‘The Odyssey’ Is Inspiring Unprecedented Levels of Cope
Posted by wiredmagazine
‘The Odyssey’ Is Inspiring Unprecedented Levels of Cope
Posted by wiredmagazine
26 Comments
For months, Elon Musk and the right-wing cranks he caters to on [X](https://www.wired.com/tag/x) have whipped themselves into a raging froth over the supposed desecration of an ancient Greek poem by one of the most successful movie directors alive.
Now that their manufactured backlash has [bombed](https://www.wired.com/story/the-odyssey-backlash-failed-tremendously/), they’re searching for ways to cope with the reality that they are increasingly divorced from popular opinion.
[Christopher Nolan](https://www.wired.com/tag/christopher-nolan/)’s artistic crimes in bringing “The Odyssey” to the screen, according to Musk and others in a furor, were instances of what they called “historical inaccuracy” in a lavish fantasy teeming with monsters, witches, and undead spirits—mainly the casting of Lupita Nyong’o, who is Black, as Helen of Troy, and Elliot Page, who is trans, as Sinon. The grand total of approximately 10 minutes of screen time between these actors in a three-hour saga, combined with the general hysteria over “wokeness” in Hollywood, a rejection of Americanized dialog, and lingering misogyny regarding [scholar Emily Wilson’s 2017 translation of Homer’s epic](https://www.wired.com/story/the-new-odyssey-movie-is-sparking-a-right-wing-backlash-this-female-scholar-knows-it-well/) (the first by a woman), resulted in countless teeth-gnashing posts and calls for a boycott that never materialized.
Instead, the mythic drama hauled in a staggering [$264 million](https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/the-odyssey-brings-2641-million-worldwide-ticket-sales-studio-says-2026-07-19/) as it opened this past weekend, sailing toward continued box office dominance and, in all likelihood, a slew of awards. A few conservative commentators acknowledged it as a landmark achievement, but many sank deeper into denial.
Read the full story at the link above.
This is one of the dumber culture war hills they are choosing to die on.
I love how they still think it’s gonna flop.
It dropped -18% from Sunday to Monday, and iirc it went up on Tuesday. This is gonna do easily another $75/80M in the second weekend.
What a bunch of coping ninnies, man.
Hmm…these clowns see the movie differently than I do.
Being conservative has got to be exhausting. Always outraged over stupid shit. Do you think most of them actually care about shit like this or do they just get their marching orders from people like Musk and fall in line? Imagine living your life like that
I think it was a fantastic casting choice. I mean its Helen of Troy… no matter who they put in there there would be arguments.
The argument now isn’t how pretty she is but rather how she’s black. Black people as a whole are tanking it and not just Lupita which is what would’ve happened if Lupita happened to be white.
Now Musk is about to drop $100M on a shitty version! Whatta world!!!!
They wanted another Troy. Nothing wrong with that type of swords and sandals action movie but the twitter lords were never going to be satisfied with Nolan’s Odyssey even if he cast Sydney Sweeney.
I’m surprised they aren’t trying to pretend they never called it w0k3 at all. That’s what usually happens when the w0k3 thing fails to actually go broke.
maga are losers with terrible taste. sucks to suck.
Reddit post about an article about a Twitter post about a Reddit post.
Here’s the source of the conspiracy cope about the “faked” ticket sale the article mentions, if anyone wants to have a laugh at the delusion
https://www.reddit.com/r/CriticalDrinker/comments/1v169nz/some_weird_sh1t_with_the_odyssey_ticket_sales/
Conservatives have become the cancel culture sensitive pussies they always claimed liberals were
Eventually we can erase history.
Sooo stupid. The whole point of the movie is that our civilization is collapsing because douchebags like Elon Musk have abandoned all sense of decency and propriety, and this theme is not evident in the trailers.
Musk proved Nolan wrong after watching the trailer by… acting like an obnoxious douchebag and attacking members of the cast for existing. Which is exactly the kind of lazy hatefulness that makes polite society impossible to maintain.
Plus, the whole point of Sinon as a character is that he was the smallest and least threatening soldier Odysseus could find to sacrifice. Elliot Page gave a great performance and was perfectly cast.
I saw someone on Threads post that “The Odyssey is anti-woke”……wtf.
I think recent culture fights they felt they had won gave them a grossly overestimated sense that they could win this one.
They never one they just thought they did because other factors came into play. This time they were up against one of the most accomplished directors alive, with an excellent and talented cast, with a story that is thousands of years old and been retold and adapted in phenomenally varied ways over that time.
Even if it was a bad Nolan film it’d still have been a success…
Wait I don’t understand. Where is the article? I can only see the first paragraph.
Some of them are trying a different tack, they have dropped the hue durrr DEI argggh! BS and are now trying a soft approach and are trying to flood the space with their intellectual takes on the craft of film making, a lot of it obviously AI slop. I mean it’s staggering that that walking vagina dryer Ben Shapiro is the one capable of admitting that yes it’s actually a great film.
Paiges character was jarring.
The boy who grew up to be Paige’s character had more skeletal mass than Paige.
Something I was surprised to see was one of the calls to boycott this movie that I saw was actually from the left.
I guess there was a scene that was filmed in West Sahara and the people staging the boycott were coming from the standpoint of by filming there the makers of the film were being complicit in the political injustices happening there.
It was like witnessing this weird horseshoe theory of movie boycotting in action…
Meanwhile they think that “Citizen Vigilante” is high cinema…, these people are flat-brained donkeys.
It is even funnier because Nolan doesn’t own a smartphone or do anything at all on the internet. He simply doesn’t care about any opinion other than his own. So when they criticize his film with their stupid shit fits he doesn’t see the criticism, care about the criticism, or change anything he does because of it a single iota.
How can a trillionaire be always so jealous??
I’m so sick of every piece of media being scrutinized and rooted to fail because of some arbitrary culture war bullshit
they’re all mad about blonde haired, blue eyed Charlize Theron playing Calypso!
Just given by the sales numbers a lot of those complaining saw it opening weekend so it is what it is. I know Nolan is laughing at all of them as he walks to the bank.