The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 1779 - The Odyssey Looks Awful. Here’s Why.

00:00:00.000 When we first learned that Christopher Nolan was making an adaptation of The Odyssey, there was

00:00:04.740 perhaps reason for optimism, if you happen to be an optimistic sort of person. Nolan has made

00:00:11.560 some mistakes in his career. Tenet was one of the most convoluted films ever made. Interstellar had

00:00:16.760 one too many bloated Hallmark-style monologues from Anne Hathaway preaching about the universal

00:00:21.840 power of love or whatever, but he's still unquestionably one of the most talented living

00:00:27.220 filmmakers, and The Odyssey is one of the foundational works of Western literature.

00:00:31.640 It's a heroic epic with very obvious themes of masculinity, patriarchy, daring, discovery,

00:00:38.240 mortality. Nolan has proven he can tackle epic sweeping projects in the past, and because

00:00:43.440 Hollywood has somewhat retreated from the racial depravity of the Cultural Revolution 0.81

00:00:47.960 of 2020, or so we thought, it was reasonable to hope that Nolan would be faithful to Homer's 0.65

00:00:53.320 original story and produce a worthwhile film. Then the trailers arrived, and we'll start with

00:00:58.740 the one that came out several months ago. Watch. After years of war.

00:01:23.320 promise me you'll come back what if i can't

00:01:32.120 promise me you'll come back what if i can't now this might be splitting hairs but it's worrisome

00:01:42.580 if this is the kind of dialogue they're going to highlight in the trailer sounds like a

00:01:48.340 conversation you might have with the receptionist at your dentist when she's scheduling your six

00:01:52.740 month checkup. It's kind of flat. It's bland. It's definitely nothing like the dialogue in

00:01:59.080 the Odyssey. It doesn't sound like people in ancient Greece. But the more you watch this

00:02:04.620 trailer, the more you notice some other problems. There's the cheap looking armor in the beginning,

00:02:08.520 which looks like it was created with a 3D printer. Put aside the fact for now that they

00:02:14.020 didn't actually have armor that looked like this back in the Bronze Age. Just look at this side

00:02:18.520 by side comparison, you have the armor in the 2004 movie, Troy, with the armor that they're

00:02:25.240 using in the Odyssey. And you can see it there. It's pretty obvious downgrade, in my opinion,

00:02:31.440 whatever material Nolan's using, it looks noticeably cheap and fake. So that's another

00:02:35.600 red flag. Again, not the kind of thing that means the movie will be a disaster, but it makes you

00:02:39.820 wonder what's going on. Then you get into bigger issues. At the outset, I'll mention that I'm not

00:02:45.280 an expert on Homer, but I can say with a high degree of certainty that despite my lack of

00:02:51.940 expertise, there are, when you take all the factors together that we'll discuss, really only two

00:02:56.500 possibilities. Either I somehow know a lot more about the topic than Christopher Nolan, which

00:03:01.680 seems unlikely, or Christopher Nolan is deliberately bastardizing the Odyssey. First of all, the tone

00:03:09.360 is not right. The Iliad is supposed to be the gritty wartime epic from Homer. On the other hand,

00:03:14.020 The Odyssey is more of a grand, sweeping adventure story, though also, of course, dealing with

00:03:20.800 serious themes. But there's more flowery language. There's strange creatures and adventures.

00:03:27.320 People get turned into pigs. Poseidon causes the ships to wreck and so on. Now, with this trailer,

00:03:34.000 it looks kind of like Nolan isn't so much giving us a fantasy epic with a vibrant color palette,

00:03:40.120 but rather a gritty, dimly lit, self-serious action thriller.

00:03:46.340 Because, for one thing, every major movie made today is dimly lit

00:03:51.400 for reasons that no one's ever been able to explain.

00:03:54.680 At least no good reasons.

00:03:56.360 No one's sort of applying the Batman approach where it doesn't belong.

00:03:59.780 You half expect to see the Joker show up when you watch the trailer.

