Christopher Nolan says ‘The Odyssey’ backlash is “irrelevant”
Director Christopher Nolan has responded to criticism of The Odyssey, which he has described as “irrelevant”.
Nolan’s upcoming epic is set for release in cinemas on July 17th; therefore, the British filmmaker is nonplussed about online backlash from people who have yet to see the movie.
The loudest dissenter has been Elon Musk, who has been ranting about The Odyssey to his 240 million followers on X for months.
Earlier this year, the Tesla owner claimed that “Chris Nolan has lost his integrity” for casting Nyong’o as Helen of Troy.
Then, in May, he claimed that Nolan had chosen to use a diverse cast for The Odyssey solely to enhance his chances at the Academy Awards, writing, “Who specifically is the asshole who added DEI lies to Academy Awards eligibility instead of it just being about making the best movie?”
Musk wrote on X on May 15th, “Chris Nolan desecrated the Odyssey so that he would be eligible for an Academy Award.”
The world’s richest man has even been taking on The Rest is History podcaster and historian Tom Holland (not the Spider-Man actor who stars in The Odyssey) for his defence of the film after attending the premiere. Musk wrote on X, “Tom Holland is such a cuck”.
The social media discourse, which has also seen the trailer receive more than 600,000 dislikes on YouTube, surrounding The Odyssey, doesn’t concern Nolan, who has said in a new interview that “it comes with the territory”.
He told The Telegraph, “These conversations that happen before people see the film – they’re always irrelevant, because no one having them knows what the film actually is yet.”
This is not Nolan’s first rodeo, either. Speaking from experience, he added, “But remember. I spent 10 years of my life dealing with Batman.”
The director elaborated, “When I came on to Batman Begins, writers and artists had been working on this beloved character for almost 65 years, and a lot of freighted thoughts were out there about what he represents.”
He then shared the valuable lesson that Batman taught him, adding, “And what I learnt over my time on that trilogy is you can’t worry about any of that at all. What you have to do is honour the original text by interpreting it in the strongest way you personally can.”
Nolan’s latest comments come after he recently refuted claims that cinemas are dying, praising Backrooms and Obsession for “getting young people into cinemas”, before saying, “I think ever since the 1950s, when television came along, there’s been this tendency in this media to always proclaim, you know, the death of movies.”
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