u/AllNewNewYorker

Click here for Part 1

Now, if you get a chance, pull up some behind the-scenes videos of how Lucas made the prequels. Here’s a few of them, watch:

Credit: Star Wars/YouTube.com

Whatever you think of the finished product, they’re hammering out new scenes and new locations, they were working out the details of the podracing scene and all the sound effects that would play throughout, they wanted to get the lighting of the palace just right - they weren’t preoccupied with recreating the original trilogy, they wanted to make something new. And that’s what they did. Was the dialogue kind of stilted, yes. Were many of the characters weak, yes. Was a lot of the acting not great, yes. Was the opening crawl about a trade war, you know, pretty boring, yes. But no one can accuse the prequels of trying to rip off the original trilogy - the choreography was different, the set pieces were different, and if you happen to be a fan of trade wars and political debates, you know, which is possible—and now tariffs are all the rage again—then, you know, there’s something here for you to watch that wasn't in the original films.

By contrast, take a look at the making of documentary for “The Force Awakens” - the entire time, they're fixated on what happened before, on nostalgia. Can’t go five seconds without talking about the older films, and how badly they want to emulate them. They come across like people who are desperate to figure out what made “Star Wars” appealing, so they can copy as much of the original films as possible. They never talk about any of their bold new ideas, because they don’t have any..

Watch:

Credit: Star Wars Coffee/YouTube.com

>MAN 1: “What we would do is we would have sort of weekly check-in meetings with J.J., where we’d have a conference call, you know, video conference call. And we would go through the art.“

>MAN 2: J.J. is very adamant that we kind of go back to the core aesthetics that made the original trilogy so great, and a lot of that was driven by Ralph and his sensibility. And for us, it’s kind of going back home in many ways, both for the visual look and the style of the movie…”

>J.J. ABRAMS: “There was a feeling when I was a kid, when I saw Star Wars for the first time, that it was all practical and real. I mean, there were things like being outside the sand crawler and seeing those treads, those massive treads right there, it was a physical, tangible, real thing, you knew it when you saw the movie.”

>PRODUCER: “So we wanted to go back and embrace the LOOK of those original films, which was all part of the feeling of how they were able to transport you into that universe…”

>KATHLEEN KENNEDY: “There are things that are relevant, things you’re identifying with - certainly for all young kids when the movie came out, they either wanted to be Luke Skywalker, or they saw themselves as Han Solo. And I think that was a part of our challenge, was how are we gonna bring new characters into this series that had that same kind of power?…”

>WRITER: “What was made clear to me very early on was that it was going to be shot on film, which is something that I love, I love working with film.”

>CO-PRODUCER: “When you’re making Star Wars, there’s really no choice but to shoot it on film. You have to, because the originals were shot on film, and it’s very much part of how we remember them looking and feeling - there’s something that you need to capture on celluloid, no question…”

>J.J. ABRAMS: “The villain in training is interesting for me because, in talking about villains in Star Wars, you don’t and can’t get better than Darth Vader, it’s sort of the thing.”

>WRITER: “They had created an image that was unmistakable, you don’t need any explanation - the guy walks through the smoke, you get the whole thing, and he’s the most threatening villain of all time.”

>J.J. ABRAMS: “The idea that this is a character who is influenced by that darkness, started to allow a masked villain, which feels essential in the Star Wars universe, to take form and not feel like we’re being naive and acting like there wasn’t a Darth Vader.”

>KATHLEEN KENNEDY: “Maybe putting on the mask makes him feel more powerful.”

>MAN 3: “It makes perfect sense that this guy has had a huge impact on everybody. And yes, this figure looms large for our villain, too.”

>ADAM DRIVER: “There’s so many nods to Vader and how you first meet him, and I think JJ was after something more youthful and unpredictable and someone who isn't polished, and even in his lightsaber, it’s not quite finished…”

>JOHN BOYEGA: “The scene that made me feel like ‘Oh my gosh, this is crazy,’ is when all of the casts are around that table planning.”

>PRODUCER: “The moment that meant the most to me personally was Ackbar was on set. And, you know, security’s been so tight, we’re ot allowed to take pictures or anything, but I had to take a picture of Ackbar on set and show it to my brothers, because we LOVED Ackbar, you know, ‘IT’ A TRAP!’”

They’re fangirling about Admiral Ackbar being on set, they’re making sure all the visuals look like the original trilogy—one call back after another without any new ideas—from a business perspective, it makes sense, at least in the short term. The film made $2 billion, and as a result, Disney decided that there must be insatiable demand for “Star Wars” products, even if they’re unoriginal and uninteresting. You know, having no respect for the audience at all, which is another problem with all these companies. They have no respect for the audience, think the audience is stupid. And so they think that, well, you’ll just guzzle down whatever slop they give you, and it doesn’t matter.

That’s why Bob Iger thought that it made sense for Disney to flood the zone to release one film every year, along with a slew of television shows. It began mass-producing this stuff, and to that end, Disney created something called “The Volume,” which is basically a cylindrical sound stage that’s surrounded by LED screens that display video game style CGI backgrounds. It was supposed to be much better than a traditional green screen, and it would fool audiences into thinking that Disney was shooting on location or building complicated sets, which they weren’t.

Watch:

Source: Insider/YouTube.com

>“While filming this scene from Disney’s The Mandalorian, the actors could see their surroundings, but the surroundings weren’t actually there. All of this is just LED screens, displaying backgrounds pre-made in a video game engine. Compare that with this fight scene from Avengers Endgame, where actors jumped around in a sea of green, imagining how VFX artists would make this planet look once filming had ended. The Mandalorian is one of the first major productions to choose LED walls over green screens, and the benefits for the actors are just the tip of the iceberg. LED walls make the lighting better, filming smoother, and in certain cases, cost a lot less than using green screens… Now, you may be thinking, ‘This isn’t so new. I’ve seen something like this before.’ And you're right, kind of. The predecessor to what we see on The Mandalorian is a driving scene like this one from Dr. No. You’ve got the actor in the car, and behind them, a screen with footage of the road they've traveled. But the technology was limited. Say you want to move the camera angle during the scene. That projected footage can’t move with the camera. But by using Unreal Engine, tech borrowed from the video game field, that problem is solved. Artists can create a photorealistic 3D background that moves strictly with the camera’s field of view, known as the frustum. So if the camera swings around and changes angles, the background shifts in precisely the same way. This allows motiontracked cameras to execute traditional cinematography techniques within the virtual set. Achieving cinematic movements like the parallax effect, where an object in the foreground moves at a different speed than the background, amplifies the illusion of filming at an actual location… He says lighting is one of the key benefits of working with virtual sets. The light coming from the LEDs provide realistic colors and reflections on the actors and props, something you simply can’t achieve with green screen.”

