Before The Odyssey embarked on its theatrical journey, writer-director Christopher Nolan was subjected to attacks and arrows from conservative social media warriors. In their bid to spark a culture war debate over the casting of a film they hadn’t seen, they succeeded only in helping to promote a film that hardly needed any extra publicity while making themselves look foolish.
As those who made uninformed criticism of the film included Elon Musk and Donald Trump Jr., who took to social media to criticize Lupita Nyong’o’s casting as Helen of Troy because she is black and Elliot Page’s casting as a Greek warrior because he is transgender, it became difficult for the media to ignore these attacks. Moreover, the anti-woke crusade against such a familiar target as “liberal Hollywood” remains one of those gifts (or sops) that keeps on giving.
Despite the obvious obsession with Nyong’o and Page’s characters, each of the two actors only takes up a few minutes of screen time.
However, Nolan’s film simply makes these conservative provocateurs look stupid. Clocking in at nearly three hours, The Odyssey continues director Oppenheimer’s personal war with moviegoers’ bladders. But despite the early obsession with Nyong’o and Page’s characters, each of the two actors takes up no more than a few minutes of screen time in the film, which stars Matt Damon, Tom Holland and Anne Hathaway. The beauty of Nolan at the moment is that his reputation and track record allow him to attract notable talent – a la Zendaya, rapper Travis Scott and horror queen Mia Goth – even for small roles, which is a clever means of broadening the film’s appeal.
Musk and others have tried to spin this into something nefarious, bizarrely claiming that the diverse cast is some kind of cynical ploy to attract awards attention, as well as anti-white bigotry. Not to mention, The Odyssey is, after all, a mythological story, so the producers didn’t cast Nyong’o as J. Edgar Hoover.
Nolan himself has diplomatically dismissed right-wing criticism when asked about it, even as he enjoys the outpouring of critical praise for the film. Filled with visual grandeur that demands to be seen on the biggest screen, The Odyssey may not be one of the British director’s best films – films like Inception and The Prestige set the bar very high – but it certainly has the grandeur to be considered a worthy follow-up to the Oscar-winning Oppenheimer.
Brian Lowry
Brian Lowry is a media commentator and critic most recently at CNN and before that at Variety and the Los Angeles Times.
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