00:04:03.200 This is yet another Hollywood blockbuster where everything needs to be

00:04:06.220 dark and brooding and intense and, like I said, dark, like actually dark, lit in terms of how

00:04:15.100 it's lit. It would have been much more interesting if Nolan had embraced the vibe

00:04:20.860 of the actual epic poem, which is what the 1954 adaptation did. Take a look at this here.

00:04:29.480 Now, from this one photo, you can tell that they understand at least the tone that a film based on the Odyssey should have.

00:04:40.200 And there's actually some color.

00:04:42.500 Did you know you can have color in movies?

00:04:44.740 Modern directors don't realize this.

00:04:47.060 You're allowed to have color.

00:04:48.560 That's okay.

00:04:49.520 There's no law saying you're not allowed to have any kind of color or actually fully light a scene.

00:04:54.480 You're allowed to do that.

00:04:56.400 As far as I know.

00:04:57.460 so it feels tonally off which is which is what a lot of viewers have picked up on

00:05:02.660 and as the trailers kept coming the situation started to look even worse so uh here's the

00:05:09.380 most recent trailer that really has set off some alarm bells for a lot of uh a lot of viewers watch

00:05:15.080 what would he do if he came back here and find all these suitors in his house

00:05:19.620 You're pining for a daddy you didn't even know, like some sniffling pastor.

00:05:29.620 Who's looking after your wife and son?

00:05:32.620 Do you see?

00:05:34.620 My dad is coming home.

00:05:37.620 Bringing vengeance.

00:05:41.620 Bringing it all.

00:05:43.620 Let's go!

00:05:50.180 I think it's asleep.

00:05:56.180 Well, there's some more award-winning dialogue for you.

00:05:59.100 Odysseus says, let's go.

00:06:03.020 That's what they went with for this big, epic moment where he's leading the charge.

00:06:07.400 Let's go.

00:06:09.160 Now, again, I know it sounds like splitting hairs,

00:06:10.820 but this is not how people in the ancient Greek world,

00:06:14.100 many centuries before Christ, would have communicated.

00:06:17.040 I don't just mean because they're speaking English. I'll forgive that part. I don't think

00:06:24.620 that every director has to go full Mel Gibson and actually do the film in the language that they

00:06:30.080 spoke, although I certainly respect that strategy. Whether they're speaking English, fine. But the

00:06:36.840 English that they're speaking should capture the spirit of the time period. Now, if you're making

00:06:44.420 a movie where a high school quarterback runs onto the field for the big game against the

00:06:49.720 school's hated rival, then it makes sense to have him shout, let's go. But it doesn't work

00:06:55.220 for a depiction of an ancient battle based on one of the greatest works of literature of all time.

00:07:00.140 And there's no excuse for it because Homer's, because the Odyssey is full of beautiful dialogue

00:07:05.300 where he's exhorting and encouraging his men. I'm not saying Nolan needs to use those exact words,

00:07:12.260 but he should at least try to capture again the spirit.

00:07:15.820 Homer has this famous passage,

00:07:17.300 Friends, we are not unacquainted with evils.

00:07:19.860 This present evil is no greater than when the Cyclops penned us

00:07:22.780 in his hollow cave by force of his strong hands.

00:07:26.180 Yet even from there we escaped.

00:07:29.900 That sounds like something a person might have said back then,

00:07:32.280 or at least it sounds like something that a person might have said in a story back then.

00:07:38.280 But Nolan has boiled all that down to,

00:07:41.260 Let's go.

00:07:42.260 calling it generic would be a rather considerable understatement. And then there's the use of the

00:07:47.380 word daddy in the trailer, as well as the fact that the son of Odysseus says, quote,

00:07:53.000 my dad is coming home. Yes, my dad is coming home. Now, putting aside the fact that Tom Holland is a

00:08:00.220 29-year-old actor talking like he's a seven-year-old anticipating his dad's return from a two-week

00:08:04.660 business trip to Cleveland, again, it's dialogue that could be used in a million different movies.

