Andy Weir is very good at using science and problem solving to drive his plots forward. I like to imagine it as what humans could accomplish without class oppression standing in our way.
State capitalist is a fine description so long as one understands that to mean it's a transitional system. Socialism can only be fully acheived (marked by the abolition of class) at an international scale, but a workers' state can be established in individual countries and develop the forces of production there in the mean time. This not only serves the purpose of internationally demonstrating the superior suitability of the workers as a ruling class compared to the bourgeoisie, but builds the necessary material conditions that gives rise to full socialism. The official CPC theory is that China is on the socialist road guided by the whole process people's democracy. They're 2035 goal is to basically realize socialist modernization, and by 2049 to be a great modern socialist country.
One way to think about it is that China has a bourgeoisie the same way Great Britain had a monarch and aristocracy in the 19th century: the old ruling class is deliberately propped up to the rest of the world for appearance's sake, but their power has been hollowed out to the point that they're mere figureheads who provide cover to the actual ruling class that would otherwise be treated with extreme suspicion & hostility. China's bourgeoisie face many restrictions on investing capital, liquidating capital, operating a business, setting prices, and are broadly subject to have their assets taken by the state for any number of reasons. Of course, they're still able to become immensely wealthy and live in luxury, but they face significant scrutiny and are culturally encouraged to live quiet lives. This enables the PRC to operate a market economy that on the whole functions dramatically better than market economies operated by a bourgeois ruling class, and that's before you consider the large share of their economy that is directly controlled by the state and the central planning apparatus that reigns over the entire economy. It's a truly impressive system (granted, all centrally-planned systems are impressive relative to capitalist systems), and perhaps their greatest stroke of genius was taking advantage of cold war geopolitics to become the cornerstone of the global economy.
And what's so cool is that this is just a peak at what international proletarian rule could accomplish to bring about full socialism and the abolition of class.
I understood "sailing West to honor the dead" to mean sailing geographically West, as in the only cardinal direction you could sail in starting from the East Mediterranean sea to go into exile. That's at least what I understood Penelope was proposing when she originally suggested they run away by sailing West to escape Agamemnon.
Depends on your preferences, but I personally really liked it. I enjoyed it as a theatrical experience, and I appreciated that it depicted the ancient world as a whole as brutal & violent (as opposed to the typical fascist propaganda that is sword and sandal movies romanticizing ancient "Western" societies). I found it interesting that Nolan introduced a diegetic anticipation of the bronze age collapse flipping the hero's journey from the source material on its head into a journey of grand reckoning. It's got a sharp anti-imperialist message and it pisses off right wingers, so I'd recommend it if any of that sounds cool to you. Second Wind did a review and analysis on their channel that I thought was really good: https://youtu.be/AC4ABA1hbRw
spoiler
In my view which is similar to the Second Wind reviewer, Nolan applies the homecoming (νοστος) theme of the source material as a metaphor for American imperialism coming home. The big twist that the Greeks are the true cause of the bronze age collapse which is blamed on rumored sea peoples is straightforwardly a mirror of the ongoing collapse of Pax Americana, down to the classic American technique of blaming some migrant outgroup while ignoring that said migrants are fleeing the warzones America creates around the world. Everywhere Odysseus and his men go, they're treated as the belligerent imperialists that they are. We also see back in Ithaca the same belligerence reflected most directly in the boorish suitors, but there's a normative belligerence that we see across the Greek socities, whether it abuse of puppies/dogs (aka man's best friend) or the maintenance of hegemonic patriarchy and slavery (again, a very obvious mirror of the US). While at first we think Odysseus eats the lotus flower because of PTSD, it becomes clear by the time we're caught up that he's eating the lotus flower to forget what his monstrous actions and to forget his home so he would not have to return and face the consequences of his actions. I do think Nolan intended that to be a critique of our attribution of victimhood to veterans who have PTSD, where the reality is that they are the perpetrators of trauma at our behest so that the rest of us in the imperial core can benefit from our imperial plunder detached from the traumatic cost of obtaining it. Odysseus is delivered home by the gods not because he has been morally redeemed, but as the deliverer of the fated imperial reckoning which ushers in the bronze age collapse. It ends on the hopeful musing that with collapse there can then be renewal and that in time Odysseus' mistakes (i.e. America's mistakes) will be forgotten. I think there's something subtle about that final line. It's not that Odysseus' mistakes will be forgiven, but merely forgotten, implying his mistakes would have so little relevance to the present that they have neither need nor want to remember them.