For a movie of its type (epic action fantasy), the Odyssey was probably well done; I don't have much to compare it with since blockbuster spectacles are not my thing. Saw it yesterday with friends who did not like it. I wanted to see it to complete the cultural experience we are having with the new Emily Wilson translation and all the online commentary including the tattooed British-American Wilson's scholarly panning of the film. I lined up the 3 or 4 translations at the library and invited people to compare the opening lines. This site shows six translations side by side. In Wilson's introduction, I learned that the Greek of the original is written in dactyllic hexameter, six dactyls per line. Her translation is in iambic pentameter. I looked to see if there were English poems written in dactylic hexameter and found Longfellow's Evangeline. Since Longfellow was a classics professor and he was writing a North American epic poem about the travails of separated lovers, he knew to elevate it by using the meter of the Greek classics. I'm pleased that the story of my ancestors got the epic treatment. This little Coleridge rhyme helps me remember meter:
   Trochee trips from long to short;
   From long to long in solemn sort
   Slow Spondee stalks, strong foot!, yet ill able
   Ever to come up with Dactyl's trisyllable.
   Iambics march from short to long.
   With a leap and a bound the swift Anapests throng.