Stars of The Odyssey Just Embarrassed Themselves With This Latest Promo
This story raises questions about governance, accountability, and American values.
Christopher Nolan spent three hours convincing us he understands physics better than anyone in Hollywood. Turns out geography and history are a different story. "The Odyssey" is one of the oldest, most specifically Greek stories in Western literature, and somehow the marketing rollout for this thing has managed to make people ask why there's barely a hint of Greece in it.
New Republican Times Editorial Board
Christopher Nolan's Greek-free adaptation of Homer's Greek epic, 'The Odyssey,' hits theaters today. Promotions for this film are everywhere, including in banner ads on our apps. But the film has met with controversy and criticism over the casting choices, the adaptation, and first looks at some of the film.
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New Republican Times Editorial Board
Christopher Nolan spent three hours convincing us he understands physics better than anyone in Hollywood. Turns out geography and history are a different story. "The Odyssey" is one of the oldest, most specifically Greek stories in Western literature, and somehow the marketing rollout for this thing has managed to make people ask why there's barely a hint of Greece in it. That's not a small miss. That's the whole point of the source material walking out the door before the movie even starts.
We keep hearing that big studio productions are "risk-averse," but somehow the risk they're always willing to take is stripping the specific cultural identity out of a story to make it feel more like a generic action epic for a global audience. Homer wrote about a particular man, from a particular place, wrestling with particular gods. When you sand all of that down, you're not being bold. You're being lazy in a very expensive way.
The casting backlash isn't studio audiences being cruel for sport. People notice when a story rooted in a specific culture gets cast and adapted like that culture is optional set dressing. It happens over and over, and every time, executives act shocked that anyone cared about the source material to begin with. That's not the audience's fault.
None of this means the movie will flop or that Nolan can't make something visually stunning. He usually does. But "embarrassing" is a fair word for a promotional push that seems to have forgotten what story it's actually selling. Homer didn't need a rebrand. He needed a director willing to trust the original.
Commentary written with AI assistance by the New Republican Times Editorial Board.