This is a little complaint, but The Odyssey is creaking under the weight of so many little complaints, it’s hard to identify what Christopher Nolan was trying to get right.

I’ve hunted wild boar.  I took it with a Mossberg 500 shooting a sabot slug at 120 yards.  One shot, one kill.

This 30 second clip of Odysseus hunting boar had too much wrong with it. 

Why are there a bunch of kids standing behind Odysseus ?  Some of them are kind of crouching, but animals can see, smell and hear.  Animals avoid people.  Suburban deer have lost all fear of humans, but they aren’t going to approach a crowd.  That crowd of neighborhood kids probably stink, making them easier to detect.

Odysseus intentionally dry-fires his bow before taking his shot.

Odysseus does it every time and even talks about why.  It’s some muddled thinking about making it a fair contest between hunter and hunted, and letting the animal know that the game is on.  The animal already has advantages like better senses, speed and the ability to go a different direction.

Wild boars are smart, and have excellent hearing and sense of smell.  On my hunt, Joe, the guide and I were behind a giant tree root ball 120 yards from a little stream.  Only I moved, super slow, to draw a bead on the piggy as he came for a drink. The boar was twitchy, but I took the shot when his side was toward me. 

Everybody is supposed to know that you never dry-fire a bow.  It’s bad for the limbs.

The dry-fire and insistence on warning the animal, was an unnecessary detail meant to show something like Odysseus has a deep sense of fair play.  That could have been demonstrated in a not dumb way.

Having the crowd behind him just makes no sense.  Whatever, the boar charges down the game trail right at Odysseus and his buddies.

My boar was a sleek, black beauty, so I had the butcher save me the head and hide.  It was my intention to salvage the boar tusks for a memento.  That proved to be too difficult.

A boar’s head is like armor.  I tried a sawz-all and angle grinder to cut through the boar’s snout.  After a half-hour trying to cut through solid bone, I gave up.  That’s gross, but that’s what I did.  There is no way an arrow is going to penetrate a boar coming straight on.  I believe my 12 gauge slug would have been deflected by bone, rather than penetrate.

Here’s how Odysseus takes his shot.

This is the instant before releasing the arrow.

Hunting and archery are not minor topics for Odysseus.  On this hunt, Odysseus gets a wound that Penelope’s housemaid recognizes decades later.  This is a critical scene. 

Odysseus has a bow that is so powerful, none of the suitors can string it, and he takes a shot through crossed axes that nobody else could make.

There are many unlikely scenes in The Hunger Games, but Katniss Everdeen is plausibly drawing a bow.  You don’t get the sense that she is making pew-pew noises as she plays Cowboys and Indians with her nephew.

I am not a dedicated or accomplished hunter.  I go out with knowledgeable friends.  I’ve never killed anything with my compound bow, but have taken deer with the shotgun and crossbow.  I much prefer the gun.

I had five complaints from a 30 second clip.   None of those complaints were necessary, and could have been avoided with a little effort.  Even a person unfamiliar with hunting could find that scene unlikely.  

People with other expertise have problems with other aspect of the movie.  The armor, ship or the landscape.  It all adds up to a sloppy movie that does not tell a convincing tale.

It would be interesting to see a post from people who love Nolan’s movie, backing up their assertions with specific references.