Speaker 1: All right, Ryan, we're back for an emergency broadcast on
Speaker 1: the Odyssey because there's obviously a dearth of right wing
Speaker 1: podcasters given their takes on this movie.
Speaker 2: Well, where to begin, right?
Speaker 1: So I wrote a review on The Odyssey on Keith
Speaker 1: Woods dot COM's dot com.
Speaker 2: Now not that pub by the way, maybe not in
Speaker 2: the world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, eat, pray sale quite like that title.
Speaker 2: But like I said, i'd start at review, right.
Speaker 1: I wanted to not like this movie, like I wanted
Speaker 1: it to be a failure, but I was expecting to
Speaker 1: enjoy it because I am actually a fan of Christopher Nolan.
Speaker 2: I think you are as well.
Speaker 1: We both we both the right Interstellar, especially quite highly.
Speaker 2: Well, i'll call myself an X fan.
Speaker 3: Now, I saw the last four films in IMAX, and
Speaker 3: I think they've got gradually worse. I was very disappointed
Speaker 3: after Oppenheimer. It was very fireless, fire a semetic and
Speaker 3: I was very surprised by the glowing reviews universally. And
Speaker 3: and this was even worse. It's it's barely even the
Speaker 3: Odyssey anymore. It's a grand departure from the true values
Speaker 3: of of the the of Homer, which is the foundation
Speaker 3: of Western civilization. And it went beyond all my expectations
Speaker 3: and was even worse.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well we can get into that, but let's let's
Speaker 1: start with the origin of the Big shutout online, which
Speaker 1: was the casting. And like I said, I would have
Speaker 1: I would have been critical of this movie regardless. But
Speaker 1: if I enjoyed the movie, if I thought it was
Speaker 1: a good movie, I probably would have just been silent
Speaker 1: apparat from making fun of the ridiculous and choices. Well,
Speaker 1: actually it was just I thought a really bad movie.
Speaker 1: But the cast in is actually one of the big reasons,
Speaker 1: Like this is not a secondary thing that he had
Speaker 1: to satisfy for political reasons or something that really does
Speaker 1: spoil immersion in the movie. It's also a lot worse
Speaker 1: than I think any of us thought it would be
Speaker 1: than the worst Nolan Hayders were predicting. And weirdly enough,
Speaker 1: when it came out, people were saying, oh, there's only
Speaker 1: you know, four or five minutes of the Peter Youngo
Speaker 1: as Helen of Troy and Ellen Page's character they.
Speaker 2: Just get a few minutes of screen time.
Speaker 1: But it's actually much worse than that because Sinnan Ellen
Speaker 1: or Earliot Page's character is actually a pivotal character to
Speaker 1: the story opens to the movie and then has that
Speaker 1: super important scene in the middle with talking to Odysseus
Speaker 1: from Hades, which is meant to deliver an important moral lesson.
Speaker 1: But then you also have character weren't really talked about,
Speaker 1: this guy, I think his name is Himesh Patel as
Speaker 1: odysseus right hand man, who's in the movie. Apparently for
Speaker 1: about a third of the screen time. You have a
Speaker 1: super multi racial ship crew belonging to Odysseus. Right, You've
Speaker 1: got an East Asian guy there, there's an African guy there,
Speaker 1: the the Indian second in command, and then even the
Speaker 1: suitors there's an African there, Mung the Trojan soldiers, obviously
Speaker 1: Helen of Troyce. So it's really sprinkled throughout this movie.
Speaker 1: There isn't like an important act where these characters don't
Speaker 1: feature heavily. And obviously, I mean, you know, just aside
Speaker 1: from the political problems of this that you know, it's
Speaker 1: obviously encouraging white iratire with this foundational European epic, but
Speaker 1: it really spoils immersion in the movie. Like people talk
Speaker 1: about this and they're like, oh, you know, you just
Speaker 1: it should never bring your politics into it. But it's like,
Speaker 1: it's one thing if this was a play or some
Speaker 1: kind of modern interpretation of of an old story. But
Speaker 1: Nolan himself has set the standard that he's gone out
Speaker 1: of the way to have realism. And he said he
Speaker 1: wouldn't let people wear uggs, on said and all this
Speaker 1: kind of thing, and he was trying to think of
Speaker 1: super realistic ways to make this like the Bronze Age.
Speaker 1: And on top of that you have a story which
Speaker 1: the background for it is how fatally perilous it is
Speaker 1: to try and navigate even a small pocket of the
Speaker 1: Mediterranean and the Bronze Age, and then you have people
Speaker 1: that somehow from all around the world have wound up
Speaker 1: on odysseus ship. So it totally kills the emotion. It's
Speaker 1: much worse than the Chuds could have imagined.
Speaker 2: I mean this is political for me.
Speaker 3: I'm a European man from the Western heroic tradition and
Speaker 3: it's a total inversion of the heroic. Matt Damon is
Speaker 3: awfully cast as Odysseus. I think you were right to
Speaker 3: point out that the cheeky Sean bean that appeared in
Speaker 3: Troy was a far more fitting casting choice. Tom Holland
Speaker 3: was awful as Telemachus. He's he kind of appears as
Speaker 3: like a dragon mothered absolute soy boy. And you know
Speaker 3: in the Odyssey, Tellimachus travels to Sparta and then he's
Speaker 3: told the story of Orestes avenging the murder of his father,
Speaker 3: and that gives him the impetus to, you know, help
Speaker 3: restore his father's house. But when we when he gets
Speaker 3: to Sparta, it's a Menelaus that ancient historians have brought
Speaker 3: up looks awfully like the image of Andrew Date.
Speaker 1: This was a there's some void historian that had this
Speaker 1: take that Menelaus is supposed to be best Andrew Tate,
Speaker 1: and the the online rate was like, lambassa and her,
Speaker 1: but we're both kind of sympathetic, I take.
Speaker 2: I think it's probably true.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and well it is a very intentional choice because
Speaker 1: who else in the movie or who in the Bronze
Speaker 1: Age has like a totally bald head and then the
Speaker 1: full beard and kind of complexion as.
Speaker 2: Well skin tone. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and of course he's you know, objectifying Helen, and
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 3: He's just yeah, she's a she's a beaten woman, she's
Speaker 3: got scars on on the side of her face, and
Speaker 3: it just seems as though Christopher Nolan is a complete
Speaker 3: feminist simp I mean his success. They were actually free
Speaker 3: in an Olan clan. There's his brother Jonathan, who is
Speaker 3: a contributor to the writing and the ideas, and his
Speaker 3: producer is his wife who goes by her maiden name
Speaker 3: Emma Thomas is it.
Speaker 2: And I they met a university. They met in the
Speaker 2: first week of university.
Speaker 3: Nolan invites her to the film society and they're never
Speaker 3: a part since they've been together for almost forty years.
Speaker 3: They have four children, and I believe their relationship is
Speaker 3: like the ultimate progressive English equal marriage is really how
Speaker 3: you should understand the kind of ideas that Nolan is
Speaker 3: pushing here.
Speaker 1: Well, you give me an interesting detail that she reworked
Speaker 1: the original Interstellar script to make Murph a girl.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean yeah.
