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The Odyssey Was EVEN WORSE Than I Expected. Here’s Everything Wrong With It · The Matt Walsh Show

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Now that Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey has been released to
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: near-unanimous critical acclaim and significant box office success, we've been
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: told that all the criticisms made against the film prior
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: to its release, mostly by conservatives, have been proven baseless,
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: even embarrassing. Those who raised concerns about the movie should
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: now hang their heads in shame and crawl before Christopher
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Nolan on hands and knees, begging for forgiveness, offering gifts
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: of supplication like an ancient Greek standing before the Shrine
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: of Apollo. This has been the basic conclusion of commentators
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: on the left, and even a fair number of commentators
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: on the right. The wokeness allegations, they say, have been refuted.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: The movie is an artistic triumph, a masterpiece. And now
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: it is our job to show that we are culturally
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: in tuned by joining in with the applause or at
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: least ceasing our criticisms. That is the general consensus, as
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: you've probably heard. And the general consensus is, as the
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: general consensus so often tends to be, wrong. Now that
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: I've actually seen the movie, I can definitively say that
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: Every single criticism from conservatives was entirely correct on every point.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: We were not only correct in our prejudgment, but much
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: more correct than we ever knew. You can judge a
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: book by its cover most of the time, and the
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: cover of this one had a gender-confused woman in a
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: man costume and a race-swapped Helen of Troy. We judged
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: those to be massive red flags, and turns out we
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: were right. The Odyssey is indeed a three-hour-long middle finger
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: to its source material, to Western civilization, to white people,
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: to Greeks, to literature, and to moviemaking in general. It
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: contradicts itself to the point that every important aspect of
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: the story, from the plot to the theme to the characterization,
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: is reduced to incoherence. The dialogue in the rare moments
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: where it's even intelligible is often clunky and heavy-handed and
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: wildly out of place. Most of all, the film does
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: not feel like a story set in the ancient world.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: which is a fatal problem for a film set in
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: the ancient world. It barely feels like a film at all,
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: in fact. It has more the feel of a rough draft,
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: a V1 that Nolan was contractually obligated to produce, which
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: probably isn't far from the truth. Everybody understands that with
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: the rise of streaming services and the glut of content
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: all over the internet, movie theater attendance has plummeted. Profit
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: margins in the entertainment industry are lower than they've ever been.
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: And at this point, now that Marvel has... at least
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: for now, there are only two reliable ways to fill
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: theaters and generate significant profit, at least from the perspective
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: of movie studios. And the first approach is to fund
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: an existing IP to include, very recently, viral meme IPs
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: like Back Rooms. And the second approach is to produce
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: an event film by somebody like Christopher Nolan, an epic
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: that has enough set pieces and feels big enough that
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: people will be compelled to get off their sofa and
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: pay 20 bucks to see it. And that's what we
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: have here. Nolan is done making original risky stories that
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: might not go over well. The days when he made
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: Memento are over for the simple reason that you don't
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: need an IMAX theater to enjoy a film like Memento.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: You can watch it on your phone and get basically
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: the same experience because it's a high-concept, dialogue-driven film with
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: no reliance on giant monsters or 20 different A-list actors
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: filling out the cast. Not that there's anything wrong with
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: giant monsters, by the way. That's actually one of the
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: only good points of Nolan's Odyssey, as we'll discuss. But
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: in any case, With very few exceptions, films like Memento
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: are no longer interesting to the big studios or to
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: directors like Nolan. They're only interested in green lighting films
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: like this one. So whether you like it or not,
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: that's the economic reality of the industry right now. And
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: there's nothing wrong with a film like this one either,
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: by the way, at least conceptually. An event film, an
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: epic film based on an ancient foundational story of Western
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: civilization could be, should be, a wonderful thing, which makes
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: the failure of this film all the more tragic. Now,
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: to be sure, if any director could withstand those pressures,
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: you'd think it would be Nolan. He's about as bankable
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: as a director can possibly be. But you have to wonder,
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: especially after the flop that was Tenet, if he's lost
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: his will to do anything particularly novel or outside the box.
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: Tenet lost something like $ 100 million for the studio, which
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: was only partially because of COVID. People didn't like the
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: movie for the understandable reason that it made no sense.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: So now, after that catastrophe, maybe Nolan is more concerned
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: with protecting his image, which is why he's increasingly relying
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: on established stories and massive ensemble casts. Whatever the case,
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: The Odyssey is a striking example of a director who,
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: whether he's aware of it or not, is terrified of
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: failing to meet expectations. He wants to give everybody, from
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: audiences to the suits in Universal Pictures, exactly what they expect.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: And that means he must adhere to every norm in Hollywood,
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: from DEI casting to one-dimensional characters and lots of sentimental nonsense.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: It also means that Nolan has to participate in Hollywood's
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: larger objective, which is to subvert American culture by making
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: everything gayer, more feminine, less patriotic, more depressing, and of course,
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: less white. Now, I've seen people desperately trying to describe
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: this film as path-breaking, awe-inspiring, even transgressive. Almost as if
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: they're trying to make it true by saying so. But
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: infusing modern liberal values into an ancient story is pretty
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: much the least transgressive thing a Hollywood director can do.
