A new Christoper Nolan film is typically heralded with the same fervor as Christ’s second coming — but something has been decidedly off about his latest. The Odyssey is Christopher Nolan’s long-gestating adaptation of an epic, ancient poem, a swords-and-sandals actioner that’s been quietly percolating within the director for 20 years. Naturally, that means he’s had a lot of time to think about what his version of the classic Greek adventure would look like; in a recent interview with Time, he offers up detailed explanations for everything from the surprisingly Batman-like armor that adorns Benny Safdie’s Agamemnon to the baffling casting of rapper Travis Scott as a bard.
Reading Nolan’s insights would have been quaint, even intriguing, in a vacuum. Unfortunately, they reached me just as the backlash towards the famously private director seemed to reach its zenith. If you frequent X — formerly known as Twitter — with even half the frequency I do, you’ll have seen the rising tide of dissent threatening to capsise Nolan’s Odyssey before it’s even gotten out to sea. We all read Homer’s epic in school, of course, but suddenly everybody’s an expert in ancient Greek customs and Bronze Age culture. None of Nolan’s choices are safe from a breathless kind of scrutiny. Lupita Nyon’go is Helen of Troy? Sacrilege, according to, y’know... racists. Robert Pattinson’s use of the word “daddy” in the latest trailer also ruffled some feathers. Not even the idea that Anne Hathaway’s version of Penelope — the calm, clever wife of the lost Odysseus (Matt Damon) — is actually “full of fury” went down with much grace. It seems the entire world is crashing out before the movie even comes out. But we need to chill out. I need to chill out.