Speaker 3: Jonathan Nolan apparently he originally wrote it as a son
Speaker 3: and Christopher Nolan's wife intervened and said, well why not
Speaker 3: make it, you know, a daughter relationship and she becomes
Speaker 3: the great greatest scientists of all time. Well, you know,
Speaker 3: we can we from women's achievements in science. They haven't
Speaker 3: so far lived up to what men have achieved. So yeah,
Speaker 3: it does feel a bit unrealistic at the end of Interstellar,
Speaker 3: but you know, this is just cinema.
Speaker 2: Now. Women are becoming far more.
Speaker 3: Involved as directors, screenwriters. You know, there are many feminist
Speaker 3: films now. Young girls are being raised on Frozen, which
Speaker 3: has a very feminist plot, you know, Selene's Song, the
Speaker 3: Korean and many other films. Hamnetts came out this year,
Speaker 3: also very feminine film. I woon say it's feminist, but
Speaker 3: it's you know, in the feminine world very much, and
Speaker 3: this is becoming an increasing feature of Hollywood films.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, let's get into the movie. I mean, so said,
Speaker 1: I said, like Odysseus, as Norlan presents him, he's he's
Speaker 1: a hero for the therabeutic age, and it's really unimagined,
Speaker 1: unimaginative what he's done and that he's taken. This character
Speaker 1: that is very interesting and multi layered as presented by Homer.
Speaker 1: You know, he has elements that are egotistical and selfish,
Speaker 1: and you know, even puts his own men's lives at risk.
Speaker 2: Obviously, the story.
Speaker 1: With him having the hubris to go back and deliver
Speaker 1: his name to the Cyclops as the best example, because
Speaker 1: it gets some curse and causes all these problems. But
Speaker 1: Nolan has just kind of collapsed everything into a very
Speaker 1: common kind of Hollywood trope or archetype of basically the
Speaker 1: kind of grizzled, pensive American war veteran. And that's how
Speaker 1: Damon plays him. And yeah, I thought the casting, I mean,
Speaker 1: outside of the diversity, hers was very poor as well.
Speaker 1: Holland is the worst example, I mean, just so it's
Speaker 1: wooden and bland, but Damon was very poor as well.
Speaker 1: But it's hard to know how much even blamed for that,
Speaker 1: because this is how Nolan.
Speaker 2: Wrote the character.
Speaker 1: Is he's just this grizzled, like Vietnam war vet who's
Speaker 1: basically the entire movie kind of processing his guilt. And
Speaker 1: that's the worst thing about the movie is perfect anything else.
Speaker 1: It's just not very fun or entertaining, right, I Mean,
Speaker 1: they kind of cycle through these plot points that Nolan
Speaker 1: feels like he has to take off, and it's kind
Speaker 1: of episode by episode, but it never has this epic
Speaker 1: feel because it doesn't really feel like there's any world
Speaker 1: outside of, you know, the immediate vicinity of what the
Speaker 1: characters are encountering at any one time, and it's supposed
Speaker 1: to be this you know, sprawling epic across the Mediterranean,
Speaker 1: but all you really see is kind of the coastlines
Speaker 1: that they land on and then run from stretches of
Speaker 1: sea and the inside of his palace and Ehaica. So
Speaker 1: it never feels like this, like I said, sprawling epic
Speaker 1: that he had a huge budget to deliver on, and
Speaker 1: he kind of cycles through these episodes and some of them,
Speaker 1: you know, some of them you can tell his heart
Speaker 1: wasn't really into it and he had to he had
Speaker 1: to get through it. You know. He tried to do
Speaker 1: obviously the Great Sea Monster without any CGI and it
Speaker 1: was a little bit lacking, and he kind of rushed
Speaker 1: that scene a little bit. But yeah, I mean it's
Speaker 1: all you know, it's all there really to build up
Speaker 1: to this climax of O this he is dealing with
Speaker 1: the suitors, and even that doesn't really land.
Speaker 2: I mean, I found it had no emotional core to it.
Speaker 1: At the end, like he gets reunited with Telemachus and
Speaker 1: you know, it's Matt Damon and Tom Holland with these
Speaker 1: flat expressions and then they move on and you get
Speaker 1: this very I thought disappointing climax scene as well with
Speaker 1: the you know, at least in the story, you have
Speaker 1: kind of a resolution to Telemachus's arc where he helps
Speaker 1: his father dispatched the suitors. In this he doesn't even
Speaker 1: do that, right, he tossed the weapon from the roof,
Speaker 1: and mestically, the whole arc of Telemachus is like he
Speaker 1: gets bullied and shared owned by his mother and the
Speaker 1: suitors for the whole film, has this very lackluster, flat
Speaker 1: reunion with his father, tosses him a sword at important
Speaker 1: point in the movie, and then gets made king. Like
Speaker 1: no one has a satisfying Eric I mean, Odysseus. This
Speaker 1: is the whole thing. Nolan's Odysseus really has no arc.
Speaker 1: Like in Homer, he has an excess of certain virtues
Speaker 1: you could say, or he has you know, he has
Speaker 1: traits that are misapplied, and you know, he basically learns
Speaker 1: the lesson of the proper place to use his martial excellence,
Speaker 1: which is in defense of his home and of his family,
Speaker 1: and he becomes a more rounded person. And obviously that's
Speaker 1: the core of any good story, is that there's a
Speaker 1: you know, satisfying, progressing, logical character arc. Well, the arc
Speaker 1: in this basically, as we find out at the end,
Speaker 1: is that he's super guilt ridden for troy and he's
Speaker 1: all guilty and pensive for three hours, and then he
Speaker 1: processes his guilt by I guess speaking it out. He
Speaker 1: has a scene where he expresses his guilt to his
Speaker 1: wife and reaches out for the apparition of Athena, which
Speaker 1: turns out is probably just at least this is my theory,
Speaker 1: is just a kind of PTSD projection of his guilt,
Speaker 1: and once he's kind of processed and he's lived back
Speaker 1: through the events of the Sack of Troyes, she disappears.
Speaker 2: So essentially his whole character Eric is that.
Speaker 1: He's a guilty, mournful guy for three hours and I
Speaker 1: guess eventually processes his guilt and then leaves Ithaca. So
Speaker 1: there's there's no real character progression there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and all the real lessons of the Odyssey and
Speaker 3: Iliad are almost completely left out, apart from the idea
Speaker 3: of homecoming. Even the notion of Oikos the restoration of
Speaker 3: the Lord in his high is kind of subverted because
Speaker 3: he doesn't even take the throne. He just sails off
Speaker 3: into the sunset with his wife because it's what she
Speaker 3: wants to do.
Speaker 2: Well, that's the implication.
Speaker 3: And the film just completely strips out all these lessons
Speaker 3: that you know, are basically created by wise men bards
Speaker 3: to increase cultural, social political complexity. I mean, Xenia is
Speaker 3: a you know, obviously a big part of the film.
Speaker 3: And the right hospitality, the right level of hospitality to
Speaker 3: travelers strangers, you know, because they might be a god.
Speaker 3: But you know, in the Greek mythology that is clearly
Speaker 3: aiding social complexity and trust in the Aegean because everything's
Speaker 3: moving through by ships and you know, trade and high
Speaker 3: trust is needed, and you know, these things really matter.
