"You see that in the scene with Circe where the men are turned into pigs.... These men get addicted to eating and then she physically manipulates their bodies into the bodies of pigs.... thematically pretty interesting. And the idea is that he has to violate Zeus's law essentially one last time.... The thematic, I think, is kind of great...."
Says Ben Shapiro, strongly praising "The Odyssey," and not just because it has "very conservative messaging."
Midway through the long review, Ben turns to the supposed flaws conservatives have been talking about. He rejects the complaints about casting nonwhite people — "no one in the movie is Greek" — and whether Lupita Nyong'o is sufficiently beautiful — "the war wasn't really launched over Helen being gorgeous."
He does have a problem with Elliot Page: "Elliot Page is still a woman and the voice is the voice of a woman. And having a woman pretending to be a youngish man telling you these things does not land in the way that it should.... And that's annoying.... But if conservatives want to be effective in the culture, you can't just label the entire piece of art bad because a decision in the art is bad... I think the broader theme of the movie is actually very much in line with many things that conservatives think..."
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I would like to see it. I really miss sprawling epics, noble heroes. And…I take it… the total absence of obscenity, which would be a welcome change of pace.
The problem is this movie has now become the barometer of one's political leaning in such an extreme fashion that any critique of it risks making the critic labelled "right-wing". Others I have read rate it as superb. Rest is History podcast have done a fascinating episode on the book, useful preview of film.
I didn't get why the character Elliott Page plays was invented, nor why Elliott Page was cast to play him. The clips are ridiculous.* I haven't seen the movie yet, but this strikes me as one of those things that can just yank you right out of your suspension of disbelief.
* It's not that a woman can't exhibit relish at the act of combat - I refer the reader to Gal Gadot's first turn as Wonder Woman. There's one scene in particular in which she's, I don't remember, talking to someone as the fight is raging over yonder, and something happens that makes her pay attention to the fight again. She turns her head to see what's going on, gets that "Oh no you DIDN'T" smile, gives a little head-shake like, "Ok, now you've done it," and runs back to the fray as if she can't wait to get in there again.
If Odysseus had spent less time on forever wars in Troy and more time on issues affecting white working-class citizens of Ithaca, then maybe Penelope's suitors wouldn't have tried to kill him.
Ben Shapiro, 2 days in a row..... 'X' dopamine seductions..... Althouse is turning into The Clickbait Chronicle?
Nolan wants his movie to get Oscar’s. That’s totally understandable. To qualify for the Oscars, movies must cast persons from underrepresented racial or ethnic groups. (Which includes LGBTQ+). So Nolan had to add a few incongruous actors to the mix. Blame it on the Oscar’s’ racial rules.
I really like Ben. I find it interesting that he likes this movie.
Me - I can't even sit through this review. None of that is my cup of tea.
Nolan should have gotten Linda Hunt to play Sinon.
What a miserable, sheeplike existence, thinking it’s your job to pre-hate or pre-love a movie based solely on some influencer’s clickbait word.
I'm looking forward to seeing it. I had 2 years of classic Greek and 4 years of Latin in high school (Jesuits...Dave Begley will understand), and I still remember reading and daily taking apart the Odyssey, in Greek. It was an other-worldly experience that stays with me to this day. Among other impressions, the drama of the spoken words themselves still resonate.
It was an all-boys school, heavy on all the classics and on sports, and during football practice we "Greeks" would yell out quotes from the Odyssey in Greek on particularly good hits on the non-Greeks (Latin only). In hindsight, the overall semester-long study of the Odyssey instilled a lifelong interest in exploration and adventure, and an appreciation of the distinction of eras and the cultural values that dominated them.
Eva Marie! I assume your Linda Hunt mentioned was referencing her role in “The Year of Living Dangerously.” I loved that movie back in the day, and I thought she was great in it. I should rewatch that and see what I think today.
I’d like to see this movie. I’m not driving these days, but I see that there’s an iMax theatre in Ocala, which isn’t that far from The Villages. It might be worth getting a ride or using Uber or Lyft . Most things aren’t.
I agree that it has become such a litmus test that to criticize it is to don a MAGA hat and be banned from polite company and probably lose your comfy little sinecure writing reviews that cultural elites want written. The race swapping is just a tired trope intended to allow these people to skewer critics as racist.