Like most tech demos, it sounds convincing enough; it seems to solve all the problems of traditional green screens. The executives at Disney concluded that it would help them mass produce shows like “Kenobi” and The Mandalorian, and nobody would notice that they were cheaping out. But actually, people did notice.

This is a video from the YouTuber “Zaxx,” giving a few examples of how using the Volume for some very awkward staging decisions that made no sense in the context of the story. And full disclosure, once you watch this video, there’s a good chance you won’s be able to stomach any of these Disney “Star Wars” shows anymore (if, somehow, you were able to do that to begin with).

Here it is:

Source: ZAXX/YouTube.com

>NARRATOR: “The Volume is basically a sound stage that’s run by ILM, under their brand Stagecraft. It’s a super cool technology, but it can be super limiting. But with the Volume, and Stagecraft, there’s no choice. It can look like your characters are anywhere, but they’re really on a small stage. And you can change the backdrop, but it’s always a circle. Remember that. But if you need more than one actor to move through that space, it gets silly fast. And so what you get is scenes like this from Kenobi, the one that launched a thousand memes. The chase starts in a circle, and that’s because the actors can’t gain or lose any distance between each other, because there’s no distance to gain. So, they look like parents who are trying to lose a race to their kid to boost their self-esteem…”

>EXECUTIVE IN COMEDY SKETCH 1: “So now he’s gotta escape, but there’s a freaking laser fence!”

>EXECUTIVE 2: “Those are hard to get around.”

>EXECUTIVE 1: “They are, except for this one, which is very easy to walk around.”

>EXECUTIVE 2: “Oh, well, good.”

>EXECUTIVE 1: “Yeah, so they panic for a second trying to get through, but then Obi-Wan realizes he can shoot the control panel and get through.”

>EXECUTIVE 1: “Why didn’t he just walk around?”

>EXECUTIVE 2: “Well, this is much more exciting, sir!”

>[cut to a live reaction of the same scene with different YouTubers]

>YOUTUBER WITH HOODED LIZARD ICON: “I don’t know, man, just walk around the hill.”

>[The YouTubers react with exasperation at the following wide shot]

>YOUTUBER 2: “But it gets even dumber - with all the Stormtroopers taken out, Obi-Wan runs up to the checkpoint, which is made of powerful lasers, and he can’t quite figure out how to shut them off, so he decides to shoot the controls and hope that it will deactivate the lasers. Now, I want you to take a very close look at this image right here [shows the wide shot] and tell me, what do you think Obi-Wan should have done? Now, it might make sense for Obi-Wan to want to disable these lasers if he had intended on using the vehicle, but he doesn’t.”

>NARRATOR: “To be fair, bringing the truck through wasn’t the Volume’s fault. No, there was a scripted reason for that. Not a good reason, but a scripted reason. And what possible reason could they have? I’m gonna have to circle back to that. So I’m gonna guess that the reason that he didn’t go around the laser fence was because there is no ‘around the laser fence.’ And they also couldn’t go over it, because there is no ‘over it.’ It’s a curved LED screen. And I’m gonna pause it that these are the edges of that screen. And once you can recognize it, you start seeing it everywhere… Like, maybe if it’s not in the Volume, you have them be surrounded by a dozen stormtroopers, and he has no chance or they have Leia or something. Because of the volume, they’re coming from one direction and there's only three of them. With this filming technique, you can’t have actors enter or exit that circle while on camera. So they kinda got to teleport. Outside the volume circle, perspective change, Obi-Wan and Leia are saved, and now all the performers are inside that circle, and so they can interact.”

Now, there’s another example where Vader is in front of a wall of flames, but he could clearly just walk around it if he wanted to. But with the Volume, the actors can’t walk around anything. You know, with the exception of “Andor,” pretty much all of Disney’s “Star Wars” shows have relied on this crutch, and it’s obviously making the shows worse.

Now, for comparison, here’s how Lucas was filming his big climactic showdowns 27 years ago. And this is what film making looked like in the pre-Disney era, watch:

Source: Star Wars/YouTube.com

Now, with the wonders of modern technology embraced by Disney, none of this is possible anymore. Characters can’t fall from heights or chase each other around, because they're confined to a tiny stage surrounded by LED screens on all sides - and by the way, since I’m on the topic of CGI, it needs to be said that the prequels actually had some extremely welldone sequences. The opening of “Revenge of the Sith” is one of them, so was the lightsaber duel at the end of “Phantom Menace” and the podracing. Somehow, a movie from three decades ago in several respects looks better than what Disney is producing now.

But the “Star Wars” content isn’t only terrible because of bad CGI and staging, it’s also terrible because the characters are atrocious. This is one of those things that, very clearly, Disney miscalculated, and they have no idea what they did wrong. And you could tell because Disney built this massive billion-dollar theme park called “Galaxy’s Edge,” in California and Florida. And it was intended to highlight all the new characters in the sequel trilogy; you know, Kylo Ren and Rey, the girl, and so on. And for the the same reason Disney built a “Star Wars” hotel that was set in the timeline of the new trilogy, and which forced guests to be locked away in a windowless building that was supposed to resemble a spaceship. And the whole pitch was that you get to hang out with Rey and all these great new characters. But their fans didn’t respond to any of this, because all of these new characters are garbage, and the hotel was a frankly insane idea. Because who doesn’t want to stay at a hotel with no windows? And so they shut down the hotel, and now they’re bringing back characters from the original trilogy for their theme park.

And this is how they're introducing them, watch:

Source: @starwars/X.com

Source: @starwars/X.com

Well, they don’t look anything like the, you know, actual characters, but I guess these are the best actors Disney could find. They were desperate to give their customers an alternative to Kylo Ren, and so they had to scramble.

Now think about what a humiliating about face this is: They were convinced—to the point that they spent a billion dollars on the idea—that people were clamoring to walk around the Disney “Star Wars” universe they created, and now they’re realizing that, actually, nobody wants to do that. I mean, it’s quite likely that no one at Disney has any idea what went wrong - in fact, it’s GUARANTEED they have no idea.

This is from an exit interview that Kathleen Kennedy did with Deadline a few months ago, after announcing her departure from Lucasfilm. She was asked about the low points in her tenure, and this is what she said:

>The lows are that you’ve got a very, very small percentage of the fan base that has enormous expectations and basically they want to continue to see pretty much the same thing. And if you’re not going to do that, then you know going in that you’re going to disappoint them. I’m not sure there’s anything you can do about that, because you can’t please everybody. All you can do is try to tell good stories and try to stick to the essence of what George created. He embedded incredible values into Star Wars and what it has to say. The whole idea of hope and fun and entertainment in what he’s done over all these years, that’s what I tried to preserve. And I wouldn’t do that any differently and I wouldn’t change anything that we’ve done over the years.

