Variety didn't try to hide its glee at the prospect of conservatives' heads exploding over Christopher Nolan's $250 million epic, The Odyssey.
"Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey Is Going to Drive the Right Wing Completely Insane" is the headline for Hillary Busis's review. Apparently, conservatives won't like the "historical inaccuracy" of the Academy Award-winning black actress, Lupita Nyong’o, playing Spartan beauty Helen of Troy ("The Face That Launched a Thousand Ships"). And the fact that transgender darling Elliot Page has a significant role in the film is also supposedly a cause for hand-wringing on the right.
Someone who is complaining about "historical inaccuracy" might want to tone it down a bit. I'm looking at you, Elon Musk.
“Who specifically is the a**hole who added DEI lies to Academy Awards eligibility instead of it just being about making the best movie?” he asked. “Chris Nolan desecrated ‘The Odyssey’ so that he would be eligible for an Academy Award.”
The Odyssey is myth, not history. The "facts" portrayed in Homer's epic poem have not been confirmed by archeological digs, although the existence of the city of Troy has been confirmed quite recently.
There is no way to confirm most of Homer's narrative. Homer brought the characters such as Achilles (myth), Paris (composite), Priam (definitely real), Agamemnon (real), and Hector (composite) to life so beautifully that they leap off the page into our imaginations.
The basis for the war, Paris's kidnapping of Helen and return to Troy, was Homer's way to "sex up" his story and make it a blockbuster narrative. To argue about the inaccurate "history" of the Trojan War is silly, stupid, and a waste of time.
Arguing about the "traditional" view of the myth is more to the point. But we're not Greek herders sitting around a campfire listening to a storyteller beguile us with the tale of Helen, Paris, and Menelaus in a fatal love triangle, and Agamemnon seeking power and riches, hoping to capture the fabulously wealthy city of Troy. We are a modern, 21st-century audience looking for escapist entertainment.
"DEI lies" is beside the point. Nolan has $250 million real, honest-to-goodness dollars invested in the project, including a sizable chunk of cash from Nolan himself. This is money from Nolan and his wife, via their production company Syncopy. Nolan negotiated a lucrative "first dollar gross" with Universal, which will allow him to recoup at least some of the cash he put into the film. But it's still a huge gamble with his personal wealth. Keeping that in mind helps explain some of his casting decisions.
Hollywood has changed dramatically this century. Films make the bulk of their money overseas. There's absolutely nothing wrong with catering to foreign audiences by reimagining an epic story to include characters that don't fit our preconceived notions of race and ethnicity. This is especially true when you have a sizable slice of $250 million of your own wealth on the line.
Musk is wrong. Nolan isn't primarily after an Academy Award. He's after the box office. And survey after survey tells Hollywood that casting diversity improves box office, especially in Europe, Africa, and Asia. When you have millions of real dollars of your own on the line, I don't blame Nolan for taking creative license with characters. Shakespeare often made casting decisions based on what his audience liked. Because the same core group of actors performed all of his plays, Shakespeare knew exactly who his audience responded to, and wrote parts to capitalize on that popularity.
Richard Burbage was the undisputed superstar tragic actor of the Elizabethan stage and the superstar in Shakespeare's theater company, The King's Men. The audience loved his intense, emotionally raw, and deeply dramatic style. Knowing this was a massive box-office draw, Shakespeare specifically wrote his heaviest, most complex dramatic leads — including Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Richard III — specifically for Burbage to play.
Yes, Nolan is a Hollywood liberal. Anyone who saw his Batman films knows he thinks seriously about concepts such as moral and immoral, right and wrong, and chaos and violence as metaphors for modern society. But why do we begrudge his desire to make a buck when we give conservatives wanting to succeed and get rich a pass?
Shakespeare was the master of reimagining an old story for 17th-century audiences. Upending the traditional retelling of classic stories that everyone in his audience was very familiar with was his signature move. It's one of the major reasons for his popularity. Nolan is doing the same thing and the right is skewering him for it. I believe it's unfair and reflects a partisan take on an issue that demands artistic tolerance.
I'm looking forward to seeing The Odyssey.
Editor's Note: President Trump is leading America into the "Golden Age" as Democrats try desperately to stop it.
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