The film hasn’t even opened yet, and Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” has already ignited more online arguments than most movies generate in their entire theatrical run. That’s saying something for a $250 million blockbuster that hasn’t even left the dock.
A quick recap of where we stand. “The Odyssey” is Nolan’s take on Homer’s Greek saga, following Odysseus’s long journey home after the Trojan War. The cast is stacked: Matt Damon as Odysseus, Anne Hathaway as Penelope, Tom Holland as Telemachus, Lupita Nyong’o in a dual role as Helen of Troy and Clytemnestra, Robert Pattinson as Antinous, Charlize Theron as Calypso, and Zendaya as Athena. The trailer dropped, tickets went on sale, and the internet did what the internet does.
Tickets sold out fast. According to Variety reporting, the AMC ticketing app experienced significant delays, with moviegoers waiting up to an hour to purchase tickets. Fandango’s website also had its share of lag times. If you’re one of the people who actually got through, congratulations. The rest of us are still refreshing.
But the real fireworks haven’t been about the ticketing mess. They’ve been about almost everything else.
The Casting Storm
When it was announced that Lupita Nyong’o had been cast as Helen of Troy, conservative commentator Matt Walsh posted several tweets on X criticizing the decision. His argument essentially boiled down to a false equivalence: that casting a Black woman as Helen while objecting to a white actress playing an African character would be hypocritical. Elon Musk, who has been critical of the film since early this year, agreed with Walsh’s sentiments. As HuffPost senior reporter Brittany Wong reported in May, Musk subscribes to the great replacement theory, a white nationalist conspiracy theory about demographic change.
Nyong’o, who is Kenyan-Mexican, responded to the backlash in an Elle interview with refreshing clarity. “This is a mythological story,” she said. “Our cast is representative of the world. I’m not spending my time thinking of a defense. The criticism will exist whether I engage with it or not.”
Nolan also defended the casting, emphasizing that Nyong’o brought the necessary strength and poise to the character. “Lupita makes it look effortless,” he said. There’s probably a lot of discipline and training behind that.
The controversy around Elliot Page’s potential involvement has been even uglier. Rumors have swirled that Page has been cast as Achilles, though neither the studio nor Nolan has confirmed this. The speculation alone was enough to trigger transphobic rants. Newsmax host Rob Finnerty went on a particularly nasty tangent, referring to Page as “a girl who dresses as a guy” and questioning how someone 5’1” could portray “the greatest warrior in history.” Musk called the potential casting “the dumbest and most twisted things I’ve heard.”
Whether Page is actually playing Achilles, Elpenor, or someone else entirely remains unclear. What is clear is that the speculation has brought out some of the worst corners of internet discourse.
The Music, The Dialogue, The Armor
Nolan made an interesting casting choice with Travis Scott playing a bard in the film. “I cast him because I wanted to nod towards the idea that this story has been handed down as oral poetry, which is analogous to rap,” Nolan explained to Time magazine. Scott has five No. 1 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 and wrote the theme song for Nolan’s “Tenet,” so there’s an existing relationship there. But not everyone was thrilled about a rapper appearing in a mythic epic.
Then there’s the dialogue. When the trailer dropped in May, critics immediately called out the American accents and modern language. One Reddit user quipped that “the way characters talk feels very modern and very off-putting.” Antinous tells Telemachus, “You’re pining for a daddy you didn’t even know, like some sniveling bastard.” Not exactly thees and thouhs.
Classicist Emily Wilson, who translated “The Odyssey” into plain language in 2018 and became the first woman to do so, told IGN that the push for archaic language is often more about perceived authenticity than actual closeness to the original Greek. “Mild stylistic archaism is often accepted without question in translations of ancient texts,” she said. “But of course, the English of the 19th or early 20th century is no closer to Homeric Greek than the language of today.”
It’s a fair point, even if it hasn’t stopped the backlash.
The costume design has also drawn fire. People have joked that Benny Safdie’s Agamemnon looks like he’s wearing a Batman helmet, with some commenters pointing out that the armor seems more suited to a Viking ship than a Mycenaean warship. Nolan pushed back, noting that there’s historical theory behind blackened bronze and that the costume designer was trying to communicate how elevated Agamemnon was relative to everyone else through expensive materials.
Some critics, though, have cut through the noise with a simpler complaint: the costumes just look boring.
The IMAX Factor
If you want to see the film the way Nolan intended, good luck. “The Odyssey” is the first feature film shot entirely on IMAX’s 70mm cameras, which is genuinely impressive from a technical standpoint. Currently, only 24 theaters in the United States are showing it in that format, according to IMAX’s website. That’s a drop in the ocean compared to how many screens the film will play on overall.
This is where the business side of things gets interesting. The film is expected to be one of the biggest blockbusters of the year, but the limited IMAX availability means most viewers will experience it on standard digital projectors. The tension between Nolan’s maximalist vision and the reality of exhibition infrastructure is nothing new for his films, but it’s especially acute here.
What We Actually Know
Here’s the thing: we still don’t have confirmed roles for some of the most-discussed cast members. Page’s involvement is still unverified. The speculation has generated enormous engagement, controversy, and outrage, but none of it has been officially acknowledged by Warner Bros. or Nolan.
Maybe it’s all nothing. Maybe it’s a brilliant marketing scheme. Maybe we’re all justarguing about a film that hasn’t told us what it’s even doing yet.
Either way, “The Odyssey” has already succeeded at one thing: it has grabbed attention. Whether that translates to ticket sales and actual acclaim remains to be seen, but one thing is certain: when this film finally opens, the discourse will only get louder.
