RadixJournal - Chasing the Sun

00:00:00.000 I have to say the more and more I see this anti-Christopher Nolan,

00:00:10.540 anti-Odyssey, anti-woke campaign,

00:00:13.960 the more and more I want to defend Christopher Nolan and the Odyssey. 0.84

00:00:21.220 And actually I find like Matt Walsh or these Euros who have gotten into the, 0.82

00:00:30.000 like it's that i think i mentioned this this it's like a keith woods thing and martin zellner like

00:00:37.040 you're so all of the people who rejected europeanism as an identity have lost the argument

00:00:45.060 10 year after 10 years and so they've decided to like they've forgotten everything and learned

00:00:51.260 nothing and now they're european and there's this little i i don't the whole thing just strikes me

00:00:57.460 is highly suspicious but they have just been obsessing about the odyssey and bringing up

00:01:05.920 some points that are like reasonable criticisms of nolan in general or multi-racial casting or

00:01:14.900 something that many many other people have brought not have brought not basically everyone said this

00:01:21.620 uh but they say it in with this like seething rage about how christopher nolan is mocking

00:01:30.640 western civilization and mocking homer or something like this to the point where i'm just like 1.00

00:01:37.700 what in the fuck is this it's just a stupid like beehive campaign that they're engaging in 0.99

00:01:47.680 that they have just obviously taken an L on now Hollywood isn't what it used to be in terms of 1.00

00:01:56.080 blockbusters for obvious reasons streaming being the most obvious but this film made 250 million

00:02:06.400 dollars and the christopher nolan's the odyssey is i would say unquestionably a very very good

00:02:18.260 movie and it's also something that you should go see you should just go purchase a ticket

00:02:27.100 make a direct donation to zog and sit there for three hours and watch because it's actually

00:02:35.300 good and it's worth engaging with even while criticizing it and i i just find the i i just

00:02:45.460 find this anti-woke bullshit uh campaign to be just unbearable at this point actually this film

00:02:55.060 is actually good and it's interesting and you interpret things from the past you interpret

00:03:03.040 them like the 1957 version of called ulysses um of made of the odyssey is obviously an

00:03:12.740 interpretation that brings in all of this baggage from the 1950s in presenting this production

00:03:20.560 i remember seeing like a this is 20 years ago seeing an odyssey performance at the national

00:03:28.200 theater in Washington, D.C., where they stripped everything down and it was like six actors are

00:03:33.660 playing all the roles and they were using puppets. Yeah, it was pretty cool. The fact that I remember

00:03:39.120 it 20 years later says something. Well, I mean, you have to interpret the text. And I don't,

00:03:46.840 the other thing, as some people have, I saw some liberals point this out, which is very interesting

00:03:52.160 because like Matt Walsh and these people are like,

00:03:55.780 this isn't Homer.

00:03:57.120 Like we don't know what it's like to be in the Bronze Age

00:04:02.060 or whatever.

00:04:03.400 There are a couple of things to say about that.

00:04:05.900 But one of them is that first off,

00:04:10.160 if Christopher Nolan is bringing anything

00:04:13.940 to the meaning of Homer and who Odysseus is, et cetera,

00:04:19.040 It is a kind of Christianity or a Christian mentality or consciousness, and they complain about that. What do you want? You want a full-on pagan odyssey? That's sort of odd, I guess, that you're criticizing Christopher Nolan for making Odysseus a conscious individual.

00:04:46.460 So Odysseus is very much like Oppenheimer. He's very much like Bruce Wayne. He's very much like all of these guilt-ridden characters that Christopher Nolan centers in action films, which is also sort of odd.

00:05:04.520 Where there was some big lie in the past or big bad thing that they did wrong. And we're sort of moving forward into the future. But due to that lie, they worry that all of society may come crumbling down due to the moral outrage of the big lie that they told.

