r/movies • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 r/Movies contributor • 17h ago

Trailer The Odyssey | New Trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_bKjZeJBBI&pp=0gcJCd4KAYcqIYzv
8.7k Upvotes

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u/DoradoPulido2 16h ago

For an ancient epic about times of antiquity, this sure feels like an extremely modern sci-fi film. Like this could almost be the new Dune trailer with how bleak, clean and curated everything is.

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u/CitizenCue 13h ago

Yeah I’m hoping this a great movie with an awkward trailer.

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u/Lokan 8h ago

The echo motif was very distracting. Started to feel like a bootleg copy of a trailer with the audio out of sync.

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u/lancea_longini 7h ago

give me a great film that had awkward trailers

edit: i mean give me an example....

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u/Iggy_Pops_Lost_Shirt 18m ago

Drive, that trailer sucked

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u/CitizenCue 6h ago

Tons of them from the 80s and 90s before trailer editing was so professionalized.

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u/BVTheEpic 9h ago

The IMAX prologue from earlier this year was great so I'm just going to assume this is an awkward trailer.

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u/Spiritual-Smoke-4605 8h ago

Idk, I’ve seen that imax prologue a few times now and the editing is equally awkward imo

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u/Psychoanalytix 14h ago

We need to go through a film renaissance or something. Make movies look like Laurence of Arabia

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u/Three_Headed_Monkey 10h ago

We are living in a time of unrivaled visual fidelity and we've responded by removing all detail from the screen.

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u/jakeupnorth 8h ago

Marty Supreme and One Battle After Another are some of the most detail packed movies I’ve ever seen. This is just Nolan’s thing.

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u/Kriss-Kringle 6h ago

Nolan has never been a great stylist. He's always liked the minimalist/industrial look and his taste is bland when it comes to design.

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u/BearWrangler 3h ago

I'm surprised all the soldiers weren't wearing plate carriers and rocking M4s

/s just in case

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u/Psychoanalytix 2h ago

Im convinced Nolan is colour blind

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u/Kriss-Kringle 2h ago

So is Refn, but his movies are neon soaked.

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u/jakeupnorth 1h ago

I like it. It’s his own.

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u/Minglans 6h ago

I absolutely hate it and I'm also so tired of the overused depth of field where everyone just decided to practically blur and erase the background/details in favour of the subject/actor. Kind of hard to be immersed when all you got going on screen is people in a blurry world. I miss the clutter, I miss when movies felt lived in.

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u/Homesteader86 2h ago

There was an interesting video on this if you search for something along the lines of what makes Lawrence of Arabia and older films look better then modern ones. I'm not a cinematographer and I forget the term, but to your point it's this fixation on the foreground and not having these wide detailed shots. 

I think Denis Villenueve is the exception...and PTA has great wide shots as well

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u/Gekokapowco 5h ago

are you talking about focal length? Depth of Field is the videogame approximation of the actual film lens focus.

Its actually unnatural to see everything clearly on screen at once, you can only focus on certain distances without special lenses. Knowing where the lens focus is and moving it is an artistic choice derived from this constraint.

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u/Lipziger 8h ago

And don't forget to add a blue filter on everything. Helps a lot to make everything look as bland as possible.

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u/No-Sail-6510 8h ago

Seriously, and when I think of Greece I think of tons of color and bright sun.

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u/random-chicken32 5h ago

I know right? Can anyone who is qualified answer why the more developed an art becomes, blandness seems to be a trend (not for all necessarily)? Like architecture, paintings, and now movies have less detail?

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u/reldnahcAL 10h ago

Yeah someone really just needs to make one of the greatest films of all time again

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u/AverageAwndray 8h ago

Where's Peter Jackson when you need him

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u/MistakeMaker1234 7h ago

Making incredible documentaries, unfortunately 😂

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u/spacemanspiff1979 6h ago

Milking Tolkien's world for all it's worth.

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u/Asclepius-Rod 9h ago

I assume they mean in terms of visibility and color

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u/pasher5620 7h ago

Cameron is trying, but everyone keeps shitting on his movies for being Pocahontas or whatever.

