In a comment piece, Guardian critic Tom Service argues that opera offers a far more thrilling way to experience Greek myth than Christopher Nolan's new film The Odyssey, which he found visually flat, dramatically monotonous and overlong. He is baffled by the film's huge popularity, criticising both its script and its score by Ludwig Göransson, which he says relies on conventional Hollywood leitmotifs rather than genuine musical strangeness, despite a well-played recreated aulos on the soundtrack.

Service points out that Nolan's three-hour film runs without an interval, longer than any single sitting in the operatic canon, including Wagner's two-and-a-half-hour Das Rheingold, and suggests that anyone who can endure it is well prepared for opera's demands. He recommends several operas inspired by ancient Greek stories as superior alternatives, including Strauss's Elektra, Mozart's Idomeneo and Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, praising their music, storytelling and emotional power, while noting these works do include intervals.