00:05:26.380 and for bruce wayne the big lie is batman uh for oppenheimer obviously the big lie or the heinous

00:05:35.220 act is this um uh the nuclear bomb that he's created that's going to set the world on fire

00:05:42.580 and and so on um in tenet i think there's sort of the big lie what you get at at the end because

00:05:50.160 the future is trying to annihilate the past and there's this sense of um we wanted to have it all

00:05:56.900 uh we the the sea levels rose we we consume too much etc etc and in some ways the future's attack

00:06:07.100 on the past is understandable because the future wants to live now Nolan of course sides with the

00:06:13.540 present uh and then with odysseus he created the bomb the bomb was the trojan horse so he was the

00:06:21.600 first one to break the moral code of the bronze age which was zeus's law and uh honoring the

00:06:31.180 guest who knows the guest might be a god and a sort of reciprocity built into that he broke it 0.76

00:06:36.560 first because he gave the trojans a gift and in some ways he deserved to go through another decade

00:06:45.120 of pain coming home and suffering the loss of his men etc because he did that he's inspired

00:06:53.160 the sea peoples maybe he is the sea people and he can't be king because he has broken this law

00:07:01.440 so egregiously not only with the horse but also by slaughtering uh his guests who even if they

00:07:07.780 were terrible guests he still slaughtered them and so he needs to exile himself in old age with

00:07:17.200 his wife and they can sort of re-experience their love affairs they sail into the ocean chasing the

00:07:23.640 sun while the untainted uh new king uh can rise in his place i mean it's it's such a christian

00:07:35.700 vision and i i just i don't know why they dislike it outside of just racism which is the multiracial

00:07:47.120 cast. And I get it. But all that proves is that you are an extremely shallow person because 0.99

00:07:58.780 news alert, we live in a woke multiracial world. I mean, I breaking news, like CEOs of corporations,

00:08:11.200 people getting admitted into college uh famous sports athletes presidents

00:08:17.700 are now not all white so you live in this world and yeah can that be criticized

00:08:28.120 of course of course it can but like christopher nolan's making a movie in 2026

00:08:36.000 and the i mean yes he could have he could have not done that not had helen of troy be uh west

00:08:47.840 african and dark skin i i get it he could have not done that and he probably would have gotten

00:08:54.320 away with it actually at this point i'm not i don't know how many you know critiques liberal

00:09:02.500 or left-wing critiques would have been thrown his way if he had done that but he didn't because he

00:09:07.700 lives in this world and so the whole like multi-racial thing for me it's just a wash

00:09:16.200 i mean your local shopping mall is multi-racial the the president the the the administration 0.94

00:09:26.540 is multiracial that you you can't get away from this and the thing is when someone you know 0.69

00:09:34.940 everything is embedded in its time and if someone's trying to say something

00:09:39.440 in Christopher Nolan clearly is he's clearly trying to bring something new he says this about

00:09:45.980 things like I you know I don't want to just recapitulate something I want to bring something

00:09:51.140 new it's why in an interview that i watched he might very well not direct a james bond film even

00:09:57.820 though he's the super james bond fan he's been so since a kid and actually i think we are blessed

00:10:04.520 that he won't direct james bond film in many ways but what he what he said there was you know i i

00:10:11.900 was talking with the producers with eon with barbara brockley this is before amazon bought it

00:10:15.960 he was like i want to reinvent it i want to do something new with it why are we creating this

00:10:20.760 film now why does it does it deserve to exist if it deserves to exist then it's bringing something

00:10:26.000 new to the table it's saying something and he wants to do that so the the whole like multi-racial

00:10:33.160 cast i mean yeah that's just a wash we live in 2026 and the question is is he trying to say

00:10:39.840 something and again i'm critical of christopher nolan and i have been for a while but i would

00:10:46.680 I would never say that he's a bad filmmaker when he's obviously an amazing

00:10:50.700 filmmaker,

00:10:51.260 uh,

00:10:52.080 who has limitations.

00:10:55.640 And I sort of disagree with his interpretation,

00:10:59.680 but at least he's saying something.

00:11:02.260 And I feel like with these conservatives,

00:11:04.200 I just want to ask,

00:11:05.360 like,

00:11:05.560 what do you want exactly?

00:11:07.900 What is it that you want?