00:08:11.000 it's generic and it rips the soul out of the odyssey and makes it much less specific and unique

00:08:17.560 almost as if that's the whole point for comparison here's some dialogue from the 2004 movie troy

00:08:25.000 which incidentally nolan was originally supposed to direct um watch the gods envy us

00:08:31.780 they envy us because we're mortal because any moment might be our last

00:08:39.740 everything's more beautiful because we're doomed you will never be lovelier than you are now

00:08:47.620 we will never be here again

00:08:54.140 now if Nolan were directing this scene Brad Pitt would just tell her let's go and then she'd go

00:09:01.220 and what's funny about this comparison is that at the time Troy was not a particularly special

00:09:05.980 film. It was a fine movie, in my opinion, a little uneven, but fun to watch. I admit I have trouble

00:09:13.160 with Brad Pitt playing an ancient person. He's a good actor, but ultimately he looks and sounds

00:09:18.540 like a guy named Brad. So if you put him in any story set before like 1960, it tends to break the

00:09:24.340 fourth wall. But ironically, though that film was not really trying to be a prestige drama,

00:09:31.020 it'll probably wind up being far more historically accurate and much better written

00:09:35.060 than Nolan's Oscar bait. And in 2004, when that movie came out, we didn't realize that within

00:09:41.080 the span of a decade, Hollywood would completely forget how to make or refuse to make good historical

00:09:47.340 films. In the case of The Odyssey, it's not hard to diagnose the specific problem. Nolan set out

00:09:53.300 to subvert a classic, to bludgeon a monumental story with flat writing and incoherent creative

00:09:58.420 decisions, along with the modern mandates of feminism, transgenderism, and anti-whiteism.

00:10:04.200 This is the approach that now defines Hollywood. 0.72

00:10:06.580 They're running roughshod like a Mongol horde over every classic they can get their hands on. 0.97

00:10:12.800 And the first sign that something would go very wrong with this particular production

00:10:16.160 was the revelation that Nolan would be relying on the 2017 translation of The Odyssey that was written by this woman.

00:10:24.900 We'll put her up on the screen.

00:10:27.780 Oh yeah, that's the kind of person you want translating The Odyssey.

00:10:31.060 Her name is Emily Wilson, and Nolan had cited her translation in several interviews.

00:10:36.600 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.

00:10:44.320 This is the look of a Portland barista who likes to spend her weekend at a No Kings rally with her grandmother.

00:10:50.780 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.

00:11:03.420 She also wanted to flatten the dialogue.

00:11:05.540 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.

00:11:17.880 For what it's worth, there's another female writer who wrote The Song of Achilles, which apparently made Achilles gay.

00:11:27.000 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.

00:11:36.800 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.

00:11:43.860 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.

00:11:54.740 I mean, high school students do that, and they're not even paid $100 million for their trouble.

00:12:01.060 I spent about five minutes online, and I found plenty of resources that help you read the original poem.

00:12:06.020 There are guides with all the vocabulary words you need.

00:12:09.560 You can even get an online tutor if you want.

00:12:12.020 Given a few months, anyone can become familiar enough with ancient Greek to read the most important moments in the Odyssey.

00:12:20.500 And that's more than enough time in this context.

00:12:23.020 I mean, we're being told that for this film, Matt Damon spent an entire year growing out his beard,

00:12:28.500 which is a pretty long time to grow out a not terribly impressive beard, but whatever.

00:12:34.980 Christopher Nolan supposedly wanted the authenticity of real non-wigged hair on the screen.

00:12:42.020 So if the production could wait for real, non-wigged hair in the name of authenticity,

00:12:47.840 then they had the time for Nolan to read the poem in its original language.

00:12:51.800 If he had done that, he'd get a much better sense of the poem's tone, its themes, its characters,

00:12:55.900 all of which he clearly butchered in his adaptation.

00:12:58.600 But even if you don't mind the fact that Nolan was kind of lazy, relied on a translator,

00:13:03.200 the fact that he picked this particular translator is really unforgivable.

00:13:08.100 Emily Wilson has gone on record in multiple interviews and in the preface of her translation

00:13:12.380 stating that Odysseus, the hero of the poem, is, quote, problematic.

