The Odyssey has been out for less than 48 hours and Barstool has already turned into a full-blown film festival panel. Will Compton was locked in before the movie even started, smuggling a cookies & cream milkshake into the theater like it was contraband, and by the next morning he'd handed down a verdict.
Will Compton came out of his screening handing out an A+ and joking that his brain refused to remember the actual plot of The Odyssey from high school.
Odyssey A+ Everyone swears we read about this in high school —but fortunately the way my brain works I wasn’t able to anticipate anything that was coming
But the real fight broke out over format snobbery. KFC wondered aloud whether normal moviegoers actually notice the difference between IMAX and a regular screen, or if it's just a thing critics pretend to care about. Jeff D. Lowe jumped in to shoot down a supposed comparison photo as fake, and Eric Hubbs backed the middle ground — regular format is a perfectly fine watch, IMAX is just built for it. That's not a small argument here: The Odyssey reportedly leans hard on its IMAX cinematography, and reviewers elsewhere have singled out the visuals as one of the film's biggest selling points.
Jeff D. Lowe delivered his own verdict from the driver's seat, grading the film 97/100 and crediting editor Jennifer Lame for what she did with Nolan's storytelling.
Once the format debate cooled off, the conversation shifted to the cast, and that's where things got genuinely heated. Matt Damon anchors the film as Odysseus, with Tom Holland playing his son Telemachus and Anne Hathaway as Penelope — and outside critics have generally sided with the women of the cast over Holland, with some reviews calling his performance one of the more miscast turns of the year. Barstool landed in almost the exact same spot, just louder about it.
Kenjac didn't hold back, saying anyone who ranks Holland above Charlize Theron's performance should have their movie-watching privileges revoked.
Putting Holland below Theron should get your movie watching privileges revoked forever
Eric Nathan pushed back, at least partially — his read was that Holland played exactly what he was supposed to play, a timid kid without a father figure. But even Nathan couldn't defend Zendaya's role as Athena, calling it a total nothing burger and leaving the door open that a rewatch might change his mind. That lines up with outside reviews too, which have described Zendaya's part as thin, even if a few critics found her a scene-stealer in the moments she does get.
Eric Nathan's response to the Holland-Theron beef, naming Zendaya as the actual weak link in the cast.
@JackKennedy Tom Holland was exactly what he was supposed to be imo, a timid kid without a dad. My weakest link was Zendaya. Just kind of a nothing burger. Maybe on a rewatch I'll see if that changes.
PFT Commenter took the discourse in his own direction, saying he was disappointed there weren't more actual Greek actors in the cast and floating Stavvy as Sinon as a hypothetical dream casting — pure Barstool bit, not a real casting note. Kelly Keegs, meanwhile, was locked in from the jump, tweeting from her seat before the movie even started about how "sat" she was, and she came out the other side with a full spoiler-filled review defending the film against people who thought Barstool shouldn't be covering a summer blockbuster in the first place.
Kelly Keegs delivered a spoiler-tagged video review straight to camera after her screening.
The Holland debate isn't just a Barstool bubble thing, either — it's the same split showing up in mainstream coverage, with outlets noting his performance is getting mixed reviews nationally while the film itself sits near the top of Nolan's career on aggregate scores. That's the fun part of this one: an entire office of self-appointed critics landing on roughly the same verdict as actual film critics, just with a lot more jokes about milkshakes and Trojan horses along the way.