'The Return' is an epic 'Odyssey' movie. Why isn't there a Homeric Cinematic Universe yet?

                                                  

                                     

In order to see his loved ones again, a man travels a long way home, encountering strange animals, perilous barriers, and psychological difficulties.

It may be a superhero tale if you give the man magical hammers or high-tech armor. It's a magical adventure when a piece of jewelry or a sorcerer's wand is used.

Even if the 3,000-year-old story of Odysseus from Homer's epic poem "The Odyssey" isn't the most hippest or frequently adapted for the big screen, it certainly doesn't require any more embellishments. The Greek soldier encounters gods and goddesses, the dangerous Cyclops, and the sea monsters Scylla and Charybdis on his perilous journey to return to Ithaca following the Trojan War to be reunited with his wife Penelope.

"The Return," currently showing in theaters, may not be "Iron Man," but it's still something. It centers on the final scene of "The Odyssey," in which Odysseus (played by Ralph Fiennes) returns to the shores of Ithaca twenty years later, a bare, sinewy husk of the warrior he once was. Odysseus must overcome PTSD and other problems in order to become the man he needs to be now, while suitors harass Queen Penelope (Juliette Binoche) and endanger their son Telemachus (Charlie Plummer).

According to director Uberto Pasolini, the film portrays Odysseus as "a man who has the pain of 20 years of violence, travels, and of guilt for what he has done (and) for returning home without the people he was supposed to look after," rather than as a "young strapping hero."

"The Odyssey" is "the template for movies," according to Exhibitor Relations box office analyst Jeff Bock. If something isn't founded on something, it's incredibly hard to get it approved. Since "The Odyssey" is among the oldest stories still in existence, you have intellectual property (IP) and more, as everyone knows.

After Pasolini and cowriter John Collee became friends and bonded over their mutual love of "Odyssey," "The Return" has been in development for thirty years. Pasolini jokes, "We took longer to make the film than Odysseus took to travel to Troy, win the war, sleep with all the wonderful women around the Mediterranean, return home, kill 108 suitors, and then return to Penelope."

The director and Collee worked with cowriter Edward Bond (who passed away this year at the age of 89) on a story that rejected gods and myths in favor of "an odyssey of the mind and of the spirit rather than a physical journey" after decades of balancing other projects, according to Pasolini.

Collee continues, "When you break down 'The Odyssey,' you start to realize that most of it is a homecoming." "To fill it out, they cram in all these increasingly strange adventures in the middle, but the core of the story is this very domestic tale."