The Odyssey (2026) Writeup

1/3

Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of the Odyssey is surely this year’s most controversial movie, which is a real shame, because this SHOULD have been a modern classic: one of the defining tales of Western Civilization being handled by one of the Anglosphere’s greatest living movie directors, how could you go wrong? Well, for starters, you could subject Helen of Troy to a browngrade and have a fucking tranny depict a heroic Greek soldier…

Yeah, the more we learned about the movie, the worse it got, to the point where this was starting to sound like a legendary train wreck, straight up cultural vandalism. However, in spite of that (or rather, for that very reason) mainstream film critics gave the movie rave reviews – and even some ostensibly “anti-Woke” reviewers were quite positive. Are they all paid shills and/or propagandists, or did Nolan actually prove his critics wrong?

I saw the movie yesterday and here’s my take: most of what the anti-Woke JewTubers have said about Nolan’s Odyssey was accurate, but they HAVE gotten some key parts of the movie wrong, or are just straight up misrepresenting it for clicks. Not to let Nolan and Hollywood off the hook mind you, because they made a lot of bad calls, usually for the worst of reasons.

For starters, the modern American English dialogue is suboptimal at best, and pure cringe at worst, with some lines destined to go down in infamy. While not cheap or badly made overall, the $250 million price budge still feels hard to understand in terms of what’s actually presented onscreen (2004’s Troy looked far grander).

More surprisingly, the sound mixing and cinematography is at some points just bad: the “music” accompanying some of the scenes with the cyclops just comes across as loud, unpleasant noise with no other purpose than giving you a headache. Meanwhile, the way the sinking of Odysseus’s ship is shot made me think the goal was to trigger epileptic fits.

Nolan also can’t seem to accept the story on its own terms, constantly trying to force his Current Year sensibilities on it. And this doesn’t just apply to the culture war side of things: the Trojan Horse is treated with a level of suspicion that evokes modern man’s familiarity with the story, rather than the bewilderment the ancients would have felt when presented with such a bizarre “gift”. At one point the Trojans even repeatedly stab the horse precisely to check for Greek soldiers hiding within it – which surely seems smart to Nolan, but doesn’t make sense on the story’s own terms, since at that point the Trojans have already accepted the horse as an offering to the gods. They’d drag the giant, wheel-less wooden horse all the way into their city to honor the gods…only to desecrate that very offering to the gods by cynically piercing it with their swords? Also, one of the Greek soldiers hiding inside the horse actually ends up getting stabbed during this process; his mouth is covered, sure, but are you seriously telling me the Trojan soldier was completely oblivious to his sword piecing flesh? It’s all an example of Nolan, while trying to be so much more clever than those ignorant Bronze Age barbarians, actually making his movie way dumber.

By far the worst aspect of Nolan’s Odyssey is however the casting. You KNOW it’s a shitshow when fucking Zendaya playing Athena has only provoked a muted response, simply because multiple other casting offenses are so much more egregious. For the record, Zendaya in no way possesses *any* of the qualities that I would associate with the Greek Goddess of Wisdom, AND it’s another anti-White race swap - but at the very least she IS of the right sex! This is more than I can say for Ellen Page as Sinon. You could argue it’s a somewhat minor role and thus not that great of fuckup, but Sinon actually looms quite large in the story (oh, the irony!), with Page at one point even getting to berate and lecture Odysseus with her goofy-ass troon voice. She actually sounds a bit like one of those pre-Peter Dinklage midgets you’d see in sitcoms like Seinfeld and The King of Queens, which is oddly fitting I guess (a lot of creative camerawork had to be utilized to hide the fact that this heroic Greek soldier is actually a tiny little woman).

As for Blacked Helen of Troy – come on now, do I even need to explain just how ridiculous and contemptible this is? Every moment Hood Helen was on screen took me right out of the movie; as did every moment with her twin sister, and with her and Agamemnon’s nog daughter. Hell, blacks keep popping up all over the movie, always looking completely out of place. There was even at least one random Asian guy among Odysseus’s crew – who knew that more than 3000 years ago, Ithaca was more racially diverse than London or New York were 70 years ago?

The questionable casting extends beyond just the headline grabbers. As Telemachus, Tom Holland is a likable lightweight, but while he may make sense for the role given the way it was written, the way it was written makes no sense to me: how can a 21 year old crown prince, with the blood of a Hero running through his veins, be THIS sheltered, helpless and infantilized? We’re in the Bronze Age, not Current fucking Year, I’m pretty sure they didn’t have the luxury of our ridiculously extended adolescence back then, and Telemachus isn’t supposed to be a Zoomer NEET! The movie even acknowledges the practical and legal reasons for why he specifically can’t be the one to physically deal with Suitors, so there was no reason to make Telemachus such a fragile manchild.

Anne Hathaway as Penelope fares better overall, though a late Feminist rant strikes a real sour note. That said, she feels real and raw as the long-suffering, but loyal wife of Odysseus, silently seething as her unwelcome suited render her home unrecognizable. Then there’s Odysseus himself, Matt Damon (insert Team America clip here). For quite a while, he didn’t really work for me: he lacked the gravitas of a Great Man, never felt like a man of the Bronze Age (his establishing shot instantly made me think “costumed actor” rather than “it’s Odysseus in the flesh!”), and was far too dour and joyless to work as the kind of mischievous Trickster that Sean Bean so successfully portrayed in Troy.