While Helen is the face that launched a thousand ships, Odysseus is the archetype that launched billions of men across the ages to fulfill destinies that lead them to home and family.
I haven't seen the movie and haven't read the epic (unless you count an illustrated version for children) in over seventy years, but I have a hunch that your interpretation of Nolan's version is accurate and insightful.
But I suspect also that he had to adjust the story in some way for modern viewers and not necessarily because of a postmodern sensibility. Although humans have not changed in all ways since the Bronze Age, we have changed in some significant ways. These make it difficult indeed to see the world through Homer's eyes. Postmodernism did not invent the primacy of compassion, say, over brutality. Christianity originated as a marriage between classical (Greco-Roman) civilization and biblical (Judeo-Christian) civilization. That had a profound and enduring effect on how people have understood masculinity ever since (at least as a cultural ideal among those who have inherited the Western canon).
I haven't seen the movie and haven't read the epic (unless you count an illustrated version for children) in over seventy years, but I have a hunch that your interpretation of Nolan's version is accurate and insightful.
But I suspect also that he had to adjust the story in some way for modern viewers and not necessarily because of a postmodern sensibility. Although humans have not changed in all ways since the Bronze Age, we have changed in some significant ways. These make it difficult indeed to see the world through Homer's eyes. Postmodernism did not invent the primacy of compassion, say, over brutality. Christianity originated as a marriage between classical (Greco-Roman) civilization and biblical (Judeo-Christian) civilization. That had a profound and enduring effect on how people have understood masculinity ever since (at least as a cultural ideal among those who have inherited the Western canon).
At some point, no one will be around to explain how history and language have been altered. The new masculinity will just BE.
Maybe. But I have hope.