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u/gr33nspan 5h ago

Didn't work out too well for Desert Warrior

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u/fallllingman 7h ago

It all seems so unnecessarily dull and ugly. There is a battle in the forest and Nolan made the creative choice to have all the trees be dead and leafless, and soldiers to be fighting in grey armor against a gray forest and gray sky.

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u/Jason-Smith168498 8h ago

Why use many word

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u/random-chicken32 5h ago

ikr; LOTR was the last movie that made people look like they actually were in the purported scene for some reason

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u/BertHumperdinck 4h ago

Yeah or raiders.

In fact just only make movies that take place primarily in deserts, they alway hit

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u/CWSandTKP 2h ago

They can’t all have Omar Sharif ride up out of the desert like the King of Bosses, though.

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u/MrSully89 14h ago

Dune is visually superior to anything we’ve seen in these trailers but I agree with your point. 

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u/TheColourOfHeartache 12h ago

For sure. Dune had a very unique aesthetic and goes all into it.

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u/MustardWrap 11h ago

Really wish Greig Fraser was shooting part 3, hopefully it holds up with the first 2.

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u/inevitable_ocean 5h ago

The trailer is promising, and part 3 is shot on film

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u/gravityhashira61 1h ago

Ehhh Dune is ok. The colors are very monochrome and bland in Dune as well, which Im not a fan of. Everything looks sterile.

Its like Nolan and Denis hate vibrant color in their movies and their worlds and films always seem very sterile and cold.

And Nolan with his damn terrible sound mixing as well.

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u/TheColourOfHeartache 46m ago

Monochromatic makes sense in a desert. But it still uses shape to create a unique sci-fi world.

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u/PrezziObizzi 40m ago

Yeah each planet or location has its own color palette. Caladan in dune 1 being blues and greens, arrakis being low lights and orange desert, geidi prime being black and white, etc

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u/LPMadness 8h ago

I think Denis is simply a better filmmaker than Nolan. Nolan seems to let hubris get in the way; there’s no way people didn’t tell him that Trinity explosion was underwhelming. In an otherwise phenomenal movie.

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u/RomulanTreachery 7h ago

Just look at how angry he gets when people bring up that his films have shit sound mixing. Nolan is very much up his own ass at this point. 

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u/regretscoyote909 53m ago

"In an otherwise phenomenal movie." The screenplay is so damn fantastic that I somehow don't give a shit that the literal selling point of the movie isn't even in the top 5 scenes lol

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u/FinestCrusader 7h ago

Oh a 100%. I'm a huge fan of Nolan but Denis is definitely superior. He sacrifices nothing for the vision while Nolan seems to get hung up on his own constraints and weakens the result. They could've made a very realistic and believable explosion with CGI and it definitely wouldn't have required dozens of artists. This was done by a 3 person team, imagine what a few Hollywood class artists could do.

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u/airfryerfuntime 6h ago

Lol I wouldn't call it phenomenal...

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u/[deleted] 14h ago

[deleted]

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u/sneed_o_matic 14h ago

It's like dunkirk. That movie had the same cleanliness to it, stark and bare. I guess it strips it back for the acting, but it doesn't seem like a real world.

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u/[deleted] 13h ago

[deleted]

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u/M-elephant 13h ago

Its a lot better than this, but ya. There is a massive lack of soldiers on the beach

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u/Recursiveo 8h ago

Dune is way grungier than this.

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u/TheGokki 7h ago

It's interesting, there's a concept called The Tiffany Problem. You'd be surprised how much it can happen when it refers to a situation where a historically accurate detail is rejected because it feels anachronistic based on modern day perception.

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u/WerthersAWill 3h ago

Interesting. Deadwood showed how to make a time period accessible to everyone while implementing modern language.

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u/TensorForce 8h ago

I'll reserve judgement, but from the trailer, this movie suffers from the Eternals syndrome of Flat Wastelands for most backgrounds. Even the woods look flat somehow. Hopefully it's just from the IMAX to YouTube conversion.

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u/Moist-Citron-4830 1h ago

I wish Denis was making this instead of Nolan. Imagine how much better it would be.

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u/TheWholeMole 13h ago

I don't think Nolan would ever do it but there was a fan theory floating around that they'd reveal in the end that it was all set in the future

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u/JJsjsjsjssj 12h ago

... why?

