Well, how could this be? I was told that The Odyssey is going to flop because YouTube dislikes are the most accurate representation of the opinions of moviegoers around the world.
As you read this article, somewhere, a man in his thirties is typing the words, “This is what the fall of the West actually looks like,” beneath a poster for a film about a guy trying to get home to his wife. Now, that man could be a trillionaire with deep-seated insecurities or a broke culture warrior sitting near the top of the list of people the trillionaire’s company is supposed to prey on. Neither of them has read Homer. They will never read Homer. But somehow, both of them know, with total conviction, exactly what Homer would have thought about the casting. Post it. Retweet it. Screenshot it for the group chat. Sail on, brave scholar.
On Twitter, or X, or whatever we’re calling it this week, a small but very loud group of people has decided The Odyssey is a betrayal of Western Civilisation. The casting is wrong, apparently. Someone cast an actor whose skin tone offended the historical accuracy of a story about a man turned into a pig by a witch.
Boycotts have been announced. Thinkpieces have been drafted about the death of culture or Hollywood by people who could not tell you the name of Odysseus’s dog, but since they cannot write, they are making a 90-second reel about it.
Sadly, all this boycott will be rendered quite meaningless when the previews start rolling at 2 pm on Thursday across a few thousand screens. Despite many people swearing off Nolan’s The Odyssey, the film is going to gross around $200 million worldwide in its opening weekend.
If you ever needed proof of how most of the internet is just people in a room being needlessly reactionary and shouting onto their own wall and calling the echo a majority, this counts as one. Tracking has the film opening to $85–100 million domestic and another $110 million overseas, across 73 territories and 22,700 screens.
Advance sales alone already sit at $30–40 million. A nearly three-hour non-franchise film is the biggest ticket in town this weekend around the globe? You would have to take your mind back to James Cameron’s Avatar and Titanic, to reminisce about the last time somebody else, apart from Nolan, managed to pull off something this remarkable.
Interesting little tidbit: If The Odyssey manages to gross at least $506,350,412 worldwide, Nolan would have surpassed Peter Jackson in the all-time box office standings, becoming the Fourth Highest-Grossing Director ever.