00:13:18.500 That's the actual word she chooses again and again.

00:13:21.840 Using the language of a disappointed 26-year-old gender studies grad

00:13:25.840 when she's scrolling through social media posts she doesn't like.

00:13:29.060 This hero is problematic.

00:13:31.940 This is how the New Yorker reported on Emily Wilson's perspective a couple of years ago.

00:13:35.840 quote, previous translators have called Odysseus shifty, cunning, and a hundred other things.

00:13:41.680 After grappling with the alternatives, Wilson chose complicated, hoping also to convey the

00:13:46.880 sense of problematic. Her first sentence, tell me about a complicated man, instantly makes him

00:13:52.900 our familiar, charismatic prince who's too impossible to live with and too desirable to

00:13:58.900 live without. Now, the moment Christopher Nolan saw this, he should have ensured that this woman

00:14:04.240 had nothing to do with the project,

00:14:06.860 there is a vast difference between a hero who's cunning

00:14:10.760 and a hero who's problematic or even complicated.

00:14:17.220 Someone who's cunning might, say, come up with an idea

00:14:21.260 of sending a wooden horse to the gates of Troy

00:14:25.400 and tricking them into thinking it's a gift

00:14:27.220 when it's really occupied by an invasion force.

00:14:31.820 That's a cunning hero.

00:14:34.240 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. 1.00

00:14:46.320 So what Emily Wilson is doing is cheapening the language. And by extension, she's undermining the character. 0.94

00:14:53.180 And instead of wasting any time with Emily Wilson, Nolan could have used Robert Fitzgerald's translation, which has been around for decades.

00:15:00.200 It's the gold standard. And just from a glance, you could tell it's infinitely better than Wilson's.

00:15:07.500 So here's how Fitzgerald's translation begins. Just to give you an idea.

00:15:14.320 It says, sing in me, muse, and through me, tell the story of that man skilled in all ways of contending the wanderer,

00:15:21.840 harried for years on end after he plundered the stronghold on the proud height of Troy.

00:15:27.000 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.

00:15:39.380 But not by will nor valor could he save them, for their recklessness destroyed them all.

00:15:44.440 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. 0.97

00:15:55.100 Of these, adventure, muse, daughter of Zeus, tell us in our time, lift the great song again. 0.97

00:16:03.960 Now, with that in mind, here's how Emily Wilson handled that same passage.

00:16:08.660 And as you listen to this, pay attention to the adjectives she uses and how just sort of bland everything sounds by comparison.

00:16:17.920 So, quote, tell me about a complicated man.

00:16:22.140 I mean, already we've gone off the rails.

00:16:25.100 Tell me about a complicated man.

00:16:27.800 Muse, tell me how he wandered and was lost when he had wrecked the holy town of Troy

00:16:31.200 and where he went and who he met, the pain he suffered on the sea,

00:16:34.140 and how he worked to save his life and bring his men back home.

00:16:36.760 He failed, and for their own mistakes, they died.

00:16:39.360 They ate the sun god's cattle, and the god kept them from home.

00:16:43.040 Now God is child of Zeus.

00:16:44.340 Tell the old story for our modern times.

00:16:47.160 Find the beginning.

00:16:47.880 so it's a version specifically written to strip away everything sort of beautiful and flowery and

00:16:57.020 and and evocative uh in the language to make it sound like something that chat gpt could have

00:17:05.240 spit out so to recap in the fitzgerald version odysseus was skilled he plundered a stronghold

00:17:11.940 he weathered many bitter nights and though he tried to save his companions with valor their

00:17:16.440 recklessness prevented him from doing so. But in Emily Wilson's version, Odysseus was complicated

00:17:22.180 and lost. He suffered on sea. He failed to save his friends. It's an old story, not an adventure

00:17:27.920 or a great song. Now, it's not hard to see what Wilson set out to accomplish here. The only reason

00:17:33.700 her translation exists is to neutralize the significance of the Odyssey. She wants to destroy