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: It's utterly cliched and expected. not the slightest bit challenging
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: or interesting or bold. Nolan's not interested in telling transgressive stories.
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: He's too afraid. And that's, at least that's one theory.
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: I mean, you can make up your own explanations for
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: Nolan's motives. Whatever the motives are, the end result speaks
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: for itself. And to begin with, yes, this movie was
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: just as woke as we thought it would be. The
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: DEI casting in particular is far worse than we knew.
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: Far worse. Nolan's version of Ancient Greece is a kind
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: of multiracial utopia. Well, perhaps not utopia. Actually, Nolan's Ancient
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: Greece is relentlessly drab and dreary and depressing and colorless.
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: all the buildings look like ancient ruins, which yes, it
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: makes sense for those buildings to look like ancient ruins today,
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: but they would not have all been ancient ruins in
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: ancient times. So this is not a utopia, but in
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: Nolan's vision, it is nonetheless absurdly diverse and multiracial. Blacks
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: and Asians, Hispanics, somehow all coexisting in the Mediterranean 3,000
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: years ago. Now, Nolan does not softly coax the audience
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: into the DEI net, easing us into it slowly but surely. No,
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: he cranks the diversity meter up to a thousand from
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: the very first frame. The first character we see is
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: the rapper Travis Scott, who somehow manages to turn in
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: a bad performance despite appearing on screen for 12 seconds.
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: He got 12 seconds and he completely botched it somehow.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: And then we see Ellen Page portraying a Greek warrior
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: waddling around the desert like a child with a soiled diaper,
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: straining under her rubber armor looking like she's about to
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: die even before she gets shot through with arrows. The
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: defenders of this film, especially on the right, have tried
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: to claim that Paige's appearance is not a huge problem
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: because she only has a small role. You've probably heard that.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: It's a very small role. Now, I don't want to
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: ascribe sinister motives to anybody or accuse them of lying,
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: so I will generously assume that the conservative commentators making
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: that claim must have fallen asleep 10 seconds into the movie,
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: which would be totally understandable, frankly. if they actually watched
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: the entire thing in a state of full consciousness or
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: at least half consciousness, then they would know that Ellen
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: Page is not a minor character in this film at all.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: She is utterly pivotal to the plot. She's one of
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: the most important characters in the entire film. She is
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: more than that. And as Steve Deese has pointed out,
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: the moral conscience of the story, her inclusion in this film,
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: in that role, is without question one of the wokest,
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: most radically left-wing things we have ever seen in a
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: mainstream Hollywood blockbuster film. There is no doubt about that.
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: If any director but Christopher Nolan had done this, he
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: would have no conservative defenders at all. To claim that
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: a movie is not woke when there's a trans-identified female
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: actress pretending to be a male Greek warrior who serves
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: as the linchpin of the plot and the film's moral
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: conscience is just ridiculous. I mean, If we're going to
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: rightly claim that it's woke to have a brown-skinned Hispanic
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: Snow White, then how can we possibly argue that there's
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: nothing woke about a trans female portraying an ancient Greek warrior? Now,
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: the argument from Nolan's conservative defenders seems to be, rather explicitly,
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: that it's okay when Nolan does it. I find that
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: argument to be unpersuasive, if not pathetic. Indeed, If you
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: believe that Nolan is one of the greatest filmmakers of
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: all time, then the logical conclusion is that it's worse
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: when he does it, not better. DEI casting in a
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: crappy Snow White remake directed by random Disney director number
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: 1242 is far less significant and culturally corrosive than DEI
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: casting by one of the most influential and marketable filmmakers
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: of all time, obviously. And that's not where the diversity
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: casting ends, not by a long shot. Odysseus' crew consists
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: of Many people of different races, multiple Asians, including a
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: second in command. Now, this character, the second in command
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: played by the actor Himesh Patel, has a heavy presence
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: in the film. He has a ton of screen time.
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: And every minute he's visible on screen is another minute
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: where total immersion in the story is impossible. I mean,
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: at one point, this character says the line, we're Greeks
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: from Ithaca. And it's one of the most unintentionally hilarious
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: moments in the movie. Now, there are no intentionally hilarious moments,
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: as the movie, unlike Homer's original epic, is totally humorless,
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: utterly devoid of charm or wit, but there are several
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: moments where you can't help but laugh, and this is
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: one of them. I mean, imagine a movie set in
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: the 12th century China, where a white actor with a
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: slight southern accent looks at the camera and says, we're
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: Chinese from the Chengdu province. And you'll get an idea
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: of how totally ludicrous this spectacle is. All that to say,
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: this is one of the most out-of-place characters I've seen
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: in a major film in memory. And on top of that,
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: his performance itself was flat and bland and uninspired. He
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: brought nothing to the role. I mean, if you're not
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: going to look the part, at least act the part.
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: But he doesn't even do that. So why is he there?
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: Anyone trying to rescue Nolan from wokeness allegations, answer me this.
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: Why was that guy in that role? It was a bland,
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: pointless performance. He wasn't there because of his acting chops.
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: So what was it? I wonder. Now, as a side note,
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: I'll mention that Patel was actually born in the UK.