No, of course you wouldn’t, Kathleen. Yes, according to Kathleen Kennedy, “a very, very small percentage” of angry fans—who she’s previously suggested are misogynist—are upset because they want to “continue to see pretty much the same thing.” Apparently, the backlash is coming from a tiny sliver of the “Star Wars” fan base, which perfectly explains why the entire franchise is bombing right now, which, you know, makes a lot of sense. 1% of fans hate change, and therefore, nobody cares about a “Star Wars” movie for the first time ever. Never mind the fact that Kathleen Kennedy’s idea of new and interesting content is a cheap looking LED, wall along with shows built around the trials and tribulations of black lesbian witches.

Actually, that’s selling “The Acolyte” short - they also managed to shoehorn gender-neutral pronouns into the show as well, as you've probably seen. But if you haven’t, here it is again:

Source: StarWars Clips/YouTube.com

>BLACK LESBIAN WITCH: “Who is that?”

>ALIEN WOMAN: “That’s Bazil.”

>BLACK LESBIAN WITCH: “Is he—or they—with us?”

Now, this kind of dialogue was inserted into these shows as a deliberate effort by Kathleen Kennedy to make a political point.

And here's what she told the New York Times:

>“My belief is that storytelling does need to be representative of all people…That’s an easy decision for me.” “Operating within these giant franchises now with social media and the level of expectation — it’s terrifying… I think Leslie [the showrunner of The Acolyte] has struggled a little bit with it. I think a lot of the women who step into ‘Star Wars’ struggle with this a bit more. Because of the fan base being so male-dominated, they sometimes get attacked in ways that can be quite personal.”

Now, it’s actually difficult to string together so many idiotic comments in a row, even if you’re trying to. No, storytelling does NOT need to be representative of all people; it’s IMPOSSIBLE for storytelling to be representative of all people, for one thing. There are more than 8 billion people on the planet! And as a practical matter, no film or television show can “represent,” whatever that means, all of them.

But even if it WERE somehow possible to, say, cast all 8 billion people in your show, and represent every single one of them, that would not improve the storytelling at all. In fact, representation is not just irrelevant to storytelling, it’s ANTI-storytelling. Okay, a story should NOT represent the wishes and desires and fantasies—much less political ideologies—of every single person who hears the story. It should instead represent the singular and distinct vision of the storyteller! That’s what a story is, that’s what art is! When people go to a movie, a good storyteller is saying, “Hey, I got a great story to tell you.” And everybody gathers around because they want to hear that person’s story! I want to hear YOUR story! And if I’m sitting around the campfire to hear your great story, I don't want other people around the campfire to chime in and add to it! No, I don’t want to hear THEIR stories, I want to hear YOUR story! That’s what we're all sitting here for.

Does “The Godfather” represent all people? Does “Moby Dick represent” all people? Does Michelangelo’s “David”? Does Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony? Do any of these iconic works of art, through their various different mediums, represent everyone on the planet? Were they
crowdsourced? Were they made democratically, after taking into account the priorities and preferences of the voting majority? No, clearly not! If Francis Ford Copala or Melville or Michelangelo had taken THAT approach, their masterpieces never would have been made, and if they had been made, they wouldn’t be masterpieces! They would be watered down, lowest common denominator sludge, stripped of everything challenging and distinct about them in an attempt to appeal to the largest number of people. That’s NOT how artists create! They create based on their distinctive vision. And if if their vision is brilliant and beautiful, and their skills can match it, then their creation will be representative of no one’s desires but their own, and yet will connect with and inspire and fascinate billions of humans for centuries!

Now, George Lucas obviously created something like that with his original series; he obviously created something that connected with billions of people for, if not centuries, decades. DISNEY USED to create art like that, decades ago. But they, along with most of the rest of mainstream Hollywood today, no longer create art that inspires and fascinates billions across generations, because they no longer create art at all - art is not something, again, that could be constructed strategically in a boardroom, as part of a, you know, strategy to monetize your IP. No art has ever been made that way, or could ever be made that way - it cannot work that way, that’s not what art is. So if you're making films that fail to connect, and fail to rise to the level of art at all, then what do you do?

Well, Disney decided that the best strategy was to yell at the audience for not liking their product enough. And this has been the pitch for years now. You know, if you hate the terrible product, then you hate women. Which is something that everybody associated with “The Acolyte,” of course, kept saying very explicitly, watch:

Source: @GeeksGamersCom/X.com

Now, if you think that all these people should never work in Hollywood again, then according to Kathleen Kennedy, you simply hate women. You also hate anything that’s new. You want to be told the same stories over and over again. I mean, that’s how completely retarded these people are.

Obviously they’re also completely missing the point. The problem is not that the audience wants to see the same thing over and over again, it’s actually the opposite of that. Like, what you’re doing is the same thing over and over again! Okay, just using the same formula, and plugging in different characters, and then throwing in some gender pronoun nonsense—throwing in a lesbian or a black person—that’s not something new! That’s not a that's not a whole bold new vision. But this was their strategy: to take a formula that they didn't create and then “make it new” by like, “Oh, we’re gonna have more black people and lesbians in it than before.”

And what you need to realize is that these dumb, narcissistic, destructive women are in charge of pretty much every corporation in the country right now. I mean, “Star Wars” is the least of our problems in that respect.

Actually, Kathleen, the problem with the Disney content is that it’s terrible. I mean, let’s go back to that Red Letter Media video for a second - it’s true that the original films were formulaic, but they also executed the formula well. You know, Luke goes through the hero's journey, suffers—loses his hand—before triumphing in the end. That’s classic storytelling.

Now, Rey, on the other hand, was created in a lab by Kathleen Kennedy and the feminists at Disney. Her arc makes no sense - she learns the Force one minute, and she’s defeating Kylo Ren in one-on-one combat the next. For his part, Finn kinda does nothing after the first movie, Poe is written as a Han Solo clone. They completely changed Luke’s personality, Han Solo doesn’t evolve either. Basically, at every turn, you could tell that Disney was winging the new films - it’s not that they had a new vision. The problem again is they had no vision whatsoever. Their only goal was just pumping out as much content as possible, as a monetization strategy.

And here’s a post from a Disney official X account,dated December 2020:

Source @Disney/X.com

“Over the next few years, roughly 10 Marvel series, 10 Star Wars series, 15 Disney live action, Disney Animation, and Pixar series, plus 15 all-new Disney live action, Disney Animation, and Pixar features will be released directly on Disney Plus.”

Now almost 6 years later, out of 10 “Star Wars” series, we’re finally getting a movie. They apparently canceled a bunch of other projects, for one reason or another. And this grand new movie, after all this time, is a repackaged season 4 of the show “The Mandalorian.” That’s what “The Mandalorian and Grogu” is - the budget of this alleged major motion picture is less than $170 million, which is a fraction of the budget of every other modern “Star Wars” film. Disney’s throwing this on the screen because they’re out of ideas; they figure they might as well try to sell some toys before the franchise is put on an indefinite hiatus. So that’s exactly what they’re going to do.