Speaker 3: A great thing that was left out is Troy is
Speaker 3: destined to be destroyed because Paris chooses Eros over power
Speaker 3: and wisdom. So Paris has to choose from the free
Speaker 3: goddesses Aphrodite, Hera, and Athena, and he chooses Aphrodite, which
Speaker 3: is his lust. So Troy is destined to fall because
Speaker 3: of Paris's choice, and also because the Trojans didn't pay
Speaker 3: their debts. So King Priam's father had Poseidon built the
Speaker 3: impregnable walls, and he Poseidon was never paid. So again
Speaker 3: that talks about like commercial trust, and you know, there
Speaker 3: are just so many lessons that have left out.
Speaker 1: I mean it is you actually had knowed a little
Speaker 1: bit though, just you don't know a bit to be
Speaker 1: you know, gone through all of the Homeric virtues and
Speaker 1: complaining that Christopher Nolan isn't like making this some great
Speaker 1: morality tale for men of the West.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, he's up against it. It is.
Speaker 3: It is a complex story. You know, a lot of
Speaker 3: it is told in the original text, is told through
Speaker 3: the Fiatians when Odysseus slands there. I mean, why don't
Speaker 3: we talk about the very start. Well, I don't know,
Speaker 3: this is all just like.
Speaker 2: I don't know, it's it's very.
Speaker 1: It's I think it's a bit pretentious to go through
Speaker 1: all of the like Homeric virtues and and want this
Speaker 1: classical tale. I mean, obviously you're going if you're gonna
Speaker 1: have a modern adaptation in IMAX as a big like
Speaker 1: one point two billion dollar blockbuster, Okay, it's not gonna
Speaker 1: be all of these lessons in the Greek virtues. But
Speaker 1: I mean, like, let's get to the fundamental problem. The
Speaker 1: fundamental problem, apart from it being very diverse and having
Speaker 1: this awful cast.
Speaker 2: It's just very gay, right, Like that again is the
Speaker 2: absence of the masculine virtues.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I mean the thing is like I would
Speaker 1: be open to some kind of modern interpretation or you know,
Speaker 1: him being a bit subversive with it, but it's not
Speaker 1: even subversive in a brave way. Like it's just the
Speaker 1: most basic boomer slop, which is like be kind to strangers.
Speaker 1: As he said in an interview, is actually the message
Speaker 1: of the movie war veteran archetype processes is guilt. You
Speaker 1: know that old trope that's been done to death for
Speaker 1: decades now. And listen to your female conscience. You know,
Speaker 1: it's the most safe, basic like the postwar consensus is important,
Speaker 1: you dare Christian values of the foundation of civilization, and
Speaker 1: even that it's one thing if if you want to
Speaker 1: make some you know, Clint Eastwood style movie Grand Tarino,
Speaker 1: that this kind of thing has these kinds of lessons
Speaker 1: as well, like if you if you want to insert that, fine,
Speaker 1: but why do it to the Odyssey? Like all of
Speaker 1: the things you could have done with the Odyssey, and
Speaker 1: his idea was to make Odysseus of all people, a
Speaker 1: kind of Homer character. Who's racked with guilt or for war.
Speaker 1: It's just not I don't know, it's not saying anything
Speaker 1: interesting of all the things you could do with that character.
Speaker 2: Like what kind of contribution is that.
Speaker 3: Look, I'm not asking for their handmaids to be hung
Speaker 3: at the end. I'm not asking for brutal graphic violence.
Speaker 3: I'm just asking for some of the basic lessons of
Speaker 3: Iliad Odyssey, which is the foundation of the West, which
Speaker 3: does matter to our culture. And yeah, I mean talking
Speaker 3: about the history the Bronze Age in the area of
Speaker 3: the Mediterranean. During the Bronze Age, these were quite matriarchal
Speaker 3: earth mother pantheons and our ancestors, the Indo Europeans, came
Speaker 3: down and they turned the culture into a martial, aristocratic
Speaker 3: heroic culture. And Iliad Odyssey they represent the emergence of
Speaker 3: the individual as a named hero. And Ricardo lu Shane
Speaker 3: does a great job of speaking about this in his
Speaker 3: book Greatness and Ruin. That's the Mycenaean culture. It's you know,
Speaker 3: we talk about the West as this individualism, but really
Speaker 3: it's an aristocratic egalitarianism. And you know, the first scene
Speaker 3: in the Iliad is an argument between Agamemnon and Achilles
Speaker 3: over the right of Bresaeus. And again that's a devolution
Speaker 3: of power from the tyrant the met you know, the
Speaker 3: warriors need to be paid their debt and all these
Speaker 3: you know, all these things are stripped out, as you say,
Speaker 3: into the feminine conscience. But that is really our culture.
Speaker 3: It's the the celestial gods overcoming the earth Mother gods
Speaker 3: in that region because of the Indo European invasion, turning
Speaker 3: it into an aristocratic complex culture.
Speaker 2: And that's been totally stripped out.
Speaker 3: And the fact that conservatives and the general public can't
Speaker 3: even recognize that's what's been done just shows how much
Speaker 3: our culture has lost its masculinity, lost its complexity, and
Speaker 3: it's all being drawn back into this social cowardice.
Speaker 2: And femininity.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I mean again, like one point two billion
Speaker 1: dollar blockbusters, are we really expecting Noland to tell us
Speaker 1: a story about the Indo European warrior culture, subjugate and
Speaker 1: the Earth Mother? What was it would have been early
Speaker 1: European firm or cultures there, right, I mean, like us
Speaker 1: get to the basic problem, I mean, the basic message
Speaker 1: that would be interesting to explore in the Odyssey that
Speaker 1: you actually can do with a sort of modern interpretation
Speaker 1: in a blockbuster format. It's basically that yes, worry of Ekos.
Speaker 1: It's the you know, the contrast is Achilles and Odysseus,
Speaker 1: and Achilles chooses immortality, true glory rather than a long
Speaker 1: comfortable life where he was prophecy that he would you know,
Speaker 1: find love and and you know, have a great home
Speaker 1: life and family and so on. And Odysseus is kind
Speaker 1: of the flip side of that, where he's willing to
Speaker 1: reject immortality itself to go back to what's his, to
Speaker 1: go back to Ithaca and his own family and his
Speaker 1: own people. And you know, it gets to the art
Speaker 1: of the difference between how the ancients viewed home versus
Speaker 1: the kind of impoverished view of home we have now,
Speaker 1: where there's there's this much more totalizing folkish view where
Speaker 1: you know, you have gods within your household and within
Speaker 1: your family familiar lineage, and then you have you know,
Speaker 1: gods and laws within your city, which your family is
Speaker 1: a part of. And it's it's this set of kind
Speaker 1: of overlapping circles of belonging and law. But you know,
Speaker 1: you only have mina, not as an individual, but you know,
Speaker 1: coming from these things that that creates your familiar lineage,
Speaker 1: your city, your ethnos. And that's a really interesting thing
Speaker 1: to explore the fact that Odysseus is willing to take
Speaker 1: this other path, and although he is a very in
Speaker 1: some way's egotistical or you could say, lustful, glory seeking individual,
Speaker 1: that home still has his pull on him. And of course,
Speaker 1: the you know, the really credible scenes in the Odyssey
Speaker 1: is when he encounters Achilles in Hades, who kind of
Speaker 1: gives the other perspective on that resas that actually he
Speaker 1: would rather be servant to the lowliest farmer and living
Speaker 1: than be king over.
