Skip the Flick, Read the Book
Mark Lopez, Jul 22 2026
From the moment a black actor loudly rammed his 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 Diversity, Equity, Inclusion (DEI ) movie and the writer-director-producer Christopher Nolan wants us to know this from the outset. The casting was more than irritating, it was demoralising, so much so that I was not able to ignore it and lose myself in the story unfolding n the screen. Had this flick been made in Australia, I’m sure it would have begun with a Welcome to Country.
Nolan’s film is the kind of provocation that the politically correct love. 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 European culture and literature and to those like me who value it.
But it got worse. Soon I had to endure the greatest miscasting in cinema history – a black actress, Lupita Nyong’o, playing Helen of Troy. My first thought was that black actors should refuse to be used as props to undermine Western Civilisation. And her performance was not that good either, suggesting her presence was driven by political rather than artistic reasons. Although this casting was intended to please the politically correct it also seemed intended to hurt some and infuriate others. However, it should be noted that to qualify for a Best Picture nomination at the Academy Awards, films now must have a racially diverse actor playing a lead or significant supporting role, or have thirty per cent of the cast played by so-called ‘under-represented’ groups.
At least I did not have to endure seeing a Greek warrior played by a man with a nose ring and a man bun. But, then again, the warrior Sinon is played by Elliot Page, a biological woman who recently re-identified as ‘male’. This is yet another carefully set trip wire. Criticise this travesti travesty and you’ll be derided as ‘transphobic’.
The screenplay by writer-director-producer Christopher Nolan is ponderous. Half-way through, I was wishing Odysseus would get back to Ithaka, kill the hundred suitors testing his loyal wife’s virtue and thereby end the story so I could go home.
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