Now, George Lucas was attacked, rightly so, for including Ewoks in “Return of the Jedi” and Jar Jar Binks in “Phantom Menace” as a cynical ploy to sell merchandise, which is a significant reason for his enormous wealth. But Lucas never made an entire movie, from start to finish solely to sell toys, without any meaningful plot, characterization, or reason to care about anything that happens. It took a series of catastrophic decisions by Bob Iger, Kathleen Kennedy, J.J. Abrams, Ryan Johnson, and company to get us to this point, but we’re definitely here. One of the most recognizable stories in modern American history has been destroyed. Disney has created, in its place, a political project that reflects the absolute worst impulses of progressivism and feminism, and they’ve demanded that we indoctrinate our children with it.

You know, if there’s one silver lining in this entire saga, it’s that, contrary to what Kathleen Kennedy expected, millions of Americans are refusing to go along with it. They’re making it very clear that, you know, this is not about hating women or hating new ideas. They just hate the bastardized, pointless, insulting, trashy, low IQ mess that this franchise has has become. Which is to say that Star Wars is dead. And Disney killed it.

Click here for Part 1

Another clue that Nolan’s goal is more to demolish the Odyssey than to interpret it is that the corporate press is already running a full-on PR campaign for Nolan’s film several months before it comes out - Time Magazine ran this cover story glorifying Nolan.

But if you actually read the story, it’s not hard to see that Nolan and his team have absolutely no idea what they're doing.

Here’s one of the more remarkable parts:

>Nolan instructed [composer Ludwig] Göransson not to use an orchestra in the score, if only to subvert expectations for a sword-and-sandals film. “It’s not like the orchestra existed back then,” says Göransson. “It was a challenge and also an opening to try to make something unique. Instead, Göransson rented 35 bronze gongs of varying sizes, experimented, recorded them with synths, and began sending the director songs. Nolan also put rapper Travis Scott in the film as a bard. “I cast him because I wanted to nod towards the idea that this story has been handed down as oral poetry, which is analogous to rap.”

So there’s a lot to think about here. First of all, he’s saying they won’t include an orchestra in the score because the orchestra supposedly “didn’t exist back then.” But in the same breath, he says they rented 35 bronze gongs and recorded them with synths - now, admittedly again, I’m not an expert. I didn’t study ancient Greece in college—in fact, I didn’t study anything in college because I didn’t go to college—but I’m pretty confident that, if the Greeks didn’t have orchestras, then they also probably didn’t have synths? So what exactly is the rationale for having synths in the score? I’m also fairly certain that Bronze Age people didn’t have IMAX cameras or 3D printed armor or boom mics or any of the other technology they’re using in this film, so this is totally incoherent. Not to mention, again, he’s basing his film on a modernized translation already, and using modernized language and dialogue, where people say things like “Dad” and “let’s go.”

But somehow Time Magazine printed this without, you know, anybody noticing that it sounded a little odd - and the worst part is Nolan saying that he cast the rapper Travis Scott as a bard because, “I wanted to nod towards the idea that this story has been handed down as oral poetry, which is analogous to rap.” Yes, Homer's Odyssey, because it was handed down as oral poetry, is analogous to rap - never mind the fact that unlike Homer’s Odyssey, rap music is not handed down through generations by many different performers. Rappers sing a song and they record the finalized version of it in a studio, you know, and then it’s not handed down, it’s like, here's the recording of the song. Other than the fact that the human voice is involved in both of these concepts, there’s really no meaningful similarity. Like, we know about old rap songs because we have the original recordings. Okay, it’s not like your grandmother is sitting you down and reciting the oral tradition of “Back That Azz Up” by Juvenile. That’s not how it works. I mean, I don’t know, maybe you have a strange Thanksgiving tradition in your house - that’s not how it works in my house, instead, you know, she could put the song on and we can enjoy and listen as a family.

Now, there are plenty of other important differences, too, starting with the fact that the lyrics to one of Travis Scott’s biggest songs goes like this. Just reading the lyrics now: “Yeah, pass the dawgs a celly/Sendin’ texts ain’t sendin’ kites, yeah/He said ‘keep that on lock’/I said ‘you know this shit’s stife’/It’s absolute I’m back reboot/Lefarri to Jamba Juice.”

Now, my only point is that that doesn’t exactly measure up to an ancient timeless epic. You know, if this were the kind of oral tradition handed down from our ancestors, we would have to assume that our ancestors were all retarded. In fact, if that qualified as “timeless poetry” to be handed down through the generations, we would really, and I don’t mean to exaggerate, have no choice but to collectively throw ourselves into a volcano and just put a merciful end to the human race entirely. So the reasoning doesn’t make any sense.

Credit: @IGN/X.com

It makes about as much sense as casting Ellen/Elliot Page in the film playing a man even though she’s a woman. You know, it’s true that they didn’t have orchestras in ancient Greece, but they did have orchestras, like, for the last 400 years, at least. On the other hand, we’ve had transgenderism for like 400 seconds. I’d say the latter is a lot more anachronistic than the former. And there are reports online that suggest that page is playing the legendary mythical warrior Achilles, and I’m not sure if that’s true or not. That’s what everyone’s saying, I don’t know if it’s true. If it is, then it’s gonna be the single worst casting choice ever made in the history of Hollywood. Unless Nolan is changing the story so that the Achilles heel is misgendering. You know. Unless that’s the case, it won’t make any sense, but no matter who she plays, we can be sure that it will be a male character. So we know that it’s terrible casting regardless.

But before I beat this point any further and elaborate on my argument that Hollywood is trying to intentionally subvert the classics, I did want to present this alternative theory, which I found interesting. It’s not really alternative theory exactly, it’s the theory that helps to maybe explain some of what we're seeing here. And in this theory, Christopher Nolan isn’t necessarily tanking the Odyssey on purpose. I mean, after all, he’s the same guy who made “The Dark Knight Rises,” where the rich guy kills the socialist revolutionaries. Instead the theory is that Nolan is only good at making a specific kind of movie and “The Odyssey” is out of his depth.

So this is from a filmmaker named Alain Astruc; it’s a really insightful point, so I want to read it in its entirety. And here's what he says:

Source: @alainastruc/X.com

“I think I finally understand what is wrong with Nolan: his universe is adverse to myth. It is made entirely of causality, and causality alone. He may be the most gifted filmmaker working in big-budget Hollywood today. But he is going to crash on myth the way sailors crashed on the rocks below the Sirens… The tell is in a detail Nolan offers with obvious pride. He found a solution to what he saw as a narrative problem: why would the Trojans believe the horse was empty and drag it inside their city? His answer is to make the horse half-submerged, sinking into the sea, so the Trojans would rescue it rather than accept it as a gift. It is a solution to a problem that never was one because it is a myth. The Trojans bring the horse inside because it is a gift and it has wheels. The poet tells you something plainly impossible with the same tone he uses to describe the sunrise, and in doing so he is signaling that the level of reality goes beyond mere causality and exists on other levels. He is the kind of guy who would explain that Santa can fit through the chimney because he designed it wide enough from the start, using proper construction methods and reliable materials. And then explain how the reindeer are fed to sustain that much effort in a single night, and how Santa elaborated a clever logistics route to deliver all the gifts on time.”