Helen’s beauty is a huge part of the story, just as the beauty of the captive that the king (? It’s been a while.) took from Achilles angered him so much that he sulked in his tent for days refusing to fight and endangering the expedition. So pretending that beauty was unimportant to the story is just a confession that you never really read the epic that you are being paid to write about.
The only appearance of Achilles in The Odyssey, IIRC he was already dead when it started, was when Odysseus went for the boat ride down the River Styx, and encountered his ghost, who was regretful of how he had lived his life and wished instead that he had married, been a farmer, and raised his sons in peace. Elliot Page would have been fine for that role, not sure if stuff from the Iliad was included, like his battle with Hector, in that case, Page was woefully miscast.
I last read the two poems four years ago, so forgive me if I got something wrong and feel free to correct anything I said.
“The idea that human beings are greedy and venal.”
Yeah, human nature is like nature nature, in that they’re everywhere.
A Greek meal on the island of Thrinacia might seem like a strange place to meet Trump supporters. But over the sounds of Zeus destroying Odysseus's last ship, you can hear a whisper among the Greek soldiers that Bidenflation was the final straw that forced them to eat the sacred cattle of Helios.
Re: Beauty
The thing about beauty is that standards vary over and between times, places, and cultures. For all we know, Helen of Troy’s beauty might not meet the standards of beauty in another time, place, or culture, including our own. Don’t we see this throughout history?
Prole - who is doing that?
You seem upset.
I find it odd that worshipping Hollywood is so important, mandatory and required.
I gave up on Hollywood a long long time ago. Sorry if that hurts your delicate feelings.
I also never watch the Oscars or any of the other required insipid insular back-slapping golden statue sappy speech clap fests known as "movie awards shows"
the decline in viewership tells me I am not the only one.
Natural Law is underappreciated by many. It’s highly inconvenient for Progressives and is the very reason they refuse to accept the Declaration and the Preamble and would ignore the rest of the Constitution.
Didn't Hollywood just make a film glorifying LEFTWING TERRORISM. - and gave it a plie of golden statues - even tho the movie sucked?
I'm glad this movie might be a good one. Still not interested.
Whatever beauty was at the time, Helen was described as fair and her light skin mentioned often, to just throw out that beauty was unimportant to the story is just throwing crap against the wall.
I don't like the way Ben Shapiro looks, the way he moves, the way he talks, the way he thinks, or the way he edits.
Its not a "Conservative" movie.
Ben Shapiro is not a Rightwinger, he's a "Israeli firster". Shapiro was A-OK with Hillary being POTUS in 2016 and spends most of his time in 2026 attacking other conservatives - not the Left. Further, when Youtube and social media were banning conservatives by the bushel, the Liberal/left head of Youtube said Ben Shapiro would never be banned.
He's not a conservative he's a neo-con.
And he's pulling the same ol crap that so-called conservatives have been doing my entire life. They're constantly looking for any reason to praise a Hollywood movie and claim that if you look at from some weird angle its "really conservative".
I doubt Shapiro has read Homer, and in any case doesn't give one Good Goddamn about it.
If it doesn't matter who gets cast, then lets redo Schindlers list with black people and see what ol' Ben Shapiro says about that. Or maybe redo Fiddler on the Roof with Asians.
I saw Oppenhiemer in the theater and wish I'd waited for the DVD. Two people, popcorn and soda, and parking. Mucho $$. My wife liked getting outta the house, but it added up.
So, I'll wait for the DVD. Its not the kind of movie my wife wants to see anyway.
Kirk Douglas had a version back in the fifties. He took a lot of liberties with Homer, and no one especially noticed or cared. It wasn't an especially memorable film, but it was entertaining......Nolan's film is apparently more ambitious. I definitely look forward to seeing it. I think you can justify the casting of Helen. She's definitely beautiful, but she stands out not for her beauty but for her otherness That's the way Helen would have stood out. . Is Eliot Page playing the part of Teresias, the man who had previously been a woman?
