The Insufferable Killjoy Tedium of Christopher Nolan Backlash
A pushback against ignorant and often racist social media discourse around The Odyssey
As a prelude, let me first say I am gagging to see Christopher Nolan’s IMAX-sized take on The Odyssey. As far as I’m concerned, the 17th of July can’t come quickly enough. I hope the film will be amazing, and obviously, my full review will be published on this site when the time comes.
With that said, I feel the need to get something out of my system regarding the nonsense plaguing social media, damning The Odyssey before anyone has seen it (I’ll spare you the misery of linking to any of this, but you can seek it out yourself if you want to be depressed at the state of humanity). In the interests of balance, I’ll fully accept that because Christopher Nolan is presently the world’s most successful film director, he attracts a fervent following. Some of these followers can be deeply irritating, especially when they consider his work to be above criticism. I do not. In fact, one of my most contentious Nolan opinions concerns The Dark Knight (2008), and how I feel it has significant flaws. (More on that here, if you want to read about it.) I state this example purely to lay out my credentials as someone I hope you’ll consider balanced regarding what I’m about to say. Yes, in general, I love Christopher Nolan’s films, but I’m perfectly happy to criticise them when I feel it is warranted.
Unfortunately, with Nolan, because of his immense and often hugely influential cinematic accomplishments, he attracts a veritable horde of attention-seeking hipster contrarians, history bores, scientific accuracy bores, right-wing anti-”woke” blowhards (in the case of The Odyssey), and other assorted killjoys determined to capitalise on their “hot take” backlash. I take some solace from the fact that backlash is an inevitable concomitant of major success. For there to be a backlash, there must first be a “frontlash”, so to speak. I doubt any of what I’m about to discuss keeps Christopher Nolan awake at night, but because of the sheer ubiquity of the social media tedium presently festering over The Odyssey, I now feel a need to address said tedium point by point.
(For the record: This isn’t the first time I’ve gone full Nolan defender. His last film Oppenheimer (2023) also attracted certain opinions that I felt were too misguided or downright foolish to pass without pushback, often from more left-wing types on that occasion, so Nolan has got it in the neck from all political sides throughout his career.)
