Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey has achieved a record-breaking opening weekend box office haul of $264.1 million (£196.9 million), despite months of online backlash from anti-woke critics. The film, anticipated as one of the biggest of the year, has drawn near-universal rave reviews from critics.
Social media backlash
The film became a target for online disputes, with incensed backlash on social media, often from people who had not yet seen it. Out-of-context interview clips and trailer snippets fueled assumptions about the nearly three-hour movie.
When a positive opinion was shared on X following the world premiere, hundreds of comments called the author a 'crazy liberal b***h' and 'a hideous feminazi-looking grifter'. Elon Musk himself joined the frenzy, criticizing the casting of Lupita Nyong'o as Helen of Troy, claiming Nolan had 'lost his integrity' and was 'pissing on Homer's grave'. Musk also called historian Tom Holland a 'cuck', apparently unaware he was not interacting with the actor.
Ignorance of source material
The backlash ignores that The Odyssey is drawn from Greek mythology, not history. Helen never existed; in legend, she hatched from an egg after Zeus raped her mortal mother. Complaints about her not being blonde-haired and blue-eyed are described as unhinged and racist.
Critics have also held up Wolfgang Petersen's 2004 film Troy as a superior adaptation, though Troy took massive liberties with the source material, such as killing off key figures whose deaths would collapse subsequent Greek myths.
Nolan's response
Nolan brushed off negative opinions from Musk, MAGA pundits, and even archaeologists griping about inaccuracies, calling them 'irrelevant because no one having them knows what the film is yet'. The film's immediate triumph, giving Nolan the biggest opening weekend of his career, is seen as proof of the inconsequential nature of the complaints.
Discussions about the film's merits as an adaptation are valid, but using them to echo racist and transphobic talking points is not. Some disappointment from Greeks over lack of representation is understandable, but threats such as being struck down by Zeus for praising a film with Black actors are not.
The Odyssey is in cinemas now.