Speaker 2: All the people in Hades. So I think that's a
Speaker 2: really interesting thing to explore.
Speaker 1: And you know, people that defend this say, oh, well,
Speaker 1: you had to put that in kind of a modern
Speaker 1: friendly moral lesson. But it's, like, you know, Troy, all
Speaker 1: the problems that movie had in two thousand and four,
Speaker 1: it was able to resent some things that were a bit,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of against our modern ethos, even in
Speaker 1: the character of Achilles and that he does choose a
Speaker 1: life of war and glory over a long comfortable life.
Speaker 1: I think the honesty could have been really interesting as
Speaker 1: an exploitation on the flip.
Speaker 2: Side of that.
Speaker 1: But instead what you get is like Ithaca really has
Speaker 1: no meaning in this film. Ithaica is just this background thing.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just the name of the place where
Speaker 1: his wife and son happen to live.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: You don't get this sense that he's returning to something
Speaker 1: that kind of completes him, that you know that he
Speaker 1: has this longing for home. It's just like, yeah, he's
Speaker 1: got to go home and be a dad, right, He's
Speaker 1: got to fulfill his role as a you know, a
Speaker 1: suburban PTSD American dad. And of course how does the
Speaker 1: film end, Right, He gets back to Ithaca, this incredible reunion,
Speaker 1: this incredible story of KOs and he goes on a
Speaker 1: cruise with his wife.
Speaker 2: Right, as every every boomer.
Speaker 1: Knows, is the dream of a fulfilled life is you're
Speaker 1: going to go off and spend your retirement money and
Speaker 1: go cruising, which you're white and Norlan has now inserted
Speaker 1: that sent to multiple movies right those Batman as well.
Speaker 1: Batman becomes this incredible Nietzschean overman and overcomes and imposes
Speaker 1: order and morality on the world and succeeds and turns
Speaker 1: himself into into this weapon of justice.
Speaker 2: And of course what's the payoff.
Speaker 1: He gets to go holiday and around Europe with Anne Hathaway,
Speaker 1: which is the same payoff Matt Damon gets. So I
Speaker 1: think that says a lot about Nolan's mindset approaching these things.
Speaker 3: I mean, what about the absence of the erotic female,
Speaker 3: like sir say, you know, turns his men into pigs
Speaker 3: and he has to sleep with her to relinquish his men.
Speaker 3: Calypso sexually enslaves him for seven years, and it's actually
Speaker 3: said in the original text that he just sat on
Speaker 3: the rock and looked out to say, like wanting to leave,
Speaker 3: as she kept him there.
Speaker 2: So Zeus sends Hermes to.
Speaker 3: Get Odysseus back on his way, But the women in
Speaker 3: the story are totally de sexualized. Calypso functions as a
Speaker 3: kind of nursing figure, just giving him the painkillers through
Speaker 3: the lotus eater, which is kind of changed a little bit.
Speaker 2: Sir say, is a rape victim?
Speaker 3: You know, Well, that's the implication, you know, that's how
Speaker 3: it's acted, and that's you know, how the audience will
Speaker 3: see it. Surely the Handmaids twelve of the Handmaids are
Speaker 3: sleeping with the suitors and causing chaos in his home.
Speaker 3: That's excluded almost entirely, and in Hades in the original text,
Speaker 3: Odysseus meets a procession of women he as well as
Speaker 3: his mother. His mother tells him about you know, his
Speaker 3: his son who's struggling and he's dying father. And then
Speaker 3: he meets a procession of women, the bad women, Epicasta
Speaker 3: who marries her son, Europhile, who chooses gold over devotion
Speaker 3: to her husband, Ariadne, who helps Feseus and betrays her father.
Speaker 3: And then he also meets the good women, the devoted wives,
Speaker 3: and the great queens.
Speaker 2: And you know, so much of the real text is
Speaker 2: about the.
Speaker 3: Cosmic order being restored through patriarchy and also Zenya, so.
Speaker 2: You know, we get we get none of that.
Speaker 1: It is interesting. They all have a kind of therapeutic rule.
Speaker 1: I mean, even Calypso when he's when he leaves, it's
Speaker 1: just this kind of thing where they have a conversation
Speaker 1: and she's like, yeah, okay, I guess I'll let you go.
Speaker 1: You're ready to go, and then she gives them this lesson,
Speaker 1: which is basically, you have to learn to let go
Speaker 1: and stop trying to control things and stop trying to
Speaker 1: impose your masculine order on the world, you know, important
Speaker 1: lesson for Odysseus of all people. And then he you know,
Speaker 1: lays flat on a board and the sea transports the mactehaca. Right,
Speaker 1: he just had to learn to let go and literally
Speaker 1: go with the flow. And yeah, then of course the
Speaker 1: you know, Circe as the rape victim, which I think
Speaker 1: he probably took from. There was a best selling historical
Speaker 1: novel a few years ago called Circe which imagined her
Speaker 1: in this way, this this traumatized kind of modern female archetype.
Speaker 1: But yeah, and of course every female character in it
Speaker 1: as well, is you know, kind of like they don't
Speaker 1: really have flows. They're kind of perfectly virtuous, right, like
Speaker 1: Helen is this victim of colonialism basically, because that's another
Speaker 1: thing of course we learned, is you know, of course
Speaker 1: Nolan has to de sacrilze everything, right, so the Trojan
Speaker 1: War was not actually about Helen of Troy's face.
Speaker 2: I'm sure Nolan saw that.
Speaker 1: And his kind of autistic mind, he has to make
Speaker 1: everything logical and makes sense and put into modern terms.
Speaker 1: And so it's kind of this double thing where it's
Speaker 1: one he's like autistic and he wants to make it
Speaker 1: a realistic world that makes sense to him. But then
Speaker 1: also there is a kind of leftist message where it's
Speaker 1: like she was actually the victim of a colonial war
Speaker 1: that was actually about Agamemnon wanted to secure trade routes.
Speaker 1: It was actually like a colonial, imperialist, capitalist war, and
Speaker 1: these people sin On, Helen of Troy, all these women
Speaker 1: and minority characters are.
Speaker 2: Just victims of this.
Speaker 1: And of course, you see, I think it was intentional
Speaker 1: as well that they chose Benny Safti. He's this kind
Speaker 1: of frail Jewish guy to play Agamemnon, and at the
Speaker 1: end you see him without his armor. You know, of
Speaker 1: course it's like, well, behind these these big colonial rulers
Speaker 1: with all these pretensions about themselves, it's it's just this frail,
Speaker 1: weak guy. I think that's very intentional as well. But yeah,
Speaker 1: they're you know, for all of the feminist writing, I mean,
Speaker 1: the female characters is very uninteresting, right, They're they're kind
Speaker 1: of it's funny in Wather, they're kind of more multifaceted
Speaker 1: in Homer and in some ways more you know, kind
Speaker 1: of more assertive and more interesting, more sensual and this
Speaker 1: they're all just the same kind of you know, tired
Speaker 1: female therapist archetype.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean Athena is the only one of the gods
Speaker 3: that appears Zous Poseidon, and how many is it left out? Okay,
Speaker 3: it might be hard to harder to include them, but
Speaker 3: I mean we were talking about this yesterday and you
Speaker 3: made a point about Athena being a kind of secularized.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think I think he wrote this movie to be
Speaker 1: totally secular. When I heard he was in the Odyssey,
Speaker 1: I figured he's not going to have anything supernatural, and
Speaker 1: he'll exclude the gods and probably at most you'll have
Speaker 1: you know, storms or something that like maybe the people
Speaker 1: at the time could blame it on the gods, but
Speaker 1: there'll be a way you can work a secular explanation
Speaker 1: into it. I think that's exactly what he did with
Speaker 1: the Tina. She's the only god or goddess you see,
Speaker 1: but she never intervenes throughout the movie, right, she doesn't
Speaker 1: intervene physically or anything. It's just him seeing her speaking
Speaker 1: to her. At one point we see he's talking to
Speaker 1: her and Clipso is there and doesn't doesn't notice her
Speaker 1: so I think she's just a projection of his guilt.