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: He has a British accent. Yet in this movie, he
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: affects an American accent. All the actors, even the British ones,
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: use a contemporary American accent. This was a creative choice
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: by Nolan, but it doesn't work. I'm not saying that
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: Nolan had to go full Mel Gibson and have the
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: characters all speak in the original language of the source material,
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: although I personally would have appreciated that. But I'm not
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: saying you have to do that. I'm saying that if
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: you're going to make a movie set in the ancient world,
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: the characters should speak in a way that that sounds
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: and feels ancient. Having them speak in a modern accent
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: using modern slang and modern colloquialisms interferes with the immersion
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: into the film, which is a theme we'll return to frequently.
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: So put another way, in a story set 3,000 years
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: in the past, none of the characters should look or
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: sound or act like someone who's ever been to a McDonald's.
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: And yet they all look and sound and act exactly
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: like that. But back to the DEI elements. Now, even
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: if you pretend that Himesh Patel is a good actor,
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: the casting doesn't work. I mean, keep in mind, this
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: is a movie about how difficult it was for Odysseus
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: and his crew to travel just 560 nautical miles from
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: Troy to Ithaca. This is a point that Steve Saylor
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: made on his substack. In ideal circumstances, with no interruptions,
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: ancient boats could have made that trip in about a week.
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: But the journey takes Odysseus many years, with considerable interruptions
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: along the way, of course. And that gives you an
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: idea of how fraught it was to travel even short
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: distances at that time. And yet, in defiance of all
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: common sense and logistics, a bunch of South Asians apparently
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: managed to travel thousands of miles to Greece, where they
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: joined Odysseus' crew. In fact, in this version of the
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: ancient world, people from all over the globe apparently travel
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: and intermingle with each other with ease. And the problem here,
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: one of the problems anyway, is that the casting by
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: itself contradicts the internal logic of the story. that Nolan
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: is supposedly telling. When African rappers have landed in Ithaca
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: and Koreans and Indians and Hispanics have somehow made the
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: trek there as well, and they all live there not
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: as exotic foreigners, but as regular inhabitants of the region,
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: then you're sending the message that travel isn't that difficult.
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: In fact, you seem to be saying, I don't know,
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: that air travel exists. It makes you wonder, somewhere during
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: this three-hour runtime of the film, why exactly Matt Damon
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: didn't just log into his Expedia account and book a
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: first-class ticket on Delta. I mean, that would have been
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: a lot easier. Although, in fairness, if the only tickets
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: available were on Southwest, he probably was better off on
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: the ship. Now, Nolan was obviously aware of all these issues.
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: We have to give him credit. He's a talented, competent director.
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: Even I will admit that. So that means the choice
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: was deliberate. Nolan went out of his way to make
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: the crew as diverse as possible, even when his casting
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: decisions undermine Not just the audience's immersion, but the foundational
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: logic of the plot itself. It's the worst case scenario
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: for DEI hiring in a film because you can't ignore
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: it without also ignoring the setting, the plot, the characters,
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: and everything else. And yet you'll hear some conservatives defending
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: Nolan on this point. Their main argument, as best I
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: can tell, is that the DEI casting is relatively minimal
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: and doesn't take up much screen time. But even if
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: that were true, and it's not, not even close, it's
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: extraordinary that to watch how quickly conservatives are willing to
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: cave in scenarios where their opponents would never dream of
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: doing so. I mean, it's the kind of thing that
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: only happens in one direction. If somebody made a movie
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: set in Africa and based on ancient African folklore and
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: then populated the cast with white people and other random
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: races and ethnicities that have nothing to do with Africa,
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: everybody would say the casting is ridiculous and distracting at best,
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: and they would be correct. If the movie was set
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: in sub-Saharan Africa in the year 1100, and Chris Pratt
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: showed up in tribal garb and said, Howdy there, folks!
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: I'm an African tribal chieftain. How do you do? There
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: wouldn't be a single soul on the planet who would
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: defend that obviously preposterous casting choice. Yet the same thing
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: is done in the reverse to a foundational text of
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: Western civilization, and even conservatives line up to defend it. Again,
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: the word that comes to mind is pathetic. Now, if
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: you're a conservative and you're unwilling to tell the truth
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: about what's happening here for fear of being labeled a
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: culture warrior or something, God forbid. We don't want to
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: be cultural. You wouldn't want to fight for the culture. Well,
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: who would want to do that? That's silly. That's ridiculous.
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: But if you have those reservations, you should know the
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: left has no such reservations. They explicitly want future generations
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: to see Western culture as a universal product. as the
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: outgrowth of modern day diversity with no distinct contribution from whites.
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: There's no better way to undermine the future of Western
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: civilization than to pretend Western civilization was invented by everybody
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: as some kind of multiracial democratic group effort. And that's
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: why they're doing this. That's what they're going for, whether
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: you want to pay attention or not. Now, when I
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: made this point on X, I was informed that actually
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: white people are supposedly doing the exact same thing. I
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: was told that there are plenty of films recent films
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: where white actors are taking roles where they don't belong
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: as an effort to stamp out other cultures. And as
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: evidence of this proposition, I was informed about the existence
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: of precisely one movie called Gods of Egypt. And this
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: came into my feet a bunch of times because I
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: made this point about if this happened in the reverse,
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: everybody would be upset. This is the only movie anyone,
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: all of a sudden, everybody was a gods of Egypt.
