Ep. 1779 - The Odyssey Looks Awful. Here’s Why.
Episode Stats
Harmful content
Misogyny
7
sentences flagged
Toxicity
11
sentences flagged
Hate speech
24
sentences flagged
Summary
When we first learned that Christopher Nolan was making an adaptation of The Odyssey, there was perhaps reason for optimism. 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 as the trailers kept coming, the situation started to look even worse.
Transcript
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When we first learned that Christopher Nolan was making an adaptation of The Odyssey, there was
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perhaps reason for optimism, if you happen to be an optimistic sort of person. Nolan has made
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some mistakes in his career. Tenet was one of the most convoluted films ever made. Interstellar had
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one too many bloated Hallmark-style monologues from Anne Hathaway preaching about the universal
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power of love or whatever, but he's still unquestionably one of the most talented living
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filmmakers, and The Odyssey is one of the foundational works of Western literature.
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It's a heroic epic with very obvious themes of masculinity, patriarchy, daring, discovery,
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mortality. Nolan has proven he can tackle epic sweeping projects in the past, and because
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Hollywood has somewhat retreated from the racial depravity of the Cultural Revolution
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of 2020, or so we thought, it was reasonable to hope that Nolan would be faithful to Homer's
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original story and produce a worthwhile film. Then the trailers arrived, and we'll start with
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the one that came out several months ago. Watch. After years of war.
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promise me you'll come back what if i can't now this might be splitting hairs but it's worrisome
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if this is the kind of dialogue they're going to highlight in the trailer sounds like a
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conversation you might have with the receptionist at your dentist when she's scheduling your six
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month checkup. It's kind of flat. It's bland. It's definitely nothing like the dialogue in
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the Odyssey. It doesn't sound like people in ancient Greece. But the more you watch this
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trailer, the more you notice some other problems. There's the cheap looking armor in the beginning,
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which looks like it was created with a 3D printer. Put aside the fact for now that they
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didn't actually have armor that looked like this back in the Bronze Age. Just look at this side
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by side comparison, you have the armor in the 2004 movie, Troy, with the armor that they're
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using in the Odyssey. And you can see it there. It's pretty obvious downgrade, in my opinion,
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whatever material Nolan's using, it looks noticeably cheap and fake. So that's another
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red flag. Again, not the kind of thing that means the movie will be a disaster, but it makes you
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wonder what's going on. Then you get into bigger issues. At the outset, I'll mention that I'm not
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an expert on Homer, but I can say with a high degree of certainty that despite my lack of
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expertise, there are, when you take all the factors together that we'll discuss, really only two
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possibilities. Either I somehow know a lot more about the topic than Christopher Nolan, which
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seems unlikely, or Christopher Nolan is deliberately bastardizing the Odyssey. First of all, the tone
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is not right. The Iliad is supposed to be the gritty wartime epic from Homer. On the other hand,
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The Odyssey is more of a grand, sweeping adventure story, though also, of course, dealing with
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serious themes. But there's more flowery language. There's strange creatures and adventures.
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People get turned into pigs. Poseidon causes the ships to wreck and so on. Now, with this trailer,
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it looks kind of like Nolan isn't so much giving us a fantasy epic with a vibrant color palette,
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but rather a gritty, dimly lit, self-serious action thriller.
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Because, for one thing, every major movie made today is dimly lit
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for reasons that no one's ever been able to explain.
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No one's sort of applying the Batman approach where it doesn't belong.
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You half expect to see the Joker show up when you watch the trailer.
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This is yet another Hollywood blockbuster where everything needs to be
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dark and brooding and intense and, like I said, dark, like actually dark, lit in terms of how
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it's lit. It would have been much more interesting if Nolan had embraced the vibe
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of the actual epic poem, which is what the 1954 adaptation did. Take a look at this here.
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Now, from this one photo, you can tell that they understand at least the tone that a film based on the Odyssey should have.
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There's no law saying you're not allowed to have any kind of color or actually fully light a scene.
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so it feels tonally off which is which is what a lot of viewers have picked up on
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and as the trailers kept coming the situation started to look even worse so uh here's the
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most recent trailer that really has set off some alarm bells for a lot of uh a lot of viewers watch
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what would he do if he came back here and find all these suitors in his house
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You're pining for a daddy you didn't even know, like some sniffling pastor.