I'm not altogether against race-swapping, except when it's done for purely political purposes, which it nearly always is anymore as evidenced by the swapping only going one way. Years ago, Patrick Stewart played Othello and I'm sure he did a fine job; he did mention that they had many discussions of how to deal with a specific reference to Othello's blackness, but decided that, in the end, It's All Acting anyway.
Kirk Douglas is not known for his Ulysses movie. He's Spartacus.. Howard Fast and Kubrick took far more liberties with Spartacus than Nolan or Kirk Douglas himself took with Ulysses. Spartacus and his companions were not appreciably more ennobled than their Roman opponents. The movie is a Marxist fairy tale.
Shapiro’s review reminds me of the old schoolyard “with a crowbar” joke, “In Ancient Greece, how did the separate the men from the boys?”
In the case of Nolan’s The Odyssey, it was with Elliot Page.
There was a Peasant's Revolt during the reign of Richard II. The revolt was led by Wat Tyler. Richard gained their trust by making them promises. After they laid down their arms, he reneged on those promises and had them all killed........Shakespeare wrote one of his greatest plays about Richard II. The interesting thing about it is that he didn't once mention the Peasants Revolt. Can you imagine any contemporary playwright writing a play about such a King and not mention his suppression of the Peasants Revolt......People have wildly different sensitivities in different eras. Shakespeare gave the people the Richard II they could handle. Nolan will give us the Homeric hero we can handle.
RC Cola- 10:16 - what a stupid comment.
Years ago I read parts of the Iliad and Odyssey. I didn't get much out of it, but you can't deny those books have staying power. Therer's a part where Telemachus, the son of Ulysses, hangs all the servant girls who had had sex with Penelope's suitors. The servant girls were, in fact, enslaved women who were probably just trying to negotiate the best possible deal possible for themselves in a tough situation. I'm pretty sure Nolan leaves this out, You could make those girls Spartacus figures and give them noble speeches to make just before hanging, but there's no way you can make Telemachus look good to a modern audience.
What Eric the Fruit Bat said.
Can't stand Shapiro, and don't really care about his opinions.
“ That's the way Helen would have stood out.”
Can you justify this from the text? She was a Spartan princess in the story, married to a king so then a queen, and she was stolen away by Paris and brought to Troy, starting the whole kerfuffle. I think that the casting said “don’t worry your pretty little head about things like history, because that is best left to better, smarter people, us.”
As far as race swapping goes, it’s now obligatory to signal the director’s political allegiance to the elites who determine who gets the important jobs. It worked with Denzel Washington in Much Ado About Nothing, but that was a rare case.
Ben Shapiro is auditioning for David Brooks’ position at the NYT.
I think I'd rather watch and listen to the full "Singing Homer's Odyssey in Ancient Greek (with Lyre)" at Literature and History Podcast than watch this movie.
Shakespeare could have had his head lopped off by a word from Elizabeth I, think Queen of Hearts, so cut him some slack for not offending her.
So he's saying that it's an ideological Trojan Horse?
Whatever this story is, it’s not the epic that has survived for 3,000 years, and the survival of it is more important than whatever Homer himself may have personally been thinking, and if the survival is based on a misunderstanding of Homer,?well that misunderstanding is validated as a central truth by its durability, a subtle point that may have escaped Nolan.
Now I gotta read it again, dammit, well, it beats doom scrolling
Homer was not a historian and his poems are not History. Epic tales exist to be re-told across generations, inevitably with variations. I’m sure Homer put his own spin on things when he collected and re-told a bunch of old folk tales.
Ya, the EP casting was a terrible choice, have no idea what Nolan was thinking. It’s like dropping Woody Allen into the Omaha Beach landing at the beginning of Saving Private Ryan. But she’s only in it for a couple of minutes, and other than that the film is absolutely glorious. See it in IMAX.
YouTube:
The Odyssey is Christopher Nolan's Trick
**SPOILERS**
I suspect they cast Elliot Page to generate this online frisson.
The problem with casting Lupita as Helen is not that she’s not beautiful (she is) but that she’s a glaring and distracting anachronism. She’s obviously of sub-Saharan African heritage, and no such person would have been in Ancient Greece 3000 years ago, and certainly not as queen of Sparta. She might as well play the part wearing glasses.
