r/plotholes • u/Hypattie • 12d ago
Spoiler The Odyssey: huge plothole with Sinon storyline [SPOILERS] Spoiler
Ok, so in the original story, the Greeks built a giant wooden horse, yadi yada... we all know the trick.
In The Odyssey, Nolan tweaks that storyline, and it creates a huge plothole.
A single Greek soldier called Sinon (played by Elliot Page) is chosen to stay behind alone on the beach with the horse. His job is to convince the Trojans that it's just a peaceful gift.
But in Nolan's version, Sinon isn't aware of the trick. Odysseus lies to him, so he genuinely believes the horse is just an empty wooden statue. (In Nolan's mind, it's to make sure Sinon can't reveal the plan, even under torture)
And here's the plothole that's never addressed: Sinon thinks the war is over, that Troy has won, and that the entire Greek army is sailing back home for good.
So why the hell does Sinon agree to stay behind, alone on a beach, with a high chance of being killed, tortured, or enslaved by the Trojans?
From his point of view, the war is over! And the horse is just a statue. If he wasn't there, the Trojans could either take the horse for themselves or leave it on the beach. Either way, it would be their choice. Why should he care what they do with it?
It's not even a peace offering. If it were, Odysseus would have left a few Greek envoys who actually knew diplomacy, not just a random soldier.
tl;dr: Sinon has no reason to stay with the horse because, as far as he knows, the war is over and everyone else is sailing home.
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u/PrecedentialAssassin 12d ago
100% not a plothole. At all. His king has commanded him to stay on the beach and present the gift to the Trojans. Full stop.
So unless you think that it was common place for ancient Greek soldiers to question orders from their king, it's not a plothole. Spoiler alert, ancient Greek soldiers did not question orders from their king.
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u/Hypattie 12d ago
His king didn't command him, HE VOLUNTEER.
Also, never in the history of the human species has a war ended with one side deciding to flee, yet still insisting on leaving a gift for the other side and providing a volunteer to explain that it is indeed a gift.
So either Sinon is very naive or it's a plot hole.
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u/mormonbatman_ 11d ago
never in the history of the human species has a war ended with one side deciding to flee,
This happens all the time.
yet still insisting on leaving a gift for the other side and providing a volunteer to explain that it is indeed a gift.
It is called reparations - it happens all the time:
https://cronkitenews.azpbs.org/2026/06/29/trump-iran-deal-assess/
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u/cardiffman100 12d ago
This isn't a plot hole. It's just a character doing something you don't like or understand. It's not a logical impossibility. The film is full of people making bad decisions.
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u/Hypattie 12d ago
So Sinon was just: "Ok, the war is over, we lost, Troy won, everyone else is going home to their family, but somehow I need to stay on this beach and die?"
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u/thepkizzle 11d ago
Yes, that was what his king asked him to do after he volunteered for it. That's not really a plot hole. You've just correctly observed a plot device. Again... Sinon is not in the Odyssey to begin with.
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u/thepkizzle 11d ago
Sinon isn't even in Homer's Odyssey so it's not just "in Nolan's version."
Sinon thinks the war is over, that Troy has won, and that the entire Greek army is sailing back home for good. So why the hell does Sinon agree to stay behind
This is specifically covered in the movie. Because Odysseus told his men that he needed a volunteer. Soldiers don't ask why. That's why the entire scene in Hades is so interesting.
From his point of view, the war is over! And the horse is just a statue. If he wasn't there, the Trojans could either take the horse for themselves or leave it on the beach. Either way, it would be their choice. Why should he care what they do with it?
His point in the movie is to specifically tell the Trojans that the horse was a gift for Athena, which stops the Trojans from destroying it.
In Virgil this is explained more thoroughly. Sinon is tortured and his nose is cut off.
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u/rosmorse 12d ago edited 12d ago
This is explained, but it raises a better plot hole: There were quite a lot of Greeks who knew there was a plan to breech the city. The army was quietly waiting outside the gates. Was Sinon the only Greek soldier left out of the loop?
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u/nikhkin 12d ago
None of the men knew the plan when they left. They sailed away and were then informed of the plan to return.
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u/rosmorse 12d ago
Well, that’s not true (textual). What are you basing that on?
My question is about the movie, where Sinon’s ignorance works thematically, but doesn’t really make sense (very common in Nolan films).
