Skip the flick, Read the book [A Critical Review of the film Odyssey]
By Mark Lopez
From the moment a black actor loudly rammed his long staff on the floor of a great dining hall in Ithaka, signalling the beginning of the film, my heart sank. This much anticipated film, Odyssey, was to be a DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) movie and the writer-director-producer Christopher Nolan wanted us to know this from the outset. If the film was made in Australia, I’m sure it would have begun with a ‘Welcome to Country’.
The DEI casting was more than irritating, it was demoralising, so much so that I was not able to ignore it and blissfully lose myself in the film.
It is the kind of provocation that the politically correct love to employ. They ideologically misrepresent dimensions of our culture, challenging us to accept what they have done because to express antagonism at being poked with a sharp stick is to fall into their carefully laid trap, leaving oneself open to being called ‘racist’.
So, from the outset, I had to watch Bronze Age Greeks and their gods played by a United Nations panoply of Africans, Asians, mixed-race individuals, and Europeans, hardly any of whom looked Greek. It felt like an insult to my love of European culture and literature.
But it got worse. Soon I had to endure the greatest miscasting in cinema history – a black actress, Lupita Nyong’o, playing Hellen of Troy. My first thought was that these black actors should refuse to be used in this way – as a prop to undermine Western Civilisation. And her performance was not that good either, which implied that her presence was for political rather than artistic reasons.
Although this casting was intended to please the politically correct it also seemed intended to hurt or infuriate others. However, it should be noted that to qualify for a Best Picture nomination at the Academy Awards, films have to have a racially diverse actor playing a lead or in a significant supporting role, or have thirty per cent of the cast played by so-called underrepresented groups.
At least I did not have to endure seeing a Greek warrior played by a man with a nose ring and his hair worn in a Man Bun. But, then again, the warrior Sinon was played by Elliot Page, a man who recently identified as transgender. This is yet another carefully set trip wire. Criticise this and you open yourself to being derided as ‘transphobic’.
The screenplay by writer-director-producer Christopher Nolan was ponderous. Half way through, I was wishing Odysseus would get back to Ithaka, kill the hundred suitors who were testing his loyal wife’s virtue, thereby ending the story so I could go home.
I had looked forward to this film with the joyous expectation of a child before Christmas. But my Christmas wishes were dashed. As I journeyed home, I felt profoundly disappointed. Late as it was in the evening (since the film ran for 173 minutes), I needed to watch another film as an antidote to clear my head and reset my bearings.
The Iliad and the Odyssey by Homer are the two oldest books in the Western literary canon. Our literary heritage starts with these magnificent stories rich with tales of heroism that ask us moral questions about human nature that have sustained rich discussion for thousands of years.
But instead of revisiting stories that had intrigued me since childhood, this film delivered de-sexed sirens pictured in a long-shot too far away to experience their hypnotic beauty, and an actress playing the goddess Athena who did not look like a goddess and did not look Greek either.
In addition, when, in the original story, Telemachus, the son of Odysseus, gives orders to his mother, he is showing her (and the audience) his capacity to replace his father in the household and to eventually assume the role of king. But this was left out of the film in order to, I suspect, please the feminists.
But there was more to this unintended cinematic Greek tragedy. A screenplay that emphasises visuals over dialogue requires a fittingly epic musical score to elevate the mood. But all we got was ponderous booming orchestral sound effects when the film desperately needed music of the scale of the sweeping themes composed for Gone with the Wind by Max Steiner or Lawrence of Arabia by Maurice Jarre. Great cinema often features a magnificent musical score, and this movie needed one like a battlefield casualty needs a blood transfusion.
While watching, I felt that to productively follow the plot, you needed to know the original story, even though the filmmakers had done their best to abuse, sorry, ‘update’ this story. You needed to know that Odysseus was the king of Ithaca who led a contingent of warriors in the Trojan War. After ten years of ineffective siege warfare, the brave and crafty Odysseus devised the ruse of leaving the gift of the Trojan Horse in order to smuggle several Greek warriors, hidden inside, past the city gates. This enabled them to sneak out at night to open the gates to allow the Greek army to sack the town. After the brutal Greek victory, Odysseus, like other Greeks, wished to return home swiftly with their plunder, only to be swept off course by a punitive Poseidon, the god of the sea, whose storms scattered the Greek ships.
A disoriented Odysseus and his men ended up on a great adventure where they fought the cyclops, were tempted by the seductive song of the sirens, and where Odysseus was seduced by Calypso for a lengthy stay on her island. When Odysseus finally made it home to Ithaka, ten years later, he found his loyal wife Penelope besieged by unscrupulous suitors wanting to marry her to gain the wealth of their former king. Odysseus and his son Telemachus slayed the suitors, all one hundred of them. This slaughter allowed Odysseus to restore order to his home and realm.
This is an epic story upon which children have been raised for centuries, but in woke Australia in the twenty-first century, how many young people would know this tale? Unfortunately, many young people will experience this story for the first time from this film, since Christopher Nolan has a huge following among the young, being famous for directing a trilogy of Batman films.
When I finish watching a new film at the cinema, I like to go home delighted, counting the days until I can purchase it on DVD so I can add it permanently to my collection. But that did not happen this time.
Instead of a celebration of brave warriors in all their flawed glory and the women who loved them, this film provided an updated politically correct version of an ancient saga that could sit comfortably alongside all the other disappointing revisionist woke re-castings of the classics. You’re better off reading or re-reading the book.
© Mark Lopez 2026 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Published as: ‘Skip the flick, Read the book’, [Review of Odyssey] Quadrant Online, 23 July 2026 https://quadrant.org.au/news-opinions/review/skip-the-flick-read-the-book/
The published version differed from what I originally wrote. This is the authentic version.