As for Elliot Page as a Greek warrior, Nolan is just winding us up.
The first line of the translation that Nolan used was changed from the version passed down through the ages to diminish Odysseus, and was written from a radical feminist perspective. This part of using control of the entertainment industry as a way to erase culture and replace it with approved narratives.
This is Shapiro’s bid to be allowed to sit at the cool kids table.
"I suspect they cast Elliot Page to generate this online frisson."
Did Nolan bait a gift for a certain, shall we say intensely disliked audience, when in truth, it was a straight up fashioning of the same old tale?
I haven't seen the movie. But I suspect this is what may have happened.
ai answers: "Yes, Christopher Nolan utilizes complex plot turns, non-linear structures, and deliberate misdirection to actively manipulate the audience's perception of reality. Rather than treating narrative twists as cheap gimmicks, Nolan constructs his entire cinematic framework to place the viewer into the exact psychological state of his characters."
YouTube: How Christopher Nolan Manipulates You...
Nolan admits that his version is designed to be accessible to simpletons, what’s the adage? Maybe it will be a huge hit!
I enjoy watching Damon. He can carry a movie in the right role -see Jason Bourne.
Hopefully he does that with this one. I'll watch it in pieces when it when it is available for free home viewing.
Also, Zendaya. I don't get the popularity. So many beautiful, talented Black actresses to choose from (Tessa Thompson for example) and they chose the scowler. Meh.
“ exact psychological state of his characters."
Suddenly it’s possible to know the text precision! No, this quote forgot to mention that the state in question comes from Nolan and the feminist who wrote the version that he used.
Nolan's style of filmmaking has it's own Wikipedia page.
In Nolan's 'Inception' (2010) he used the actress (formerly Ellen Page). It's not a strange phenomena for a director to cast actors he's worked with before. In fact, it's kind of the norm.
I could ask ai but I wont because I'm fairly certain this is the case here in 'The Odyssey' (2026) again.
Nolan didn't go out of his way to cast Elliot, he already had worked with him.
This reminds me of the attempt to cast out Woody Allen. It's déjà vu all over again.
If a work is going to diverge so far from it's namesake, then I think it should change the name. Why leave that untouched?
And yes, a sub-Saharan woman as a Spartan Queen is a substantial exodus from the source that just seems compulsive and forced. It may be a good movie, but why weaken it with that indulgence that will only pull you out of the setting. Would you remake the movie Zulu with a Norwegian actor as an African king?
I would recommend the Iliad fagles translation on audiobook. I really enjoyed it. I read the Robert Fitzgerald version of the Odyssey and thought it good too. Haven't read the Robert Fagles translation.
Like the lot of things "the modern" translations are always being pushed because they're supposedly "new, different, and exciting" but sometimes they are, and a lot of times they aren't.
Elliot page was assigned female at birth and went by his given name, Ellen, prior to transitioning in 2020.
Okey-dokey.
Lupita Nyong'o is Helen of Troy.
LOL. Of course. The beautiful woman in the world.
Himesh Jitendra Patel is Homer's Indian 2nd in command.
So far, I haven't noticed any Greeks or Italians in the cast. Which probably would've been more appropriate.
And here I thought proper feminists regarded all men as being pigs all the time.
Here's the cast of Kirk Douglas' 1954 version:
Silvana Mangano
Kirk Douglas
Anthony Quinn
Rossana Podestà
Jacques Dumesnil
Daniel Ivernel
Sylvie (then a famous 71 y/o French actress).
I was very put off by the casting of an ugly black woman as “fair-haired,” and “white-armed” Helen, who possesses amazing, goddess-like beauty. Ben’s comments force me to reassess. I’ve also read praise for Matt Damon’s acting work, which helps tip the scale.
But a point of information for Ben. Troy is in modern Turkiye,, so no problem if Trojan characters are not Greek.
The "non-traditional" casting must have seemed like a way of making old material new again. It's something the BBC does ad nauseam. In an age where we have been "entertained" to death, a little controversy may get people into cinemas.
"glorifying LEFTWING TERRORISM."
You wish that's what that film did. The leftwing terrorists are buffoons who can't really get anything right. The lead black female terrorist rats out her compatriots. Her name is Perfidia. What is perfidy?