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Well, there's some more award-winning dialogue for you.
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That's what they went with for this big, epic moment where he's leading the charge.
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Now, again, I know it sounds like splitting hairs,
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but this is not how people in the ancient Greek world,
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many centuries before Christ, would have communicated.
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I don't just mean because they're speaking English. I'll forgive that part. I don't think
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that every director has to go full Mel Gibson and actually do the film in the language that they
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spoke, although I certainly respect that strategy. Whether they're speaking English, fine. But the
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English that they're speaking should capture the spirit of the time period. Now, if you're making
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a movie where a high school quarterback runs onto the field for the big game against the
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school's hated rival, then it makes sense to have him shout, let's go. But it doesn't work
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for a depiction of an ancient battle based on one of the greatest works of literature of all time.
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And there's no excuse for it because Homer's, because the Odyssey is full of beautiful dialogue
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where he's exhorting and encouraging his men. I'm not saying Nolan needs to use those exact words,
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but he should at least try to capture again the spirit.
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This present evil is no greater than when the Cyclops penned us
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in his hollow cave by force of his strong hands.
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That sounds like something a person might have said back then,
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or at least it sounds like something that a person might have said in a story back then.
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calling it generic would be a rather considerable understatement. And then there's the use of the
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word daddy in the trailer, as well as the fact that the son of Odysseus says, quote,
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my dad is coming home. Yes, my dad is coming home. Now, putting aside the fact that Tom Holland is a
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29-year-old actor talking like he's a seven-year-old anticipating his dad's return from a two-week
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business trip to Cleveland, again, it's dialogue that could be used in a million different movies.
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it's generic and it rips the soul out of the odyssey and makes it much less specific and unique
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almost as if that's the whole point for comparison here's some dialogue from the 2004 movie troy
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which incidentally nolan was originally supposed to direct um watch the gods envy us
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they envy us because we're mortal because any moment might be our last
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everything's more beautiful because we're doomed you will never be lovelier than you are now
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now if Nolan were directing this scene Brad Pitt would just tell her let's go and then she'd go
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and what's funny about this comparison is that at the time Troy was not a particularly special
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film. It was a fine movie, in my opinion, a little uneven, but fun to watch. I admit I have trouble
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with Brad Pitt playing an ancient person. He's a good actor, but ultimately he looks and sounds
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like a guy named Brad. So if you put him in any story set before like 1960, it tends to break the
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fourth wall. But ironically, though that film was not really trying to be a prestige drama,
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it'll probably wind up being far more historically accurate and much better written
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than Nolan's Oscar bait. And in 2004, when that movie came out, we didn't realize that within
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the span of a decade, Hollywood would completely forget how to make or refuse to make good historical
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films. In the case of The Odyssey, it's not hard to diagnose the specific problem. Nolan set out
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to subvert a classic, to bludgeon a monumental story with flat writing and incoherent creative
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decisions, along with the modern mandates of feminism, transgenderism, and anti-whiteism.
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This is the approach that now defines Hollywood.
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They're running roughshod like a Mongol horde over every classic they can get their hands on.
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And the first sign that something would go very wrong with this particular production
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was the revelation that Nolan would be relying on the 2017 translation of The Odyssey that was written by this woman.
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Oh yeah, that's the kind of person you want translating The Odyssey.
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Her name is Emily Wilson, and Nolan had cited her translation in several interviews.
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And without knowing anything about her, you could tell just from the photograph that she produced an atrocious and completely unnecessary translation of the Odyssey.
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This is the look of a Portland barista who likes to spend her weekend at a No Kings rally with her grandmother.
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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.
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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.
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For what it's worth, there's another female writer who wrote The Song of Achilles, which apparently made Achilles gay.
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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.
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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 up front.
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But 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.
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I mean, high school students do that, and they're not even paid $100 million for their trouble.
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I spent about five minutes online, and I found plenty of resources that help you read the original poem.
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There are guides with all the vocabulary words you need.
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Given a few months, anyone can become familiar enough with ancient Greek to read the most important moments in the Odyssey.
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And that's more than enough time in this context.
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I mean, we're being told that for this film, Matt Damon spent an entire year growing out his beard,
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which is a pretty long time to grow out a not terribly impressive beard, but whatever.
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Christopher Nolan supposedly wanted the authenticity of real non-wigged hair on the screen.
