The culture wars come for The Odyssey – and miss

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MAGA foot soldiers such as Elon Musk have made a habit of evoking classical Greek and Roman mythology, Sparta in particular, as they imagine a world led by (white) alpha-male warriors being heroic and strong.

When Mr. Musk, then running the U.S. government’s cost-cutting DOGE, enlisted a group of very young male tech experts for his government cost-cutting cause, he referred to them as Spartans. When he launched his America Party in 2025 (whatever happened to that?), he warned of the myth of Spartan invincibility. He has referred to America as “new Rome.”

Now-former Donald Trump adviser Steve Bannon, writing for Breitbart News in 2016, compared Breitbart to the Spartans coming for the Athenians – the Athenians being the mainstream media, especially Fox News.

The Oath Keepers, a right-wing, anti-immigration militia group in the U.S., announced in 2018 that it had launched “Spartan training groups” to defend the country from the “violent left.”

So imagine the joy in Muskville and the larger manosphere when word got out that the celebrated director Christopher Nolan would be bringing that vision of manly Greco-Roman heroism to life on the big – nay, huge (size matters) – screen with The Odyssey.

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But as details began to emerge of Mr. Nolan’s take on Homer’s tale of the great warrior Odysseus, played by Matt Damon, the manosphere balked. Mr. Musk used his X platform to denounce the film, its casting choices in particular, spreading the word to his disciples that this film, which no one had yet seen, would be woke slop, meant to win Oscars, and that Mr. Nolan was urinating on Homer’s grave in the process.

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Mr. Musk seemed particularly obsessed with certain casting choices, especially Lupita Nyong’o, who is Black, playing Helen of Troy, who was said to be so beautiful, her face launched a thousand ships – i.e. provoking the Trojan War. When Mr. Musk got wind of the false rumour that Elliot Page, a trans man, was playing Achilles, he called it “one of the dumbest and most twisted things I’ve ever heard.” (In fact, Mr. Page plays Sinon, who, in this telling, innocently lures the Trojans to the horse, not aware that warriors were hidden within the supposed gift and, once past the city walls, would open the gates from the inside and allow a horde of Greek warriors to flood in and defeat Troy.)

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Now, with the movie killing it at the box office, we know: Mr. Nolan’s The Odyssey is no DEI pander. It is the antiwar, anti-supremacy, pro-empathy epic the world needs, an antidote to its current state and despotic leaders. How do you like them Spartans, manosphere?

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There has been so much obsessive, offensive focus on whether Ms. Nyong’o is qualified to play the most beautiful woman in the Greek world. But the film’s most important opposition to the culture warriors has nothing to do with casting.

Mr. Nolan has, brilliantly, subverted this heroic tale of war into an antiwar epic. The film itself is a Trojan Horse that is not merely a thrilling night at the movies, but makes it clear, in 70 mm IMAX, that war is hell, destroying real lives in the most brutal of ways, innocents among them. And it’s hell for the soldiers too, victorious though they may be.

Further, a major theme throughout the film is Zeus’s Law: that guests, including strangers, must be treated with hospitality and respect. With his Trojan Horse deception, Odysseus ultimately comes to believe that he had broken Zeus’s law and angered the gods. When audiences see Odysseus and crew at the mercy of the cruel sea, how can we not think of today’s desperate migrants risking everything on rickety boats in an effort to escape their horrific circumstances for a safer life in the West (with Greece as a frequent entry point), where, in many cases, they are not welcomed with hospitality or respect?

Mr. Nolan’s film is shade-(I)maxxing the warmongers and immigrant-bashers among us. It is a beautiful, brave rebuke.

The Odyssey review: Christopher Nolan delivers an awe-inspiring spectacle

Not that the manosphere sees it that way. After screening The Odyssey, conservative political commentator Matt Walsh reported on X that it is “just as woke as you fear, if not more so” and called it “a vehicle for liberal sermonizing.”

Now, Mr. Musk says his Grok Imagine will make an AI Odyssey feature that will be “historically accurate.” Godspeed to those on his team charged with portraying Homer’s tale of a man-eating cyclops and men-to-pigs transformations in a historically accurate way.

Just when you think the culture wars can’t get any more ridiculous, we are presented with the gift of a tentpole work of actual culture – about war – that is both terrific entertainment and a crucial morality tale for the masses.