Christopher Nolan is not phased by the pre-release backlash that’s been erupting on social media in the months leading up to his latest directorial effort, “The Odyssey.” The movie, a star-studded adaptation of Homer’s Greek epic, has irked Elon Musk and Trump’s MAGA base over its casting choices and riled up historical purists over Nolan’s armor design and use of American accents and modern English dialogue.
“Comes with the territory,” Nolan told The Telegraph about the film’s pre-release backlash. “But look, these conversations that happen before people see the film – they’re always irrelevant, because no one having them knows what the film actually is yet.”
Nolan knew from the beginning that tackling “The Odyssey” would ignite strong commentary online, and he’s a self-professed veteran when it comes to tuning out pre-release outrage.
“Remember, I spent 10 years of my life dealing with Batman. When I came on to ‘Batman Begins,’ writers and artists had been working on this beloved character for almost 65 years, and a lot of freighted thoughts were out there about what he represents. And what I learnt over my time on that trilogy is you can’t worry about any of that at all. What you have to do is honor the original text by interpreting it in the strongest way you personally can.”
“In the end, fans of the property – even when we were doing something that was not what they would have done – enjoyed the sincerity of the attempt to put as good a version of it on screen as we could,” Nolan continued. “All I can do is make the best film I possibly can in the most sincere way. It’s very different from how anyone else would do it, but that’s what adaptation is.”
Elon Musk has been one of the most vocal opponents of “The Odyssey” on social media. He came out swinging against the movie in February after word got out that Lupita Nyong’o would be playing Helen of Troy. Musk commented: “Chris Nolan has lost his integrity.”
Conservative commentator Matt Walsh used X to insult Nyong’o, writing: “Not one person on the planet actually thinks that Lupita Nyong’o is ‘the most beautiful woman in the world.’ But Christopher Nolan knows that he would be called racist if he gave’ the most beautiful woman’ role to a white woman. Nolan is technically talented but a coward.” Musk followed up by claiming that Nolan “wants the awards,” which is why he thinks Nolan is changing the races of characters in “The Odyssey.”
In additional X posts, Musk re-tweeted posts that mocked Elliot Page’s masculinity and claimed that Nolan was stomping all over Homer’s grave because of his casting choices. The MAGA base was consumed with outrage over the idea that Page could be playing the legendary Greek warrior Achillies, even though it was an unsubstantiated claim at the time. It turns out Page is not even playing Achillies in the movie. Nolan cast his “Inception” actor as the warrior Sinon.
Criticism was also lobbed at the armor design in the movie, which many on social media felt resembled Batman’s more modern-looking Batsuit.
“There are Mycenaean daggers that are blackened bronze,” Nolan told Time magazine earlier this year in defense of his design. “The theory is they probably could have blackened bronze in those days. You take bronze, you add more gold and silver to it and then use sulfur… With Agamemnon, Ellen [Mirojnick], our costume designer, is trying to communicate how elevated he is relative to everyone else. You do that through materials that would be very expensive.”
“The Odyssey” opens in theaters July 17 from Universal Pictures.
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