Speaker 1: And I think the proof of that is at the
Speaker 1: end when you see he's having the flashback of Troy
Speaker 1: and he sees the Trojan girl getting beheaded, it has
Speaker 1: the face of Atina. So I think that was the
Speaker 1: projection he was seeing throughout the movie, was a manifestation
Speaker 1: of the guilt, because that was like the worst example
Speaker 1: of the excess as he saw on the sack of Troy.
Speaker 1: And you know at the end, as he after he
Speaker 1: recounts all of that and goes through his guilt, he
Speaker 1: reaches out for a Dina and the apparition has gone
Speaker 1: and that's the last of her we see in the movie.
Speaker 1: So I think the messages at that point he has
Speaker 1: properly processed as guilt. For Nolan, I think that was
Speaker 1: supposed to be the the endpoint of the character Aric,
Speaker 1: that he processes guilt and accepted and accepted that he
Speaker 1: had disobeyed Zeus's law and created this chain of events,
Speaker 1: and then she is no longer needed. He no longer
Speaker 1: needs this projection to help him processes.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean, Athene is obviously the great protector of Odysseus,
Speaker 3: she is incentivized for try to fall. I think she
Speaker 3: inspires the idea to create the Trojan horse. She's the
Speaker 3: goddess of craft, of intelligent warfare, of wisdom, and you know,
Speaker 3: you couldn't you couldn't really leave a finer out. She's
Speaker 3: integral to Odysseus as a character. But yeah, I mean
Speaker 3: your point about secularizing her, I definitely think there's something
Speaker 3: to it. I mean, in the Sack of Troy Ajax,
Speaker 3: the Lesser Rapes, I think it's Cassandra who's one of
Speaker 3: the priescesses in the temple, and then that's punished by Poseidon.
Speaker 2: He kills him on his way home.
Speaker 3: So in the original text, again and again the gods
Speaker 3: are intervening to restore the cosmic order, but we just
Speaker 3: live left with the therapy feminism.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, you know, that's like one of the
Speaker 1: worst things about the movie is this ptsd erck. He
Speaker 1: decides to give Odysseus, which I think is just so baffling, like,
Speaker 1: of all of the things to do with that character,
Speaker 1: and again you can reimagine aspects of the character, but
Speaker 1: it's like, this is the argument people make, is they say, oh, well,
Speaker 1: number one they say it would be too unpalatable for
Speaker 1: a modern audience to have a guy like Odysseus who
Speaker 1: you know, at some point in the Odyssey, they're just
Speaker 1: you know, casually like raid and enslave a coastal village, right,
Speaker 1: and he's he's too he's too morally gray, and you know,
Speaker 1: arguably in ways is unfaithful to Penelope and so on.
Speaker 1: But it's like, well, you know, I don't know where
Speaker 1: this idea has come from that modern audiences are so
Speaker 1: uncomfortable with morally questionable characters. I mean, if you talk
Speaker 1: about like a you couldn't possibly have a protagonist who's
Speaker 1: like a vainglorious sensual pirateeers, like well, the Pirates of
Speaker 1: the Caribbean franchise has made like four or five billion
Speaker 1: dollars or something insane. But also again, if you're adapting
Speaker 1: these things, it's like you can change elements of the
Speaker 1: story and you can make a modern but if if
Speaker 1: you want to tell a story about a guy with PTSD,
Speaker 1: like the Odyssey is not the story for that. You know,
Speaker 1: you can adapt things and make the modern, but you
Speaker 1: can't fundamentally change the character of it. I mean it's
Speaker 1: like if you do Macbeth adaptation, and it's about basically
Speaker 1: a virtuous king who has a really helpful, virtuous wife
Speaker 1: that helps him rulin the interest for everybody, Well, it's
Speaker 1: not Macbeth. Why you adopted Macbeth for that? And it just, yeah,
Speaker 1: it takes away so much of what's interesting about the
Speaker 1: story to make him this you know, troubled PTSD character
Speaker 1: owners Nolan is maybe just one of these kinds of
Speaker 1: directors that he can He seems like you can only
Speaker 1: write for one main character. You know, you see the
Speaker 1: same kind of personality profile with with Odysseus and with
Speaker 1: Oppenheimer and some of the other protagonists he's written. But
Speaker 1: it's just not satisfying.
Speaker 3: Why do you think the conservative media ended up glizing
Speaker 3: the film and completely.
Speaker 2: Yeah that's funny.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, I guess what we haven't even touched
Speaker 1: on yet is how Christian this story is. You know,
Speaker 1: That's what we're kind of getting at with the guilty feels.
Speaker 1: It's very much Nolan imposing his kind of post Christian
Speaker 1: or post Catholic view on it, and you kind of
Speaker 1: wonder how intentional that is, Like, in a sense, is
Speaker 1: Nolan just very kind of unquestioning of his moral premises,
Speaker 1: like this is something, this is kind of a calling
Speaker 1: card of Nolan Is. He creates these extremely complex artfaces.
Speaker 2: And you'll have this huge.
Speaker 1: You know, sci fi lore with something like Interstellar or
Speaker 1: you know, with the Odyssey. I'm sure he came up
Speaker 1: with very complex ways that all of this could make
Speaker 1: sense with the Trojan Horse and you know, ways to
Speaker 1: kind of secularly explain some of the things we're experiencing.
Speaker 1: But he'll have a very simple moral message, which you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes it works, like Interstellar is a pretty simple message,
Speaker 1: you know, transcending power of love, whatever else. But in
Speaker 1: this case, yeah, I mean, the message is just this
Speaker 1: basic kind of as he said, be kind to strangers.
Speaker 1: He universalizes Zenia into basically the Golden rule, and I
Speaker 1: think I think at one point in the closing speech
Speaker 1: near the end, they actually say that Xenia is do
Speaker 1: unto others, right, So he's totally imposed the Christian morality
Speaker 1: onto it. And then you know, he takes out all
Speaker 1: of the aspects of pagan heroic epics that are you know,
Speaker 1: kind of ichy to a modern Christian sensibility, and then
Speaker 1: he is a very Christian message of forgiveness, universal moral
Speaker 1: law based on on universal compassion and do unto others,
Speaker 1: And like, you wonder how intentional is that from Nolan
Speaker 1: or is it just he's totally unquestioning of these kinds
Speaker 1: of moral premises, and when he goes to try and
Speaker 1: write this story, he can't. He can't consider a pro
Speaker 1: antagonist with a different set of motivations. You can't think
Speaker 1: of an interest in payoff. That isn't kind of the
Speaker 1: old lessons of the postwar consensus. But it makes for
Speaker 1: a very flat, uninteresting story, even if it even if
Speaker 1: you put aside it being kind of disrespectful to the
Speaker 1: source material. But the weird thing about the conservative glads,
Speaker 1: I mean there's like regular conservatives that have glazed it,
Speaker 1: like the Daily Wire types, which somehow Matt Walsh is
Speaker 1: the only one holding the line. Thank you Matt Walsh.