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So if the production could wait for real, non-wigged hair in the name of authenticity,
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then they had the time for Nolan to read the poem in its original language.
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If he had done that, he'd get a much better sense of the poem's tone, its themes, its characters,
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all of which he clearly butchered in his adaptation.
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But even if you don't mind the fact that Nolan was kind of lazy, relied on a translator,
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the fact that he picked this particular translator is really unforgivable.
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Emily Wilson has gone on record in multiple interviews and in the preface of her translation
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stating that Odysseus, the hero of the poem, is, quote, problematic.
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That's the actual word she chooses again and again.
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Using the language of a disappointed 26-year-old gender studies grad
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when she's scrolling through social media posts she doesn't like.
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This is how the New Yorker reported on Emily Wilson's perspective a couple of years ago.
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quote, previous translators have called Odysseus shifty, cunning, and a hundred other things.
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After grappling with the alternatives, Wilson chose complicated, hoping also to convey the
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sense of problematic. Her first sentence, tell me about a complicated man, instantly makes him
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our familiar, charismatic prince who's too impossible to live with and too desirable to
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live without. Now, the moment Christopher Nolan saw this, he should have ensured that this woman
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there is a vast difference between a hero who's cunning
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and a hero who's problematic or even complicated.
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Someone who's cunning might, say, come up with an idea
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when it's really occupied by an invasion force.
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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 going to see that in this film.
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So what Emily Wilson is doing is cheapening the language. And by extension, she's undermining the character.
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And instead of wasting any time with Emily Wilson, Nolan could have used Robert Fitzgerald's translation, which has been around for decades.
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It's the gold standard. And just from a glance, you could tell it's infinitely better than Wilson's.
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So here's how Fitzgerald's translation begins. Just to give you an idea.
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It says, sing in me, muse, and through me, tell the story of that man skilled in all ways of contending the wanderer,
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harried for years on end after he plundered the stronghold on the proud height of Troy.
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He saw the townlands 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.
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But not by will nor valor could he save them, for their recklessness destroyed them all.
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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 them their eyes the dawn of their return.
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Of these, adventure, muse, daughter of Zeus, tell us in our time, lift the great song again.
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Now, with that in mind, here's how Emily Wilson handled that same passage.
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And as you listen to this, pay attention to the adjectives she uses and how just sort of bland everything sounds by comparison.
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Muse, tell me how he wandered and was lost when he had wrecked the holy town of Troy
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and where he went and who he met, the pain he suffered on the sea,
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and how he worked to save his life and bring his men back home.
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He failed, and for their own mistakes, they died.
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They ate the sun god's cattle, and the god kept them from home.
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so it's a version specifically written to strip away everything sort of beautiful and flowery and
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and and evocative uh in the language to make it sound like something that chat gpt could have
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spit out so to recap in the fitzgerald version odysseus was skilled he plundered a stronghold
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he weathered many bitter nights and though he tried to save his companions with valor their
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recklessness prevented him from doing so. But in Emily Wilson's version, Odysseus was complicated
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and lost. He suffered on sea. He failed to save his friends. It's an old story, not an adventure
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or a great song. Now, it's not hard to see what Wilson set out to accomplish here. The only reason
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her translation exists is to neutralize the significance of the Odyssey. She wants to destroy
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the significance of an epic that's unapologetically masculine because in 2026, men, particularly white
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men from Europe and their descendants, simply cannot be heroic figures. So by using Emily
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Wilson's translation as his foundation, Christopher Nolan is doing the exact same thing. He's made
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sure that the dialogue in his version of the Odyssey is just as generic, while also undermining
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But I don't want to make it sound like Nolan is only trying to emasculate the Odyssey. He's also
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trying to remove as much of the Greek and Mediterranean influence and character as he
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possibly can. You see, Greeks are white and white people are bad. And so this is from Time Magazine's
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glowing new profile of Nolan. Quote, Nolan has also studied the text and made several striking
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adaptation choices. Argos, Odysseus' loyal dog, has been promoted from a cameo to a bit player.
