Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey’ Just Made Its Loudest Critics Look Foolish
For months, the internet had already written the ending to Christopher Nolan’s take on Homer’s epic before a single ticket was sold. Casting choices, modern-sounding dialogue and other creative swings drew online outrage long before ‘The Odyssey’ ever hit a projector, with critics of the film insisting it was destined to flop.
The loudest complaints centered on Lupita Nyong’o’s casting as Helen of Troy and Elliot Page joining the ensemble as the warrior Sinon, decisions that a vocal corner of social media branded “woke” and used as grounds for a boycott. Even Elon Musk weighed in publicly, joining a chorus that painted Nolan’s adaptation as a betrayal of the source material before anyone outside a screening room had actually seen it.
That narrative has since fallen apart. According to a WIRED report highlighted by X account Pirat_Nation, the boycott effort against ‘The Odyssey’ “failed tremendously,” with IMAX showings selling out and resale tickets reportedly climbing as high as $1,000 apiece. The film was tracking toward a worldwide opening weekend north of $200 million while also holding a 96 percent critics score on Rotten Tomatoes.
Those projections were not just industry hype. The film opened to more than $124 million domestically over three days, setting a record for star Matt Damon. Cinemas reported packed auditoriums throughout opening weekend, with some moviegoers traveling significant distances and booking 70mm IMAX showtimes days or weeks in advance.
The film carries the second highest budget of Nolan’s career, behind only ‘The Dark Knight Rises,’ meaning it reportedly needs to gross around $625 million just to break even. Still, Nolan has only made one movie since 2006 that earned less than $500 million worldwide, a track record that gave early box office tracking and glowing reviews from those who had actually seen the film little reason to predict failure. Trailer dislikes had piled up into the hundreds of thousands in the weeks before release, yet none of that online friction seemed to translate into empty seats.
Nolan himself addressed the noise in an interview ahead of release, dismissing prerelease criticism as something that comes with adapting beloved material and comparing the reaction to what he faced launching his ‘Batman’ trilogy two decades ago. His stars, including Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Zendaya, Charlize Theron and Robert Pattinson, rounded out an ensemble that critics have largely praised despite the campaign against it.
With the numbers now in and the reviews overwhelmingly positive, the gap between the online outrage and the actual audience turnout for ‘The Odyssey’ has become impossible to ignore. Did the boycott ever stand a chance, or was this always going to be another case of social media noise drowned out by a sold-out IMAX screen?