Speaker 1: It's like also Matt Walsh.
Speaker 2: And like four or five others.
Speaker 1: But yeah, a lot of people have constructed this take
Speaker 1: as well, that it's like esoterically based, right, And what
Speaker 1: they say is, oh, this is so unlike modern Hollywood
Speaker 1: because it's a story about you know, a masculine dad
Speaker 1: coming home and he restores order, and you know, fulfills
Speaker 1: his role as father and kicks out on wanted invaders.
Speaker 1: And I'm you know, I've seen the very smart people
Speaker 1: having this tech as well. I think JF thought it
Speaker 1: was a base movie, which surprised me. But the response
Speaker 1: to that is, like everything people are saying in this
Speaker 1: that's subversive or against Hollywood or against modern values, it's
Speaker 1: all just the stuff that Nolan couldn't scrub from the
Speaker 1: basic story of The Odyssey. Right, It's like, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: he adapted the Odyssey and it ends with the guy
Speaker 1: coming home killing unwanted suitors, and it's O, yeah, that's that.
Speaker 2: Is the Odyssey story. Right.
Speaker 1: So I don't see how they're coming up with that
Speaker 1: tech because everything that Nolan has changed was changed in
Speaker 1: a subversive kind of leftist way, right, Like, like I
Speaker 1: said that, you've all of these characters that are basically
Speaker 1: minority victims of colonial war, and it's only the things
Speaker 1: he's left in that people are reading that into it.
Speaker 1: But even in that case, it's like, you know, the
Speaker 1: go maybe it's about immigration. It's like the suitors are
Speaker 1: like the least multi racial part of the whole movie, right,
Speaker 1: Odysseus Son Cruz is fair more multiracial, So I don't
Speaker 1: see anyone would would kind of draw those those allegories,
Speaker 1: or even people were trying to say, you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's like it's about the specter of World War two
Speaker 1: and the guilt people feel and so on. That's that's
Speaker 1: kind of hamstring in Western man. It's like, there's no,
Speaker 1: there's not even the slightest illusion that any of any
Speaker 1: of this is, you know, that Troy is related to
Speaker 1: World War two or something that's it's not in the
Speaker 1: slightest suggested like that. It's just a basic kind of
Speaker 1: anti war narrative.
Speaker 3: I just think it's monumental cope. I think a lot
Speaker 3: of these people are completely ignorant of the lessons of
Speaker 3: the Greek myths. I think there are a lot of
Speaker 3: incentives for social and commercial cowardice. People don't want to
Speaker 3: be the naysayer, the bad guy, the guy that calls
Speaker 3: out the feminism. I think there's some evidence the ratings,
Speaker 3: the user ratings have been rigged. But you know, there
Speaker 3: are so many small accounts on social media saying how
Speaker 3: brilliant it is. It started to feel organic to me. This, Yeah,
Speaker 3: I think genuine consensus.
Speaker 1: I think it's a genuine consensus. Yeah, I mean the
Speaker 1: critics consensus is pretty much overwhelming. But yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: the average person I've talked to us seen this. I
Speaker 1: mean they think it's a great movie, which has baffled
Speaker 1: me because, like I said, even aside from any of
Speaker 1: the verse casts and put all of that aside, I
Speaker 1: think it's it's up there with Tenant as his worst movie.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's slightly better than Tenant, but I think it
Speaker 1: is so little to recommended. You know that the pacing
Speaker 1: is very odd. Dialogue is horrible. I mean, listen to
Speaker 1: the dialogue between the suitors and Telemachus. I mean it's
Speaker 1: just ridiculously bad. And obviously the line everyone has zoned
Speaker 1: in on her age of Bronze is coming to an end.
Speaker 1: I mean that's in a way that's quintessentially Nolan, where
Speaker 1: he has this ridiculously explicit, expository dialogue. But it's for
Speaker 1: some reason, it's far worse than this film, and so
Speaker 1: much of it is just people explaining things. But yeah,
Speaker 1: like I said, the pastin is poor. Like I said,
Speaker 1: these episodes are kind of they follow one another without
Speaker 1: ever really immersing you in it. None of these secondary
Speaker 1: characters are interesting at all. They're kind of just there
Speaker 1: as background to move the story along. Damon and his
Speaker 1: Odysseus is not compelling at all and doesn't really have
Speaker 1: an ERIC except for physical like he's physically moving places,
Speaker 1: but like nothing is really happening with the character except
Speaker 1: for him reliving guilt, which isn't really an ERIC. And
Speaker 1: even though the climax fight scene I thought was kind
Speaker 1: of kind of ridiculous.
Speaker 3: Oh it's awful, it's well one of the worst final
Speaker 3: fights I've ever saying, probably the worst ever. And Telemachus
Speaker 3: just being this passive bystander. It's just so hard to watch.
Speaker 1: But I think it does say something about the degree
Speaker 1: to which woke is won, because I mean, twenty years ago,
Speaker 1: if if a movie like this came out and they
Speaker 1: had a you know, a transactor like post surgery female
Speaker 1: to male and then they have African Hellen of Troy
Speaker 1: and all of these other racewop characters, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: would conservatives have have watched it and said, well, actually, no,
Speaker 1: it's super it's super pro Western tail because of these
Speaker 1: other elements in it. I mean maybe, I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess no one talked about No one's really talking about
Speaker 1: race or anything on the conservative rut twenty years ago.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, I think there would have
Speaker 1: been a sense if you said this like four or five,
Speaker 1: six years ago, when there was his turn against wocism
Speaker 1: and some of these figures like Matt Walls were more
Speaker 1: willing to speak out on you know, anti whitism and
Speaker 1: wide erasure and film and culture and so on, that
Speaker 1: it felt like that was the direction things were going in.
Speaker 1: And you know, the conservative right for the most part,
Speaker 1: especially the younger ones, were going to turn against this
Speaker 1: kind of thing, and they were kind of digging their
Speaker 1: heels in. You know, they did like the boycott of
Speaker 1: it Wasn't a Budweiser that that Matt Walsh led for
Speaker 1: having the trans person and the advert, and there was
Speaker 1: just a sense of, you know, they're starting to get
Speaker 1: aware of the wide erasure that's happening in film and culture.
Speaker 1: A lot of the kind of chud YouTubers that that
Speaker 1: a log Disney and these kinds of things talk about
Speaker 1: this stuff a lot. Now you know, they're willing to boycott,
Speaker 1: they're willing to be noisy about It felt like it
Speaker 1: was going in the direction. But now you see this
Speaker 1: and they've all embraced it, except for, like I said,
Speaker 1: Matt Walsh, a few others. It's like, in a sense,
Speaker 1: they kind of took you know, they they went like
Speaker 1: four steps backward and then they took one step forward.
Speaker 1: But it was very it was very soft pushback because
Speaker 1: they will accept any of this stuff now, seemingly as
Speaker 1: long as you're not like explicitly in their face, you know,
Speaker 1: telling them they're evil and they should die. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't know why how he could
Speaker 1: have made it more walking in their face, but apparently
Speaker 1: that's that's that's.
