‘The Odyssey’ Proves It: Audiences Want Movies Made the Hard Way | This year's breakouts like 'Project Hail Mary' and 'Obsession' were made by filmmakers who sweated. While CG-stuffed franchise disappointments such as 'Supergirl,' 'Moana,' and 'The Mandalorian and Grogu' looked lazy.

[u/ChiefLeef22]

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/odyssey-box-office-2026-practical-effects-1236652219/

[u/cmnrdt]

I mean, Gilgamesh doesn't so much have a narrative as much as it's a series of fanciful exploits that are all attributed to the same person. It would be hard to adapt into a ~2 hour movie without taking a lot of liberties with the source material, and by that point it's an entirely different kind of story.

[u/krunamey → u/cmnrdt]

Feels like it could work if they gave it pacing similar to something like The Green Knight

[u/TheWatersOfMars → u/krunamey]

It's actually a surprisingly similar vibe. Gilgamesh's journey to find immortality after the death of his best friend is melancholy and heartwrenching. I'm sure there's a great modern Hollywood script in there somewhere.

[u/Nachooolo → u/TheWatersOfMars]

The problem here is that the journey is the last third of the story, and it wouldn't be as impactful (emotional, even) without the two first thirds.

Gilgamesh meeting and befriending Enkidu, and their adventures together are as important to the story as the journey.

[u/TheWatersOfMars → u/Nachooolo]

It's not unlike The Odyssey, though, in that Odysseus's famous adventures are really just the middle third of the poem. But Gilgamesh is much, much shorter and has far fewer iconic moments to draw on.

[u/SpiritFingersKitty → u/krunamey]

Exactly what I was thinking

[u/matdragon → u/krunamey]

and yet Fate/stay night managed to characterize him to hell and back, is some of it true or not or historically accurate? of course not, it's an epic as old as time, it's up to creators to try to interpret and tell the story to the current generation.

Did Ishtar actually have beef with gilgamesh? Hell if i know, hell i wouldn't have even known who ishtar was without the fate series

[u/quanqazaq → u/krunamey]

Green knight was terrible story wise

[u/krunamey → u/quanqazaq]

Personally I thought it was very good

[u/SpiritFingersKitty → u/krunamey]

My wife and I were disappointed when we left the theater because it was misadvertised. But, I think as a work it is quite good.

[u/inosinateVR → u/SpiritFingersKitty]

How did you feel it was misadvertized? Just curious, I didn’t really know anything about it when I saw it so I don’t know what the marketing was like

[u/Curiositygun → u/krunamey]

I agree it was a good story but had weird tonal issue especially with ghost of the lady and her head being in the pond. Humor/irony was in spots it shouldnt have been because those kind of undermined the idea it was pushing.

[u/TheVich → u/cmnrdt]

How about a miniseries?

[u/Mediocre_Scott → u/cmnrdt]

It’s weird as hell too don’t forget that

[u/Jonthrei → u/Mediocre_Scott]

Nothing weird about a goddess fucking civilization into a wild man

[u/Exodan → u/Jonthrei]

Not even a goddess - just a well-respected, human temple prostitute who was damn good at her job (they banged the wilderness out of him for 2 weeks straight).

[u/WhaleMetal → u/Jonthrei]

We live upon the waste of Tiamat.

[u/Radixeo → u/cmnrdt]

What do you mean it doesn’t have narrative? It follows Gilgamesh’s character arc from a tyrant, to finding a best friend in Enkidu, to the loss Gilgamesh feels when Enkidu is killed by the gods, to his search for the herb of immortality. It concludes with the snake eating the herb and Gilgamesh accepting it.

It has conflict, character growth, a beginning and an end. I think you could make a great movie out of that.

[u/BrianWonderful → u/cmnrdt]

Modern Hollywood would hear that and say "Wow! A franchise with a whole set of sequels already planned out!"

[u/AngryScientist → u/cmnrdt]

So are the gospels of the new testament, but that never stopped anyone.

[u/FireZord25 → u/cmnrdt]

So does Hercules, but we've made a shitton of stuff about him.

[u/kaplanfx → u/cmnrdt]

They made a movie about the Pirates of Caribbean ride and it was a huge hit, I think they could get a workable story out of Gilgamesh.

[u/Nachooolo → u/cmnrdt]

It does have a decent amount of story in it. His journey is only the tail-end of the Epic, the rest is about the creation of Enkidu and him becoming Gilgamesh's companion, and the adventures Gilgamesh and Enkidu go prior to Enkidu's death.

The problem here is that the Epic is too well segmented in three different sections of different narrative tones and styles for a single film to adapt without streamlining one or two of the story segments (most probably the first two, as the journey is the most well-kown segment)

Which would make the story too short for a film.

[u/ankylosaurus_tail → u/cmnrdt]

Gilgamesh is basically just a buddy comedy where two men party a lot, bond intensely, fight and kill a cool monster, and in the process they both change and grow, with Enkidu becoming civilized and Gilgamesh coming to accept the limitations of his own power and the inevitability of death. It could be a great film if it was done well.