The Internet is once again debating yet another blockbuster movie in which white, cisgender characters are played by black or trans actors. This time we’re talking about Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey. We tell you what critics are angry about and why their arguments don’t apply to the Homer adaptation.
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Perhaps no upcoming film’s premiere is being discussed with as much excitement now as Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey.” The blockbuster won’t be released until July 2026 — but the internet has been buzzing about it since at least February 2025.
Then the film team posted the first shot of Matt Damon as Odysseus — and not everyone loved the hero’s costume. the people booksThe appearance of Odysseus is more likely to correspond to classical Greece (5th-4th centuries BC) than to the era of the Trojan War (which was at least two centuries earlier).
Until recently, the project was criticized mainly for its design. Lonely Disappointed The image of the Trojan Horse – Nolan created it as if he were in a sculpting workshop, and not in a military camp from scrap materials. Others They were angry Agamemnon’s Black Armor: To some, it reminds some of Batman’s armor from Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy.
But in recent days, the debate over the film has escalated into another episode of the culture wars. As journalist Marlo Stern pointed out in his book column According to Variety, this happened with the help of Elon Musk, who turns out to be a fan of Homer.
It all started with material May 12: Nolan spoke to the magazine about Lupita Nyong’o, star of 12 Years a Slave and Black Panther, participating in The Odyssey. The actress plays two heroines in the film: the beautiful Helen and her sister Clytemnestra.
Around the same time, a rumor emerged that the role of Achilles in The Odyssey had gone to transgender actor Elliot Page. It really is Share In the project, but in what role remains unclear; Some media He writesHis hero’s name is actually Elpenor, and this is one of Odysseus’s companions. But the rumor was enough to announce in advance that Nolan’s film was an example of “wokeness.”
“It wouldn’t have even occurred to me if they paid me to intentionally ruin this project.” books In the movie “X”, actor Kevin Sorbo (Hercules from the New Zealand series “The Incredible Journeys of Hercules”). The photo was attacked mainly by ultra-conservatives – such as the streamer Matt WalshHe is known for his participation in the films “What is a Woman?” and “Am I a racist?”, or the reckoning End of wake upwhich posts content in support of Donald Trump.
Nolan’s critics complain of Hollywood’s “double standards”, which never allow a white actress to play an African beauty, and are nostalgic for the 2004 film “Troy”. In this film, Brad Pitt played Achilles, and his hero seemed very masculine.
The campaign against “Odyssey” was led by Elon Musk: he has been sharing X posts about Nolan’s project for several days. As the same Stern writes, the billionaire has repeatedly spoken publicly about his love for Homer: in 2024, for example, Named The Iliad and Odyssey are “the ultimate thousand” (which means, apparently, that the poems glorify traditional masculinity, close to Musk himself). Regarding transgender men and women, Musk consistently stresses that he does not consider them to be “real” men and women. Musk is not indifferent to the topic because his daughter, Vivienne Jenna Wilson, has come out as transgender.
Judging by the billionaire’s repost and his fragmented comments, he believes Nolan He calls Transgender and black artists in their films for “Oscar shares”, and Hollywood filmmakers in general – “Hypocrites”. Among other things, Musk participated MimiUnder which Nolan dances on Homer’s grave Image by Amnesty Internationalin which Elliot Page, as an ancient Greek warrior, tries to open a jar of pickles (the author is clearly implying that Page is not manly enough to play Achilles).
The setting of Nolan’s “Odyssey,” with its black armor and plastic-looking Trojan horse, may be too reminiscent of standard Hollywood blockbusters — but only those with little understanding of mythology could criticize Homer’s adaptation for being “too choppy.”
In fact, ancient culture is full of stories and images that do not fit at all with modern conservatives’ ideas about traditional gender roles or “white” European culture. Here are some examples.
- The seer Tiresias, whom Odysseus spoke to in Homer, according to Ovid’s Metamorphoses, once turned into a woman for a while — and, as a woman, had sex with men. He then arbitrated the dispute between Zeus and Hera, confirming Thunder’s assumption that female orgasm is more pleasurable than male. An angry Hera deprived him of his sight, and Zeus rewarded him with a prophetic gift.
- As for Achilles, he and Patroclus were, according to some accounts, not only friends, but lovers as well. Achilles also pretended to be a woman so that he would not go to fight in Troy. His deception is revealed by none other than Odysseus, who had himself avoided the “summoning” shortly before.
- Many heroes of Greek myth, who are usually depicted as white in art, are “actually” dark-skinned – for example, Andromeda, who was saved by Perseus, was an Ethiopian princess.
All these examples do not mean that ancient culture was comprehensive in the modern sense of the word. Ancient cultures understood gender, sexuality, or race very differently than we do. For example, although homosexuality was not always condemned in ancient Greece and Rome, same-sex unions in ancient times were viewed very differently than they are today. Suffice it to say that the Greeks and Romans did not have same-sex marriage, and the couples did not have children.
At the same time, reading anything into ancient poems, whether it is a right-wing or left-wing agenda, is also a traditional approach in its own way. The Iliad and Odyssey were subjects of free interpretation even in the time of ancient classical playwrights, such as Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. Each subsequent era adapted Homer’s stories to suit itself. In the Middle Ages, for example, Hector was a model of chivalry, and in the theater of classicism, ancient heroes embodied seventeenth-century ideas of duty and honor.
Therefore, there is no answer to the question of who reads Homer correctly – Elon Musk, who considers his poems “maximum alpha”, or Christopher Nolan, who chose Lupita Nyong’o to play Helen. At its core, this discussion has nothing to do with ancient Greece.