So he has a point here, undoubtedly. Think about, for example, how George Lucas destroyed “Star Wars.” Again, not exactly a “Star Wars” expert myself, but in the original trilogy, the Force was a mysterious mystical power that was never fully explained. You’d kind of use your imagination and, you know, fill in the blanks. But in the prequels, Lucas came up with a scientific explanation for the force. And basically, it's like, some people had “midi-chlorians” or however they spell it. And the midi-chlorians in their cells gave them magic powers - so this was a disastrous change because it removed all the mythology, all of the intrigue behind the Force. The Force went from something ineffable and mysterious to like a biological mutation like cancer, except good I guess. Now, was it more rational from a technical perspective? Sort of, I guess, but it ruined one of the core aspects of the original film. The Force didn’t need to be rational. Like, “Star Wars” is a story about spacemen running around and fighting each other with laser swords. We don’t need a rationalistic, materialistic explanation for every aspect of it. Now, modern mainstream filmmakers are, for the most part, allergic to anything mystical or supernatural or mythological. They have to filter everything through a materialist lens because that’s the lens by which they see the world. This is what makes them especially ill-suited to make movies set in ancient times. You know, the whole beauty of filmmaking is that it allows the audience to see the world through the eyes of its central characters. But seeing the world through the eyes of ancient people means seeing a world steeped in myth and mysticism. Because that is the world that they perceived.

The only major director working today who understands that is not Christopher Nolan, but Robert Eggers. In “The Northman”—which is one of the only good historical films of the last quarter century—Eggers tells the story from the perspective of a Viking in the 10th century. That’s why some people who watched the movie didn’t really like it, I think, because they didn’s quite understand what Robert Eggers was doing. And the movie, it’s very violent and epic, and it is, you know, grim in a lot of ways, but it’s also kind of trippy, in a way people weren’t expecting. And why is that, well, because he’s telling the story from the perspective of these people who lived in the 10th century. He’s respecting the mysticism of the ancients. Trying to capture their worldview, not his own, right? Capture THEIR worldview. THEIRS, not his.

Now, most modern filmmakers like Nolan are way too literal in their thinking. There’s nothing romantic, nothing mystical, nothing mythological in their view of the world.m - they can’t handle historical epics because our ancestors lived in a world that is so totally alien to the world these filmmakers perceive. So arguably that’s the problem here: maybe Nolan doesn’t understand how to tell the story. Maybe all the race swaps and all the incoherent details are part of some ill-advised larger effort to connect the dots that don’t need to be connected. Now it’s hard to say because the movie’s not out yet.

Whatever theory explains all this, the fact is that many other directors and other studios are doing the same thing Nolan is doing. Obviously, they’re taking a hatchet to classic works of literature. They’re inverting the themes and ruining the characters - “Animal Farm” from Angel Studios is one of the most recent examples. As we all know, Orwell’s “Animal Farm” was an allegory about communism, but the Angel Studios version makes capitalism into the villain.

This is from Tim Poole who saw the film.

Source: @Timcast/X.com

“The new animal farm is about happy animals sold off after a farmer cant pay his mortgage. One pig gets in credit card debt and agrees to sell the farm in a private equity deal to Elon Musk’s mom who then builds a hydroelectric dam on the property so the animals rebel and plant explosives which blow up the dam killing all her employees. Not a single analogue or comment on marxism let alone communism.”

Now, to his credit, Tim turned down an offer from Angel Studios to promote this film. He recognized that it’s an absurd pro-communist adaptation, so he called it out. Instead of making a new film with a new title, they felt they had to bastardize “Animal Farm.” Like, if you just want to make a dumb movie about barn animals, you can do that! Right, you could just make a movie, call it “The Barnyard” or whatever! And then it would only be stacked up against the pantheon of children’s movies about barn animals (where it would still fall well short of the classics of the genre like “Babe” and “Charlotte’s Web”). But instead, they are cynically using the name of one of the most important and iconic works of 20th century literature. Now, in their defense, Angel Studios insists that they didn’t have any creative control over the film, they’re just the distributor. But frankly—and I say this as someone who likes Angel Studios—that is not much of a defense - I mean, it's a bit like saying, well, I didn’t create the crack cocaine, I just shipped it to millions of people. It’s a surprising development because Angel has done some really powerful and important work - most notably “Sound of Freedom,” which was about child sex trafficking.

And that's why it’s so bewildering that, in “Animal Farm,” Seth Rogan openly mocks “Sound of Freedom.”

Watch:

Source: @animalfarmfilm/X.com

>SMALL PIG: “Hey, where’d this come from?“

>SETH ROGAN PIG: “It’s leftovers, it’ll go to waste, you should have this for all your hard work!”

>SMALL PIG: “No no nonononono, thank you, but it’s supposed to be shared… equally.”

>SETH ROGAN: “UHH BUBUBUBUBUH! There is no ‘supposed to’ anymore. Okay? We’re free. For example, I’m about to fart right now. [rips out a long-winded fart for six or seven seconds, scaring a dog and some chickens] This is the sound of freedom.”

>SMALL PIG: [disgusted] “Thanks, Napoleon. Nice to be appreciated, but…”

>SETH ROGAN: “Just enjoy the milk, kid! And also, like, don’t worry. You know, it’s our little secret.“

Now, first of all, even aside from the fact that this “Animal Farm” adaptation destroys the core message of the book, tears away Orwell’s critique of communism, empties the story of its meaning, and wears it like a skin suit - even aside from all that, again, the tone and look and feel of the film just aren'’t right. You know, Nolan took something grand and sweeping and made it grim and dark; this movie takes something grim and dark and makes it childish and crass. Like, it’s animated with all the artistic care and vision of a “Paw Patrol” episode. And instead of dealing with the heady themes of Orwell’s book, instead they’ve elected to, you know, make fart jokes. And on top of that, it’s openly mocking Angel Studios’ top film, even though Angel Studios distributes the film!

Now, to be clear, Seth Rogan wasn't the only insufferable leftist to work on this thing - here’s another:

Source: @libsoftiktok/X.com

>“At the heart of every genocide is dehumanization. That is the beginning. And I know we’re talking about animals here, but when we stop seeing our fellow citizens as human, then we can commit violence against them with impunity, take away their rights. I think what we’ve seen over the past six years with trans people is a really good example of that. It’s clear that it’s never been about sports, it’s never been about protecting women or children - if they wanted to protect women and children, they would indict the people in the Epstein Files. We know who they are, but they’re not doing that. So that was all a pretext to scapegoat trans people, to dehumanize us and put us in an excluded category so that we can take away… so they could take away our rights - legislate us out of existence. We’re seeing that happen…“

Is there anyone who can seriously argue that Hollywood’s output has gotten better ever since they began recruiting actors and directors and writers like that guy? Has there been a single film that’s been improved by shoehorning in some DEI casting and overt leftist political messaging? Certainly none of the historical epics have improved - I mean, the genre has basically disappeared, and the few attempts that have been made have been, you know, unintentionally farcical.

