Thanks to those who have offered suggestions for future columns. I will begin fulfilling requests on a “first come, first serve” basis starting in January 2024. As always, I am open to suggestions for future topics. Feel free to leave a comment below or on Discord!
“The religions of ancient Greece and Rome are extinct. The so-called divinities of Olympus have not a single worshipper among living men.” So writes Thomas Bulfinch at the beginning of Stories of Gods and Heroes. As a student of the humanities, I have learned that the moment you make an absolute statement of this sort, some goofus will come out of the woodwork to disprove you. At the same time, I do not see anyone offering hecatombs or pouring libations to the Olympian gods. Still, their memory lingers. All told, I think the Greek gods are doing better than many of their fellow deities. Without the pressure to maintain their relevance in the face of the modern world, they are free to live like… well, like God in France. The reason Bulfinch put pen to paper was because he believed that knowledge of Greek and Roman mythology was the key to appreciating literature. Works like John Milton’s Paradise Lost were inaccessible without it.
Bulfinch also associated Greek mythology with refinement and taste, and that is where we part ways. The original myths were bawdy and indecorous, and so are their modern heirs. Last year’s Icarus, a (very good!) revisionist retelling of the story of Theseus and the Minotaur, retains the sex and violence of the original myths, ending with Theseus hitting and quitting Ariadne. It is only questionably suitable for children, and certainly not for very young children. Our current subject, alternately known as Epic Tails or Argonuts (I have encountered both, and both are suitable for my Letterboxd list Porn Parody has the Same Title), goes in a different direction. It is suitable only for children, with all the hard edges sanded completely off.
So why did I select it for the column, making it not only the first animated feature, but also the first new release, to receive this distinction? It goes back to the title. While the English titles rely on limp puns, the original French title is Pattie and the Wrath of Poseidon (Pattie et la colère de Poséidon). When I saw the poster, with a girlboss mouse posing defiantly before the looming image of the angry god, my mouth went agape. Pattie and the Wrath of Poseidon. That’s like naming a movie Laura and the Vengeance of the Lord. I imagined what that poster might look like. Probably like that one edition of Robert Hugh Benson’s Catholic, papal-approved end times novel Lord of the World. The one with Jesus crucified on a mushroom cloud.
Where is the film adaptation of THIS?
The trailers for Pattie made it look like a bargain basement dumpster fire, but the damage was done. Why am I covering this film and not Icarus, which I would readily encourage everyone to watch, provided they can find it? Well, apart from that title, it’s the gods. No gods in Icarus, but Pattie’s got the gods. Also, Icarus would have led me down some rabbit holes about ancient Minoan civilization, and I don’t have time for that. And wrestling with Cold Fever last month—absolutely the hardest of the columns I’ve written so far—made clear that bagging on bad movies is much easier than writing about good ones. À l’abordage!
Sects!
Not being a classicist, I know precious little about Greek religion as such. I honestly don’t know what pious pagans did in their day-to-day lives, and when I tried to read a book on the subject, I stopped after the description of thwacking a bull on the head to daze it before applying the butcher knife.
I know a little bit more about Greek mythology because, when I tired of Bulfinch, I wanted to know the stories straight from the sources. I remember being absolutely astonished by a passage I read in Pausanias’ Description of Greece (3.25.6), where he muses about the hound of Hades, otherwise known as Cerberus. But not in Homer!
But Homer, who was the first to call the creature brought by Heracles the hound of Hades, did not give it a name or describe it as of manifold form, as he did in the case of the Chimaera. Later poets gave the name Cerberus, and though in other respects they made him resemble a dog, they say that he had three heads. Homer, however, does not imply that he was a dog, the friend of man, any more than if he had called a real serpent the hound of Hades.