00:11:10.220 And some of them have pointed to like the Northman,

00:11:13.540 uh,

00:11:14.720 uh,

00:11:15.880 by Eggers as you know what they want they want a just brutally realistic treatment and I do too

00:11:27.660 I think that would be fascinating the only problem is is that the Iliad and the Odyssey were

00:11:34.360 written in the ninth century 800s ish we're not exactly sure they were written hundreds of years

00:11:42.300 after the bronze age collapse and the you know you know into the dark age of greece they're sort

00:11:51.280 of already separated from the bronze age and the sack of troy uh which they are depicting in a

00:12:01.460 mythical stylized over the top in many ways way this is very similar to shakespeare uh producing

00:12:11.980 a play about henry the eighth uh richard the second richard the third hamlet in the middle ages

00:12:18.480 and so on it's you're you're you're already distanced from it to make it realistic is sort

00:12:26.440 of missing the point now i think it would be fascinating to do a actual bronze age like

00:12:34.000 sacking of troy drama where you there's not going to be a thousand ships by the way secondly they

00:12:41.100 can't stay there 10 years they physically impossible to do it do you do you kind of

00:12:48.480 reinvent the trojan horse in some cool way it could be done but all that is is a totally brutally

00:12:56.040 realistic drama with no esoteric messaging or symbolism or so on and you're just kind of

00:13:03.100 engaging in this like documentary style experiment of what it would be like to exist in that world

00:13:10.420 and all of the rape and pillaging and brutal excess that that would involve yeah I think

00:13:18.200 that would be cool but that too is not Homer at all so what is it that you want what what do you

00:13:29.360 want Christopher Nolan to do what is this odyssey like this isn't the real Homer this isn't the real

00:13:35.640 odyssey yeah i i of course agree it's a christopher nolan movie made in 2026 filmed on imax yeah it's

00:13:43.800 not homer that book is still there you can go still buy the fagels translation at your local

00:13:50.380 bookstore by the way nothing's been taken away but what is it that you want and i think i actually

00:13:56.940 have an idea of what they want and let me just find this here i i was i think what they want

00:14:07.200 is a uh yeah this is let me just play some things here

00:14:15.000 i think what they want is

00:14:29.440 vivid imagery that they can see clips of or put into hype edits and that is revealed by the fact

00:14:43.160 that they have been praising to the skies wolfgang peterson's troy from 2004 or thereabouts

00:14:53.240 troy which starring brad pitt which has some cool scenes no doubt but by the way was sort of

00:15:03.700 forgotten over the past 20 years and was assessed at the time as a b-movie as bad

00:15:13.100 but now apparently apparently according to elon musk is this like masterpiece that we've

00:15:20.800 yet to revisit it's a bad film it looks cool in places and i'm sure there's some merits to it

00:15:28.680 but it's a bad film wolfgang peterson notwithstanding he's an interesting guy

00:15:35.000 but i i think i i just saw this some guy someone has created this like

00:15:41.000 ai edits of the odyssey that here it is

00:15:47.320 and it's like okay this is great it's this cool ai thing i don't know if you've seen these where

00:16:16.460 like they'll do like what if star wars were made in the early 60s and it's just this cool kind of

00:16:23.360 mishmash of styles but even that it's that film doesn't exist obviously but it's like

00:16:29.440 embedded in the mid-century type style yeah it like that's cool that's what you want

00:16:36.400 like i i don't i just don't understand these people and i just think they're extremely

00:16:45.660 shallow they've they have a bee in their bonnet about christopher nolan and some of the criticisms

00:16:52.860 are fairly apt but they're not really like delving into them because it's all this polemical stuff

00:17:00.460 of like this movie was terrible just gonna say like objectively speaking this movie is not

00:17:07.300 terrible i mean i get it it's all you know artists you know in the eye of beholder or whatever but

00:17:12.280 yeah objectively speaking this movie is is really great now again i i have my own criticisms of it

00:17:21.340 but like this this idea of just like attacking the film and attacking christopher nolan while

00:17:29.020 offering nothing of substance as an alternative is just sort of the essence of conservatism in 0.98

00:17:36.880 general so fuck them like i like this movie more because of the haters seriously i want to defend 0.99

00:17:47.440 christopher nolan against matt walsh 1.00

RadixJournal - July 22, 2026

Chasing the Sun

Episode Stats

Transcript