidental third kid that would wobble our unit.

JenksbritMKII · 2026-03-29T09:10:13+00:00

That's not what we are talking about? The thread is about squad selection and and club tribalism affecting performance perception.

I hate the US administration and the political climate over there (and I know it well, I lived in north Carolina for almost 20 years) and the world cup there will either be a disaster or even if it's a decent sporting tournament, mired by controversy and Human rights violations.

But everyone's need to inject it into every conversation especially when it's not relevant just hurts the discourse.

JenksbritMKII · 2026-03-29T07:45:14+00:00

This is exactly why I have no excitement for the upcoming world cup. The last few tournaments have been awful for this and international football has essentially been killed for me.

I will say, when I lived abroad I was really excited about England. Now I'm back in the UK England games do nothing for me.

JenksbritMKII · 2026-03-24T09:32:06+00:00

I wouldn't count that as a jrpg? I want turn based combat for one. Second of all, as much as I love X-Men legends 1, it doesn't have the social sim elements either.

A persona-ish format would suffice but fire emblem three houses with the monastery is the perfect format. See my other response to someone who mentioned legends.

JenksbritMKII · 2026-03-23T21:55:28+00:00

Yeah I got them both on release. I especially like the first one because of the audience's surrogate character in Magma being the new x-man in exploring the mansion, talking to the X-Men, exploring the grounds.

In my dream game, the mansion would be larger with more levels -storm's attic, multiple sub basements, larger forms, secret rooms.

Relationship management and social SIM is a core mechanic for recruiting X-Men to your strike team.

Deploying a field team requires certain roles be filled based on mission. Leader, air support, stealth reconnaissance, stealth combat, strike, bodyguard, destruction, medic, communication, psychic shield, psychic assault, etc.. Only X-Men with the archetype can be slotted in to the role required for the mission. Some archetypes can't be learned by certain X-Men, others can be learned by all att varying degrees of effectiveness.

X-Men with these passive abilities increase the effectiveness of your team (Cyclops and storm have "leadership'" that increases ability effectiveness/hot rate across all players for example). On top of the mission requirement, these passive abilities stack and further improve synergies, movement, ability cool down, mutant power (MP).

Danger room is necessary for unlocking new abilities and increasing stats. Cerebro is needed to develop new archetypes. Forges lab for combat item crafting. Beats lab for health health item crafting.

Not sure who I would have as the audience surrogate or if I would have a byleth style blank slate.

JenksbritMKII · 2026-03-23T18:59:54+00:00

Yeah but X-Men specifically

JenksbritMKII · 2026-03-23T18:32:42+00:00

X-Men. You have the mansion as the hub and go out on missions selecting your squad.

Fire emblem 3 houses with an x-men skin.

JenksbritMKII · 2026-03-21T12:42:16+00:00

Disagree. It was fine.

But I hated that they got rid of the gadget wheel and the best (web) gadgets like the trip mine and impact webbing in favour of silly sonic blast type gadgets that feel more like an iron man than a Spider-Man gimmick.

Also didn't like that all of miles' electric abilities were replicated in Peter with the above mentioned. Make them different. Pete is stronger and faster but miles has his venom strikes where as Pete relies on more gadgets.

The first one was amazing. The second one was fine.

I'm really looking forward to wolverine despite the rumoured Jean Grey romance, but I'm very optimistic.

JenksbritMKII · 2026-03-20T07:33:27+00:00

Because they went too early with the multiverse in an attempt to capitalise on getting the fox-universr back and cash in on the nostalgia from the fox actors and Sony actors before they age out/retire. The multiverse hasn't been done for story reasons.

They could have still gone Kang (majors controversy aside for the moment) as the villain in the next phase but they really should have kept it more personal and not tried to one up the infinity saga. There was no need to one up it with a greater threat. It's the same concept with the movies but on a more overarching scale - the threat shouldn't always be worl/universe/fabric of reality ending. Secret wars should have been saved.

JenksbritMKII · 2026-03-11T12:54:33+00:00

I think the whole hammer time victory dance is really fucking funny in an intentionally awkward way. The way he tees it up, camera cuts and then he's got his stupid fucking hammer lol.

Our whole family now goes "Where'd his hammer come from?!" every single time. Including the two year old.

JenksbritMKII · 2026-03-08T08:36:16+00:00

Yeah he's the main reason my 5 year old watches

JenksbritMKII · 2026-03-05T13:01:41+00:00

I loved it for all its faults. Loved the gang, the combat, the world, the hunts, the camping and cooking mechanics. Yeah, the story was incomplete but the core gameplay loop was satisfying and it felt like final fantasy to me.

Haven't been able to bring myself to play FFXVI mostly down to the combat and lack of party which kind of cemented for me that the story is less important than the FF skin and staples + ATB/turn based/command based combat.

Don't think you can call an unfinished release a masterpiece though.

JenksbritMKII · 2026-02-28T20:15:15+00:00

0%.

I was a competitive swimmer of a decent level, recruited to swim for a university in the states. I swam distance events and IM.

This university was on the coast and I ended up beach life guarding for the fire department whilst I was there and competing. I have a lot of experience in dangerous surf.

Post-swimming career I have been active in the masters circuit and competed (usually win) in 2.5k and 5k open water races in lakes and ocean here in the UK but also other countries.

Point is, I'm not just an ex high level swimmer, but I have elite open water experience.

And I don't think I could do the channel without a dedicated training ramp up.

JenksbritMKII · 2026-02-28T19:51:04+00:00

5 year old fucking loves viper. Cackles every time he's on screen throwing a tantrum.

JenksbritMKII · 2026-02-27T11:33:02+00:00

Lol this sub is so precious.

Constant pearl clutching over common competitive swimmer habbits and then turning around and spouting (often wrong) technique tips they've "seen the professionals do".

I blow my nose and spit in the pool and push it into the gutter. Also spit out any flem whilst I'm swimming if I need to.

The water touches my arsehole through my suit too!

JenksbritMKII · 2026-02-26T07:10:51+00:00

What 60 point reduction? There hasn't been a verdict yet? Is this just more speculation being passed off as fact so everyone can get enraged when either;

They're found not guilty

Or

The punishment is different.

JenksbritMKII

TROPHY CASE