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Odysseus and his son, played by Tom Holland, burdened by the legend of a father he doesn't
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remember, are given more time together. And the reunion between Odysseus' fellow king
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and his wife Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world, blamed for starting the war after a
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Trojan prince spirited her away, has always felt too neatly resolved in the poem. Nolan complicates
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it, and in a twist, Lupita Nyong'o also plays Helen's sister, whose marriage to
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Menelaus' brother is, to put it mildly, acrimonious. So Lupita Nyong'o, the actress,
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is going to play the most beautiful woman in the world, and the face that launched a thousand
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ships, the catalyst for the Trojan War. And in case you need a visual, we'll put it up on the
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screen. On the left, you have Helen from the 2004 movie Troy. On the right, you have Lupita Nyong'o.
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Now, if somebody woke up in a coma after 20 years and they wanted an update on what's happened to
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America in those two decades, you could simply show them this side-by-side comparison. I mean,
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they'd probably conclude that we'd been conquered by Africa somehow, which maybe isn't too far from
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the truth. Now, Lupita Nyong'o is, as you can kind of tell, from Kenya. It makes no historical
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sense whatsoever to cast a sub-Saharan African in this role. I mean, you might as well make Helen
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of Troy Chinese. You might as well put her in an igloo and make her an Eskimo. It is an absurd
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casting choice that totally breaks the immersion of the film. So why would Nolan do this? Were there
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no white actresses available for the role? Well, he would do this because he knows that he would
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be called racist if he gave the most beautiful woman in the world role to a white woman. It
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really is that simple. Nolan is technically talented, but a coward. He's too afraid to do
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anything that even slightly challenges the spirit of the age, which is why, although he's a good
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artist, he'll never be a great one. Being a great artist requires some amount of moral courage. He
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doesn't have any. Now, to be clear, in the Iliad and the Odyssey, Homer describes Helen as fair-haired,
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fair-faced, and white-armed. There's no dispute that she's a very attractive white woman, which
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again makes sense because this is a greek poem by casting a black woman as helen once again nolan
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is transforming a heroic epic into a farce he's going out of his way to turn a key pillar of the
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western canon into a mockery the same reason by the way that the the recent snow white film cast
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a south american woman in the title role because snow white is canonically of course white obviously
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it's right there in the name and um but the the filmmakers knew that snow white is supposed to be
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the prettiest girl in the kingdom, the fairest of them all, and so they felt compelled to give
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the role to a brown woman. I mean, certainly they couldn't imply that a white woman is beautiful,
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least of all the most beautiful, and that's the unofficial rule that Nolan is obeying here.
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There are also official rules he's arguably obeying. Per Oscar policy, there needs to be
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a certain amount of diversity in lead characters, so the theory is that Nolan added black characters
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in order to qualify for the Oscars, but I'm not sold on that idea because if you read the
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Oscars criteria, there's plenty of other DEI initiatives that he could have resorted to.
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Could have hired black producers, for example, or started a training camp for black actors or,
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you know, whatever. Now, of course, we will be told and are being told that race swapping
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characters in the Odyssey, casting it in a way so that the demographic makeup of Greece in,
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you know, 1200 BC looks like the demographic makeup of Brooklyn in 2026 AD. We'll be told
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it doesn't matter because it's just a movie, right? It's pretend. But we all know that if
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a major Hollywood studio made a film set in Africa featuring iconic African characters
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and then cast white people in some of the key roles, none of the people defending the Odyssey
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casting would be nearly as forgiving. In fact, they'd literally be protesting in the street.
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And if you can imagine this, imagine if the role of the most beautiful woman in Africa was given to a white lady.
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Okay, what if they handed that spot to, I don't know, Sidney Sweeney?
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I mean, they would show up to the movie studio with Molotov cocktails.
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They would go full Luigi Mangione on Universal Pictures executives.
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And yet, when race swaps go the other direction, we're told it's our obligation to just accept it without complaint.
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By the way, one Hollywood actor who's been very outspoken against race swapping characters in films is John Liguizamo.
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Liguizamo is Hispanic and has insisted publicly many times on the record that Hispanic characters in films should only be played by Hispanic actors.
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But, you know, the good news is that he's consistent, because he also, I'll say to his credit, he spoke out about the Odyssey and said that only white people of Greek descent should be featured in the film.
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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.