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: Like no one's ever heard of that movie. Well, as
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: you can see from the poster there, the film features
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: Gerard Butler and Jeffrey Rush, who don't appear to be Egyptian.
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: And yet they're starring in a film called Gods of Egypt.
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: So there you have it. White people are trying to
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: erase non-whites from Hollywood. I have to admit it's amusing,
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: if nothing else. People are desperately searching for an example
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: of a modern movie that's been race swapped like The Odyssey,
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: but in the opposite direction and the best they can do.
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: is some obscure film nobody's heard about from 10 years
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: ago that nobody watched and has a 15% rating on
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: Rotten Tomatoes that was in fact panned by everybody. So
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: if your intention was to prove my point, you succeeded.
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: Like I said, these race swaps only go in one
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: direction and everybody knows it. Now, if I had to
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: play devil's advocate, I'd say that the conservatives, you know,
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: are giving Nolan a pass on the casting because they
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: think the overall message of the film is conservative. But
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: that's not true either. Not even close. During the film,
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: you'll get multiple lectures from women about how they're oppressed
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: by the patriarchy. Late in the film, we're treated to
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: a cartoonishly anachronistic speech from Odysseus' wife, Penelope, about how
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: unfair it is that the suitors won't let her become
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: king in Odysseus' absence. She has all this knowledge and wisdom,
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: but the patriarchy is keeping her down. And it's played
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: completely straight, even though it's clearly a clumsy attempt to
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: airdrop contemporary feminist attitudes into a story where it doesn't
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: belong and into a time period where such attitudes did
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: not exist. And certainly at no point in Homer's Odyssey
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: did Penelope whine about how she could take over as king,
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: because it would have been totally absurd. But in this film,
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: with a supposedly conservative message, we're supposed to be okay
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: with the idea that Penelope has the exact same attitude
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: you expect from a newly minted women's studies major in
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: the Bronx. Then there's the fact that the film goes
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: out of its way to strip the story of divinity
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: as much as possible. Nolan suggests that Odysseus' problems amount
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: to bad luck rather than divine intervention. No gods show
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: up at all. Zeus and Poseidon don't appear as characters.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: Only goddesses appear in the film and then only as
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: PTSD hallucinations, basically. Zendaya as Athena pops up incessantly and
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: again just does nothing with the role. That's a theme here.
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: You got these actors. The movie is chock full of
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: A-list actors. A lot of them doing nothing with the
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: roles they're given. It's amazing. It's kind of amazing to watch.
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: She does nothing. She just kind of somberly stares at Odysseus.
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: That's all that happens. But the point is that she
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: isn't real within the context of the story. She's a
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: kind of therapeutic coping mechanism for a man struggling with trauma.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: Nolan's Odyssey, unlike Homer's, is a story completely disenchanted, devoid
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: of the supernatural, aside from like the odd witch or
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: two that shows up. And now Nolan's apologists will say that, well,
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: he did this because he was going for a more
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: grounded film, right? That's what we keep hearing. Well, it's
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: a grounded, it's a grounded film. Oh, okay then. So, oh,
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: grounded is what we're doing. So then why does ancient
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: Greece have the demographic makeup of Los Angeles circa 2026?
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: Why is there a tiny little woman running around pretending
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: to be a dude? Why is there an Asian guy
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: delivering the line, we're Greeks from Ithaca? Grounded?
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: Really?
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: Grounded in what? So the apologists are letting Nolan have
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: his cake and eat it too, like always. I mean,
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: you cannot argue that Nolan had to take the gods
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: out of a story of Greek mythology in order to
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: ground it and then... also argue that Ellen Page's appearance
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: isn't a major problem. In fact, Nolan himself has said
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: that he expelled the gods from this film because he
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: preferred to handle the supernatural in a, quote, real-world way. Well, again,
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: if he's worried about the real world of ancient Greece...
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: then why does ancient Greece look absolutely nothing like ancient Greece? Now,
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: to the extent that Zeus does play a role in
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: Nolan's film, it's because he's mentioned about 500 times in
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: the context of Zeus's law, quote unquote. Again, this is
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: a concept that doesn't exist, at least in the way
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: Nolan portrays it in Homer's Odyssey. The idea of Zeus's law,
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: as the characters tell you to your face, and one
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: of the many examples of on-the-nose exposition that treats the
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: audience like it has a collective IQ of 45, is
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: that Greeks should treat strangers as they'd like to be treated.
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: More broadly, Zeus's Law is Nolan's spin on the Greeks'
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: concept of xenia, or hospitality, which does play an important
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: role in Homer's poem. But contrary to what Nolan seems
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: to think, his idea of Zeus's Law is very different
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: from the Greek concept of hospitality as outlined in Homer.