Here you see a Greek writer of the second century CE argue about classical mythology with the anal retentiveness of a biblical scholar. The Iliad (Book VIII, line 368) and the Odyssey (Book XI, line 623), the two foundational pillars of Western literature, and the oldest literary sources for Greek mythology, only call Cerberus “the hound of Hades.” What was his real name? We don’t know! How many heads did he have? We don’t know that either! Maybe he had one! Maybe he had fifty! Maybe “hound” is just a metaphor for a boring-ass real-world snake. We don’t have the textual clarity that we have with the Chimera (Iliad, Book VI, line 181), which is definitely a lion, goat, and snake mash-up. You can’t say differently. Heretic.
The comparison with biblical scholarship is deliberate. By the Hellenistic period (323 BCE–31 BCE), Homer was practically sacred scripture. The text was standardized, divided into books, and received in-depth commentaries. The Greeks were well aware that the gods came off as petty tyrants in their own sacred literature, and so allegory was employed to make them more palatable. The allegorical commentary was adopted by the first-century Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria, who interpreted the Torah in the same manner. He then bequeathed this method to the emerging Christian Church, who inherited two sets of mythology—that of the Greeks and of the Hebrews—but discarded the related religious practices of both. Allegory and other nonliteral reading strategies proved an effective means of bridging the gaps between the Testaments but also, strange to say, allowed Christians to believe in the pagan gods without worshiping them.
One explanation is that the gods are actually demons who inhabit idols. The gods are then folded back into a biblical understanding of the cosmos, where they were either the fallen angels… or else the children of angels who had sex with human women.* Another explanation is that the gods were in fact tremendous men whose cult of personalities went viral. So Hades was really a difficult neighbor with a mean dog who raped his niece.** Historically probable, maybe, but I don’t know why you would write a pretty poem about that, much less deify the guy. And it still doesn’t explain why I get so damn cold each winter.
Whatever the case, the gods are still with us long after their last temple was shuttered. They live in our art museums, on our tote bags, on our condom boxes, and in our literature, even unapologetically Christian epics like The Faerie Queene and the aforementioned Paradise Lost. And they live on in our movies. Over the centuries, the stories have attained something like a canonical form, even in the absence of a proper canon. The hound of Hades does not exist (at least, I hope not), but everyone and their mother knows that he’s called Cerberus and he has three heads, Homer be damned. With that in mind, let’s now take a closer look at this pile of CGI garbage.
Lies!
The first lie occurs in the opening lines of the film. Pattie, who has read all the Greek myths, gives a roll call of the heroes in the opening narration. “But my favorite of all is—”
“Odysseus,” you, the educated viewer, think. After all, the movie is called Pattie and the Wrath of Poseidon, and Odysseus was on Poseidon’s shit-list. The trailer also very prominently features a run-in with a whole tribe of Cyclopes, and Odysseus’ violent encounter with the Cyclops Polyphemus—Poseidon’s giant, one-eyed monster—is the very reason the sea god was cross with him in the first place. Add to that the general maritime theme, the sense of adventure, the connotation of the word odyssey in modern language, and…
“JASON!” Pattie announces.
Oh, honey, are you sure you’ve read ALL the Greek myths? Pattie does indicate she wants to become a great heroine, and Jason was perhaps better at being a hero than a father or a husband. We soon learn that Pattie’s excuses are few. She lives in Iolcus, which is Jason’s hometown, and Jason is still alive, although he is now a senile dotard. You can never die in politics, they say, and if cheating on your witch wife—who then murders your children—doesn’t sink you, I guess nothing can.
Anyway, Pattie’s aspirations to heroism are counterbalanced by her other desire, which is to visit the Library of Alexandria. And there’s our second lie! The Egyptian city of Alexandria was founded by its namesake, Alexander the Great, who is a contemporary of Jason the same way that I am a contemporary of William the Conqueror. No wonder the guy is so damn old! He must be pushing a thousand!
Pattie is under the care of Sam, a talking cat (!?!), who is overprotective of her and doesn’t want her to sail from Greece to Egypt. He promptly eats her ticket to ride, but she gets her chance at adventure anyway. The town has just erected a big fancy statue to Zeus, and brother Poseidon is pissed. Jason reassembles the Argonauts to find the raw materials to build an equally impressive statue of the god of the sea, teaching children the moral that the only way to defeat tyrants is through appeasement. Pattie tags along and, despite her unimpressive stature, uses her ample wits to solve all the practical problems in their way. Just like Jason!
