‘The Odyssey’ Smashes Box Office Records, Proving the ‘Go Woke, Go Broke’ Myth Is Dead

The Odyssey earned $264.1 million worldwide in its opening weekend, surpassing previous Christopher Nolan hits such as Oppenheimer and The Dark Knight Rises. The film had a $250 million production budget and a $125 million marketing spend, making it one of the most expensive R-rated movies ever made.

IMAX screenings significantly boosted ticket sales with $51.8 million globally, contributing to IMAX’s best weekend ever, with some theaters selling out midnight and 3 a.m. showings. The film stars Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Zendaya, Lupita Nyong’o and Elliot Page, and received strong reviews with a 95% Rotten Tomatoes rating and an A CinemaScore from audiences.

The film’s success also carries a broader cultural significance: it has exposed just how manufactured the outrage surrounding it always was.

Sing, muse, of the cunning Christopher Nolan, who has once again achieved the impossible. His new adaptation of The Odyssey has earned rapturous reviews, a coveted “A” CinemaScore from audiences, and the best non-Batman-related opening of Nolan’s career. It’s on track to net more than $120 million domestically and more than $137 million from international markets, per The Hollywood Reporter.

Perhaps a handful of trolls—a small group that includes the richest man in the world—has sworn off Nolan’s film because its cast has the audacity to feature both a Black woman and a trans man. But loud as their voices may be, the actual grosses prove that they couldn’t dampen The Odyssey’s prospects.

The real truth is that normal people, regular folks whose brains haven’t been pickled by constant exposure to the worst opinions on the internet, are unaware of this manufactured controversy. And even if they have heard about it, they certainly aren’t letting it influence their viewing habits.

Vanity Fair

The Culture War Collapsed Once Audiences Saw the Film

The release of The Odyssey has exposed just how manufactured the outrage surrounding the film always was. For months, right-wing commentators tried to turn Christopher Nolan’s adaptation into another culture-war emergency, largely because the cast included Black and transgender actors. Now that the film is out and has been warmly received, much of that panic looks even more ridiculous.

There are always legitimate questions about any production. Historians can raise concerns about the armour, ships and other period details. In Nolan’s case, the decision to reduce some of the poem’s more fantastical elements is worth debating. Those are real artistic and historical criticisms. But that was never the main conversation pushed by the loudest detractors. Their obsession centred on who was allowed to appear in the film.

Rumours were treated as confirmed facts simply because they offered an excuse to attack someone based on their identity. Elliot Page was falsely reported to be playing Achilles, prompting weeks of transphobic mockery. The claim turned out to be wrong, but the people who spread it showed little interest in correcting themselves. The point was never accuracy; it was to humiliate.

Lupita Nyong’o’s casting attracted an equally racists and colorist response. Commentators insisted that she could not represent Helen of Troy while repeatedly promoting Sydney Sweeney as the obvious alternative. That argument was presented as a defence of Greek authenticity, yet almost none of the same people objected to Matt Damon playing Odysseus or to an American cast speaking English in modern accents. Apparently, historical purity matters only when a Black woman enters the frame.

The fixation on Nyong’o also revealed something deeper. These men could not tolerate one of the world’s most acclaimed and beautiful actresses being associated with a figure famed for her beauty. They spent more time debating whether Nyong’o was attractive enough than discussing the poem, the adaptation or Nolan’s filmmaking. That is insecurity dressed up as scholarship.

The so-called accuracy argument also collapses under scrutiny. The Odyssey is mythology, not documentary evidence. Its world includes gods, monsters, witches, giants and a woman born from an egg. Ancient Greek artists regularly depicted legendary figures in the clothing and armour of their own periods rather than attempting Bronze Age reconstruction. Adaptation has always involved interpretation.

Even the text itself undermines the fantasy of an isolated, uniformly white Greek world. Homer repeatedly refers to the Ethiopians, while Greek mythology contains figures connected to Africa and the eastern Mediterranean. Ancient societies traded, travelled and interacted. People did not remain sealed inside the racial categories imagined by modern culture warriors.

Historical Accuracy Only Matters When a Black Woman Is Cast

The hypocrisy becomes clearer when compared with whitewashing. These commentators rarely produce dozens of videos when white actors are cast in non-white roles or when European and American stars replace people from the cultures being depicted. They accept those choices as normal filmmaking. Yet the appearance of a Black actor in European mythology suddenly becomes an assault on civilisation.

That double standard has followed other films. Prey was attacked before release because its lead was a young Indigenous woman. Critics confidently made false claims about Comanche history, including the suggestion that domesticated dogs did not exist within that culture. When the film turned out to be excellent, the goalposts moved. The same people who had predicted disaster simply found new ways to dismiss it.

This is why their film criticism feels increasingly worthless. They do not begin with the work itself. They begin with an ideological verdict and then search for scenes, casting choices or rumours that can be forced into it. A film is “woke” before they have seen it, and every later observation is designed to support that conclusion.

The outrage around The Odyssey was especially intense because these commentators see Greek mythology as property belonging to their version of Western civilisation. They do not approach the poem as a living story capable of reinterpretation. They treat it as a monument that must be guarded from Black people, women, queer people and anyone else they view as an intruder.

Yet stories survive because each generation reshapes them. The Greeks themselves reinterpreted their myths. Translators alter rhythm, tone and emphasis. Filmmakers change structure, character and imagery. Nolan’s version was never going to be a museum reconstruction of Bronze Age Greece. It was always going to be a Christopher Nolan film.

Audiences understand that better than the outrage merchants do. Most viewers are not buying tickets to inspect helmets or conduct racial measurements of the cast. They want spectacle, emotion, adventure and a compelling human story. The Odyssey has survived for centuries because it contains monsters, grief, love, temptation, violence, longing and the desire to return home. Those themes do not belong to one race.

Final Thoughts

The funniest part is that many of the people who spent months declaring the film ruined had already bought tickets. Nolan’s name, the source material and the scale of the production virtually guaranteed that they would watch it. Their anger was content. The more outrageous the claim, the more clicks it generated.

Now that the film has succeeded, some will quietly retreat, while others will pretend their attacks improved the final product. They will not admit that they spread false rumours, obsessed over minor casting choices and confused personal prejudice with artistic criticism. The culture-war machine rarely apologises because accountability would interrupt the next cycle of outrage.

The lesson is simple. These campaigns are not really about protecting history, mythology or cinema. They are about preserving a narrow vision of who is allowed to occupy cultural space. When a Black woman, a transgender actor or an Indigenous heroine appears in a story they consider theirs, they treat representation as theft. But Western culture was never as racially sealed or culturally pure as they imagine. Neither was the ancient world. Their panic says far more about modern fear than it does about Homer, Greece or Christopher Nolan.