'The Odyssey' is the mother of bad-trip tales. Why are we obsessed with travel disasters?

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Set us as preferred Lost luggage? Tarmac delays? Rental-car blues? No whining about measly travel headaches with the mother of all bad-trip sagas looming on the big screen.“The Odyssey,” Christopher Nolan’s epic take on the Trojan War’s fallout, debuts July 17.Spoiler alert, if you somehow avoided Homer in community college: Nobody, save biblical Job, has had more misery hurled at them.Outflanked by cruel and fickle gods at every turn, legendary Greek hero Odysseus outsmarted a one-eyed giant, suffered through the bewitching Sirens’ song and braved the Underworld’s dead denizens.

He battled oversize cannibals, outmaneuvered a witch and lost scores of men at every turn.Then made it back to Ithaca after 10 years only to find his home overrun by suitors wooing his wife.

Entertainment & Arts If you want tickets to Christopher Nolan’s epic ‘The Odyssey,’ you’ll need to get in line.On Thursday, wait times on the AMC website reached an hour as hopeful moviegoers scrambled to secure seats.It’s a tale packed with bad decisions, failure, heartbreak and death.

Perfect story fodder, given how much we love bad-trip stories.We consume lists of the worst airports and wonder at accounts of illness-plagued cruises.

We scroll through videos starring unruly passengers or mangled bags, and read about the last resting place for lost luggage.Hollywood has created a whole franchise around road trips gone wrong.

Think of “The Hangover” or “Sideways” or “Little Miss Sunshine.” Screenwriter-director John Hughes perfected the big-screen comedic treatment of travel gone south with classics such as “Home Alone,” “National Lampoon’s Vacation” and “Planes, Trains and Automobiles.”Let’s not even talk about the “three-hour tour” that left Gilligan and friends stranded on a deserted island for 98 ep...