Turn Your Brain Off
A Review of Nolan’s Odyssey
You’ve probably seen some of the online outrage that has centered around casting choices: a transgender man (a biological woman who looks literally awful) cast as a male soldier, an African woman cast as Helen of Troy — described by Homer as “white-armed” and said by later Greco-Roman poets to have golden hair.
I am sympathetic to some of the frustration. When one reads fiction, one desires to see the book come alive on film — film true to fiction. That is the oldest and simplest promise the movies ever made to literature: we will show you what you have only imagined. Of course, it never quite happens the way we expect. Something is always lost in translation, some liberty is always taken.
But there is a difference between the inevitable compromises of adaptation and a deliberate refusal to adapt at all.
It’s Hollyweird.
They have a moral code now (you know, the one J.K. Rowling and Ricky Gervais keep lampooning on X), and that moral code supersedes everything — the text, the audience, the box office, even the story itself.
“The most beautiful woman in the world — the face that launched a thousand ships” — had to be cast a certain way in 2026. In 2016, the political priorities were different, and so the casting was different. In 2036 they will be different again. The character never changes; Homer never changes; only the sacrifices demanded by HOA Karens that run the party-politik do.
This is how the political cookie crumbles, and nobody except Robert Eggers will dare fail to offer sacrifices to the gods.
Sidenote: did you know that political correctness literally came from the Soviet Communists? We spent an entire century mocking it only to be defeated by it — even “Conservative” moms bathe themselves in it. You can’t say “retarded and gay,” and it’s not because that might hurt someones feelings (no ones feelings have ever been hurt by the phrases), it’s because you might offend the White Woman that is perpetually offended on behalf of others.
We aren’t living in the 90s anymore. Nobody is trying to make a movie that the world will simply enjoy. Audiences in Korea, Japan, China, and Europe — audiences everywhere — want to see a true-to-life depiction of the fiction they know. But a small faction of people living in the 90068 zip code doesn’t live in the real world. They would rather see the industry go bankrupt than make content that connects with mass audiences.
They’re not trying to make a film, they’re trying to make a statement.
So a theatergoer needs to suspend judgment when going to see a movie like Nolan’s Odyssey. The patron has to turn his brain off at the door, check Homer at the coat rack. And that, honestly, is how you can enjoy this bloated, self-important joke of a film.
I’m a big boy. I know how these simpletons make movies. I’m not angry at the casting. I can’t expect morons to mend their ways. So I overlook a multitude of sins in an effort to truly enjoy something for what it is. So this review isn’t Right Wing rage bait. This is a review of what has actually been presented.
Here is my review:
