Mythology Explained

Today we’re going to discuss the forbidden books removed from religion: ancient texts filled with fallen angels, demons, giants, hidden cosmologies, secret revelations, and visions so strange and controversial that many were ultimately excluded from official scripture.

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Most people today believe that Lucifer’s fall is a straightforward story: a powerful angel grows proud, rebels against God, and becomes the Devil. It’s one of the most famous “origin stories” in the world… except there’s a problem. That story — at least in the form we know it — doesn’t actually exist in the Bible. The idea of Lucifer as a fallen angel is something that developed over centuries, shaped by translation choices, theological debate, and later literature. And depending on which tradition you look at — Christian, Jewish, Islamic, or even medieval poetic — the fall of the “Devil” is told in very different ways.

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Hey everyone, welcome to Mythology Explained. I heard this folktale..conspiracy…myth..Whatever you want to call it mentioned on a couple of podcasts recently, and being fairly unfamiliar with it myself, I decided to dig a little deeper. It goes a little something like this.. According to one of the strangest military legends of the modern era, American soldiers operating near Kandahar encountered a creature that should not have existed.

It stood somewhere between ten and twelve feet tall, had long red hair, six fingers on each hand, six toes on each foot—weighed ELEVEN HUNDRED POUNDS and it had the strength to kill armed soldiers with a single blow.

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From biblical Nephilim and ancient giant legends to modern military folklore and alleged government secrecy, the Kandahar Giant remains one of the internet’s most fascinating stories about giants supposedly surviving into the modern world.

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Long before the Olympians ruled from their thrones on Mount Olympus, the cosmos was shaped by older forces — vast, silent, and unknowable.

These were the Primordial Deities or Protogenoi: the first powers of existence, embodying fundamental aspects of reality itself.

And out of the first void came something deeper than shadow. A presence, not just of absence, but of power. She wasn’t the goddess of one place or domain. She didn’t rule the sea or the sky. She simply was — there before the stars, before time, before anything had a name.

Even Zeus, king of the gods, knew better than to cross her.

Because this wasn’t just nightfall.

It was Night itself.

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Christopher Nolan has repeatedly pointed toward one particular line from Emily Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey as an inspiration for his film:

“Tell me about a complicated man.”

It is a line intended to introduce Odysseus as a figure with many different sides—a warrior, liar, husband, survivor, manipulator and one of the most intelligent characters in Greek mythology.

But now Emily Wilson has actually SEEN Christopher Nolan’s version of that character.

And according to her…He isn’t particularly complicated at all.

In a recent interview, Wilson described Nolan’s Odysseus as a “traumatized Jason Bourne”—an action hero who feels guilty about being an action hero. She criticized the removal of his intelligence, disguises, humour and many of the qualities that make him so memorable in Homer’s poem. She also argued that Penelope’s role had been reduced, that the movie failed to humanize many of the victims of Odysseus’s violence and that its moral messaging was ultimately incoherent.

And since that interview, she has apparently become even harsher, describing the film’s writing as “abysmal” and saying...

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So, I went to see The Odyssey.

In spite of the countless dislikes on the movie’s trailers.

In spite of some of the questionable casting choices.

In spite of the almost complete lack of Greek representation in an adaptation of one of the most famous GREEK myths ever written.

And in spite of the MULTIPLE videos made by me criticizing decisions the filmmakers had already revealed.

But despite ALL of those things, I was never going to simply let the movie pass me by. I’m perfectly willing to make judgments based on the information available to me. But I’m also not going to draw a line in the sand and completely make up my mind about a movie I haven’t even seen yet.

And now that I HAVE seen it…

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I did it. I went to see The Odyssey.

I won’t spoil anything here, and I’ve got a full review on the way, but before I release that, I want to talk about Circe—the witch from The Odyssey who transforms Odysseus’s men into pigs and eventually gives him the instructions he needs to reach the entrance to the Underworld. The movie also makes some pretty significant choices about who Circe is, what she represents, and how her encounter with Odysseus actually unfolds.

And that inspired me to take a deep dive into some of her history, examining her origins and how the Circe we saw on screen differs from the Circe of Myth.

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Christopher Nolan has made a movie with real ships, real oceans, one of the most expensive productions in history, and quite possibly the most recognizable cast ever assembled.

And somehow, the most interesting thing about the trailer is how many people seem to hate it.

Hey everyone, welcome to Mythology Explained. Over the last couple of months, I’ve made quite a few videos discussing Christopher Nolan’s upcoming adaptation of The Odyssey. But after the release of the latest countdown trailer, the reaction surrounding this movie has become far more negative than I think anyone expected. The comment section is filled with people mocking the casting, the costumes, the accents, and the general direction of the film.

And if we consider how popular Nolan is in general, the fact that one of HIS trailers has generated this level of hostility is pretty significant.

Interestingly, Nolan recently dismissed much of the pre-release criticism as essentially “irrelevant” (his words not mine) because no one criticizing the film has actually seen it yet.

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Hey everyone, welcome to Mythology Explained. Over the last couple of months, I’ve made quite a few videos discussing Christopher Nolan’s upcoming adaptation of The Odyssey. I’ve talked about casting, the apparent lack of Greek representation in one of the most famous Greek stories ever written, Lupita Nyong’o playing Helen of Troy AND Clytemnestra, the rumours that Elliot Page might be playing Achilles, and more recently, I took a look at Emily Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey, which Christopher Nolan has mentioned on multiple occasions.

And now the FINAL trailer has officially dropped. Here are my thoughts.

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A little while ago, I made a video discussing one of the strangest rumours surrounding Christopher Nolan’s upcoming Odyssey movie: the idea that Elliot Page might be playing Achilles. The reason of course that rumour generated so much discussion is pretty obvious… Achilles is arguably the most famous warrior in all of Greek mythology, the central figure of the Iliad, the son of a goddess, the greatest fighter among the Achaeans, and a character who has been visually and symbolically defined for nearly three thousand years. So when people started speculating that PAGE might be playing Achilles, the internet immediately started arguing about whether that casting made any sense (spoiler: it didn’t), what Achilles was actually supposed to represent, and how closely modern adaptations should stay to the mythological image of these ancient characters.

Anyway..We've got an update.

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