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: And you don't have to squint very hard to see
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: how Nolan is trying to twist this concept into a
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: not very subtle sermon about modern-day immigration policy. And in
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: Nolan's film, Odysseus spends a significant amount of time moping around,
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: sullen and depressed, after enabling the destruction of Troy by
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: using the Trojan horse. And for those who somehow aren't familiar,
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: the Greeks presented the horse as a gift, but they
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: had filled it with soldiers. And at night, the soldiers
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: opened the gates of Troy, enabled the Greek army to invade.
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: So this was a massive and unlikely victory, which was
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: brought about because of the Greeks' trickery and cunning. And
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: in Homer, it was a heroic maneuver. Odysseus had outsmarted
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: his enemies. It was a virtue. It was not portrayed
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: in Homer as a violation of Xenia or hospitality or
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: anything like that. There was no sense that Odysseus had
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: committed some grave crime. Odysseus was very confident, but he
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: was also effective in crushing his enemies. In Homer, Xenia
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: didn't mean that you would never trick your enemy in
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: a war. It was about hospitality, a very different concept
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: that applied to your dealings with strangers. And on the
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: other hand, in Nolan's film, Zeus's law works very differently.
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: Zeus's law, as Odysseus explains it, means that you're not
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: supposed to use gifts like the Trojan horse. as a
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: trick in order to enable a ground invasion. So in
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: other words, whether Nolan realizes it or not, he's completely
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: bastardized a central concept in the poem. And in the
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: name of this bastardization, Nolan transforms Odysseus into a whiny,
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: solemn shell of a man plagued by trauma and guilt
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: because he violated some fake idea of Zeus's law by
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: destroying Troy. And of course, the idea of an ancient
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: warrior feeling really bad about a glorious victory is absurd
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: on its face. And the more you think about it,
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: the worse it gets. I mean, if you have any
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: familiarity at all with the source material, it's actually kind
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: of incredible that Nolan would even try this. First, the
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: Trojan horse wasn't the start of the conflict. You know,
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: it's not as though Odysseus started the war by defying
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: some sacred norm. The film suggests the war actually started
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: over trade routes. And Helen was basically a pretext and
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: was not, in fact, the most beautiful woman in the world.
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: So it's not clear why it's some grave sin to
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: end a war that's been going on for 10 years
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: with all the brutality that war entails. I mean, is
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: the implication that it would also be unethical to execute
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: a clever flanking maneuver that tricked an enemy general? Would
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: the Battle of Chancellorsville be a violation of Zeus's law?
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: Who knows? The other problem is that in the film,
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: Odysseus is so weepy and sad about his violation of
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: Zeus's law that he decides to go into exile. But
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: first he has to kill a bunch of suitors who
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: are trying to marry his wife. Specifically, he has to
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: pretend to be a beggar in order to infiltrate the palace,
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: at which point he'll launch a surprise attack where he
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: brutally murders the suitors. So in other words, in order
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: to rectify his violation of Zeus's law during the Trojan
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: War that he feels really bad about in the movie,
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: Odysseus violates Zeus's law again by killing the suitors using
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: trickery to get into the palace. But he thinks it's
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: partially OK, I guess, because the suitors themselves were taking
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: advantage of Penelope's hospitality by getting drunk in the palace
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: and hitting on Penelope while Odysseus was away. And then
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: after this massacre, Odysseus decides that he's tired of violating
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: Zeus's law. and sails away with Penelope. So, spoiler alert,
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: a little late. So he does not, in this movie,
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: he does not reclaim the throne in glory. He also
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: doesn't die for his sins. Both of those would have
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: been decisive choices that clarified the themes and concluded the story.
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: But Nolan chooses the third and most indecisive route, having
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: Odysseus leave and hand the throne to his son, who,
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: portrayed by Tom Holland, will presumably bore all of his
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: subjects to death, as he'd done to the audience for
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: three hours with his insipid, dull performance. So part of
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: the problem when you create a new interpretation of this
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: quote-unquote law is that Your characters have to interact with that.
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: And in this case, the characters interact with the law
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: in ways that don't make much sense. This is a
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: problem Nolan creates that didn't exist in Homer. He made
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: the central character of the story become depressed over violating
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: some law that doesn't make sense, which derails the entire
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: story and makes everybody's motivations murky and uncertain. And in fact,
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: this is a catastrophic error so severe that even Emily Wilson...
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: The University of Pennsylvania feminist who wrote a woke translation
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: of the Odyssey that Nolan relied on for the film
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: is now publicly calling out the film's portrayal of Odysseus.
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: This is one of the more amusing developments of this
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: whole saga. I mean, even the woke translator can't take
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: it anymore. She's siding with the crazy right-wingers. Watch. What
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: did you think about the film in terms of this
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: notion of the Odyssey as an anti-war text?
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: I mean, I thought it... I want to not spoil
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: anything about the film because I know the majority of
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: people haven't seen the film. I mean, the film has
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: these flashbacks to the Trojan War. I'm not sure if
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: I see it as an entirely anti-war film, but it
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: certainly presents us with an Odysseus who feels very bad
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: about certain things that he's done in war and is
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: struggling to process them in a very... I would say
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: very modern, psychiatrized way. And he's struggling to process them
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: and needs drugs to do so for help with his recovery.