And that’s a big deal because the historical epic is one of the most important genres of storytelling, it has been for literally thousands of years. When you watch one of those films done right, you learn valuable lessons about the way the world used to work. The obstacles that great men had to overcome. Again, you see the world through the lens of our ancestors, which is a very valuable thing. But it just doesn’t exist anymore - I’d argue that the last truly great historical epic (with the exception of “The Northman”) was “Master and Commander,” which came out in 2003.

And that film featured great actors and filmmakers at the top of their game, telling a heroic and exciting story with real moral and dramatic weight. No concern at all for “diverse representation” or DEI. You leave the film feeling enthralled, and also like you just received a history lesson. Very few films over the past quarter century have even come close to that - “Apocalypto” in 2006 was, you know, masterfully done, “The Northman,” as already mentioned. And in terms of historical films that were actually well-made and respected the time period they portray, that’s pretty much it. This is a massive critical void in America’s culture.

At some level I can understand why lesserk known directors aren’t trying to correct the problem: they know their careers would be destroyed if they tried. But Christopher Nolan, like Angel Studios, is not gonna go bankrupt anytime soon; he’s got more money than he can possibly spend. No one in the industry can take him down, you know, he has total financial artistic freedom to make whatever he wants - he could’ve made the first meaningful historical epic in decades. One that didn’t resemble every other bog standard assembly line production from every other director. Could’ve done that. Instead, we get Zendaya. We get Black Helen. We get dialogue that sits comfortably at a fourth grade reading level.

Was Christopher Nolan a great director? Well, yes, at one point I think he was. Everyone knows that. What’s unclear—the question we may never get an answer to—is why he decided to torch his own legacy, in a doomed effort to destroy Homer’s.

Click here for Part 2

When we first learned that Christopher Nolan was making an adaptation of “The Odyssey,” there was perhaps reason for optimism, if you happen to be an optimistic sort of person. Nolan has made some mistakes in his career—“Tenant” was one of the most convoluted films ever made, “Interstellar” had one too many bloated Hallmark style monologues from Anne Hathaway preaching about the universal power of love or whatever—but he’s still unquestionably one of the most talented living filmmakers, and the Odyssey is one of the foundational works of Western literature - it’s a heroic epic with very obvious themes of masculinity, patriarchy, daring, discovery, mortality. Nolan has proven he can tackle epic sweeping projects in the past, and because Hollywood has somewhat retreated from the racial depravity of the cultural revolution of 2020, or so we thought, it was reasonable to hope that Nolan would be faithful to Homer’s original story and produce a worthwhile film.

Then the trailers arrived, and we’ll start with the one that came out several months ago, watch:

Source: Universal Pictures/YouTube.com

“Promise me you’ll come back.” “What if I can’t?”

Now, this might be splitting hairs, but it’s worrisome if this is the kind of dialogue they’re gonna highlight in the trailer. Sounds like a conversation you might have with the receptionist at your dentist when she’s scheduling your six-month checkup. It’s kind of flat, it’s bland. It’s definitely nothing like the dialogue in the Odyssey; it doesn’t sound like people in ancient Greece.

But the more you watch this trailer, the more you notice some other problems; there’s the cheap looking armor in the beginning, which looks like it was created with a 3D printer. Put aside the fact, for now, that they didn’t actually have armor that looked like this back in the Bronze Age.

Just look at this side-by-side comparison. You you have the armor in the 2004 movie “Troy” with the armor that they're using in “The Odyssey.”

It’s a pretty obvious downgrade in my opinion. Whatever material Nolan’s using, it looks noticeably cheap and fake, so that’s another red flag. Again, not the kind of thing that means the movie will be a disaster, but it makes you wonder what’s going on.

Then you get into bigger issues. And at the outset, I’ll mention that I’m not an expert on Homer, but I can say, with a high degree of certainty, that despite my lack of expertise, there are, when you take all the factors together that we’ll discuss, really only two possibilities: Either I somehow know a lot more about the topic than Christopher Nolan, which seems unlikely; or Christopher Nolan is deliberately bastardizing the Odyssey.

First of all, the tone is not right: the Iliad is supposed to be the gritty wartime epic from Homer; on the other hand, the Odyssey is more of a grand sweeping adventure story, though also of course dealing with serious themes. But there’s more flowery language, there’s, you know, strange creatures and adventures, people get turned into pigs, Poseidon causes the ships to wreck, and so on. Now, with this trailer, it looks kind of like Nolan isn’t so much giving us a fantasy epic with a vibrant color palette, but rather a gritty, dimly lit, self-serious action thriller. Because, you know, for one thing, every major movie made today is dimly lit for reasons that no one’s ever been able to explain - at least no good reasons. Nolan’s sort of applying the “Batman” approach where it doesn’t belong; you half expect to see the Joker show up when you watch the trailer. This is yet another Hollywood blockbuster where everything needs to be dark and brooding and intense and, like I said, dark, like actually dark, you know, in terms of how it's lit. It would have been much more interesting if Nolan had embraced the vibe of the actual epic poem, which is what the 1954 adaptation did.

Now, from this one photo, you can tell that they understand at least the tone that a film based on the Odyssey should have. And there’s actually some color.
Did you know you can have color in movies? Modern directors don’t realize this: you’re allowed to have color. That’s okay, there’s no law saying you’re not allowed to have any kind of color, or actually fully light a scene. You’re allowed to do that, as far as I know! So it feels tonally off, which is what a lot of viewers have picked up on.

And as the trailers kept coming, the situation started to look even worse. So here’s the most recent trailer that really has set off some alarm bells for a lot of viewers.

Watch:

Source: Universal Pictures/YouTube.com

Well, there’s some more award-winning dialogue for you. Odysseus says, “Let's go!” That’s what they went with for this big epic moment where he’s leading the charge: “Let’s go!”

Now again, I know it sounds like splitting hairs, but this is not how people in the ancient Greek world, many centuries before Christ, would have communicated. I don’t just mean because they’re speaking English, okay; I’ll forgive that part, I don’t think that every director has to go full Mel Gibson and actually do the film in the language that they spoke, although I’d certainly respect that that strategy. They’re speaking English, fine. But the English that they’re speaking should capture the spirit of the time period. Now, if you’re making a movie where a high school quarterback runs onto the field for the big game against the school’s hated rival, then it makes sense to have him shout “let's go,” but it doesn’t work for a depiction of an ancient battle, based on one of the greatest works of literature of all time. And there's no excuse for it because the Odyssey is full of beautiful dialogue, where he’s exhorting and encouraging his men. I’m not saying Nolan needs to use those exact words, but he should at least try to capture, again, the spirit.