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you know. Another clue that Nolan's goal is more to demolish the Odyssey than to interpret it is
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that the corporate press is already running a full-on PR campaign for Nolan's film several
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months before it comes out. Time Magazine ran this cover story glorifying Nolan. But if you
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actually read the story, it's not hard to see that Nolan and his team have absolutely no idea
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what they're doing. Here's one of the more remarkable parts. Quote, Nolan instructed
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composer Ludwig Goranson not to use an orchestra on the score, if only to subvert expectations for
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a Swords and Sandals film. It's not like the orchestra existed back then, says Gorenson. It
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was a challenge and also an opening to try to make something unique. Instead, he rented 35 bronze
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gongs of varying sizes, experimented, recorded them with synths, and began sending the director
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songs. Nolan also put rapper Travis Scott in the film as a bard. I cast him because I wanted to
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nod towards the idea that this story has been handed down as oral poetry, which is analogous
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to rap. So there's a lot to think about here. First of all, he's saying they won't include
00:26:52.120
an orchestra in the score because the orchestra supposedly didn't exist back then. But in the
00:26:58.040
same breath, he says they rented 35 bronze gongs and recorded them with synths. Now, admittedly,
00:27:03.700
again, I'm not an expert. I didn't study ancient Greece in college. In fact, I didn't study anything
00:27:10.200
in college because I didn't go to college. But I'm pretty confident that if the Greeks didn't
1.00
00:27:14.940
have orchestras, then they also probably didn't have synths. So what exactly is the rationale for
00:27:21.940
having synths in the score? I'm also fairly certain that Bronze Age people didn't have
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00:27:25.900
IMAX cameras or 3D printed armor or boom mics or any of the other technology they're using in this
00:27:30.240
film. So this is totally incoherent. Not to mention again, he's basing his film on a modernized
00:27:35.800
translation already and using modernized language and dialogue where people say things like dad
00:27:43.860
and let's go. But somehow Time Magazine printed this without anybody noticing that it sounded a
00:27:50.700
little odd. And the worst part is Nolan saying that he cast the rapper Travis Scott as a bard
00:27:56.640
because, quote, I wanted to nod towards the idea of the story has been handed down as oral poetry,
00:28:01.220
which is analogous to rap. Yes, Homer's Odyssey, because it was handed down as oral poetry,
00:28:08.040
is analogous to rap. Never mind the fact that unlike Homer's Odyssey, rap music is not
00:28:13.460
handed down through generations by many different performers. Rappers sing a song and they record
00:28:19.460
the finalized version of it in a studio. And then it exists in the, it's not handed down.
00:28:26.740
It's like, here's the recording of the song. Other than the fact that the human voice is
00:28:31.520
involved in both of these concepts, there's really no meaningful similarity. Like we know about old
00:28:37.160
rap songs because we have the original recordings. Okay. It's not like your grandmother is sitting
00:28:41.940
you down and reciting the oral tradition of back that ass up by juvenile. That's not how it works.
0.97
00:28:50.240
I mean, I don't know. Maybe you have a strange Thanksgiving tradition in your house. That's not
00:28:53.020
how it works in my house. Instead, you know, she could put the song on and we can enjoy and listen
00:28:56.900
as a family. Now, there are plenty of other important differences too, starting with the
00:29:01.520
fact that the lyrics to one of Travis Scott's biggest songs goes like this. Just reading the
00:29:08.600
lyrics now. Yeah, past the dogs a selly, sendin' texts ain't sendin' kites. Yeah, he said, keep
00:29:16.000
that on lock. I said, you know the s***, it's stife, it's absolute, I'm back, reboot, Lafari to
0.89
00:29:22.460
Jamba Juice. Now, my only point is that that doesn't exactly measure up to an ancient timeless
0.91
00:29:29.920
epic. You know, if this were the kind of oral tradition handed down from our ancestors, we
00:29:35.460
would have to assume that our ancestors were all retarded. In fact, if that qualified as timeless
0.97
00:29:41.100
poetry to be handed down through the generations, we would really, I don't mean to exaggerate,
00:29:45.980
have no choice but to collectively throw ourselves into a volcano and just put a
00:29:50.240
merciful end to the human race entirely. So the reasoning doesn't make any sense.
00:29:55.740
It makes about as much sense as casting Ellen slash Elliot Page in the film playing a man,
00:30:03.600
It's true that they didn't have orchestras in ancient Greece,
00:30:06.160
but they did have orchestras for the last 400 years at least.
0.95
00:30:12.680
On the other hand, we've had transgenderism for like 400 seconds.
1.00
00:30:17.400
I'd say the latter is a lot more anachronistic than the former.