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: And he seems to feel bad about being a warrior
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: and we never actually get to see him doing much warrior-ing,
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: which I thought in a way was a bit of
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: a shame. I mean, we do get to see the bow,
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: which is lovely, but I think in some ways, I mean,
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: I was realizing, thinking about the film, There's a tolerance
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: for ambiguity in the world of the Odyssey, which I
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: don't think there exactly is in the world of Hollywood
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: blockbuster action films. And I think that's one of the
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: big challenges for Nolan, is that he has to make
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: the protagonist a likable all-American hero, which is a real
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: challenge if you're basing this on a poem where the
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: hero is not necessarily motivated by romantic love or being
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: a nice suburban parent, but actually by, he wants glory
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: and he wants to get spoils from the sack of
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: a city, which you'll see what Nolan does with all
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: of that, but it's different things from what Homer does.
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: I kept looking in vain for a sense that this
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: was a film about glory. I think it's a film
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: that has some interest in shame, but I don't think
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: it has any interest in glory.
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: Well, she's right. I never thought I'd say that about
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: someone that looks like that. And when she says that,
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: by the way, that Odysseus uses drugs to deal with
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: his trauma, that is also in the movie. He's essentially
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: taking the ancient equivalent of SSRIs to help deal with
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: his depression. I mean, that's what's in this movie. I'm
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: not making this up. And this is the same woman,
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: by the way, that we just saw who suggested that
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: Odysseus was a problematic hero who says he's complicated in
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: her translation. She routinely chose words to make Odysseus seem
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: less heroic and noble. So she clearly is coming at
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: the story from a feminist, modern perspective. And even for her,
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: Nolan's film was a little too weepy and a little
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: too morose. Nolan took a story about an epic hero,
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: as she said, that's about glory, and made him peevish
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: and insecure, all because Odysseus violated some fake law Nolan invented,
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: which apparently says you're not supposed to use clever strategies
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: to win wars. It's reminiscent of Oppenheimer, where Nolan made
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: it clear he had a similar attitude, of course, about
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: the atomic bomb. And this is just rehearsing, rehashing, I
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: should say, those exact same themes in this story. Now,
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: some of this stuff qualms about Zeus's laws and its
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: applications may seem pedantic, but it's not pedantic to expect
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: internal logic from a film, especially one being hailed as
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: an artistic masterpiece and one of the best movies of
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: the century, if not all time, which is what some
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: critics are saying. And more importantly, it all points to
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: the film's greatest fundamental flaw, which was Nolan's decision to
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: infuse modern psychology and therapy speak into a story about
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: an ancient warrior three millennia ago. In the ancient world,
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: to triumph in battle was the greatest virtue. It would
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: not be a source of shame. That is a modern attitude.
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: It is not an ancient one. Now, If Nolan wanted
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: to make a modernized version of the Odyssey that imposes
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: modern psychology and modern preoccupations, not to mention racial demographics,
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: onto an ancient epic, well, he could have done an
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: interpretation set in the current day. There are many examples
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: of that kind of thing, and some of them are
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: pretty good. Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou?, set in 1930s America,
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: comes to mind. But transparently, the modern mindset and worldview
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: into the ancient world turns the whole thing into a farce,
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: which is why a number of scenes look and feel
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: kind of like a Mel Brooks movie with better cinematography.
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's totally absurd. What's the point of a
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: story set in ancient times that doesn't even try to
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: actually capture the look and feel and perspective, most importantly,
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: of ancient times? The best films set in the ancient
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: past are able to transport you to that world and, crucially,
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: show you the world through the eyes of those people.
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: That is the magic of film, at least good films.
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: And Nolan never achieves this. He never comes close to
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: achieving it. He never even tries, it seems. In Apocalypto,
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: Mel Gibson transports you into the mind of a Mayan
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: 500 years ago. In The Northmen, Robert Eggers transports you
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: into the mind of a Viking 1,000 years ago. And
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: in The Odyssey, Christopher Nolan transports you into the mind
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: of a liberal woman in 2017. At no point in
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: the story does Nolan ever actually take the audience to
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: the ancient world. You never feel like you're 3,000 years
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: in the past. You feel like you're watching modern liberal
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: Westerners put on a pageant because you are. Nobody would
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: be calling this thing a masterpiece if it was made
• 31:00
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• 31:03
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  Speaker 1: Every gift is tax deductible. Now, hearing all this, maybe
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: you're saying to yourself, well, I don't care about the
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: cultural messaging or the casting or the politics or any
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: of that. I just want to see a well-constructed movie
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: on a technical level. Well, the problem is that It's
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: impossible to overlook all these flaws because the film itself
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: is not very well constructed or all that entertaining. For
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: the most part, it's disjointed, dull, self-serious, convoluted, somehow feeling
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: both verbose and overly rushed at the same time. The
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: dialogue is some of the worst I've ever heard in
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: a critically acclaimed film. On the nose and clunky are
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: descriptions that can't even begin to describe the script. The
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: Odyssey is the kind of movie where a character in
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: the Bronze Age actually says, I'm not making this up,
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: the age of bronze is collapsing. And the dialogue is
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: like that throughout. I mean, you cannot have genuinely subpar,
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: sometimes bafflingly stupid dialogue in a masterpiece film. One can
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: only imagine a character in a Christopher Nolan movie set
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: in the Middle Ages. Jeez, you know, hey guys, the
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: Middle Ages are pretty tough. Hey, how are you guys
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: all feeling in these here middle ages? Pretty tough, huh?