Homer has this famous passage: “Friends, we are not unacquainted with evils. This present evil is no greater than when the Cyclops penned us in his hollow cave by force of his strong hands. Yet, even from there we escaped.” Now, that sounds like something a person might have said back then, or at least, it sounds like something that a person might have said in a story back then. But Nolan has boiled all that down to “let’s go.” Calling it generic would be a rather considerable understatement.

And then there’s the use of the word “daddy” in the trailer, as well as the fact that uh the son of Odysseus says, “My dad is coming home.” Yes, “my dad is coming home.” Now, putting aside the fact that Tom Holland is a 29-year-old actor talking like he’s a seven-year-old anticipating his dad's return from a two-week business trip to Cleveland. Again, it’s dialogue that that that could be used in a million different movies; it’s generic, and it rips the soul out of the Odyssey, it makes it much less specific and unique - almost as if that's the whole point - for comparison, here’s some dialogue from the 2004 movie “Troy,” which, incidentally, Nolan was originally supposed to direct.

Watch:

Source: Warner Bros. Pictures

>“The Gods envy us. They envy us because we’re mortal. Because any moment might be our last. Everything’s more beautiful because we’re doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.”

Now, if Nolan were directing this scene, Brad Pitt would just tell her “let’s go,” and then she’d go.

And what’s funny about this comparison is that, at the time, “Troy” was not a particularly special film - it was a fine movie in my opinion; a little uneven, but fun to watch. I admit I have trouble with Brad Pitt playing an ancient person. He’s a good actor, but ultimately he looks and sounds like a guy named Brad. So if you put him in any story set before, like, 1960, it tends to break the fourth wall. But ironically, though that film was not really trying to be a prestige drama, it’ll probably wind up being far more historically accurate and much better written than Nolan’s Oscar bait. And in 2004, when that movie came out, we didn’t realize that, within the span of a decade, Hollywood would completely forget how to make—or refuse to make—good historical films.

In the case of “The Odyssey,” it’s not hard to diagnose the specific problem: Nolan set out to subvert a classic - to bludgeon a monumental story with flat writing and incoherent creative decisions, along with the modern mandates of feminism, transgenderism, and anti-whitism. This is the approach that now defines Hollywood: they’re running roughshod like a Mongol horde over every classic they can get their hands on.

And the first sign that something would go very wrong with this particular production was the revelation that Nolan would be relying on the 2017 translation of the Odyssey that was written by this woman.

Oh yeah, that’s the kind of person you want translating the Odyssey - her name is Emily Wilson, and Nolan had cited her translation in several interviews. And without knowing anything about her, you can tell, just from the photograph, that she produced an atrocious and completely unnecessary translation of the Odyssey. This is the look of a Portland barista who likes to spend her weekend at a “No Kings” rally with her grandmother. And indeed, if you read her translation, you’ll quickly discover that her intent was to rewrite the poem in order to change the meaning of Homer’s words, in order to invert and hollow out the central themes of the Odyssey. She also wanted to flatten the dialogue. She took she took something ancient and rich and vibrant, and ran it through a kind of liberal HR approved translator to produce something bland and, you know, “not problematic” by modern leftist standards. (For what it’s worth, there’s another female writer who wrote “Song of Achilles,” which apparently made Achilles gay).

Now, first of all, before we talk about Emily Wilson, I have to make the point that a translation of the Odyssey shouldn’t really be necessary for this film in the first place - Christopher Nolan will easily make at least $100 million on this film, since he typically gets 20% of the gross ticket sales, plus $20 million upfront. It’s an enormous amount of money, obviously, and for that kind of cash, he could have just read the Odyssey in the original Greek, or at least he should be able to read the key parts of it. I mean, high school students do that, and they're not even paid $100 million for their trouble. I spent about five minutes online, and I found plenty of resources that help you read the original poem. There are guides with all the vocabulary words you need. You can even get an online tutor if you want. Given a few months, anyone can become familiar enough with ancient Greek to read the most important moments in the Odyssey, and that’s more than enough time in this context. I mean, we’re being told that for this film, Matt Damon spent an entire year growing out his beard, which is a pretty long time to grow out a not terribly impressive beard, but whatever.

Christopher Nolan supposedly wanted the authenticity of “real, non-wigged hair” on the screen. So if the production could wait for “real non-wigged hair,” in the name of authenticity, then they had the time for Nolan to read the poem in its original language. If he had done that, he’d get a much better sense of the poem’s tone, its themes, its characters; all of which he clearly butchered in his adaptation - but even if you don’t mind the fact that Nolan was kind of lazy, relied on a translator, the fact that he picked this particular translator is really unforgivable. Emily Wilson has gone on record, in multiple interviews and in the preface of her translation, stating that Odysseus, the hero of the poem, is “problematic.” That’s the actual word she chooses, again and again. Using the language of a disappointed 26-year-old gender studies grad when she’s scrolling through social media posts she doesn't like. This hero is “problematic.”

This is how the New Yorker reported on Emily Wilson’s perspective a couple of years ago:

>Previous translators have called [Odysseus] “shifty,” “cunning,” and a hundred other things. After grappling with the alternatives, Wilson chose “complicated,” hoping also to convey the sense of “problematic.” Her first sentence—“Tell me about a complicated man”—instantly makes him our familiar: that charismatic prince who’s too impossible to live with and too desirable to live without.

Now, the moment Christopher Nolan saw this, he should have ensured that this woman had nothing to do with the project. There is a vast difference between a hero who's “cunning” and a hero who's “problematic,” or even “complicated.” You know, someone who’s “cunning” might, say, come up with an idea of sending a wooden horse to the Gates of Troy, and tricking them into thinking it’s a gift, when it’s really occupied by an invasion force - that's a “cunning” hero, right? On the other hand, a “problematic” hero is one who, I don't know, uses the N-word a lot, with the hard R (I’m not sure if we’re gonna see that in in this film). So what Emily Wilson is doing is cheapening the language, and by extension, she’s undermining the character - and instead of wasting any time with Emily Wilson, Nolan COULD have used Robert Fitzgerald’s translation which has been around for decades, it’s he gold standard. And just from a glance you could tell it’s infinitely better than Wilson’s.

So here’s how Fitzgerald’s translation begins, just to give you an idea.

It says, “Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story of that man skilled in all ways of contending, the wanderer, harried for years on end, after he plundered the stronghold on the proud height of Troy. He saw the town lands and learned the minds of many distant men and weathered many bitter nights and days in his deep heart at sea, while he fought only to save his life, to bring his shipmates home. But not by will nor valor could he save them, for their own recklessness destroyed them all- children and fools, they killed and feasted on the cattle of Lord Helios, the Sun, and he who moves all day through heaven took from their eyes and the dawn of their return. Of these adventures, Muse, daughter of Zeus, tell us in our time, lift the great song again.”

