'The Return' is an epic 'Odyssey' movie. Why isn't there a Homeric Cinematic Universe yet?

A man endures a long trip home, one that involves extraordinary creatures, dangerous obstacles and psychological challenges, so he can see his loved ones again.

Give the guy high tech armor or a magical hammer and it could be a superhero story. Involve a piece of jewelry – or a sorcerer’s wand – and it’s a fantastical journey.

The 3,000-year-old tale of Odysseus in Homer’s epic poem “The Odyssey” may not be the coolest or even a frequent subject of Hollywood adaptations but it certainly doesn’t need any accessorizing. In his treacherous quest to return to Ithaca after the Trojan War and reunite with his wife Penelope, the Greek soldier faces gods and goddesses, the menacing Cyclops and sea monsters Scylla and Charybdis.

So why don’t we have a Homeric Cinematic Universe at this point?

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"The Return” (in theaters now) might not be "Iron Man" but it's something. The drama focuses on the last bit of “The Odyssey,” where Odysseus (Ralph Fiennes) washes up on the shores of Ithaca after 20 years away a naked, sinewy shell of the warrior he once was. Suitors hound Queen Penelope (Juliette Binoche) and threaten their son Telemachus (Charlie Plummer), and Odysseus has to overcome PTSD and other issues to realize the man he needs to be now.

The movie depicts Odysseus not as a “young strapping hero,” director Uberto Pasolini says, but as “a man who has the pain of 20 years of violence, travels and of guilt for what he has done (and) for returning home without the people he was supposed to look after.”

Homer’s “The Odyssey” has had so much influence on entertainment and it contains everything Hollywood loves. There's at least an Odysseus trilogy to be done, maybe even a Sirens Disney+ series. Yet no one's put it on screen in a major, defining way at a time when much lesser works of literature are adapted regularly. Kirk Douglas starred in the 1954 Italian film "Ulysses," Armand Assante was Odysseus in the 1997 TV miniseries "The Odyssey, and the Coen brothers’ very loosely adapted Homer for the 2000 movie “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” (Even Homer’s “The Iliad” – an “Odyssey” prequel, if you will – got the Brad Pitt treatment with 2004’s “Troy.”)

"The Odyssey" is "the template for movies,” says Jeff Bock, box-office analyst for Exhibitor Relations. “It's very difficult to green-light anything if it's not based on something. Well, ‘The Odyssey’ is one of the oldest stories alive, so you got IP (intellectual property) and then some, because everybody is aware of this.”

“The Return” has been in the works for 30 years, since Pasolini befriended cowriter John Collee and they bonded over a shared “Odyssey” adoration. “We took longer to make the film than Odysseus took to go to Troy, win the war, sleep with all the beautiful women around the Mediterranean, get home, kill 108 suitors and then get back to Penelope,” Pasolini quips.

After decades of juggling other projects, the director and Collee collaborated with cowriter Edward Bond (who died at 89 this year) on a narrative that tossed out gods and myths for “an odyssey of the mind and of the spirit rather than a physical journey,” Pasolini says.

“When you deconstruct ‘The Odyssey,' you begin to realize that most of it is a homecoming," adds Collee. "They fit in all these increasingly bizarre adventures in the middle to pad it out, but actually, the essence is this very domestic story.”

It’s also a really, really long one: Emily Wilson’s acclaimed 2018 translation of “The Odyssey” is a hefty 592 pages. Not that literary doorstops like “The Lord of the Rings” or the Bible have stopped filmmakers from mining them.

Maybe “The Odyssey” has a bit of academic stink? It's safe to assume most people who have tackled Homer in their lives read the epic travelogue less for fun and more for “I better get an A on this test.”

“It’s a great read,” argues Mallory Young, Regents Professor Emeritus at Texas’ Tarleton State University who taught "The Odyssey" to college students for more than four decades. But “it’s also a commitment.”

Pop culture tends to simplify, not to present complexity, and Hollywood might not jibe naturally with "The Odyssey" being “unapologetically ambiguous,” Young adds. “Everything about the work and its hero introduces complications and contradictions. Is Odysseus a hero or an antihero? Is he the first modern civilized man or a vicious barbarian? Is he the man who unjustly suffers or the one who causes suffering for himself and others?"

Collee notes that “Hollywood has become less and less literate in a strange way.” He points out one scene in “The Return” where they took a memorable moment from “The Odyssey” – Odysseus having to prove himself by shooting an arrow through 12 axe heads – and figured out, via academic research, how to show that authentically.

“Now, that's a level of interrogation of this classic text that I think, in the Marvel universe, probably is so much easier to just invent some kind of guy with fantastic powers, put him in the modern world and make a lot of jokes about the here and now that we know so well,” Collee says.

Still, shouldn't some filmmaker over the years have been crazy/ambitious enough to try an “Odyssey” world-building effort? “I don't know. We needed to have Uberto to come and save us,” "Return" star Binoche says with a laugh.

For the Oscar-winning actress, “The Return” resonates because Odysseus represents the male side of us who "who wants to go out and conquer the world" and Penelope is the internal part, and both aren't whole until they come home, "a place where you go back into your real nature in a way.”

“The Odyssey” offers a timeless insight into who we are, Young says, “the simultaneous longing for the thrill of adventure and the comfort of home, for revenge and forgiveness, for violence and love, for power and submission. Humans are complex and contradictory, terrible and wonderful. And through it all, we keep on swimming.”

And for a movie studio or a confident bunch of filmmakers, it’s a sprawling uncharted potential universe worth a deep dive. Just look out for the sea monsters.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'The Return' adapts 'The Odyssey.' Is a Homer movie universe next?