1.00
00:30:21.840
And there are reports online that suggest that Paige is playing
00:30:28.760
That's what everyone's saying. I don't know if it's true.
00:30:30.880
If it is, that it's going to be the single worst casting choice ever made in the history
00:30:36.080
of Hollywood, unless Nolan is changing the story so that the Achilles heel is misgendering.
00:30:43.240
Unless that's the case, it won't make any sense.
00:30:44.980
But no matter who she plays, we can be sure that it will be a male character.
00:30:49.280
So we know that it's terrible casting regardless.
00:30:51.860
But before I beat this point any further and elaborate on my argument that Hollywood is
00:30:56.760
trying to intentionally subvert the classics, I did want to present this alternative theory,
00:31:08.500
isn't necessarily tanking the Odyssey on purpose.
00:31:14.540
where the rich guy kills the socialist revolutionaries.
00:31:19.940
is only good at making a specific kind of movie
00:31:25.160
So this is from a filmmaker named Elaine Astrick.
00:31:29.540
I want to read it in its entirety. And here's what he says, quote, I think I finally understand
00:31:34.260
what's wrong with Nolan. His universe is adverse to myth. It is made entirely of causality and
00:31:41.060
causality alone. Maybe the most gifted filmmaker working in big budget Hollywood today, but he's
00:31:45.880
going to crash on myth the way that sailors crashed on the rocks below the sirens. The tell
00:31:51.940
is in a detail Nolan offers with obvious pride. He found a solution to what he saw as a narrative
00:31:55.960
problem. Why would the Trojans believe the horse was empty and drag it inside their city? His
00:32:00.620
answer is to make the horse half-submerged, sinking into the sea so the Trojans would
00:32:04.780
rescue it rather than accept it as a gift. It's a solution to a problem that never was one
00:32:10.220
because it's a myth. The Trojans bring the horse inside because it's a gift and it has wheels.
00:32:16.080
The poet tells you something plainly impossible with the same tone he used to describe the sunrise,
00:32:20.080
And in doing so, he's signaling that the level of reality goes beyond mere causality and exists on other levels.
00:32:27.600
He's the kind of guy who would explain that Santa can fit through the chimney because he designed it wide enough from the start,
00:32:33.860
using proper construction methods and reliable materials.
00:32:37.000
Then explain how the reindeer are fed to sustain that much effort in a single night.
00:32:41.060
How Santa elaborated a clever logistics route to deliver the gifts on time.
00:32:50.080
think about, for example, how George Lucas destroyed Star Wars. Again, not exactly a Star
00:32:57.920
Wars expert myself, but in the original trilogy, the Force was a mysterious, mystical power that
00:33:04.400
was never fully explained. It'd kind of use your imagination and fill in the blanks.
00:33:09.820
But in the prequels, Lucas came up with a scientific explanation for the Force.
00:33:14.600
and basically it's like some people had midichlorians or however they pronounce it
00:33:20.320
and um and the midichlorians in their cells gave them magic power so this was a disastrous change
00:33:27.420
because it removed all the mythology all of the intrigue behind the force the force went from
00:33:33.040
something ineffable and mysterious to like a biological mutation like cancer except good i
00:33:40.800
guess. Now, was it more rational from a technical perspective? Sort of, I guess, but it ruined one
00:33:49.620
of the core aspects of the original film. The Force didn't need to be rational. Like, Star Wars
00:33:55.700
is a story about spacemen running around and fighting each other with laser swords. We don't
00:34:01.400
need a rationalistic, materialistic explanation for every aspect of it. Now, modern mainstream
00:34:09.140
filmmakers are, for the most part, allergic to anything mystical or supernatural or mythological.