Now, with that in mind, here’s how Emily Wilson handled that same passage, and as you listen to this, pay attention to the adjectives she uses, and how just sort of bland everything sounds by comparison.

“Tell me about a complicated man.” I mean, already, we’ve gone off the rails. “Muse, tell me how he wandered and was lost when he had wrecked the holy town of Troy, and where he went, and who he met, the pain he suffered in the storms at sea, and how he worked to save his life and bring his men back home. He failed to keep them safe; poor fools, they ate the Sun God's cattle, and the god kept them from home. Now goddess, child of Zeus, tell the old story for our modern times. Find the beginning.

So it’s a version specifically written to strip away everything sort of beautiful and flowery and evocative in the language, to make it sound like something that Chat GPT could’ve spit out.

So to recap, in the Fitzgerald version, Odysseus was “skilled;” he “plundered a stronghold,” he “weathered many bitter knights,” and though he tried to save his companions with valor, their recklessness prevented him from doing so - but in Emily Wilson’s version, Odysseus was “complicated” and lost, he suffered on sea, he failed to save his friends, it’s an “old story,” not an “adventure” or a, you know, “great song.”

Now, it's not hard to see what Wilson set out to accomplish here - the only reason her translation exists is to neutralize the significance of the Odyssey; she wants to destroy the significance of an epic that's unapologetically masculine, because in 2026, men—particularly white men from Europe and their descendants—simply cannot be heroic figures. So by using Emily Wilson’s translation as his foundation, Christopher Nolan is doing the exact same thing - he’s made sure that the dialogue in his version of the Odyssey is just as generic, while also undermining the themes of masculinity in the original poem.

But I don’t want to make it sound like Nolan is only trying to emasculate the Odyssey - he’s also trying to remove as much of the Greek and Mediterranean influence and character as he possibly can. You see, Greeks are white, and white people are bad.

And so this is from Time Magazine’s glowing new profile of Nolan:

>[Nolan] has also studied the text and made several striking adaptation choices. Argos, Odysseus’ loyal dog, has been promoted from a cameo to a bit player. Odysseus and his son Telemachus [Tom Holland]—burdened by the legend of a father he doesn’t remember—are given more time together … And the reunion between Odysseus’ fellow king Menelaus [Jon Bernthal] and his wife Helen (Lupita Nyong’o)—the most beautiful woman in the world, blamed for starting the war after a Trojan prince spirited—her away has always felt too neatly resolved in the poem. Nolan complicates it. And in a twist, Nyong’o also plays Helen’s sister, Clytemnestra, whose marriage to Menelaus’ brother is, to put it mildly, acrimonious…

So Lupita Nyong’o, the actress, is going to play the most beautiful woman in the world and “the face that launched a thousand ships,” the catalyst for the Trojan War.

And in case you need a visual, we’ll put it up on the screen - on the left, you have Helen from the 2004 movie “Troy.” On the right, you have Lupita Nyong’o.

Now, if somebody woke up in a coma after 20 years, and they wanted an update on what’s happened to America in those two decades, you could simply show them this side-by-side comparison - I mean, they’d probably conclude that we’ve been conquered by Africa somehow, which maybe isn’t too far from the truth.

Now, Lupita Nyong’o is, as you can kind of tell, from Kenya. It makes no historical sense whatsoever to cast a subsaharan African in this role. I mean, you might as well make Helen of Troy Chinese! You might as well put her in a in an igloo and make her an Eskimo! It is an absurd casting choice that totally breaks the immersion of the film. So why would Nolan do this? Were there no white actresses available for the role? Well, he would do this because he knows that he would be called racist if he gave the most “beautiful woman in the world” role to a white woman, it really is that simple. Nolan is technically talented, but a coward. He’s too afraid to do anything that even slightly challenges the spirit of the age. Which is why, although he’s a a good artist, he’ll never be a great one. Being a great artist requires some amount of moral courage; he doesn’t have any.

Now, to be clear, in the Iliad and the Odyssey, Homer describes Helen as “fair-haired, fair-faced, and white armed.” No dispute that she’s a very attractive white woman. Which again makes sense, because this is a Greek poem. By casting a black woman as Helen, once again, Nolan is transforming a heroic epic into a farce. He’s going out of his way to turn a key pillar of the Western canon into a mockery. The same reason, by the way, that the recent Snow White film cast a South American woman in the title role - because Snow White is canonically, of course, white, obviously, it’s right there in the name. But the filmmakers knew that Snow White is supposed to be the prettiest girl in the kingdom—“the fairest of them all”—and so they felt compelled to give the role to a brown woman. I mean, certainly they couldn’t imply that a white woman is beautiful - least of all the MOST beautiful. And that’s the unofficial rule that Nolan is obeying here.

There are also official rules he’s arguably obeying - per Oscar policy, there needs to be a certain amount of “diversity” in lead characters, so the theory is that Nolan added black characters in order to qualify for the Oscars, but I’m not sold on that idea, because if you read the Oscars’ criteria, there’s plenty of other DEI initiatives that he could have resorted to. He could’ve ave hired black producers, for example, or started a training camp for black actors or, you know, whatever.

Now, of course we will be told—and are being told—that race swapping characters in the Odyssey—casting it in a way so that the demographic makeup of Greece in, you know, 1200 BC looks like the demographic makeup of Brooklyn in 2026 AD—we’ll be told it doesn’t matter, because it’s just a movie. Right, it’s pretend. But we all know that if a major Hollywood studio made a film set in Africa, featuring iconic African characters, and then cast white people in some of the key roles, none of the people defending the Odyssey casting would be nearly as forgiving - in fact, they’d literally be protesting in the street! And if you can imagine this: imagine if the role of the most beautiful woman in Africa was given to a white lady. Okay, what if they handed that spot to, I don’t know, Sydney Sweeney? There would actually be riots; I mean, they would show up to the movie studio with Molotov cocktails! They would go full Luigi Mangione on Universal Pictures executives, they would! And we all KNOW that’s the case! And yet, when race swaps go the other direction, we’re told it’s our obligation to just accept it, without complaint.

By the way, one Hollywood actor who’s been very outspoken against race swapping characters in films is John Leguizamo. Leguizamo is Hispanic and has insisted publicly, many times, on the record, that Hispanic characters in films should only be played by Hispanic actors. But, you know, the good news is that he’s consistent, because, I’ll say for to his credit, he spoke out about “The Odyssey” and said that only white people of Greek descent should be featured in the film. I’m just kidding, of course; John Leguizamo is in “The Odyssey,” playing a Greek character himself. He ain’t Greek. So rules for thee, not rules for me, you know.