Speaker 2: All you have to do.
Speaker 3: I think people are psychologically defeated, and they're they're bending,
Speaker 3: bending the knees of this kind of culture industry.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: You know, obviously Hollywood is trying to make money. They're
Speaker 3: trying to appeal to the biggest possible audience, as universal
Speaker 3: as possible, and you know, the essence of these ancient
Speaker 3: stories will be be lost in many of these retellings.
Speaker 2: But to the the extent to which that was true
Speaker 2: was unbelievable.
Speaker 3: And I think, you know, a lot of the consensus
Speaker 3: is now created on social media through influences and and
Speaker 3: social media is the ultimate democracy. The problem is that
Speaker 3: the police are retarded and cowardly, and they don't want
Speaker 3: to be the ones that have the bad word to
Speaker 3: say about the thing everyone's seeing and everyone's excited about.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, we spoke about James Bond a
Speaker 3: few years ago. A feminist writer cucked Bond, made him
Speaker 3: a brooding single father, and killed him. And yet there
Speaker 3: were still James Bond fans on YouTube saying, Oh, it
Speaker 3: wasn't what I was expecting, but I think I'm going
Speaker 3: to see it again just so I can, like, maybe if.
Speaker 1: I watched the fourth time, I'll appreciate it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And you've got all these people on x now
Speaker 3: saying they're going to watch The Odyssey again in imax, oh,
Speaker 3: because it was so great in two D, and they're
Speaker 3: you know, they're bragging about going to see at four am,
Speaker 3: six am. It's just collective madness transmitted through social media,
Speaker 3: which is so influenced, influential on our lives. Now women
Speaker 3: are fully integrated into the culture. They're now power brokers,
Speaker 3: they're now consumers. They have a big say in the
Speaker 3: values that are projected in the culture. Industry, and this
Speaker 3: is a slot we're being served up now, and you know,
Speaker 3: white people are increasingly a minority. Masculine white men are
Speaker 3: an even bigger minority, and our voice is swamped by
Speaker 3: the cowards basically, Yeah, and.
Speaker 1: People that hate the Odyssey with the ultimate persecuted minority.
Speaker 1: But even if you want to talk about the kind
Speaker 1: of radical road, I mean, there was a sense people
Speaker 1: were being very critical of it before it came out,
Speaker 1: and everyone was making fun of the cast and choices.
Speaker 1: But then when it came out, there was a lot
Speaker 1: of people that were just like, well, you know, fine,
Speaker 1: but I don't want to shut out, like, you know,
Speaker 1: people trying to spin kind of you know, hot takes
Speaker 1: about how kind of brilliantly subversive what Nolan had done was,
Speaker 1: and it's like, you get the sense with some of
Speaker 1: them it's like that they just don't want to be
Speaker 1: which is understandable. People just don't want to feel like
Speaker 1: they're on the losing side all the time and constantly
Speaker 1: be complaining and constantly be pointing out how bad and
Speaker 1: subversive everything is. And so people said that. To me,
Speaker 1: it's like, well, you know, the right, it's not like
Speaker 1: creative if we're just criticizing stuff. It's like, yeah, but
Speaker 1: you know it's not you're not you're not creating some
Speaker 1: kind of master morality, but like pretending like modern liberal
Speaker 1: slop is really powerful and right wing or something. It's
Speaker 1: like that that's not going to change anything in the
Speaker 1: other direction if you just embrace this stuff, right, And
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, people are like, oh, well, why
Speaker 1: don't people just go create their own thing. It's like, well, actually,
Speaker 1: you know, even if we ignored this, it's like this
Speaker 1: is still going to be hugely influential, right, people actually
Speaker 1: want interest in good cultural critique. But I think there's
Speaker 1: a lot of people on the radical right now that like,
Speaker 1: after so many years of this, it's just like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, this, like mainstream culture is kind of lost,
Speaker 1: and this is just the direction of things, and the
Speaker 1: diversity and everything is just part of it, Like it
Speaker 1: is two point. I think it's just like, after so
Speaker 1: many years, even people on the very kind of radical
Speaker 1: ride that seem to have radical views just accept the
Speaker 1: feed in a certain way, and they may you know,
Speaker 1: they may hold the same beliefs, but then they get
Speaker 1: agitated by you know, the Matt Walsh types chilling out
Speaker 1: about this stuff. Like they don't like really any expression
Speaker 1: of it because they feel like it highlights their own powerlessness,
Speaker 1: so they want to pretend they're not powerless by you know,
Speaker 1: you know, we're embracing this and we're somehow kind of
Speaker 1: part of this ride. We're part of this culture. We're
Speaker 1: like right wing progressives that are okay with this. We're
Speaker 1: not totally losing and getting destroyed. It's like, well, okay,
Speaker 1: maybe you're okay with it, but these people still hate
Speaker 1: you and they're still doing this to dis wite you,
Speaker 1: and that's not actually going to change things or subvert
Speaker 1: anything if you support it from the sidelines.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: It's like I saw Richard Spencer with like he didn't
Speaker 1: want to he did like this movie, but then he
Speaker 1: saw that me and Martin Selner were being critical of it,
Speaker 1: So now he thinks he likes it and he wants
Speaker 1: to defend it. You know, that's kind of an interesting
Speaker 1: todd process, but we can give him as you. I
Speaker 1: think he did have the most novel take, which seems
Speaker 1: to be his goal. He just came out and said
Speaker 1: Odysseus was a Jew, which is that's an interesting approach
Speaker 1: to take.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know what their beliefs are exactly. I
Speaker 3: think they think that Troy is the ultimate expression of apollo.
Speaker 2: I don't think there's any point. Yeah that's not get but.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there are all these social media incentives, you know,
Speaker 3: wanting to own someone else, wanting to have the opposite
Speaker 3: take of someone else, and there's just so much ignorance,
Speaker 3: lack of willingness to read learn your real tradition.
Speaker 1: It's like the big influencers an't the problem because it's
Speaker 1: like Matt Watash is a huge audience and he can
Speaker 1: just say what he thinks because his audience agrees him.
Speaker 1: And he's like, yeah, this is trash. It's full of
Speaker 1: the verse, just like the based Chud take, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't like it. It's all all the round people.
Speaker 2: It's like, yeah, it's.
Speaker 1: Good, good Matt Wallace says that. But it's like he
Speaker 1: can say that, right, And I'm totally honest about what
Speaker 1: I think about it. And I've been I've been you know,
Speaker 1: I've been good Alog and Christopher Nolan for the last
Speaker 1: week now, and I'm fine to just put out what
Speaker 1: I think about it and people are kind of going
Speaker 1: to respond regardless and it's someone like Nick Fintez like
Speaker 1: next says he enjoyed it. That's fine, you know, he's
Speaker 1: just gonna give his tack out there. The real problem
Speaker 1: is like the people where it's like the Twitter accounts
Speaker 1: would like three or four or five thousand Twitter followers
Speaker 1: that they're like, well, I'm not like the other right wingers, right,
Speaker 1: I'm not like the other gropers. I'm not like the
Speaker 1: other nationalists. I have this super like esoteric intellectual I'm
Speaker 1: right wing progressive. This is the few things I have.