00:17:37.660 the significance of an epic that's unapologetically masculine because in 2026, men, particularly white

00:17:42.560 men from Europe and their descendants, simply cannot be heroic figures. So by using Emily

00:17:48.180 Wilson's translation as his foundation, Christopher Nolan is doing the exact same thing. He's made

00:17:51.700 sure that the dialogue in his version of the Odyssey is just as generic, while also undermining

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00:19:35.080 But I don't want to make it sound like Nolan is only trying to emasculate the Odyssey. He's also

00:19:39.760 trying to remove as much of the Greek and Mediterranean influence and character as he

00:19:45.700 possibly can. You see, Greeks are white and white people are bad. And so this is from Time Magazine's 1.00

00:19:53.300 glowing new profile of Nolan. Quote, Nolan has also studied the text and made several striking

00:19:58.400 adaptation choices. Argos, Odysseus' loyal dog, has been promoted from a cameo to a bit player.

00:20:05.620 Odysseus and his son, played by Tom Holland, burdened by the legend of a father he doesn't

00:20:11.000 remember, are given more time together. And the reunion between Odysseus' fellow king

00:20:17.720 and his wife Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world, blamed for starting the war after a

00:20:23.880 Trojan prince spirited her away, has always felt too neatly resolved in the poem. Nolan complicates

00:20:29.920 it, and in a twist, Lupita Nyong'o also plays Helen's sister, whose marriage to

00:20:38.100 Menelaus' brother is, to put it mildly, acrimonious. So Lupita Nyong'o, the actress,

00:20:46.660 is going to play the most beautiful woman in the world, and the face that launched a thousand

00:20:52.600 ships, the catalyst for the Trojan War. And in case you need a visual, we'll put it up on the

00:20:59.320 screen. On the left, you have Helen from the 2004 movie Troy. On the right, you have Lupita Nyong'o.

00:21:06.660 Now, if somebody woke up in a coma after 20 years and they wanted an update on what's happened to

00:21:11.220 America in those two decades, you could simply show them this side-by-side comparison. I mean,

00:21:15.380 they'd probably conclude that we'd been conquered by Africa somehow, which maybe isn't too far from

00:21:20.620 the truth. Now, Lupita Nyong'o is, as you can kind of tell, from Kenya. It makes no historical

00:21:28.560 sense whatsoever to cast a sub-Saharan African in this role. I mean, you might as well make Helen 1.00

00:21:38.100 of Troy Chinese. You might as well put her in an igloo and make her an Eskimo. It is an absurd 1.00

00:21:44.800 casting choice that totally breaks the immersion of the film. So why would Nolan do this? Were there

00:21:52.320 no white actresses available for the role? Well, he would do this because he knows that he would 1.00

00:22:02.200 be called racist if he gave the most beautiful woman in the world role to a white woman. It

00:22:07.480 really is that simple. Nolan is technically talented, but a coward. He's too afraid to do 0.99

00:22:13.420 anything that even slightly challenges the spirit of the age, which is why, although he's a good

00:22:18.860 artist, he'll never be a great one. Being a great artist requires some amount of moral courage. He

00:22:24.540 doesn't have any. Now, to be clear, in the Iliad and the Odyssey, Homer describes Helen as fair-haired,

00:22:31.460 fair-faced, and white-armed. There's no dispute that she's a very attractive white woman, which 0.54

00:22:38.540 again makes sense because this is a greek poem by casting a black woman as helen once again nolan 0.70

00:22:44.300 is transforming a heroic epic into a farce he's going out of his way to turn a key pillar of the 0.53

00:22:49.680 western canon into a mockery the same reason by the way that the the recent snow white film cast

00:22:55.760 a south american woman in the title role because snow white is canonically of course white obviously

00:23:00.300 it's right there in the name and um but the the filmmakers knew that snow white is supposed to be

00:23:05.660 the prettiest girl in the kingdom, the fairest of them all, and so they felt compelled to give

00:23:11.040 the role to a brown woman. I mean, certainly they couldn't imply that a white woman is beautiful,

00:23:16.040 least of all the most beautiful, and that's the unofficial rule that Nolan is obeying here. 0.74

00:23:22.360 There are also official rules he's arguably obeying. Per Oscar policy, there needs to be

00:23:26.880 a certain amount of diversity in lead characters, so the theory is that Nolan added black characters

00:23:30.880 in order to qualify for the Oscars, but I'm not sold on that idea because if you read the

00:23:34.480 Oscars criteria, there's plenty of other DEI initiatives that he could have resorted to.

