The Odyssey: When Is The Best Time To Use The Bathroom?

Contains spoilers for "The Odyssey"

The Oscar-winning director Christopher Nolan's brand-new adaptation of "The Odyssey" is very good. It is also, however, quite long. At a whopping 173 minutes, this massive film — based on the epic poem attibuted to the famous Grecian named Homer — runs for just under three hours, and if you're a well-hydrated person or you just happened to grab an extra-large soda on your way into the theater, you're probably going to need to use the restroom.

As you experience the trials and tribulations of the long-lost war hero Odysseus (a striking Matt Damon), who's instrumental in winning the Trojan War but gets his men hopelessly lost during the long journey home, you might want to pop out for a quick pee. There are, fortunately and unfortunately, a lot of scenes in this movies that are absolute must-sees. Nearly any scene featuring Odysseus' grieving wife Penelope (Anne Hathaway) is vital, and when it comes to some of the trials encountered by Odysseus and his men, like Bill Irwin's hungry cyclops Polyphemus and Samantha Morton's quietly vengeful witch Circe, the sequences are so technically impressive that you won't be able to tear your eyes away from the screen even if your bladder is in danger of imminently bursting.

That's why we here at Looper are providing the answers — the real, serious, boots-on-the-ground journalism you all want and crave. We're here to answer the question you're all asking: when should you go to the bathroom during the long runtime of "The Odyssey?"

If you're at all familiar with the narrative of "The Odyssey," you know about the island that contains the famed sirens, which sing a song that lures unsuspecting sailors to their deaths (usually, they get so distracted and pulled in by the song that they simply drive their boats into deadly rock structures). Thanks to an interlude with Tiresias (James Remar) in Hades shortly beforehand — a completely unmissable sequence, thanks to Nolan's astonishing visuals and a striking performance from his "Inception" collaborator Elliot Page as Odysseus' fallen soldier Sinon — Odysseus knows the sirens are in the path of his ship. He orders his men to stuff wax into their ears so they can safely row past the alluring women on the rocks, but, prideful as Odysseus can be, he insists that his men tie him to the ship's mast so that he can be the first man to survive hearing the siren song.

Yes, this sequence is really cool, but narratively, it's not essential — and it also goes on for a little bit, especially because Odysseus recounts exactly how tantalizing the song was after they pass the island. (One of his men also tears the wax out and leaps from the boat, presumably swimming to his death.) Make sure to be quick about it, though; right after this, the boat encounters the twin terrors of Scylla and Charybdis, a monster and a whirlpool, and must make a risky choice between them.

If you make it past the siren song sequence but realize that you absolutely can't tough it out until the final credits roll on "The Odyssey," we've got good news. There's one other sequence where you can get away with quickly ducking out of the theater, and that's the final voyage of Odysseus' boat. After Scylla and Charybdis, the men park their boat on a remote island filled with cows. The thing is that the cows are chosen by the sun god Helios, and Tiresias previously warned Odysseus that his men will be cursed to die if they devour the cows, so they all promise to survive on vegetation.

There is no vegetation, and the winds take so long to change that everyone begins to starve. All of the men, save for Odysseus, have a barbecue ... and when the winds change, they leave the island only for the sea god Poseidon to work in tandem with Helios and send a deadly storm. If you're at all sensitive to strobe lights or just really need to use the bathroom, duck out as soon as this journey begins; you'll have time to get back from the bathroom for the film's stunning grand finale in Ithaca.

"The Odyssey" is in theaters now — but watch this before you head to the theater.