{"id":384,"date":"2026-07-18T11:36:52","date_gmt":"2026-07-18T11:36:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/longdistancemoversusas.com\/?p=384"},"modified":"2026-07-18T11:36:52","modified_gmt":"2026-07-18T11:36:52","slug":"the-odyssey-is-majestic-and-makes-its-conservative-critics-look-foolish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/longdistancemoversusas.com\/?p=384","title":{"rendered":"\u2018The Odyssey\u2019 is majestic \u2013 and makes its conservative critics look foolish"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Before \u201cThe Odyssey\u201d embarked on its theatrical journey, writer-director Christopher Nolan suffered slings and arrows from conservative social media warriors. In their quest to gin up culture war controversy over casting choices in a movie they hadn\u2019t seen, they have succeeded only in helping promote a film that hardly needed extra publicity, while making themselves look stupid.<\/p>\n

Read more Trump revived his election lies. The people who run elections are bracing for the midterms.<\/a><\/p>\n

Because those launching ill-informed broadsides against the film included Elon Musk and Donald Trump Jr. \u2014 railing on social media against the casting of Lupita Nyong\u2019o as Helen of Troy because she\u2019s Black, and Elliot Page as a Greek warrior because he\u2019s trans \u2014 the attacks became difficult for the media to ignore. Plus, anti-\u201cwoke\u201d crusading against a familiar target like \u201cliberal Hollywood\u201d remains one of those gifts (or grifts) that keeps on giving.<\/p>\n

Yet\u00a0Nolan\u2019s film merely makes those conservative provocateurs sound foolish. At a run time of almost three hours, \u201cThe Odyssey\u201d continues the \u201cOppenheimer\u201d director\u2019s personal war on moviegoers\u2019 bladders. But despite the advance obsession over Nyong\u2019o\u2019s and Page\u2019s characters, the two actors each occupy no more than a few minutes of screen time in a film that stars Matt Damon, Tom Holland and Anne Hathaway. The beauty of being Nolan, at this point, is that his reputation and track record enable him to attract identifiable talent \u2014 a la Zendaya, rapper Travis Scott and horror queen Mia Goth \u2014 for even smallish roles, a clever means of broadening the film\u2019s appeal.<\/p>\n

Musk and others sought to transform that into something nefarious, bizarrely arguing that the diverse casting represented some kind of cynical ploy for awards attention, as well as anti-white bigotry. Never mind that \u201cThe Odyssey\u201d is, after all, a mythological tale, so it\u2019s not like the producers cast Nyong\u2019o to play J. Edgar Hoover.<\/p>\n

Nolan himself has diplomatically dismissed the right-wing naysaying when asked about it, even as he basks in a torrent of critical praise for the film. Imbued with a visual grandeur that demands to be seen on the biggest screen possible, \u201cThe Odyssey\u201d arguably isn\u2019t one of the British filmmaker\u2019s best \u2014 movies like \u201cInception\u201d and \u201cThe Prestige\u201d set a very high bar \u2014 but it certainly possesses the majesty to qualify as a worthy follow-up to the Oscar-winning \u201cOppenheimer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Without giving too much away, if one can even spoil a 3,000-year-old tale, Nolan\u2019s take on \u201cThe Odyssey\u201d also not-so-subtly incorporates modern and timeless themes, including questions about humanity and the toll of eroding a society\u2019s standards of honor and decency. As Jon Stewart told the director earlier this week, that makes it a fitting companion to \u201cOppenheimer,\u201d while delivering a perhaps unintended rejoinder to Musk and his army of social media trolls.<\/p>\n

Read more Trump\u2019s Thursday speech should be recognized for what it truly was<\/a><\/p>\n

In an interview with The Telegraph, Nolan politely said such criticism \u201ccomes with the territory,\u201d calling it \u201cirrelevant\u201d because those griping months ago, when the anti-\u201cOdyssey\u201d campaign began, hadn\u2019t seen the film. He also cited his experience with the \u201cBatman\u201d trilogy, a fan base with very strong opinions about what will best serve the franchise.<\/p>\n

The people grousing when director Zack Snyder cast Ben Affleck as the Dark Knight, however, mostly operated in good faith, which can\u2019t be said for those attempting to use insufficient fidelity to Homer\u2019s original story to\u00a0 tap into an inexhaustible reservoir of outrage.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The saving grace for them is that those parroting their \u201cgo woke, go broke\u201d talking points generally don\u2019t devour box-office reporting by the Hollywood trade papers or necessarily grasp that movies are a global product, which is the metric by which the film looks destined to shine. Although the summer box office has proved unpredictable \u2014 with horror movies like \u201cObsession\u201d raking in record totals and \u201cMoana\u201d and \u201cSupergirl\u201d failing to exhibit much girl power \u2014 projections are that \u201cThe Odyssey,\u201d tailor-made to premium large-screen formats, will earn roughly $200 million worldwide its opening weekend.\u00a0That voyage began with nearly $18 million in Thursday previews, the highest domestic total this year.<\/p>\n

Whatever the final tally, it should go a long way toward erasing the prospect of a \u201cgo broke\u201d scenario for Universal Pictures, the studio releasing the film. Nolan and Universal, happily and deservedly, appear destined to win this latest battle without stooping to engage their loudest critics. But with such relentless foes, consider that one modest victory in what has become a seemingly endless culture war.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Read more Ethics concerns swirl around Paramount merger as court hearing kicks off<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Elon Musk and others on the right railed against the film\u2019s casting, but their \u201cgo woke, go broke\u201d talking points proved wrong.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":383,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture"],"yoast_head":"\n\u2018The Odyssey\u2019 is majestic \u2013 and makes its conservative critics look foolish - Long Distance Movers USA<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/longdistancemoversusas.com\/?p=384\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"\u2018The Odyssey\u2019 is majestic \u2013 and makes its conservative critics look foolish - 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