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: Or maybe in 1917, a character might say, well, thank
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: God World War I is coming to an end. On
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: top of the bad writing, the dialogue itself is often
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: difficult to hear. The score routinely drowns out the words,
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: which is a recurring problem for Nolan. And it's kind
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: of an inexcusable problem. I mean, people always say that
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: about Nolan films. Oh, yeah, you know, Nolan films, you
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: can't understand the dialogue. Well, I don't know. That seems
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: like a kind of a serious problem. Especially if we're
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: talking about the greatest director of all time, like you
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: should be able to understand the dialogue at least. But
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: as the film passes the two hour mark, you start
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: to think of the problem as more of a blessing.
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: I mean, if you're missing any lines of dialogue, then
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: you can console yourself with the fact that you really
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: aren't missing much. The film does not capture the grandeur
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: and scope of the original epic. That's why it feels
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: truncated and drawn out simultaneously. None of the scenes are
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: given any time to breathe. You know, we check in
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: and check out quickly. And of course, one of the
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: great challenges of adapting an ancient epic like The Odyssey
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: is turning it into a coherent, propulsive film that tells
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: a story in three hours, preferably two or two and
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: a half, actually, without feeling like a series of vignettes
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: loosely connected to each other. And that means that you
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: need to find the narrative through line. You need to
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: find the core of the story. So in other words,
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: any filmmaker taking on this source material will need to
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: narrow it down, in effect, and streamline it because of
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: the nature of the medium that he's working with. But
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: Nolan never figures out how to do that. He can't
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: narrow it down, or if he does, he narrows it
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: around the wrong things. And so the movie, from a
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: pure storytelling perspective, is a failure. Now, it's an understandable failure,
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: perhaps in some ways, maybe even an inevitable one, you
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: might argue, but it's a failure nonetheless. From a structural perspective,
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: the story has a lot of inherent problems as well.
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: Homer's poem is modular in many respects. Bards could tell
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: specific tales, like the encounter with the Cyclops, and it
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: would work really well. But when you crunch all these
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: tales together in a three-hour-long movie, some cracks begin to emerge.
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: And in the Odyssey, in the first half of the film,
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: all of Odysseus' adventures seem to end the same way.
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: It's kind of like the same thing. He'll land on
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: some shoreline with his men. They'll encounter something promising, like
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: a child who could offer them food or a sheep
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: or whatever. And then they'll be ambushed by some horrible monster.
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: Many of them will die. And Odysseus will order a
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: full retreat to the boat. And we just kind of
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: repeat this over and over again. It's like that scene
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, basically playing again
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: and again. Run away! Run away! Run away! Run away!
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: Run away! Run away! Yeah. So it's basically that over
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: and over again. And, and you might, you might argue that, well,
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: it's hard to avoid this kind of episodic thing where
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: we're repeating the same beats over and over again, uh,
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: when you're trying to adapt this source material, but avoiding
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: that is part of the challenge. If you're supposed to
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: be a great filmmaker, right? That's, that's part of the whole,
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: that's your job is, is to figure out a way
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: to handle that. Um, There's one encounter like this in
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: the Odyssey where Odysseus and his men come across a
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: bunch of giants wearing armor, and the giants end up
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: attacking them and damaging their boat and killing a bunch
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: of them. As far as I can tell, the point
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: of the sequence is to show off the costume design
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: of the giants so that the giants can be featured
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: on marketing materials like this one. As you can see,
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: it looks really cool. I mean, it does look cool.
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: They can put it on posters and blast it all
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: over Reddit, and that's kind of it. The scene doesn't
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: really serve, in Nolan's story, any purpose beyond that. It
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: doesn't advance the story that Nolan is telling. They just
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: immediately run from the giants like it's a Monty Python movie. Now,
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: that said, I will praise the visuals of the film,
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: and particularly in one respect, they kind of mark a
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: return to Jurassic Park-style effects rather than CGI. And you
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: can see how they built the Cyclops here, for example.
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: And in general, throughout the film, the practical effects are impressive.
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: I mean, they're easily the best part of the entire project.
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: Better than the acting, the plot, the dialogue, the score, everything.
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: Nolan absolutely deserves an Oscar for visual effects. Not for
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: any other category, although he surely will win every other
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: category too. But even the Cyclops scene, despite being one
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: of the best sequences in the film, feels abbreviated and
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: ultimately kind of empty in Nolan's tellings. It's missing something.
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: Even the good scenes in the movie, when they come up,
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: there's something missing here. And what's missing, in the case
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: of the Cyclops scene, is the wit and humor of
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: the original, because Christopher Nolan has an apparent religious objection
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: to including anything witty or humorous in his films. Everything,
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: everything must be approached with this kind of reverent, ominous,
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: self-seriousness all the time. That's the only tone that he's
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: capable of. Even scenarios that are meant to be absurd.
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: A bunch of guys trapped in a cave with a
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: giant cyclops and a herd of sheep. That's absurd. There's
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: something quite silly about that. And it's meant to be.
