When Christopher Nolan’s new The Odyssey film was announced, many people were understandably excited. Although composed nearly three millennia ago, the epic was tailor-made for today’s big screen, featuring exotic locations, tons of spectacle, strong men and beautiful women, and dealing with the enduring themes of home, heroism, and survival.
And yet, for all this, the only relatively recent, large-scale adaptation for the screen was a made-for-TV film in 1997 with cheap production (just a small step above a typical episode of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys with Kevin Sorbo). Despite its shortcomings, the movie at least stayed faithful to the source material and maintained a brisk pace as well as a spirit of fun.
Nevertheless, in an era of reboots, it only made sense for Hollywood to give the Odyssey the epic treatment it deserved under the direction of a guy like Christopher Nolan. He could enlist the necessary talent and apply the necessary cinematic techniques to do to Odysseus what he did for Batman.
But every piece of news, particularly the new lengthy (4000+ words) puff piece from Time magazine, has quickly eroded any hope this movie is worth seeing. With his horrible casting, drab cinematography, and intent to explore Odysseus’ inner demons, Nolan seems committed to ruining his most ambitious film yet. Rather than save American cinema from its current death spiral, he has somehow brought all of its worst qualities together in this new project.
DEI Casting
The most obvious offense has been his choice of actors. Outside of Matt Damon playing Odysseus, nearly every other person in this movie has little reason to be there. Starting from the top, Anne Hathaway is a mediocre actress with too little depth, range, or charisma to play Odysseus’ wife Penelope. The same should be said for Tom Holland, playing Odysseus’ son Telemachus. Although both of them have risen to fame playing likable young adults, they will be difficult to believe as a grief-stricken queen desperately waiting for her husband and an adult son growing up in his father’s shadow.
Of course, what has elicited more outcry has been Nolan’s brazenly woke casting for the other characters. To play Athena, he cast Zendaya, an actress who suffers from incurable “resting bitch face,” can’t act, and is too young and unserious for the part. For Helen of Troy, the princess whose superlative beauty “launched a thousand ships,” he cast Lupita Nyong’o, a mostly forgettable actress who is known more for appearing in the Black Panther movies than being a paragon of female perfection. If one had to guess why exactly Nolan picked these actresses, it seems that being a woman of color had something to do with it.
As for men of color, Nolan has this covered by casting the rapper Travis Scott as a bard in order to communicate “the idea that this story has been handed down as oral poetry, which is analogous to rap.” Considering that the epic poem is an art form that celebrates the ideals of an ancient culture with larger-than-life characters in a larger-than-life setting while rap is a contemporary art form that glamorizes urban decay, vice, and criminality, this connection is a bit of a stretch.
Nolan also made sure to represent the elderly with the inclusion of Charlize Theron as the ageless nymph Calypso and John Leguizamo as Odysseus’ lieutenant Eumaeus. At 50 years old, Theron evidently clings to her glory days of being a bombshell/action star. Meanwhile, John Leguizamo is an unfunny 65-year-old comedian best known for spouting leftist propaganda and whining about racism.
But the most controversial decision (to put it mildly) for casting has been that of Elliot Page, formerly known as Ellen Page. Setting aside the rumor that she might play Greece’s mightiest warrior Achilles, simply looking at Page after her transgender surgeries is highly distracting, if not outright disturbing. Here was a young attractive actress starring in big movies like Juno, X-Men: Days of Future Past, and Inception now reappearing as a scrawny pubescent boy. With the transgender insanity behind us, most people would probably agree Page needs mental and emotional help more than a prominent role in a big-budget movie.
Colorless Visuals and ‘Complicated Man’
For the few who can get past these glaring problems with the cast, there are also the dull, colorless visuals of the film. As popular YouTuber Critical Drinker remarks in a recent video, the scenes from the trailer are dreary and uninspired. Even a person with passing familiarity with the Odyssey will note how this is the very opposite of the energy and vibrant imagery of Homer’s narrative.
Perhaps Nolan does this because he wants to emphasize Odysseus’ interior conflicts, potentially the worst aspect about this film. Working off the inaccurate and mediocre translation of the epic from the woke feminist Emily Wilson, Nolan clearly aims to tell the story of a “complicated man,” not an epic hero. Nolan’s Odysseus is racked with doubt, homesickness, and guilt, a far cry from the confident, curious, and brave Odysseus of Homer and poets like Alfred Tennyson and Dante Alighieri. In a telling moment, when asked whether this new Odysseus would merely be an ancient Greek iteration of his Oppenheimer or Batman films, Nolan responded evasively, “You have to be comfortable with repeating yourself, if it’s right for the project.”
Rather than spend so much money on what seems to be a bloated wokefest, Odyssey fans could do better by reading Robert Fagles’ translation of the poem and watching the 1997 film, along with Troy, the 2004 film adaptation of the Iliad starring Brad Pitt. And if they have kids and like Jack Russell Terriers, the Wishbone episode on the Odyssey is also worth checking out.
Not only could Nolan have made a fortune with this new movie, he could have created something beautiful and enduring. Instead, he and his team seem primed to make an epic flop that few people will remember. Just like Odysseus left behind Troy to recover his kingdom, it’s well past time that Hollywood leave the woke behind and recover its place in popular culture.
