Some on the Right have spent the last several months complaining about Christopher Nolan’s “Odyssey.” The controversy has largely centered on two things: transgender-identifying Elliot Page playing a male soldier (but not Achilles, as rumors suggested) and the race-blind casting, particularly the choice to feature black actress Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy.
X owner Elon Musk tweeted in May that “Chris Nolan desecrated the Odyssey.” Earlier this month, the Twitter account Wall Street Mav, which has over a million followers, predicted “financial disaster.”
Just a day after its release, “The Odyssey” is already proving haters wrong. Forget the critics’ score (though that is hovering at 95%). On Rotten Tomatoes, audiences gave the film an even higher 97% score. It earned $17.6 million on Thursday, the day before its official release, and the numbers keep growing.
Online outrage doesn’t always translate to the real world. And in this instance, perhaps the legendary “Interstellar” and “The Dark Knight” director knew a thing or two about what audiences were craving.
“As a filmmaker, you’re looking for gaps in cinematic culture, things that haven’t been done before,” Nolan said in an interview last year. “And what I saw is that all of this great mythological cinematic work that I had grown up with — Ray Harryhausen movies and other things — I’d never seen that done with the sort of weight and credibility that an A-budget and a big Hollywood, IMAX production could do.”
In a year dominated by sequels — the year’s top films so far have been “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” and “Toy Story 5” — Nolan’s “Odyssey” revives a classic story for a new generation who, if we’re being honest, probably were never going to thumb through a copy of “The Odyssey” (even the Emily Wilson translation favored by liberals). It’s become popular internet slang to respond to a lack of pop culture knowledge by saying “we’re losing the ancient texts.” But when it comes to stories such as “The Odyssey,” we actually are.
This means Nolan’s “Odyssey” comes at the perfect time. The archetypes, the themes, and the drama of Homer — it’s all there. Nolan raised some eyebrows by marketing the film with the tagline “defy the gods.” If you know anything about “The Odyssey,” you should know that you cannot, in fact, defy the gods. But in the actual film, Nolan makes that clear.
“The Odyssey” is a big, glorious summer blockbuster based on a pillar of the Western canon. It explores mercy, hospitality, vengeance, family bonds, honor, and, of course, homecoming. The score is bracing, the 60-foot puppet cyclops is nightmare-fuel, and Robert Pattinson is particularly chilling as the suitor Antinous.
That said, Page’s role as Sinon (a character from Virgil’s “Aeneid”), does distract from the narrative. Nolan worked with Page on “Inception” in 2010 (a decade before she began identifying as a man), and he likes to recast actors he’s worked with before. But with just a few minutes of screen time, Sinon’s brief appearances can’t distract from the greatness of the rest of the film.
The race-blind casting, on the other hand, allows for some stellar performances, mostly notably Zendaya as Athena and Himesh Patel as Odysseus’ second in command, Eurylochus.
With the “Odyssey” controversy, conservatives are getting hung up on the details (some more troublesome than others) when the headline is that one of Hollywood’s best directors just made a three-hour long film about a father returning home to his family, facing terrifying monsters and deftly wielding his bow and arrows on the way. It’s beautifully shot, it has mass appeal, and there’s little in the film itself to subvert Homer’s epic tale, which is now reaching a new audience.
Ignore the performative “Odyssey” hate, and go enjoy the film.
***
This article is part of Upstream, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