00:23:38.580 Could have hired black producers, for example, or started a training camp for black actors or,

00:23:42.880 you know, whatever. Now, of course, we will be told and are being told that race swapping 0.74

00:23:49.720 characters in the Odyssey, casting it in a way so that the demographic makeup of Greece in,

00:23:56.180 you know, 1200 BC looks like the demographic makeup of Brooklyn in 2026 AD. We'll be told

00:24:04.340 it doesn't matter because it's just a movie, right? It's pretend. But we all know that if

00:24:11.540 a major Hollywood studio made a film set in Africa featuring iconic African characters

00:24:18.100 and then cast white people in some of the key roles, none of the people defending the Odyssey

00:24:23.580 casting would be nearly as forgiving. In fact, they'd literally be protesting in the street.

00:24:28.700 And if you can imagine this, imagine if the role of the most beautiful woman in Africa was given to a white lady. 0.97

00:24:40.200 Okay, what if they handed that spot to, I don't know, Sidney Sweeney? 0.97

00:24:45.140 There would actually be riots.

00:24:47.980 I mean, they would show up to the movie studio with Molotov cocktails.

00:24:51.940 They would go full Luigi Mangione on Universal Pictures executives.

00:24:56.160 They would.

00:24:57.000 And we all know that's the case. 0.52

00:24:58.700 And yet, when race swaps go the other direction, we're told it's our obligation to just accept it without complaint.

00:25:08.200 By the way, one Hollywood actor who's been very outspoken against race swapping characters in films is John Liguizamo.

00:25:16.400 Liguizamo is Hispanic and has insisted publicly many times on the record that Hispanic characters in films should only be played by Hispanic actors.

00:25:26.160 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.

00:25:39.280 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.

00:25:49.280 you know. Another clue that Nolan's goal is more to demolish the Odyssey than to interpret it is

00:25:54.540 that the corporate press is already running a full-on PR campaign for Nolan's film several

00:25:58.960 months before it comes out. Time Magazine ran this cover story glorifying Nolan. But if you

00:26:04.660 actually read the story, it's not hard to see that Nolan and his team have absolutely no idea

00:26:07.800 what they're doing. Here's one of the more remarkable parts. Quote, Nolan instructed

00:26:12.020 composer Ludwig Goranson not to use an orchestra on the score, if only to subvert expectations for

00:26:18.040 a Swords and Sandals film. It's not like the orchestra existed back then, says Gorenson. It

00:26:24.000 was a challenge and also an opening to try to make something unique. Instead, he rented 35 bronze

00:26:29.540 gongs of varying sizes, experimented, recorded them with synths, and began sending the director

00:26:35.820 songs. Nolan also put rapper Travis Scott in the film as a bard. I cast him because I wanted to

00:26:41.640 nod towards the idea that this story has been handed down as oral poetry, which is analogous

00:26:46.900 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 1.00

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,

00:30:00.880 even though she's a woman.

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

00:30:24.100 the legendary mythical warrior Achilles,

00:30:26.620 and I'm not sure if that's true or not.

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,

00:31:00.100 which I find interesting.

00:31:02.000 It's not really an alternative theory exactly.

00:31:03.660 It's the theory that helps to maybe explain

00:31:05.520 some of what we're seeing here.

00:31:07.480 And in this theory, Christopher Nolan

00:31:08.500 isn't necessarily tanking the Odyssey on purpose.

00:31:12.040 I mean, after all, he's the same guy

00:31:13.260 who made The Dark Knight Rises

00:31:14.540 where the rich guy kills the socialist revolutionaries.

