Right-wing culture warriors may have spent months complaining about the unconventional casting decisions for The Odyssey. But the movie’s biggest blow to their worldview has nothing to do with Elliot Page or Lupita Nyong’o.
In the film’s final act, Odysseus (Matt Damon) tearfully reveals to his wife Penelope (Anne Hathaway) his guilt over his sacking of Troy. The sequence paints Odysseus’ trick with the Trojan horse not as a clever bit of bravery but as an unforgivable war crime, one that has damned his soul as much as the atomic bomb damned J. Robert Oppenheimer’s.
It’s not the most flattering portrayal of Odysseus, who right-wing fans of The Odyssey would apparently prefer to be portrayed in as heroic a light as possible. For Elon Musk, who claimed in 2023 to “love Odysseus most” of all the Greek mythological figures, it must particularly sting to see Odysseus’s pride stripped away from him, for his most clever moment to be portrayed as his greatest sin.
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