It's a farce that mocks a lot of things. The only thing it really doesn't mock is that a father loves his daughter.
Ben Shapiro assumes that there still is a "conservative movement" and that he speaks for it. Both questionable assumptions. This was actually not a bad review. He goes deeper than most reviewers do. I mean that he approaches the film as someone who has read and thought about the Odyssey. But that voice! If he's not angry about Elliot Page's casting, could it be solidarity with another trans man?
Ben Shapiro is a dork.
My take away from Shapiro is that the language fumbles are much more distracting than the casting choices. I can see how that would bother people.
I won't see this in a theater. I'll wait until it's out in the Torent-verse.
There are many things far more fantastical than an African Queen in Homer. It wouldn't pull me out of the story. I checked. Eliot Page. He doesn't actually play the role of Tiresias, but, like that character, he's a ghost in the underworld. Perhaps it's an allusion to Tiresias........Shakespeare used a cross-dresser to play the part of Cleopatra, and his audience accepted the casting. Maybe Nolan is using the new norm for casting, or maybe he's creating a new norm.......In just my lifetime, look how the character of Batman and The Joker have evolved. Nolan has directed the canon version of Batman. Heath Ledger didn't draw upon Cesar Romero for his version of The Joke, and the actress who plays this Helen is not in any way like Rosana Podesta.
If Page is playing Achilles as a much chastened ghost, as he appears in the actual Odyssey, then I don’t have a problem with it. That Achilles is a shrunken man.
Is there any limit? Could Ulysses by played by a 7 year old girl, and we would all say, yea, that fine?
Can Ulysses jump off a jet ski and pull out his Iphone?
Here is a good question for Grok, how likely was it that a Spartan king would take a bride outside of the powerful families of Sparta? It is erasure of the history of our civilization. Sparta was ruled by a tiny, tight knit warrior class, most of the residents of Sparta were Helots, slaves owned by the government. It’s important that we don’t forget the many lessons handed down to us from the Greeks.
No way could Helen be the offspring of the gods, hatched from the egg of a swan, in Nolan’s Ancient Greece, so we have to take her as a Spartan queen.
And I refuse to suddenly - for no reason - change the spelling of Turkey. Why? The Spainish name for England is Inglaterra. Nobody calls Germany "deutchland" except the krauts. Do we get upset when Latinos call us "North americans"?
Do people some sort of weird high from obeying orders from Central command and changing the spelling of words? I don't. But then I'm not a conformist nor do i follow "party lines".
Ben Shapiro is a dork.
LOL. That's true. I never thought much of about Shapiro till 2016. I was puzzled why people liked him so much. He talked fast, seemed smart, but otherwise... mediocre.
His movie reviews are interesting because he's practically the only "Conservative" who does them. They're not into "culture". They're dont even do subversive deconstruction. To the Right culture and the arts are just a big blank space. Something other people think about.
Pens and Poison - a slightly different take.
Agree with her overall view of Hollywood.
RC Cola is a Jew hating/ Israel hater. LOL.
I will see it. Read an interesting “review” that said the movie portrays Odysseus as a man who is traumatized by war and wants to forget. (Possibly that’s the portrayal in the translation Nolan used?) But that Homer’s Odysseus is actually a man whose primary flaw is hubris and his glory-seeking pride is what drives his journey. The latter rings more true to me. Hubris is a more interesting theme.
Peachy - hadn’t read your comment. Yes. Likely the same review I saw but just a short, non-video version on Instagram.
RCO, Steve Sailer reviewed it twice: Nolan
Some of them are beyond his paywall.
the-odyssey-its-not-going-to-be-fun
My disbelief can only handle so much suspension. Then I
start to laugh.
The dog Argus was well cast, both as a pup and as an elderly loyalist. That alone makes the movie OK by me.
He mispronounces “overarching” two times.
Thanks Ralph. I'd forgotten about Steve Sailer. Although I dont think of Steve as "Rightwing". I think of him as more a realist and independent who marches to his own drummer.
I actually had time to read a transcript of this review, and its even worse than I thought. First, Shapiro has a lot of annoynig tics.