00:31:18.640 Instead, the theory is that Nolan

00:31:19.940 is only good at making a specific kind of movie

00:31:22.540 and the Odyssey is out of his depth.

00:31:25.160 So this is from a filmmaker named Elaine Astrick.

00:31:28.300 It's a really insightful point.

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.

00:32:47.780 So he has a point here, undoubtedly.

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

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00:38:43.480 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 0.98

00:40:01.320 that, right? You could just make a movie, call it The Barn Yard or whatever. And then it would only 0.96

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,

00:40:44.720 which was about child sex trafficking.

00:40:47.240 That's why it's so bewildering that in Animal Farm,

00:40:50.660 Seth Rogen openly mocks Sound of Freedom.

00:40:53.880 Watch.

00:40:55.000 Come on.

00:40:56.520 Hey, where'd this come from?

00:40:57.940 It's leftovers. It'll go to waste.

00:40:59.900 You should have this for all your hard work.

00:41:01.800 No, no, no, no, no. Thank you.

00:41:03.400 But it's supposed to be shared equally.

00:41:07.040 There is no supposed to anymore, okay?

00:41:09.740 We're free.

00:41:10.880 For example, I'm about to fart right now.

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

00:42:40.060 is a really good example of that. 0.92

00:42:42.580 It's clear that it's never been about sports.

00:42:45.060 It's never been about protecting women or children.

00:42:47.360 If they wanted to protect women and 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

00:43:04.680 so that they could take away our rights.

00:43:07.500 Legislative side of existence.

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

00:44:51.200 that were actually well-made

00:44:53.200 and respected the time period they portray,

00:44:56.280 that's pretty much it.

00:44:59.160 This is a massive critical void

00:45:01.200 in America's culture.

00:45:03.640 At some level, I can understand

00:45:04.680 why lesser-known directors

00:45:05.800 aren't trying to correct the problem.

00:45:07.400 They know their careers would be destroyed

00:45:08.840 if they tried.

00:45:10.360 But Christopher Nolan, like Angel Studios,

00:45:12.740 is not going to go bankrupt anytime soon.

00:45:14.460 He's got more money than he can possibly spend.

00:45:18.440 No one in the industry can take him down.

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.

00:45:34.420 Could have done that.

00:45:36.460 Instead, we get Zendaya. 0.98

00:45:38.780 We get Black Helen.

00:45:41.160 We get dialogue that sits comfortably at a fourth-grade reading level.

00:45:46.940 Was Christopher Nolan a great director?

00:45:48.860 Well, yes, at one point, I think he was.

00:45:52.120 Everyone knows that.

00:45:54.160 What's unclear, the question we may never get an answer to,

00:45:58.020 is why he decided to torch his own legacy

00:46:00.540 in a doomed effort to destroy Homer's.

00:46:05.320 That'll do it for the show today.

00:46:06.340 Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening.

00:46:07.600 Talk to you tomorrow. Have a great day. Godspeed.

00:46:15.760 Martin Luther King Jr. is an American icon,

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

00:46:27.280 He had a dream. 0.57

00:46:28.820 It's just not the dream you thought it was.

00:46:30.980 Were his true aims a colorblind society or something far more radical?

00:46:35.740 Who bankrolled him?

00:46:37.320 What unfolded behind the scenes in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963?

00:46:41.640 Was civil disobedience actually peaceful?

00:46:44.440 We wanted to show you a clip of the I Have a Dream speech, but according to our lawyers,

00:46:50.760 we can't.

00:46:51.760 In fact, King's family has made a lot of money suing media outlets.

00:46:54.600 They want to silence critics like us.

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

00:47:14.680 Civil Rights Movement and its consequences.

00:47:16.880 King's Movement fundamentally transformed our country and our system of government.

00:47:20.880 I speak as a citizen of the world.

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,

00:47:34.720 available now on Daily Wire Plus.

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The Matt Walsh Show - May 13, 2026

Ep. 1779 - The Odyssey Looks Awful. Here’s Why.

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