00:34:15.500
They have to filter everything through a materialist lens because that's the lens by
00:34:19.360
which they see the world. This is what makes them especially ill-suited to make movies set in
00:34:24.080
ancient times. You know, the whole beauty of filmmaking is that it allows the audience to
00:34:30.520
see the world through the eyes of its central characters. But seeing the world through the
00:34:37.500
eyes of ancient people means seeing a world steeped in myth and mysticism, because that is
00:34:44.780
the world that they perceived. The only major director working today who understands that is
00:34:50.420
not Christopher Nolan, but Robert Eggers. In The Northman, which is one of the only good
00:34:56.940
historical films of the last quarter century, Eggers tells the story from the perspective
00:35:00.440
of a Viking in the 10th century. That's why some people who watched the movie didn't really like
00:35:06.660
it. I think because they didn't quite understand what Robert Eggers was doing. Um, and the, the,
00:35:12.440
the movie it's, it's very, um, it's very violent and epic and it is, you know, grim in a lot of
00:35:18.580
ways, but it's also kind of trippy. It's like, it's in a way people weren't expecting. And why
00:35:23.720
is that? Well, because he's, he's telling the story from the perspective of these people who
00:35:28.700
lived in the 10th century. He's respecting the mysticism of the ancients, trying to capture
00:35:36.220
their worldview, not his own, right? Capture their worldview, theirs, not his. Now, most modern
00:35:44.260
filmmakers like Nolan are way too literal in their thinking. There's nothing romantic, nothing
00:35:50.240
mystical, nothing mythological in their view of the world. They can't handle historical epics
00:35:55.140
because our ancestors lived in a world that is so totally alien to the world these filmmakers
00:36:01.820
perceive. So arguably that's the problem here. Maybe Nolan doesn't understand how to tell the
00:36:06.940
story. Maybe all the race swaps and all the incoherent details are part of some ill-advised
00:36:11.060
larger effort to connect the dots that don't need to be connected. Now it's hard to say because the
00:36:16.360
movie's not out yet. There's a growing divide in higher education right now. Some schools seem
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Meanwhile, students and parents are left wondering whether the degree will actually lead anywhere
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Go to preborn.com slash Walsh. That's preborn.com slash Walsh. Whatever theory explains all this,
00:38:49.300
the fact is that many other directors and other studios are doing the same thing Nolan is doing.
00:38:54.180
Obviously, they're taking a hatchet to classic works of literature. They're inverting the themes
00:38:59.080
and ruining the characters. Animal Farm from Angel Studios is one of the most recent examples.
00:39:04.260
As we all know, Orwell's Animal Farm was an allegory about communism, but the Angel Studios
00:39:08.020
version makes capitalism into the villain. This is from Tim Poole, who saw the film, quote,
00:39:13.360
The new Animal Farm is about happy animals sold off after a farmer can't pay his mortgage. One
00:39:19.200
pig gets in credit card debt and agrees to sell the farm in a private equity deal to Elon Musk's
00:39:24.240
mom, who then builds a hydroelectric dam on the property. So the animals rebel and plant
00:39:29.720
explosives, which blow up the dam, killing all her employees. Not a single analog or comment
00:39:35.220
on Marxism, let alone communism. Now, to his credit, Tim turned down an offer from Angel
00:39:42.860
Studios to promote this film. He recognized that it's an absurd pro-communist adaptation,
00:39:47.660
so we called it out. Instead of making a new film with a new title, they felt they had to
00:39:53.200
bastardize Animal Farm. Like if you just want to make a dumb movie about barn animals, you can do
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00:40:01.320
that, right? You could just make a movie, call it The Barn Yard or whatever. And then it would only
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00:40:07.900
be stacked up against the pantheon of children's movies about barn animals, where it would still
00:40:11.920
fall well short of the classics of the genre like Babe and Charlotte's Web. But instead,
00:40:16.320
they are cynically using the name of one of the most important and iconic works of 20th century
00:40:21.120
literature. Now, in their defense, Angel Studios insists that they didn't have any creative control
00:40:26.680
over the film. They're just the distributor. But frankly, and I say this to someone who likes
00:40:32.180
Angel Studios, that is not much of a defense. I mean, it's a bit like saying, well, I didn't
00:40:35.820
create the crack cocaine. I just shipped it to millions of people. It's a surprising development
00:40:40.980
because Angel has done some really powerful and important work, most notably Sound of Freedom,
00:40:47.240
That's why it's so bewildering that in Animal Farm,
00:41:14.720
this is the sound of freedom thanks napoleon nice to be appreciated but just enjoy the milk kid
00:41:27.280
and also like don't worry you know it's our little secret now first of all even aside from the fact
00:41:33.520
that this animal farm adaptation destroys the core message of the book tears away orwell's
00:41:37.680
critique of communism empties the story of its meaning and wears it like a skin suit even aside
00:41:41.800
from all that. Again, the tone and look and feel of the film just aren't right. You know, Nolan took
00:41:50.060
something grand and sweeping and made it grim and dark. This movie takes something grim and dark and
00:41:54.000
makes it childish and crass. Like it's animated with all the artistic care and vision of a Paw
00:41:59.980
Patrol episode. And instead of dealing with the heady themes of Orwell's book, instead they've
00:42:05.440
elected to, you know, make fart jokes. And on top of that, it's openly mocking Angel Studios' top
00:42:10.820
film, even though Angel Studios distributes the film. Now, to clear Seth Rogen wasn't the only
00:42:16.040
insufferable leftist to work on this thing. Here's another. At the heart of every genocide is
00:42:22.840
dehumanization. That is the beginning. And I know we're talking about animals here, but when we
00:42:29.700
stop seeing our fellow citizens as human, then we can commit violence against them with impunity,
00:42:35.780
take away their rights. I think what we've seen over the past six years with trans people
1.00
00:42:45.060
It's never been about protecting women or children.
