The upcoming Christopher Nolan film "The Odyssey" is shaping up to be prime culture war rage bait, but for very good reasons.
As I wrote previously, Nolan has taken quite a few liberties with the film. American accents, steel plate armor, and more. Since then, some of the rumors have also been confirmed. Actress Elliot Page, famous for "transitioning" into a man, is playing Achilles of all people. Rapper Travis Scott will play the Poet, and Lupita Nyong'o will play Helen of Troy as well as her sister Clytemnestra, who are not twins in the story.
Read: People Should Be Angry With Christopher Nolan's Take on 'The Odyssey'
These aren't decisions the public is taking lightly. The trailers for Nolan's movies are receiving far more downvotes on YouTube than he's ever had. As Geeks and Gamers noted, this is a first for Nolan, who is typically a celebrated director:
The Odyssey has become the most disliked movie of Christopher Nolan's career.
Christopher Nolan has spent nearly two decades building one of the strongest reputations in Hollywood. From The Dark Knight trilogy to Inception and Oppenheimer, Nolan cultivated a fanbase willing to show up for almost anything with his name attached. But the first trailer for The Odyssey appears to be testing that loyalty in a way no previous Nolan film ever has.
While the trailer is not technically “ratioed” on its main upload, the negative response surrounding the project is unlike anything Nolan has faced before.
While the main American trailer still has more upvotes than downvotes, the Universal Pictures Canada trailer does actually have 23,000 downvotes compared to 10,000 upvotes.
None of this should be surprising. As I stated in my previous article, people aren't upset about Nolan taking some liberties in his version of the tale; it's that Nolan is taking specific liberties:
But what Nolan is doing is taking the same story, the same setting, the same time period, and he's just tossing out everything that would make sense to inject something that is, frankly, decision-making based on socio-political modernity. That has never been, and never will be, something that the vast majority of audiences will appreciate. This is only going to please a small section of our populace, and as per the pattern, many of them won't even show up to watch it.
These are only the kind of changes you would make if you're trying to actively impress one kind of people, and that's the Hollywood elite. There is literally no other reason these changes would happen. These are specifically made to introduce elements of a political persuasion. Elliot Page makes absolutely no sense as Achilles, never mind that Helen of Troy makes no sense being black.
People are disliking the trailers because of these changes, yes, but it's deeper than that.
They dislike the culture behind these trailers. The culture that continues to pump out movies that look and feel more like socio-political lectures or displays of dominance than entertainment. It's the culture that believes everything under the Western umbrella of culture needs to be "reimagined" for "modern audiences," which is a concept that isn't even real.
Do I think this film is going to bomb? No.
Christopher Nolan is one of Hollywood's most celebrated directors, and I have a strong feeling that this film will still bring people out. At the very least, it will have a sensational opening weekend and may well continue into the second with little drop-off, but that's assuming that the changes don't indicate further "wokification," which changes like this always indicate.
I think we'll really see America's true feelings behind this film in the second week, not the first, but regardless, I assume this is going to do okay. Which is a shame, because a clear and strong message needs to be sent, not just to Hollywood, but the rest of the Western world, that our tolerance for this nonsense is used up. We're over the race swaps, deconstructions of masculinity, and being treated like students to be lectured to, not customers to receive quality in exchange for money.
Hollywood might get away with riding Nolan's name into a box office success, but if it does work, it'll only work once, and it will tarnish the name of a director who held one of the last large deposits of public goodwill.