Like? Well this: "I'd rate this movie between a 8.5 and a 9.0". I mean, wow Ben way to be needlessly and crazily precise. If you'd given it an 8 or a 9, I dont think anyone would've cared.
Or saying "This is a masterpiece" after saying it has "big flaws" and if "8.75" is "masterpiece", what is a 9.5 or a 10 - "a super-duper masterpiece"?
And why bang on about what a "Weird choice" it was to have Ellen page in the movie, when you're said you're OK with a black Helen of Troy and Homer's crew being full of Indians, blacks, and Latinos?
Also sorta odd is Ben's agreement with Nolan that "The Gods" which are prominent in the written Odysee should be almost left out. We get mythical monsters but very little Zeus. Shouldn't the "religious Right" want more of the Gods?
Somewhat else talked about "Beauty Standards" being different in different times and places. Well thats not true of the ancient Romans and Greeks and most americans in 2026.
And somethings are standard across almost all cultures for women. An hourglass figure. Large eyes. Symetrical features. Small nose and chin. No wrinkles.
RCOcean - Oppenheimer was a JOOOOO. I'm surprised you wanted to see the movie. As always ... it's not all about JOOOOOOS. Open your mind. I stopped reading the site for a while mostly because there are a few people who spout illiterate nonsense. You spout nonsense of course but at least it's not illiterate. Only anti-Western values and Jew hatred, but at least it's not nonsense.
Regarding how upset Jews would be if they recast Schindler's list - now I know you hate Jews and I'm pretty sure you know this but I don't know for sure - there are times and places where one's race, religion, color, etc are meaningful and others where they are not. If they made a movie about Jesus but he was a Chinese female Muslim that would be ridiculous. He was a Jew in Roman times so he should look like that. It is fundamental to the story. If you made a movie where you could see the characters clearly, it would be similarly ridiculous to make Miss Saigon black. Or white or brown. In a play/musical? Black might be a stretch (meaningfully disrupting the suspension of disbelief). White would probably be OK because in the theater it's hard to see clearly (for me at least) what the performer looks like if I'm not in the first few rows.
For The Lord of the Rings? Well I always imagined them as white. Maybe not the Ents or the Orcs, but the main characters. Until very recent times I don't think there has ever been any other suggestions and the pictures always showed the characters with Caucasian features. I personally could not watch the woke LOTR shows with every race because I did not feel I was in Middle Earth. I felt like I was at Whole Foods in West Hollywood. There was no suspension of disbelief.
Which brings us to The Odyssey. My main objection to the casting is casting Hollywood A-listers. Matt Damon? Hathaway? I don't see characters from the Odyssey. I see Hollywood stars. a black Helen? I don't mind it if she's really beautiful. I mean the Greek empire expanded all over that portion of the world and into Africa. Not unreasonable. The primary characters I think should be white/brown for historical reasons. Deities? No one has ever seen one directly. Not sure how I feel about that.
Long story short - you already know when race or gender or creed is an important part of the story and you willfully ignore it because your hate for Jews is so great you cannot do otherwise.
I feel bad for you that your life has come to this. Once you were normal. I bet you were a normal kindergartener who liked playing baseball and kickball. That your life deteriorated to such an extent that you are filled with hate is sad to me.
Thanks for all the words Kieth. I don't know what your point was, but man that was some wall text. And points for getting in the words "Hate Jews" in there about 10 times.
Funny how you can say anything about anything. But man, you attack israel - the greatest country that ever existed (LOL) - and you get people attacking you constantly. They'll pop up on a Christopher Nolan movie review.
Of course, maybe they're getting paid. Or maybe not.
TW, i just watched Peirs Morgan's "Uncensored" youtube video on "The odyessey" and he had VDH on, along with a black guy and 3 other people. And of course, it all about "Hey what about those black actors in the movie" with a little bit about Ellen page.
And of course, VDH the so-called conservative, admits he didn't even watch the movie! But y'know them thar Greeks were really not racists and would've been fine with an black helen of Troy and Athenia.
Except they would NOT have been. The ancient Greeks would've been upset that no one in the movie was Greek!
Kieth on blogger since November 2014 with 234 views.
can you say sock puppet boys and girls?
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