If you follow entertainment news even vaguely, you would have heard about Christopher Nolan’s upcoming epic, The Odyssey based on the Greek Epic of the same name. You will also have heard that “based on” should be emphasised as it usually is for so many films that draw on any works of literature as well as those drawing from real life events. This isn’t always a bad thing as 1995’s Braveheart is still an entertaining film though also littered with some truly bizarre errors and anachronisms that would have a historical purist tearing their hair out. The same is true to a lesser extent of Gladiator which I have reviewed here previously.
From what has been revealed in the trailer and through promotional interviews so far, suggests that this will be a disaster for more than a few reasons and I truly hope it is.
I should start here by stating that I considered myself a fan of Christopher Nolan’s up until a few films ago. It is surprising that with around fifty films I’ve covered in some form on this blog, that I’ve yet to cover one of his outside of a single paragraph in this post. Like for most, he first came to my attention with Batman Begins but I’ve seen all of his films except his independent directorial debut Following and many of these more than once.
I say “until a few films ago” because I didn’t really like Dunkirk or Tenet and I hated Oppenheimer. The latter has no sympathetic characters and yet still seems to have sanitised many of the unpleasant historical figures that appear as characters in the film. Considering my noted contempt for the Academy Awards, it doesn’t surprise me that out of his twelve films to date, it was Oppenheimer that received the most “official” accolades.
Since 2020, the Oscars have required films submit to their ‘Representation and Inclusion Standards‘ but Oppenheimer was able to qualify despite having one of the whitest casts I can recall in many years. This wasn’t just because parts of it are filmed in black-and-white either. This puzzled me but it seems you can still meet their standards in other areas and so avoid the ‘STANDARD A: ON-SCREEN REPRESENTATION, THEMES AND NARRATIVES’ which is the most ridiculous of them all. Interestingly, Jews aren’t listed as one of these ethnic groups and this was not lost on Jews.
As much as I disliked Oppenheimer, it would have been worse if a film about historical events had to include a diverse cast when the real people involved were hardly diverse and the country certainly wasn’t either. Oppenheimer himself was Jewish but portrayed by the very Irish Cillian Murphy and I don’t think there was any controversy with his casting; especially as he went on to win the ‘Best Actor’ award.
This brings us to The Odyssey, which despite having a very easy work-around for the silly diversity requirements has still decided to include a “diverse” cast. Unlike many online who claim expertise, I am familiar with the source material though I can’t claim to have read it in the original Greek. I have read and re-read it in English and I am quite familiar with the poem. I have studied it, read it for pleasure and even taught it.
However, you don’t need to know much more than that it comes from Greece then to know that there would be no East Asians or Sub-Saharan Africans anywhere near Greece or much of the Mediterranean thousands of years ago. Even up until very recently, they were decidedly uncommon. And yet, as rumoured and expected, the Kenyan actress Lupita Nyong’o has been cast in dual roles Helen of Troy and also as her treacherous sister Clytemnestra. Ellen Page, the once very pretty actress who has since unsexed herself and now claims to be a very little man named ‘Elliot’, is also in the film. She briefly appears in the trailer above all covered in mud and it is assumed she has been cast as Achilles who does make an appearance in Odysseus’ famous journey into the Underworld. This has not been confirmed as of writing but it would be little more absurd than a sub-Saharan African playing Helen. The Mulatto actress Zendaya had already been revealed as playing the goddess Athena which immediately sapped any confidence I had that it would be worth watching. There is also one Korean actor and even “red-haired” Menelaus is played by the dark-haired Jewish actor, Jon Bernthal.
Here might be the part where I spend time arguing with these casting choices but there is little point. As a famous little tweet by Millennial Woes goes, “It’s amazing how much leftist discourse is just them pretending not to understand things, thus making discourse impossible.” Everybody understands why these casting choices are bad and that history as well as the source material contradict them. Yet, we’ll be told in various ways that it is “no big deal” and you are “overreacting” or “just mad” for caring at all. As I’ve written previously, there is no point in engaging with these people. They will pretend not to understand no matter how well you explain it.
Even if not for the casting choices, the fact that Nolan has drawn from a “modern” (read: bad) translation of the epic by somebody named Emily Wilson, is more than enough to write the whole project off. This is immediately evident in much of the dialogue heard in the film’s trailer above.
In preparing this post, I had a look at the box office for all of Nolan’s films and all (including Tenet), have been profitable if not blockbusters. The best outcome for this film would be a box office disaster which considering it’s budget and the increasing disdain for this sort of nonsense, is not at all out of the realms of possibility. It is a shame too as only about five years ago I would have been really excited to hear that Christopher Nolan was directing an adaptation of The Odyssey. Now, I couldn’t care less.
I remember being excited for Troy back in 2004 which was based very loosely on The Iliad and I was disappointed when I saw it then and it didn’t gain any favour in a second viewing more recently. Yet with all the problems I have with that film, it still at least looks far more appealing than this upcoming disaster-piece. It is also clear that Nolan could have gotten around the Oscar diversity requirements in pursuit of “authorised” acclaim which makes these casting decisions not only absurd but clearly malicious.