There are many “What the fuck?” elements to this scenario, and we’ll get to those shortly. The one I want to focus on now is the Argonauts, who are all undead skeletons. Pattie resurrects them with the dust from a dragon’s tooth. Points for referencing an actual part of the myth of Jason, but, seriously, what the fuck? Why is the entire crew of the Argo composed of skeletons?
The reasoning falls into place as the film continues. Consider the bestiary. The first monster the crew encounters is a Kraken.
Then, after a grand total of one (1) adventure, they arrive at their island destination, where they contend with a giant automaton.
And some giant scorpions.
And a Cyclops or two.
There’s also a Hydra.
So you can probably also guess why Pattie goes all-in on the skeletons.
That’s right. Every monster in this film is drawn wholesale from that forger of childhoods, Ray Harryhausen, and his adaptations of Greek mythology, namely Jason and the Argonauts (1963), Clash of the Titans (1981), and even The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1957), which, like its literary model, borrows the Cyclops story from the Odyssey. The movie doesn’t hide this debt either. The opening sequence, a traditionally animated bit recounting the voyage of Jason (and the best part of the movie), clearly shows Talos (the automaton) and a Cyclops drawn after the style of Harryhausen.
In principle, that’s not a bad thing. The creators love Harryhausen. I love Harryhausen too! But he didn’t care overmuch about fidelity to the Greek myths. The Kraken, as many have noted (including this movie), is a Scandinavian monster, not a Mediterranean one. The scorpions are additions to the Perseus story. Jason’s dragon wasn’t a Hydra (and he didn’t kill it). Harryhausen was either a prophet or had a keen sense of the Rule of Cool. Either way, he knew “Release the Cetus!” had no future.
Pattie displays greater fidelity to the imaginary world of Harryhausen than it does to the Greek myths. This is comparable to the relationship between the Star Wars films and their source material. The original Star Wars is indebted to Flash Gordon and other wonderful pulp science fiction nonsense. Later Star Wars films are based mainly on previous Star Wars films. The lack of imagination eventually becomes suffocating. It doesn’t help that Pattie’s tributes to Harryhausen are uniformly terrible.
Videotape!
French animation is a curious thing, in that all the films are either traditional-looking features done in collaboration with neighboring European countries (often about one of their previous collaborations) or dogshit CGI dross riding the coattails of Illumination or DreamWorks. Icarus, a co-production with Belgium and Luxembourg, belongs to the first category, notwithstanding the absence of literal Nazis (for which see here, here, here, and even here). I don’t think I need to tell you in which category Pattie falls. There’s only French money in this one.
All of my aesthetic objections can be loaded into two truck-size intermodal containers. The first is just the fact that it is chasing the worst trends in American animation. Europe and Japan are the major safe havens for 2D animation. A low budget 2D animated film can still have style and, as a rule, ages much better than CGI. The original Toy Story was state of the art in its day, but now it is starting to look its age. Pattie is at a serious disadvantage since it already looks like ass.
Sometimes literally.
The bad CGI animation is not the only way that it functions like a mid-tier 2000s feature. The scatological humor and knowing pop culture references (you know, “for the adults”) are in full force here. The bodily fluids of the day are vomit and mucus, used creatively only once. Pattie discovers Sam’s betrayal—that he swallowed her ticket to Alexandria—when he vomits it all over another character.
As for pop culture, get a load of this. During a stayover in Syracuse, Sam runs afoul of three rodents with exaggerated Italian accents. Sam needs a way to make things right with Pattie, and the father of the group—he’s not a literal father, but a kind of spiritual father (there’s no good word for it)—will help him in exchange for “an offer you can’t refuse.” This is a reference to the classic film Zootopia (2016), a film the intended audience for Pattie is too young to have seen. It’s not funny there, and it’s less funny here. So who is this reference for?
