Christopher Nolan calls right-wing backlash to The Odyssey ‘irrelevant’
Christopher Nolan has brushed off backlash to The Odyssey (Getty Images | Universal Pictures)
Christopher Nolan has shared his thoughts on the online backlash to his new film The Odyssey, which has primarily come from right-wing spaces, calling it “irrelevant”.
Speaking to the Telegraph on 10 July, the director said of the backlash: “Comes with the territory. But look, these conversations that happen before people see the film – they’re always irrelevant, because no one having them knows what the film actually is yet.”
He went on to compare the experience to making the Batman films.
“When I came on to Batman Begins, writers and artists had been working on this beloved character for almost 65 years, and a lot of freighted thoughts were out there about what he represents,” he said.
“And what I learnt over my time on that trilogy is you can’t worry about any of that at all. What you have to do is honour the original text by interpreting it in the strongest way you personally can.”
He continued by saying that a lot of the backlash before The Dark Knight was released came from the fact that the late Heath Ledger was cast as the Joker, a role that earned the actor a posthumous Academy Award.
“In the end, fans of the property – even when we were doing something that was not what they would have done – enjoyed the sincerity of the attempt to put as good a version of it on screen as we could,” Nolan said.
“So, when it comes to The Odyssey, all I can do is make the best film I possibly can in the most sincere way. It’s very different from how anyone else would do it, but that’s what adaptation is.”
Backlash to The Odyssey
The Odyssey has received backlash from certain online spaces throughout its production, most notably for its casting of trans actor and icon Elliot Page, who previously worked with Nolan in his hit film Inception.
Page’s role in The Odyssey had not been confirmed throughout most of the backlash, but many right-wingers, including news anchors and political commentators, had a lot to say about the topic.
Newsmax anchor Rob Finnerty made his feelings known on-air in May, seemingly thinking that The Odyssey was based on a real, historical event rather than on Greek mythology.
“The most famous warrior in all of history, not just Greek history, Achilles, is about to be played by a transgender woman in a brand new movie,” he said.
He was wrong on three counts, namely that Elliot Page is a trans man, Achilles was a mythological figure, and Page plays Sinon, Odysseus’s cousin who fought alongside him in the Trojan War.
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