Jul.24

electoral-vote.com

Dem 47

   

GOP 53

This Week in Schadenfreude: Nolan's Heroes Fight the Trojan War AND the Culture Wars

It would not be summer without right-wing culture warriors soiling themselves over at least one of the blockbuster films of the season. It happened last year with Sinners, it happened in 2024 with Wicked, it happened in 2023 with Barbie, it happened in 2022 with Avatar: The Way of Water and... well, you get the point. The current film that is in the right-wing crosshairs, and has been since well before it was released, is The Odyssey.

The culture warriors' gripes with the newest from director Christopher Nolan largely boil down to three things, in this order:

1. Several of the characters are played by non-white actors. Most notably, and causing far and away the most discontent, Helen of Troy and her twin sister are played by Lupita Nyong'o. Nyong'o is Kenyan and Mexican, so that's two sh**hole countries for the price of one.
   
   
2. Nolan cast trans actor Elliot Page in a major role, as Sinon. Right-wingers who know the original work (and not too many of them do) are annoyed not only by the trans casting, but by the fact that the movie Sinon is much more noble than the epic poem Sinon.
   
   
3. The entire movie is a critique of the sort of masculinity and rah-rah approach to war that is embodied by people like Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. "The main struggle for Nolan and his producer wife is that they can't make the ancient Greeks too heroic, masculine, iconic because that would uphold the Euro-supremacist roots of all Western Civilization," wrote one Twitterer, "so you cast a woke manlet as the King." Note, in particular, the gratuitous reference to Nolan's producing-partner wife, Emma Thomas, implying that he makes the films he makes because he's been emasculated by her.

Interestingly, Donald Trump has not—as far as we can discover—waded into this particular fight. That could be a reminder that he has a pretty good nose for these things, and will sometimes avoid those fights that look like a loser. The absence of the President means that the "general" for this particular culture wars battle has been Elon Musk, who has been using his vanity project social media platform to crap on the film for many months. The South African is particularly upset about the presence of a trans actor (recall, it is Musk's anger at having a trans child that is reportedly responsible for remaking him into a right-wing reactionary).

Inasmuch as ex-Twitter has substantially become a right-wing bubble for many users, and one where those same users get constant exposure to Musk's heavily prioritized tweets, the right-wing Twittersphere was absolutely convinced that The Odyssey was going to bomb. At this point, let us list every feature film Nolan has directed this century, along with that film's adjusted gross:

• Oppenheimer (2023): $1,073,234,902
• Tenet (2020): $473,016,245
• Dunkirk (2017): $719,198,602
• Interstellar (2014): $964,130,364
• The Dark Knight Rises (2012): $1,583,613,011
• Inception (2010): $1,272,923,187
• The Dark Knight (2008): $1,562,503,392
• The Prestige (2006): $182,316,737
• Batman Begins (2005): $640,806,952
• Insomnia (2002): $211,831,322

So, of the ten films he's done since the start of the 21st century, only three have failed to break half a billion dollars in box office revenue. One of those was released during the pandemic, the other two were somewhat artsy films released 2+ decades ago. And Nolan is now well into the "tentpole" phase of his career, wherein his studio partners lavish money on his production budgets ($250 million for The Odyssey) AND on promoting his films (reportedly another $150 million).

The upshot is that you'd have to be nuts to bet against The Odyssey. And yet, apparently that is what a lot of the Muskovites did. Using Kalshi and other platforms, they placed bets that the film would either underperform its predicted gross during the first weekend, or that it would end up short of $1 billion in total worldwide gross. As to the former, it was projected to take in $250 million during the opening weekend, and it actually took in $387.6 million. As to the latter, the film is at 95% with critics and 97% with viewers on Rotten Tomatoes, is just about to cross over the $500 million mark worldwide, is sold out well into August at nearly every IMAX theater in the U.S., and is well ahead of the pace of the $1 billion-grossing Oppenheimer. Add it up, and the weekend bets against The Odyssey were losers, while the overall box office bets against the films should become so by mid-August, if not sooner.

In view of this, the wisest course of action for the image-obsessed Musk would seem to be to stand down, and move on to the next culture wars fight. But, like his buddy Trump, Mr. Trillionaire just can't let things go. So, he has now made this promise:

Before this year ends, Grok Imagine will make a full-length movie of The Odyssey that is historically accurate and true to the art of Homer.

Because, of course, there's nothing worse than a historically inaccurate movie based on a story that includes a cyclops, a witch who turns soldiers into pigs, several sentient sea monsters, and regular visits from the goddess Athena.

In view of the fact that Grok Imagine is AI, we are not sure why it would take until the end of the year to crank out the movie Musk envisions. Does it require substantial human intervention to make the project happen? Or some enormous amount of computing time? We just don't know. Maybe Musk will lose interest, and won't follow through on his threat. Really, what he and his followers should do is follow the advice of actor Colman Domingo, who is guest-hosting Jimmy Kimmel's show this week: "If you want to see a film with a cast of all white people who are cursed by the gods, the Melania movie is currently streaming." (Z)