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: But Nolan isn't capable of juggling two tones at once.
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: In this case, absurdity and tension. That scene should be tense, yes,
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: because you're trapped in the cycle, but also absurd. And
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: he can't do both, so he always just chooses tension.
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: And so the whole movie is one note for this reason.
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: Now compare this to say the Coen brothers, just for example,
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: who are able to write scenes in pretty much all
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: their movies that are both hilarious and suspenseful and disturbing
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: at the same time. And much of this movie needed
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: that kind of touch. It needed that kind of tone.
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: where we can do two things at once. I would
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: have loved to see what the Coen brothers could have
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: done with the Cyclops sequence, for example. And actually, come
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: to think of it, we did see that with John
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: Goodman's Bible salesman character in Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: And this movie, and the Cyclops scene in particular, called, again,
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: for that kind of artistic touch, for that kind of
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: tonal nuance. But Nolan, at least in this movie, was
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: incapable of that. Now, despite everything I've said, if you
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: feel like you want to watch this movie anyway because
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: you're in the mood for a historical epic of some kind,
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: I'm compelled to remind you that you have far better options.
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: You could watch Master in Command or Apocalypto, The Northmen, Gladiator,
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: just to name some of the best from this century.
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: The Odyssey is well below those films on the list
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: of historical epics. And to clarify for all the nerds
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: who are going to get ready to nitpick, when I
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: say historical epic, here I mean an epic adventure film
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: set in a real and recognizable period of the past.
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: whether based on true events or entirely mythological. So I
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: wouldn't include, for example, like the Lord of the Rings
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: on that list. Although those films, Lord of the Rings films,
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: are certainly superior to Nolan's Odyssey in every imaginable way, too. Now, truthfully,
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: I have to search very hard to give Nolan credit
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: for anything beyond the visual effects as it relates to
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: this movie. But there was one point where the conservative critics,
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: some of them at least, were wrong. The movie is
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: not a flop. And not all conservative critics predicted that
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: it would be. But But to any that did, it
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: was not a flop. It's a hit. It's a massive hit.
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: Christopher Nolan is a cultural force, the likes of which
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: does not exist on the right at all. And we
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: have to grapple with that fact. We have to do
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: something about it besides complaining. Otherwise, we're going to watch
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: as guys like Nolan continue to defile and defame the
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: great works of Western civilization in front of an audience
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: of tens of millions of people. It's not entirely a
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: lost cause, by the way. On Tuesday, somebody named John
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: Carger wrote the following post on X. I want Elon
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: Musk to give Mel Gibson $ 100 million to film an
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: Odyssey adaptation with painstakingly historically accurate ships, armor, weapons, and casting,
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: with all dialogue taken straight from the original poem and
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: delivered in Homeric Greek. And just 24 hours later, Musk replied,
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: I'm down. Now, this is the legacy of Nolan's Odyssey.
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: If it actually leads to the creation of art that
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: honors Western tradition and literature, then and only then can
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: you make the case the film served some useful purpose. Otherwise,
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: the film is precisely what we thought it would be.
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: It's a mockery of the men who built civilization, an
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: incoherent mess, wearing the skin suit of a foundational text.
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: The film is not the Odyssey at all. In truth,
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: it's an attempt to transform a distinct literary work into
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: yet another tedious celebration of multiculturalism and leftist guilt tripping.
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: And rather than pretending ridiculously that the film is secretly
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: based or whatever, we have to admit that Nolan succeeded.
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: He accomplished all of the goals he was trying to achieve.
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: And in the process, he has created one of the
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: most successful pieces of propaganda in the entire history of Hollywood.
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: The fact that even conservative critics are strenuously defending a
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: movie featuring a trans-identified female with top surgery in a
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: pivotal role only proves that fact. And that's why we
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: need to get to work. By the time Christopher Nolan
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: is delivering his Oscar acceptance speech about his brave casting
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: of Ellen Page as a Greek warrior, or the many
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: nuances of Zeus's law, we should have our own faithful
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: production in the works. The only coherent message of Nolan's
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: film is that conservatives have become far too complacent. And
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: unlike everything else in this film, it's a message we
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: should take seriously. Before these people destroy any other great
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: works of literature they didn't create, and which they apparently
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: can't possibly understand. I'll do it for the show today.
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. Talk to you tomorrow.
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: Have a great day. Godspeed. Once upon a time, there
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: was a country, not just a country, but a big one,
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: an empire. And in that empire, there was an upper
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: middle-class family where two boys were raised by their mother,
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: loved books, Uncle Tom's cabin and the Bible. Their father
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: admired the country's leaders. They were patriotic and happy. Both
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: sons went to universities where they were radicalized. One of
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: the brothers read a book and convinced him to try
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: to shoot the country's leader. He was hanged. The other
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: brother read the same books but decided to lead a movement.
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: First they came from the universities and no one seemed
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: to care. Then they took over the unions and again,
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: no one seemed to care. Then they created their own
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: media organizations and took over the cities. And again, most
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: people just ignored it. Change, after all, was something they
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: could believe in. Until it was too late. Sound familiar?
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: This is the real history of communism, the Russian Revolution.