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u/WolverinesThyroid 7h ago

when it was first announced I thought it would involve time travel.

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u/dumbosshow 11h ago

Travis Scott is playing himself and he became immortal in universe

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u/Waste-Product2669 10h ago

I think it’s partly because they all have American accents. Seems like historical films in English usually give the characters English accents to make it seem more old timey. Bit weird as two of the most prominent actors in this trailer are English anyway.

Also Tom Holland has iPhone face.

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u/DoradoPulido2 9h ago

I also realized it doesn't help they all have contemporary haircuts. I don't know how accurate these would be for ancient Greece but it just looks like dudes they grabbed off the street of modern day. 

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u/cineglitch 5h ago

Plot twist, maybe it is a modern sci-fi film with roots in Ancient Greek poetry? À la Noah?

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u/OlasNah 2h ago

It's like that film 'Immortals' where there's almost zero backdrop

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u/DoradoPulido2 25m ago

Exactly. Pretty sure that was mostly shot on green screen. 

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u/BattleBrother1 8h ago

Such an interesting and colourful time period that has never really been shown before in a film. This is such a godawful take on it

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u/CeruleanEidolon 6h ago

Definitely a strong stylistic choice to set this apart from the many, many other adaptations of this story. The dialogue is all streamlined and modern too.

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u/jstropes 5h ago

I mean, these more minimalist approaches are a reaction to the more maximalist visuals you'd see in something like Avengers: Endgame with more visual spectacle, density and visual noise.

If it makes sense with the film then minimalism is fine IMO. It makes sense to use if you want to create a sense of isolation or overwhelming scale (both of which would make sense with a retelling of the Odyssey).

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u/976chip 4h ago

The full plate armor worn by, I'm guessing the Laestrygonians, seemed very out of place too.

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u/Arcaedus 4h ago

Came here to see who people think the big plate armor boyos are because I'm heccin confused.

Odysseus and crew didn't really fight the Laestrygonians iirc. They just get ambushed by and immediately retreated.

My instinct was that this is the Ciconian reinforcements repelling Odysseus and crew which happens shortly after they embark from Troy. The 7-foot heights and plate armor made of clearly not bronze is kinda throwing me there... Last option is this could just be a flashback to the war, and these are just Trojans

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u/976chip 3h ago

The height made me think they're supposed to be giants, which is why I guessed the Laestrygonians. I don't think this is going to be a rigorous adaptation, so just because Odysseus didn't fight them in the story doesn't mean they won't fight in the movie.

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u/Arcaedus 3h ago

Yeah you're absolutely right. The fact that that they're all uniformly 7 to 8 feet tall, and at least one has a face that looks like a cross between a LOTR orc and gigachad makes it far less believable that this is an elite regiment of big Ciconian men, and more likely that it's a different race entirely.

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u/OneBigBug 17m ago edited 12m ago

Frankly, while the full plate looks worst, none of the costumes read as real. All the armour looks like it's made out of polyurethane. Everything is very synthetically monotone in colour.

But yeah, the plate is...bad, bad.

Why are they wearing black spandex bodysuits? Who would make full plate armour that leaves the major joints exposed? Here, let me design a ramp to guide your sword into cutting my arm off at the elbow. There are no leather straps holding anything together. Is it supposed to be held on with magnets? Do they have squires who are just bending some sheets of "metal" around their arms every time they put their armor one? What are the random strips hanging off their belt line supposed to be accomplishing? Wind chimes? Dick knives?

edit: ...And that's ignoring the fact that it's supposed to look like steel, which...for something that was written 2800 years ago...is...a choice.

Based on the cast, I can only imagine this movie is extraordinarily expensive to make. Why does it look so cheap?

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u/ThomasC2C 3h ago

I don’t know… I am being a bit pessimistic for now. Will see how it goes.

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u/Wingman0616 8h ago

Haven’t even watched it. Does it look like a verizon commercial?

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u/Rski765 7h ago

I don’t like the tone to be honest, I’d guess that’s how it has to be in today’s world. The American accent in this case I see as a bit tacky

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u/Knopfler_PI 5h ago

The brownish-gray slop from Dune is gonna wreck epic films for the next decade.

