By Chris Snellgrove
| Published 7 seconds ago
Right now, Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey is tearing through theaters like a one-man army. This film is the latest adaptation of an ancient Greek text about a soldier trying to find his way home after helping to win a costly battle. Specifically, Odysseus helped to bring the Trojan War to an end, which is ironic when you think about it. After all, the success of this fictional tale might have finally brought a real-world conflict to an end. Namely, the endless culture wars fought by the bravest keyboard warriors this side of 4chan.
For many months now, all of the usual suspects have been whinging about Nolan’s casting decisions. This included having Lupita Nyong’o play Helen of Troy and having Elliot Page play Sinon, a Greek warrior. At the prospect of (gasp!) a Black woman and a trans man playing Greek characters, haters began screeching that the film was woke garbage that would bomb at the box office. That is, of course, the conventional wisdom of the old adage: “go woke, go broke.” However, The Odyssey earned a whopping $264.1 million in its opening weekend, providing a lesson everyone should learn. The lesson? Repeat after me: the internet is not real life.
There Is No Normal
When I’m not dropping hot takes about movies and TV shows, I’m a professor at a humble state college. One of the life lessons I try to impart to all my students is that there is no normal; there is only what has been normalized around you. Are you in a room with nothing but flat-earthers? In that scenario, you’d be considered the crazy one. After a while, you might even start to believe what they are saying. This is just human nature…everyone wants to fit in rather than be an outcast. Eventually, it becomes easier to drink the Kool-Aid of wacky groupthink than to speak truth to a bunch of idiots.
What does this have to do with The Odyssey? Everything, really. Despite once clinging to the mantra “facts don’t care about your feelings,” the conservatives predicting that the movie would bomb didn’t have any real data to suggest that would happen; instead, they just had the rancid vibes of everyone in their preferred virtual spaces insisting that the film would flop. This is a practical example of the flat-earther example above. You can only hear the majority of people in your favorite online groups predict doom for so long before those predictions seem inevitable. Nobody wants to question the narrative because that’s the quickest way to get ostracized from the group.
The Internet Is Not Real Life
Now, the success of The Odyssey (it made over a quarter of a billion dollars in the first weekend!) has destroyed that narrative on its own. What has that done to the naysayers who predicted its doom? Some have retreated into conspiracy theories; millionaires must be buying out empty theaters! The movie is only successful because it pandered to woke elites! It’s only making money because of presales! The expensive IMAX tickets inflated the numbers! These are just a few conspiracies being peddled by intractable crazies who can’t comprehend The Odyssey being popular and successful. Their narrative has fallen apart, proving once and for all that the internet is not real life.
Regardless of its political leanings, every single online group you are part of has its own biases about countless topics. This includes what is or isn’t woke. But part of being a grownup is realizing that these groups’ opinions don’t reflect the wider culture anymore than your childhood friends’ opinions reflect the opinions of everyone in your hometown. If you and your buddies hate a new bar but it gets more crowded by the month, then most people clearly like it. And if the movie all of your online buddies have called woke garbage earns hundreds of millions in the first weekend, then it’s clearly both popular and successful.
The Culture War Is Over
Everyone votes with their dollars. If having a Black woman or a trans man portray a Greek character was a huge dealbreaker, mainstream audiences would have boycotted The Odyssey. If the average moviegoer actually cared about tweaking the lore of a 3,000-year-old poem, they’d have avoided the film. The fact that the movie is doing gangbusters at the box office is proof that most going to see it aren’t fretting over politics or culture war narratives. They just wanted to see a giant blockbuster filled with great actors; Christopher Nolan, whose every film has been successful, gave those audiences exactly what they wanted, and he’s being rewarded for it.
That’s how you can tell (and you may want to sit down for this) that the whole idea of a culture war is fake. Under capitalism, the predominant culture and cultural preferences are represented by what people pay for. The Mandalorian and Grogu didn’t fail because it was woke; it failed because it was another low-effort film from a fading franchise. Obsession didn’t succeed because it was anti-woke; it succeeded because it had fresh ideas, killer performances, and a visionary director. In short, audiences just want a good film, and a movie’s box office is the most reliable barometer of mainstream audiences’ opinion on a major blockbuster film.
Freaks And Greeks
Given its own massive box office, The Odyssey is clearly a movie that appeals to mass audiences. Now, that doesn’t mean you have to like it or that it is necessarily a great film; after all, plenty of terrible movies are still insanely profitable. And you don’t have to approve of the casting, either; if boycotting this movie because of those two actors is that important to you, nobody’s going to drag you to go see it. But if you’re still hating and claiming this movie will bomb, you are officially the minority opinion on Christoper Nolan’s latest film, one that could easily earn over a billion dollars when all is said and done.
Again, the takeaway here is that the internet isn’t real life. Did everyone in your scoldmaxxing online circles predict The Odyssey would fail? Now you know how much those predictions are worth. Were you utterly convinced that Elliot Page’s brief appearance in this film would destroy Nolan’s chances of success? Now you know how little the average person actually cares about these things. Fortunately, you can avoid these problems by putting the phone down, walking away from the computer, and going outside at least once a day. When you start talking to real people and not digital avatars, you might start caring less about what the internet has to say.
Regularly going outside is the best thing for anyone who has spent months liking countless posts about how The Odyssey would fail. If that’s you, then do us all a favor and touch some grass while you’re out there!
