Don’t Forget About 'Troy'

In another timeline, we would’ve gotten the first true blockbuster adaptation of The Odyssey about 20 years ago, probably starring Sean Bean—one of the all-time great swords-and-sandal character actors (shout out Boromir, shout out Ned Stark)—as the titular journeyman. Alas, that wasn’t the will of the [Hollywood] gods. Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy, a loose adaptation of the Illiad with Bean in a supporting role as Odysseus alongside Brad Pitt’s Achilles, was a commercial hit—one of the highest-grossing films of 2004, in fact—but the reviews were so tepid that everyone involved seems to have pretty much washed their hands of the project, dried them on some loose bills from that half-billion-dollar haul, and moved on. If the reception had been better, I’m almost certain some exec would have cracked the Sparknotes on Homer’s epic and got to work developing The Odyssey as a spinoff for Bean’s Odysseus.