Continuing this train of thought, the whole first act is a riff on Ratatouille (2007), a film that is even older than Zootopia. Pattie is a mere mouse who dreams of adventure, and her friend Luigi has big dreams too. He wants to join the elite guard of rodent ninja. What am I even typing?
And I say HEY YAY YAY YAY!
Luigi—a nice Greek name, just like Pattie—does not actually go on the voyage. In his place is an old salt (a seagull) with a hook for a hand who introduces himself by abrasively scratching his hook against a rough surface. He is not eaten by a shark. He does initiate a song-and-dance number, the only one in this non-musical.
Dance parties, CGI, sassy talking animals, pop culture references, excrement—Pattie is a perfect storm of everything I don’t want in an animated feature. It’s not a movie-killer, though. The latest Puss in Boots has all of those things, and it is a very good movie indeed. No, the ne plus ultra is how aggressively the movie dumbs down any element of fear or danger. Some of it is subtle. In the lineup of gods, I caught most of the Olympian deities—I counted Zeus, Poseidon, Hera, Hermes, Athena, Apollo, Artemis (inexplicably, of a different race than her biological twin brother), Dionysus, Aphrodite, and Hephaestus—but no Ares. Why is there no Ares? Is he too scary for children? Did they not know how to turn him into a cartoon caricature?
The monsters are not only distressingly toyetic but have barftastic character designs that make a mockery of their Harryhausen forebears. This is their Kraken.
The Cyclopes, for their part, look like toy Trolls but behave like real Trolls in that they will turn into trees (not even stone!) if exposed to sunlight. This is one way of avoiding eye trauma in your kiddie pic. Similarly, the Hydra’s heads, when decapitated, disappear in a puff of smoke instead of flopping to the floor in a pool of blood (as in Disney’s Hercules). The giant scorpions have wrecking balls on their tails instead of proper stingers.
Not that I particularly want copious bloodletting in a movie intended for children, but Harryhausen did not shy away from violence and danger. His films, while landmarks in special effects work, are also matinée movies for younger viewers. The monsters are the real stars, and the humans are just blocks of wood intended to shepherd us from one monster scene to another. Sometimes those blocks of wood are shaped like Caroline Munro (for the men) or Kerwin Mathews (for the… men), but that’s beside the point. I watched Harryhausen religiously when I was already 5 or 6 years old, and that’s really the ideal age to see his stuff. The kids who are subjected to Pattie and the Wrath of Poseidon are being cheated.
*From Justin Martyr’s Second Apology: But the angels… were captivated by love of women, and begat children who are those that are called demons; and besides, they afterwards subdued the human race to themselves, partly by magical writings, and partly by fears and the punishments they occasioned, and partly by teaching them to offer sacrifices, and incense, and libations, of which things they stood in need after they were enslaved by lustful passions; and among men they sowed murders, wars, adulteries, intemperate deeds, and all wickedness. Whence also the poets and mythologists, not knowing that it was the angels and those demons who had been begotten by them that did these things to men, and women, and cities, and nations, which they related, ascribed them to god himself, and to those who were accounted to be his very offspring, and to the offspring of those who were called his brothers, Neptune and Pluto, and to the children again of these their offspring. For whatever name each of the angels had given to himself and his children, by that name they called them.
**From Jerome’s Chronicle: The fable of Proserpina, whom Aidoneus [i.e., Hades] carried off—that is, Orcus, king of the Molossians. His dog named Cerberus, of enormous size, devoured Pirithous, who had come to abduct his (Aidoneus’) wife with Theseus [Theseus is a dick, isn’t he?]. When the latter found himself already in mortal danger, Hercules arrived and set him free. For this reason he (Hercules) is spoken of as if he had been received from the underworld: so Philochorus writes in the second book of the Atthis.
Gavin McDowell is a Hoosier by birth and French by adoption. He received his doctorate in “Languages, History, and Literature of the Ancient World from the Beginning until Late Antiquity” and is currently investigating Aramaic translations of the Bible. He is supremely unqualified to talk about film. For more of his unprovoked movie opinions, see his Letterboxd account.