Speaker 1: And they're like try and like ape the contrarianism of
Speaker 1: more intelligent people like Spencer, you know, two degree is
Speaker 1: intelligent that they kind of try and ape his contrarianism
Speaker 1: or they try and you know maybe like a novelty
Speaker 1: technick point as will have. But it's like, no, actually,
Speaker 1: you are just like kind of a you know, you
Speaker 1: are just like a stupid jod That's that's that's train
Speaker 1: a rap as these people that actually have character, and
Speaker 1: that's like that's like a.
Speaker 2: Huge amount of the Twitter right now.
Speaker 1: It's like people don't want to be part of a
Speaker 1: mass and they want to like differentiate themselves a little
Speaker 1: bit and and kind of curate their own following if
Speaker 1: they have a few thousand followers. And it's just like
Speaker 1: that typical thing of like everyone wanting to be a chief,
Speaker 1: everyone wanted to have a hot take, and people just
Speaker 1: aren't really behind. You know, let's all shut out on
Speaker 1: Christopher Nolan for a week. It's just not very appealing
Speaker 1: to people anymore.
Speaker 3: What did you think about the intellectual reviews from the
Speaker 3: lights of you know, Tom Holland and Emily Wilson, I
Speaker 3: mean Emily Wilson.
Speaker 2: Basically if you read into her how she Yeah, I didn't.
Speaker 1: I didn't look at what Holland said, but yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I mean the Wilson text says it all. I mean
Speaker 1: what Moready said. I mean, she's she said that kind
Speaker 1: of the same thing as we been alluding to that
Speaker 1: there's no there's no sense.
Speaker 2: Of heroism or glory in the film. That he just
Speaker 2: made Odysseus this kind of sad, brooding character. I mean,
Speaker 2: he says it all.
Speaker 1: Everyone assumed she'd love this super liberal feminist interpretation, but
Speaker 1: I think in her case it's probably like, well, you know,
Speaker 1: even if she is a super leftist, since she wanted
Speaker 1: to have this leftist message. It's like, well, it will
Speaker 1: probably land better if it was a more compelling movie,
Speaker 1: or it was a bit more like The Odyssey, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, she obviously recognizes this is just you know,
Speaker 1: kind of modern boom or Hollywood slob.
Speaker 3: That that seemed to be the take from most of
Speaker 3: the classicists that I've seen on YouTube and clips. They
Speaker 3: were quietly critical without looking to annoyed. But Tom Holland,
Speaker 3: I've been laying into him on X.
Speaker 1: I just think point you're talking about the historian. The
Speaker 1: actor that played Telemachus is kind of an important talking
Speaker 1: about the historian, the author of Dominion. He's part of
Speaker 1: the Rest is History podcast, very big influential podcast, and
Speaker 1: they had a commercial relationship with the studio and Tom
Speaker 1: Holland was invited to a preview and he gave it
Speaker 1: the most glowing review. And I was very doubtful of that,
Speaker 1: and I didn't intend to see the film, and then
Speaker 1: I saw the Rotten Tomatoes ninety six percent user review,
Speaker 1: and I was I was thinking, oh, maybe maybe it
Speaker 1: would be interesting, and then.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we spoke about.
Speaker 3: Seeing it on you know, the possibility that it was
Speaker 3: really bad, and then and then you know, trashing it,
Speaker 3: so I you know, I intended to keep my mouth
Speaker 3: shut if it if it was actually good.
Speaker 1: But yeah, well unfortunately, I think the judge, like us,
Speaker 1: do you have to take a bit of an l
Speaker 1: on this. It is projected to cross I think one
Speaker 1: point two billion dollars, which would make it Nolan's most
Speaker 1: successful film ever. I think it's interesting as well how
Speaker 1: much it kind of shows there's still a monoculture. As
Speaker 1: much as we talk about, you know, with the Internet
Speaker 1: and siloed communities and the breakdown and traditional media that
Speaker 1: everyone is off in their own subcultures now, but you
Speaker 1: see something like this, and even when Barnbadheimer released that
Speaker 1: was this big kind of monocultural event that everyone was
Speaker 1: talking about. Or I think it is something like the
Speaker 1: release of the last season of Stranger Things on Netflix,
Speaker 1: that you do still have these kinds of cultural moments
Speaker 1: where all of social media and all of the little
Speaker 1: subcultures and even our own little dissidence subculture is all
Speaker 1: focused on this one thing. Like, in a way, there
Speaker 1: is still kind of a monoculture there and it's actually
Speaker 1: as woke as ever.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the big events, big commercial events, they will hit
Speaker 3: social media feeds hard. Social media is oriented to discuss
Speaker 3: these big events for days on end, and then people
Speaker 3: get pomo. They don't want to be left out. They
Speaker 3: don't want to be left out of the conversation. And yeah,
Speaker 3: that's that's the culture industry now, it's universal slop.
Speaker 1: Yeah, of course, whatever Norland does next is going to
Speaker 1: have like unlimited budget. Yeah, I mean, I'm sure they're feminist.
Speaker 1: Angler wife is going to have free rain.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm sure they're going to give him another five
Speaker 3: hundred million.
Speaker 2: Yeah they'll they'll lap it up like a sorcer of milk. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But yeah, final writing, we actually a very rare occurrence.
Speaker 1: We came to the same ratting on this very specific writing.
Speaker 1: We both said three point five. Yeah, correct, I'm still settled.
Speaker 1: I think three point.
Speaker 3: Five is the I was leaning towards the four. In
Speaker 3: the twenty four hours after coming out of the theater.
Speaker 3: I was really angry and I thought, no, no, three
Speaker 3: point five.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's one of the things it's like, at the end
Speaker 1: of its like maybe you know, it's like did I
Speaker 1: watch a good movie? But the more you think about
Speaker 1: it's like, well, what you kind of have this empty,
Speaker 1: unsatisfied feeling at the end of this because like I said,
Speaker 1: there's no real character acts in it. It's just events
Speaker 1: following events. Nothing is very compelling, nothing feels very real
Speaker 1: or a motive because of the dialogue, and it has
Speaker 1: a final message and a kind of total message in
Speaker 1: understanding that just leaves you unfulfilled because there's no there's
Speaker 1: nothing to do on there moral or ethically.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if there were any highlights, you know, you could
Speaker 3: take sirsus character like the you know, turning the men
Speaker 3: into pigs, you know, as as Nolan intended. I think
Speaker 3: the island is quite interesting with the lion tiger and
Speaker 3: the the deer turning human. Also the scene of the
Speaker 3: sirens is quite good, and the whirlpool. But you know,
Speaker 3: there there are brief highlights. But you know, overall, Ilan
Speaker 3: has defiled the Western tradition. I just just have to
Speaker 3: make that my conclusion.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, I would tell people not to go watch it,
Speaker 1: but at this point, I mean, who's even going to
Speaker 1: listen to us?
Speaker 2: Right? But I'm sure I've already booked their tickets.
Speaker 1: Yeah, going through a second screen in the nomax. But yeah,
Speaker 1: big woman, one big angler, one big boomer one. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so usome Matt Walsh have to just hold the loan
Speaker 1: and and hope for a better time.
Speaker 2: Elon, if you're out there all right, Well that's it.
Speaker 2: We'll be back with maybe all reviews. Next movie. Take everyone,