The Odyssey Discourse Has Broken My Brain
Historical accuracy suddenly matters very deeply to people watching a movie about magic wind bags
We all know Twitter is full of smooth-brained curmudgeonly goofballs who yell at their moms and God, and interrupt their schoolteachers. But holy **** these people make dumb and dumber look like Oxford dons.
I’m not done. I’ve just witnessed too much stupid, and my stupid meter long ago fritzed out, and the wires are flooded with the stupid, that I’m like Teddy Roosevelt, who drank a gallon of coffee a day and vibrated while he fixed up the national parks, and saved football, and such, but instead of a gallon of coffee, imagine it was a gallon of stupid.
So here it is.
Christopher Nolan’s forthcoming film, The Odyssey, released its second trailer sometime last week. As usual, the internet bent itself into a soft pretzel over it.
Please subscribe. I’m too jazzed up on stupid to beg better.
The main complaints were these:
It’s too dark
The armor isn’t Greek
Is that horse in the sand?
God, Matt Damon doesn’t look like Odysseus
IS THAT ACHILLES?
IS SHE BLACK????
And again: WHAT THE HECK IS UP WITH THE ARMOR
Then the troglodytes came out of the corners and said, hold my beer.
“Nolan doesn’t care about cinematography either.”
Oh, MAN, my eye is twitching.
You’re TOTALLY right. He doesn’t care at all. He doesn’t care SO MUCH that he hasn’t requested a custom camera for his last three movies. He went to IMAX and was like, “Hey guys, I know I don’t care much about how the movie looks. But can we spend millions of dollars on film, and millions more building a camera to shoot thousands of feet of that expensive film?”
Oh, and then there are 5 of his films that were nominated for Best Cinematography Oscars. In 2010, Inception actually won! Crazy, for a guy who doesn’t care about cinematography.
And we haven’t talked about shooting practical. He cares so little about the final image on screen that he just blooped in CGI for everything.
The explosion in Oppenheimer? fake.
flipping rooms in Inception? fake.
space in Interstellar? Yeah, that’s all fake too.
Wait. None of that is true.
They did literal space science in order to make the black holes in Interstellar. SPACE SCIENCE.
Not to be outdone, here’s another troglodyte with a smooth brain who talked too much in school and missed all the learning parts.
I mean, you're right, obviously, Joel.
Nolan has never made a good movie, by any metric. His movies don’t make any money because they aren’t good. IMDB gives them terrible ratings because they’re bad. Critics groan when a new Nolan movie is announced, because they’re all such steaming turds.
Wait. None of that is true.
But I promised a gallon of stupid, not a pint, so here’s more.
Of Batman Begins (2005), Film critic Roger Ebert wrote, “This is at last the Batman movie I’ve been waiting for.”
Then he reflected on Nolan’s career to that point: “The movie has been directed by Christopher Nolan, still only 35, whose ‘Memento’ (2000) took Sundance by storm and was followed by ‘Insomnia’ (2002). What Warner Bros. saw in those pictures that inspired them to think of Nolan is hard to say, but the studio guessed correctly, and after an eight-year hiatus, the Batman franchise has finally found its way.”
Another critic wrote: “I honestly think that ‘Memento’ is one of the best movies from the past 20 years. In my opinion, it’s a perfectly written and directed masterpiece.”
But let’s not look at Roger Ebert alone, for God’s sakes. How about awards!
Memento was nominated for Best Original Screenplay at the Oscars, and won a Golden Globe and Critics Choice for the same.
In 2009, The Dark Knight was nominated for Best Picture and Best Director at the Critics’ Choice.
He got his first Best Picture Oscar Nomination with Inception in 2011.
Following, Nolan’s first feature, released in 1998 on a shoestring budget, and took home Best First Feature at the San Francisco Film Festival.
So, yes, LindyMan, he was just decent. He wasn’t all that good. Critics didn’t like him enough to give him any Best Director awards. Nope, Christopher Nolan was a JAG, 20 years ago.
Wait. None of that is true.
But wait, there’s more!!
The DEI stuff, can’t miss it.
People got so mad that Lupita Nyong’o is set to play Helen of Troy (and Clytemnestra) that the venerable and eminently intelligent folks of the internet pulled out their claws.
Matt Walsh tweeted, “Nobody on the planet actually thinks Lupita Nyong’o is the most beautiful woman in the world.”
The upside-down trapezoid on legs, Elon Musk responded, “True.”
Sick burn.
This bright soul, who probably also talked over his teachers and missed the learning parts, dropped another:
I mean, yeah. You’re right. Totally.
Christopher Nolan is just out here trolling Western civilization by casting a black person in his pseudo-fantasy-historical-epic-summer-blockbuster-that-will-earn-$1 billion.
But I’m overreacting; it’s completely normal to freak out about the race of an actor who will play a character that was born from an egg after a swan impregnated a woman. She can’t be black! She’s got to be realistic! Make her look more Greek!
That part is true; the swan egg part.
Do you think there was any chance Helen was born with feathers?
And to wrap up on a high note, “johannesAchill” is weighing in here with his two cents (I think he can only afford a penny).
My wires are overloaded. I did promise you a gallon of stupid.
I haven’t even gotten to the armor thing, or the achilles1 thing, because for one, I don’t care enough to go deep into Mycaenean armor, nor do I give much of a crap about what the ogres and gods look like, because blasting historical accuracy seems pretty nuts in a movie that will feature Poseidan and Circe, and man-eating giants, and cyclops, and Aeolius giving Odysseus a bag of winds so he can get home safe.
This all strikes me as titanically stupid because we also know these Lilliputians are about to go watch the movie anyway. Matt Walsh’s skin will be peeling back off his face while his eyes grow wider and his lower jaw descends ever lower, just like the rest of us.
You’ll be deaf at the end of it, but god bless you, you’ll watch.
And the Achilles thing looks like it’s a conspiracy, lol. Nobody has been cast as Achilles.
Well said. Most of the complaints being made (before the movie has even been released) make it obvious they have never read The Odyssey or seriously grappled with it’s major themes.
I'm not a fan of dismissing critique out of hand, especially critique directed at fiction with fantastical elements. As if being fiction means anything goes.
It is important that Hollywood's executives and directors think about the impact of casting. Helen of Troy being black is a choice, a major one that must naturally impact the story. Helen of Troy is of course greek in the original, is that no longer the case? Or is it? In which case will this version of the Odessy treat Mycenean Greece as a modern cosmopolitan society? Will her being black impact the culture, attitude or character in any meaningful way? If not, why make her black? After all this isn't black representation if it doesn't change anything, its simply a “white” coded character with a different coat of paint.
Why not focus on increasing the number of real perspectives in our fiction instead of having white coded characters played by black actors? I think adaptations of the Epic Cycle would benefit far more from highlighting a character like Memon, as the first powerful African man in the western literary canon.
Side note, if the goal is inclusion, why don't I see any Mediterranean actors in the cast? As a man of Mediterranean descent I've spent my whole life seeing my people play by whote brits and now black brits.. I would very much like to see Mediterranean people get the chance to play ourselves for once.