00:42:49.200
they would indict Epstein, people in the Epstein files.
00:42:53.260
We know who they are, but they're not doing that.
00:42:55.420
So that was all a pretext to scapegoat trans people
00:43:00.740
to dehumanize us and put us in an excluded category
00:43:08.760
we're seeing that happen is there anyone who can seriously argue that hollywood's output has gotten
00:43:14.480
better ever since they began recruiting actors and directors and writers like that guy has there
00:43:20.520
been a single film that's been improved by shoehorning in some dei casting and overt leftist
00:43:26.460
political messaging certainly none of the historical epics epics have improved i mean the genre has
00:43:30.780
basically disappeared and the few attempts that have been made have been you know unintentionally
00:43:36.400
farcical. That's a big deal because the historical epic is one of the most important genres of
00:43:42.900
storytelling. It has been for literally thousands of years. When you watch one of those films done
00:43:50.680
right, you learn valuable lessons about the way the world used to work, the obstacles that great
00:43:57.260
men had to overcome. Uh, you, you, again, you see the world through the lens of our ancestors,
00:44:05.980
which is a, which is a very valuable thing, but it just doesn't exist anymore. I'd argue that the
00:44:12.180
last truly great historical Epic with the exception of the North man was a master and
00:44:17.100
commander, which came out in 2003. And that film featured great actors and filmmakers at the top
00:44:22.520
of their game, telling a heroic and exciting story with real moral and dramatic weight,
00:44:27.780
no concern at all for diverse representation, quote unquote, or DEI, you leave the film
00:44:33.940
feeling enthralled and also like you just received a history lesson.
00:44:39.200
Very few films over the past quarter century have even come close to that. Apocalypto in 2006 was
00:44:44.460
masterfully done. The Northman is already mentioned. And in terms of historical films
00:45:14.460
He's got more money than he can possibly spend.
00:45:20.300
He has total financial and artistic freedom to make whatever he wants.
00:45:24.360
He could have made the first meaningful historical epic in decades.
00:45:27.740
One that didn't resemble every other bog-standard assembly line production from every other director.
00:45:41.160
We get dialogue that sits comfortably at a fourth-grade reading level.
00:45:54.160
What's unclear, the question we may never get an answer to,
00:46:07.600
Talk to you tomorrow. Have a great day. Godspeed.
00:46:18.020
Widely considered one of the greatest Americans who ever lived.
00:46:21.840
A man who had a vision for a colorblind society, a post-racial America.
0.53
00:46:30.980
Were his true aims a colorblind society or something far more radical?
00:46:37.320
What unfolded behind the scenes in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963?
00:46:44.440
We wanted to show you a clip of the I Have a Dream speech, but according to our lawyers,
00:46:51.760
In fact, King's family has made a lot of money suing media outlets.
00:46:57.120
What they're doing makes it very difficult to judge Martin Luther King Jr. not by the
00:47:00.660
color of his skin, but by the content of his character.
00:47:04.300
Is America today stronger, more unified, and racially equal than before King's rise?
00:47:10.440
These questions demand answers, and as Americans, we are entitled to a full accounting of the
00:47:16.880
King's Movement fundamentally transformed our country and our system of government.
00:47:24.080
Each day the war goes on, the hatred increases, though the cause of evil prosper.
00:47:30.620
First part of our two-part special on the Civil Rights Movement, a new constitution,
00:47:40.440
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