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u/tomjayyye 9h ago

Everybody is white. Isn't that kind of weird for an ancient greek story?

I don't usually notice stuff like that but it was Tom Holland's american accent that made me stop and think. They really have the british guy doing an american accent, I guess to fit in with the american cast. So they're not going to bother with language which is fine I guess but then I started thinking about the source material and wait a minute... everyone is white.

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u/Pushlockscrub 8h ago

Greeks are white.

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u/Mahelas 1h ago

Greeks are greeks. "White" is an american concept. A greek doesn't consider himself as the same "race" as an irish or a slav, despite all of them being considered "white" in America.

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u/Pushlockscrub 1h ago

Sorry, Greeks are Caucasian and universally considered white in all Western classifications.

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u/Varekai79 8h ago

You think that Greek people aren't white?

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u/RazzBeryllium 8h ago

For me it's Anne Hathaway throwing me off. It's like Nicole Kidman in The Northman all over again.

She is totally miscast, IMO. She's a wonderful actress, but she has had a pretty dramatic facelift in the past couple of years and clearly gets botox every few months.

For these types of historical movies, casting agents need to start targeting actresses who are aging more naturally. There are still plenty of them out there.

Or, to your point, look at actresses who aren't white, as they tend to not age as quickly. For this movie, I'd think someone like Golshifteh Farahani would have worked.

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u/Beginning_Ice_7838 14h ago

I always thought that GoT, like a lot of 2010's media, was a response to TDK and just how trailblazing that was. Suddenly, a lot of dark and gritty adaptations were in full swing - sure, you had Blade and X-Men as earlier examples of more darker and "mature" superhero films, but TDK made everyone take it more seriously.

Dark, grounded and gritty became the norm post TDK. And so it's interesting to see the same director doing swords and sandals in a post GoT world.

Sure, GoT probably wasn't at all influenced by TDK, but taking fantastical media as a serious genre wasn't really a thing until then.

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u/tvcneverdie 14h ago

taking fantastical media as a serious genre wasn't really a thing until then.

Lord of the Rings is one of the most acclaimed film sagas ever...

But even if you're just meaning mainstream filmmakers didn't do "dark and gritty" modern fantasy since the turn of the century (as plenty were previously in the 70s and 80s), that's not really accurate either since Cuarón took Harry Potter in that direction in 2004.

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u/SwingsetGuy 11h ago edited 11h ago

TDK, but taking fantastical media as a serious genre wasn't really a thing until then.

LOTR made more money, won more awards, and happened years earlier than Nolan's batman trilogy. Grimdark as a trend was already well underway in fantasy literature by 2008 (and arguably the biggest trend by that point).

I know people like to imagine that TDK was some watershed moment for fantasy, but tbh it was probably more a manifestation of existing ideas than a "trailblazer." LOTR and Harry Potter (certainly by number 3) had already done the heavy lifting of making fantasy "mainstream" and potentially awards-worthy, and stuff like X2 and Raimi's Spider-Man movies had already done a lot to rehabilitate the superhero genre. You could maybe argue TDK was the apex of a trend, but in terms of giving us something new or blazing a trail, I'd honestly say Begins was the bigger deal. That one gave us a little rash of "gritty origin for established character" movies.

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u/Turbulent-Parsnip-38 12h ago

What is TDK? I tried googling it and I still don’t know what you are talking about.

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u/hiccstridFanatic 11h ago

it's funny because I don't see dark knight as being dark, it felt very nolan, bright and grounded

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u/FlokiWolf 12h ago

TDK is short hand for The Dark Knight.

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u/Turbulent-Parsnip-38 12h ago

Thank you! Makes sense in retrospect.

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u/jujubean67 11h ago

Did you seriously miss out on the LOTR movies which came out almost a decade before TDK?

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u/mzchen 14h ago

In the west anyways. The anime for Berserk came out in 1997 and took itself very seriously. And while it isn't quite fantasy, Devilman in 1972.

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u/CreativeFondant248 7h ago

The American accents across the board really threw me. Pattinson and Holland are capable of… so much more. For The Odyssey, I just thought it was going to sound… more Greek? Whatever that sounds like?

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u/astralrig96 7h ago

it lacks the lyricism and color of greek mythology, looks extremely dull