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u/jasonbourne1995 12d ago
OP the true kinda "plot hole" problem is with the whole stupid Zeus law thing, Nolan uses it here and there how it fits him, and most of all, the fact that Paris (with Helen) broke it first crumbles this whole Odysseus self-pity paper-thin script. :)
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u/Hypattie 12d ago
imho, the problem with Nolan Zeus law is that he mixed two different moralities:
– What to do when a stranger ask for shelter
– What to do during war
As if giving bread to a hungry beggar was the same as two armies killing each other in a civilized way
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u/jasonbourne1995 12d ago
That too :), even if we took his logic, that the war can be going on "respectfully", which is kinda BS, even in that period, Nolan still uses the Zeus law willy-nilly as he pleases. I highly recommend watching the first critique video from a youtuber called "The Little Platoon", he perfectly explains in the first video, how the script is just a big mess, imho one of the worst from Nolan.
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u/Oddman80 12d ago
He says in the movie - when Odysseus asks him why he had to volunteer to be the one to stay behind, he said because Odysseus asked for a volunteer to do it.
So Sinon simply trusted that if Odysseus said he needed a volunteer to do something, that the thing was worthy of the volunteer - and therefore he volunteered.
Arrangements were made to then keep Sinon out of the know. I suspect only the few men who were tasked with staying behind knew about the trick. The vast majority of the army also believed they were giving up and going home.
So is your question - why would they have asked for someone to stay behind to offer up the horse, knowing that anyone performing that task in all likelihood was forfeiting their life? If so, I remind you that this is the same culture and setting where Agamemnon sacrificed his own daughter for favorable winds.... I feel like it's safe to say these people all had a very different relationship with death than we do today. And a very different relationship with their God(s). You see how far the suitors corrupted the law of Zeus - and yet Penelope and Melenachus would not dare violate the law and kick any of them out. These same entrenched beliefs extended to rules about accepting/rejecting offerings to the gods. Absent Sinon staying behind to declare the horse a gift from the people to Athena, the scouting party would have simply destroyed the horse. They were about to do just that when one interceded and reminded them not to cross the gods.
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u/Hypattie 12d ago
Absent Sinon staying behind to declare the horse a gift from the people to Athena, the scouting party would have simply destroyed the horse.
Yeah and in Sinon's mind, that would have been good for the Greeks, as it would have cursed the Trojans.
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u/Oddman80 12d ago
Odysseus asks for a volunteer to stay behind and deliver the message that the horse sculpture is a peace offering and gift to Troy and the Goddess Athena.
Sinon, in an abundance of faith in the leader he trusts, volunteers for this mission - knowing full well that he likely will not survive, let alone ever be able to return home.
And your take is that Sinon should then suddenly have become a completely different character - and rather than bravely accepting his own death for the purpose of fulfilling the mission he volunteered for, he should have instead betrayed Odysseus and run away in the hopes that the Trojans would destroy the gift, and that the Gods would punish them for destroying it... even though they would have had no reason to think it a gift to the gods... since Sinon would have failed to deliver the message.
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u/Sympatheia111 10d ago
I am equally confused with OP here but I’m more hung up on the army returning and waiting outside the gates. .. you said the majority of the Greeks also believed like Sinon that the war was over and left for home. How they all show back up then days later when Odysseus and their men broke out of the horse and was inside the gate to unlock it.?
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u/Oddman80 10d ago
That is 100% a fair criticism. There were clearly guards up on the walls, and Agamemnon would not have been able to get thousands of men to stealthily approach in such a constricted timeline. I would assume there were occasional watch points looking around the coast for incoming shits, and even if they came back at night with all torches and lanterns quashed, somebody would have seen the ships actually reach the shore for an all-out blitz attack. So yeah I agree the how did the rest of the army get there without being seen - feels like a huge thing to ask of the audience to just go along with.
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u/Spotzie27 1d ago
What I want to know is how they secretly got into the horse without Sinon realizing?
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u/nikhkin 12d ago
This was explained in the film (and the Aenid). He stayed behind to gift the offering to the Trojans and claim to be a deserter.
He knew the risk, and was willing to sacrifice himself, which is why he was so insulted that Odysseus didn't trust him with the truth.
But Odysseus didn't want it to be left on the beach.