Elon Musk's War On 'The Odyssey' Going As Well As All Musk's Other Endeavors
Even Joe Rogan and Ben Shapiro have defected.
For the last seven months, Elon Musk has been raging, quite endlessly, about the casting of Lupita Nyong’o as Helen in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. And while we’re certain that, being as racist and petty as he is, he actually was very upset about the casting of a Black woman as the “face that launched a thousand ships,” it’s also more than clear that he intended this to be a real flex, as solid proof of his power and influence, as proof of the cultural relevance of his army of Xitter goons.
He likely looked forward to being able to use the epic’s epic failure as a “go woke go broke” talking point for years on end, the same way the Right has bragged about getting Cracker Barrel to change its logo back to an old white man sitting next to a barrel (a tad literal if you ask me, but okay) and how their boycott pressured Bud Light into advertising to heterosexual men only. You know, because Cracker Barrel and Bud Light are both very relevant cultural touchstones in this, the year 2026.
Alas, as proof that either no one is listening to him or that no one cares about his critiques of movies he hasn’t even seen yet, the movie has done very, very well. In fact, after just 12 days in theaters, it pulled in $727.9 million, which is really a lot of money, especially given that people don’t really go to theaters so much anymore.
But Musk continues to thrash. Last week, he announced his plans to have his AI pal Grok (neé MechaHitler) make his own “historically accurate” version of The Odyssey by the end of the year. This will be difficult as the story involves people and gods that did not ever actually exist, and none of whom were ever described as having six fingers. (Briareus/Aegaeon, of course, had 100 hands and 50 heads, but he really only figured into The Iliad.)
Here is the weird, sad clip someone else made that inspired this oath:
It’s not very good!
The especially awkward thing here is that the movie has done so well and is apparently so good that even several of Elon’s pals have been trying to get the Right to back off of this one before it becomes very embarrassing and everyone notices that they did not have the social power necessary to stop people from going to see it.
Perhaps the first to defect was Ben Shapiro, who encouraged right-wing filmgoers to calm down about the fact that Lupita Nyong’o played Helen of Troy in about three minutes of the movie and see that it was a “masterpiece.” He also tried to flip the script and claim that Nolan actually made the film with a Christian moral framework because at the beginning, Zeus suggests that it’s a good idea to treat people well, because you never know who is a god, and that’s basically “the Golden Rule.” (The Golden Rule is apparently a lot like Undercover Boss.)
Here is Shapiro’s quote, because it really is something.
Okay, this is actually a Christian allegory. How do you miss this? Honestly, it is a Christian allegory because the whole thing is a biblical take. Okay, Christopher Nolan establishes at the beginning of the film something that he calls Zeus's rule. What is Zeus's rule?
Zeus's rule is treat others as you would be treated because you don't know who is a god in disguise. Now you may notice that treat others as you would be treated is the Golden Rule. The silver rule appears in the Old Testament. That's don't treat others as you would not want to be treated.
The Golden Rule comes from the New Testament. Okay? And usually it finishes because God made man in his image. Nolan takes that and flips it and says because any person could be a God. Okay? This is not something that the Greeks cared about.
This is not something that the Greeks cared about, said Shapiro, while also somehow muddling the Golden Rule with the lesson of Sodom and Gomorrah: treating people you don’t know well because you never know when you might be serving a Touched By An Angel.
Of course, Shapiro was still very upset about Elliot Page, who is a trans man, being cast as Sinon (a character who was actually in Virgil’s Aeneid and not The Odyssey), because it confused him.
I’m actually not entirely shocked that Ben Shapiro couldn’t manage to get all that het up about the casting. Not because he’s not racist, but because he is a musical theater nerd. One thing about musical theater, and live theater in general, is that, apart from when sex or gender is intrinsic to the role, “colorblind” casting and non-traditional casting (and setting) is the norm. This is particularly true for very well-worn stories, like The Odyssey.
Michael Knowles — who had also spent months talking up how the film was going to be an absolute disaster — attempted to do a little spin himself, by insisting that he knows that Christopher Nolan is conservative (he does not publicly identify as either conservative or liberal) because The Dark Knight was a conservative film about what a fabulous president George W. Bush was (it was not), and thus tried to find the secret right-wing subtext in the film. He really stretches it in terms of suggesting that casting Elliot Page as Sinon was some sort of gesture to Sinon’s role in The Aeneid and in The Inferno as a fraudster (though he is not depicted that way in the film).
Sure. Either that or Christopher Nolan just wanted to work with Elliot Page again after having worked with him in Inception. You know, because that’s a thing directors do. Sort of like casting actors — like Lupita Nyong’o and Zendaya — who are especially hot and in demand at the moment in their films, in the hope that this will make people want to go see them. Not everything is a secret evil Trojan horse of wokeness.
But perhaps the greatest betrayal of all comes from one of Musk’s most dedicated acolytes, Joe Rogan, who, in a recent discussion with actor Tim Robbins derided the Right’s culture war against the film (without explicitly mentioning Musk, because that would surely be too much).
“[The Odyssey is] like one of those movies that’s so big people are scrambling to go see it in the movie theaters, and it’s getting people excited about it. Along with a lot of the culture war controversies that … everybody that I know that’s seen it — I haven’t seen it yet — says ‘Fuckin’ throw all that away. The movie’s amazing.’
“They just like — it’s almost like a good way to bait people into getting really, uh, you know, confrontational. You getting tired of that though?” he asked Robbins, who was, in fact, tired of it.
“I was like, ‘Come on, guys. Calm down. Calm down.’ Like, I don’t care. It’s just is it entertaining? Is it good? It doesn’t have to be correct. That doesn’t mean anything to me. There’s never been a time in history where correct was important to me.”
Truer words! Rogan also noted that we’re dealing with mythology here and none of these characters were ever real people to begin with, which is … well, correct.
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This feels a little like a last gasp. I think at one point, right-wing political correctness and culture war hysteria started feeling a little less “One Million Moms” and more transgressive to some (stupid) people, but now they just look like old men yelling at clouds (possibly clouds that are actually Zeus, disguising himself in order to bang a mortal princess without his wife finding out, and yet she always found out). Elon thought he had the power to bring down a movie that people actually wanted to go see and were excited about, but he doesn’t. He just flew, to reference another Greek myth, a little too close to the sun. Which is a little ironic, given that I’m pretty sure he was supposed to be on his moon base by now, not sitting around on the internet crying about Black women and trans men being in movies all the time.
OPEN THREAD.
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
This is my neighbor kitty who I have nicknamed Batcat. (finally got a really good pic of this fuzzball)
https://substack.com/@ziggywiggy/note/c-304671964?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=2knfuc
I took this pic while waiting for my DoorDash order at the entrance to my building. I looked up and this is what I saw and how my brain interpreted it. I like this one a lot.
https://substack.com/@ziggywiggy/note/c-305101780?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=2knfuc
ETA:
Who noticed the exclamation mark?