Hollywood never learns..

I've got a bad feeling about this one. I think a lot of people do. Uh oh. If there's one genre I'd love to see make a serious comeback, it's the historical epic. Swords and sandals, gods and monsters, battles and adventures, legendary warriors and terrifying villains. I mean, Hollywood's flirted with the idea from time to time over the past couple of decades. Some more successful than others. Don't worry, though, 300, you'll always have a special place in my heart. This is Spart. But it seems like this year things might finally be changing. Christopher Nolan has turned this gigantic quantum space brain away from discovering the secrets of the universe and assembled one of the biggest all-star casts in modern Hollywood for the Odyssey, a retelling of Homer's epic saga about the Greek king Odysius and his decadel long journey to get home to his family after fighting in the Trojan Wars for another 10 years before that. Meanwhile, his wife has to keep the home fires burning and contend with the unwanted advances of men who want the crown. It's actually kind of hilarious when you look at all this on a map because a journey from Troy to Ithaca is only like 500 miles by sea and it should have taken him a couple of weeks. But man, the gods just had it in for that [ __ ] guy. Honey, shouldn't have talked [ __ ] to Poseidon. It's a bad call. I'm home. Well, look who the fate dragged then. Anyway, stories don't get much more epic than the Odyssey. It truly is one of the great adventures in human history. Blending together mythology, religion, monsters, and the unbreakable determination of the human spirit, and bringing it to life on screen is a challenge that will strain the very limits of modern film making. But now that I've seen the trailer and I've considered the artistic vision behind this movie, I have to say my reaction was meh. I don't know what it is, man. There's just something about this movie that doesn't quite stir anything in me, which is pretty surprising because in theory at least, it's got all the ingredients for success. The kind of source material that's practically tailor made for epic Hollywood film making. The kind of all-star cast that only comes together once in a generation and a director with a mostly good track record as a filmmaker. So, why the [ __ ] does it feel so bland? Well, to try and answer this, let's take a closer look at those key elements again, shall we? First of all, there's the source material. Nothing wrong there, right? Wrong. Well, the problem is that the Odyssey was originally written in ancient Greek, obviously, meaning that it has to be translated into English for it to be legible. And what kind of story you ultimately get very much depends on which translated version you reads. In this case, I feel like this doesn't matter. I I feel like it doesn't matter. Like I mean you have obviously the high points. There's the [ __ ] sirens. Uh there's like the witch. There's the [ __ ] uh the the Cyclops. Uh there's like him fighting the suitors. Like I mean there there's commonalities. Christopher Nolan has publicly stated that he's a big fan of the 2017 adaptation of the Odyssey which was What? Translated from Greek by British writer Emily Wilson. Why exactly does that matter? Well, because Emily Wilson just so happens to be a hardcore progressive feminist who specifically set out to rewrite, sorry, re-imagine Homer's text through a female coded gender critical post. [ __ ] Are you What the [ __ ] is going on? Oh my god. No. Take it back. WELL, I MEAN LIKE I DIDN'T I I THOUGHT YOU MEANT LIKE IT was a translation. I didn't know you meant like this modernist lens because of course she did. basically stretching the very limits of the original text to bend it around modern sensibilities. It's the same kind of creeping cloying. Well, I think what he really meant to say here was [ __ ] that gave us 2026's animal farm, a story that went from a parable about the Russian Revolution to a ridiculous shallow capitalism bad piece of Hollywood slop. That is the Is that true that they remade Animal Farm and instead of being anti-communism, it's anti- capitalism? Is that true? I I I heard about this. Isn't it crazy how right George Orwell was on like all the little things? Because like I get the big things, right? Like, yeah, you could predict, but it's all the little things. That's crazy. How does that happen? Version we're likely to get here with all its gender identity naval gazing. And if that doesn't raise a few red flags, then let's take a closer look at that allstar cast, shall we? Now, Matt Damon and Anne Hathaway are solid enough as the two leads at least. I mean, if I was to be super critical, I'd say that Haway hasn't done anything particularly significant since, well, the last time she was in a Christopher Nolan movie, and she was arguably the worst thing about Interstellar, but that's a conversation for another day. I can't say I'm ever particularly excited by an Anne Hathaway project, but holy [ __ ] is she making a comeback this year. In 2026 alone, she's in five separate movie projects, one of which is playing in the cinemas right now. But speaking of overexposed actors that we could all use a break from, Zenaia is in this movie as Athena, the goddess of wisdom. ATHENA. Holy [ __ ] man. This girl's become the female equivalent of Pedro Pascal. She is just everywhere all of a sudden. And for the life of me, I cannot understand why. I have never seen a single Zenia performance in my life and thought, "Oh my god, she absolutely carried this movie." I think she was fine in Dune, but like she was like a side car. Like whenever it it's like whenever she was on the screen, you knew that it was okay to look at your phone cuz nothing important was going to happen. Nobody gives a [ __ ] Gives a [ __ ] But really, I mean, like it was fine, right? But like it it didn't really matter. Tell me, what's your favorite Zindaya expression? The angry frown, the confused frown, or the confused angry frown. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Elliot Paige is also in this movie. As what exactly? I don't [ __ ] know. A drummer boy, maybe. Paige is like 5t tall and weighs 90 lb soaking wet. So, I don't really see how they're going to fit in amongst all those big Greek soldiers and terrifying monsters. Lupita Nongo is widely rumored to be playing the Greek princess Helen of Troy which I mean there's no way they're going to do that, right? There's no way. Like I turns out to be true would make about as much sense as Papa as Swido playing Seis Snape. But hey, what can I say? It's Hollywood, baby. Rachel, there's Dude, there's no way that's going to happen. I'm sorry. Like I I I already did it. I It's been confirmed. I will not believe it until I see it because that is so ridiculous and silly. Why would you ever do that? It's going to happen. Trust your gut. I I mean I I don't know, guys. Thing that stood out for me about the entire cast in this trailer was just how bland and mundane they all look and sounds. Every time I saw one of them, all I thought was, "Oh yeah, there's Robert Patson. There's Charlie's Don. There's Tom Holland. Where are the larger than life mythical figures of legend that should be leaping from the pages of Homer's epic to amaze us all? I do think that I mean the Agamimnon with like his armor and everything. I think that absolutely farms a [ __ ] badass. It's great, but like you do have to have like Yeah, you have Achilles has to be like a a total [ __ ] badass, right? He does like I mean like what do you duh of course feels weirdly subdued and underwhelming and a big part of that decision is to have them speak with American accents using modern terminology. My dad is coming home. Oh, your dad's coming back. Is he? Did he take some bitching selfies? Hope he didn't get godmoged along the way. There's a reason movies like this traditionally use theatrical English and formalized language for their dialogue. It gives them a sense of grandeur, seriousness, and dramatic weight that naturally he's right about this. That's true. Lend itself. I think like I noticed this a lot watching Rings of Power versus watching Lord of the Rings. Man, that was a really big difference. That's a crazy big difference to the epic story they're trying to tell. Having your actors talk like they just walked in off the street in downtown LA just feels weirdly lazy and immersionbreaking. And before anyone chimes in with little pearls of wisdom, like drinker, you know as well as I do, they would have spoken Greek in a story like this. So why does it even matter what accents they use? Well, if somebody says that, they're obviously not engaging in good faith. They don't really care about it. They're just lying to you in order to push their agenda. Everybody knows why. Everybody knows what the reasoning is. So if you're intentionally trying to misunderstand it, like you you can't convince a person like that because they've already made up their mind. Hypothetical straw man. We all know the language they would have spoken. But we also know that having your entire cast learn a whole new language just so the audience can sit through 3 hours of subtitles is neither practical nor logical. That doesn't mean that you have to go in completely the other direction. There's no way Elliot Page is Achilles. I'm sorry. I will not believe that. Didn't give a [ __ ] like this. And this all brings me back to the man at the center of all of this. Christopher Nolan, the director and writer. Now, I know the man has a fan base so raidly loyal that they make Snyder Bros look like [ __ ] normies. And he's given us some fascinating films to chew over in his time. But he's made a number of great movies. I think he has. I mean, like I honest here. The guy can also be his own worst enemy at times. Sometimes he really is just too smart for his own goods. Rightly or wrongly, he's developed a reputation as a clinical, intellectual, and slightly sterile kind of director, a master of ideas who can't seem to wrap his head around simple humanity. And I get the impression that's always chafed at him, especially with his more recent movies where it feels like he's got something to prove. Like the weirdly out ofplace love scenes in Oppenheimer that feels like two androids replicating their understanding of a human relationship. The man definitely has a niche but character-driven historical epics don't seem to be it. And with Odyssey, it's like he's saying, "See, there's more to me than sci-fi thrillers and slightly overrated superhero movies." And I don't know, man. From the casting to the dialogue to the bleak, washed out cinematography, I can't shake the feeling that he just isn't the right man to direct a movie like this. I mean, [ __ ] maybe I'm totally wrong on this one. Maybe the Odyssey will be the crowning achievement in Nolan's career and raking more money than Avatar. Or maybe it'll I think that if you're doing race swaps with characters, you're going to have a lot of problems. I don't think that there's anybody who's actually asking for race swaps. That's the big issue is that so here's the reason why race swapping is bad. Race swapping is bad unless it's and also the person playing if that's actually Helen of Troy for example, right? I mean like number one like I would say that on average like I don't mean to be rude, right? But like I mean I don't think that she would like I mean I'm sure everybody's attracted different people but like she's not hot enough to be Helen to Troy. I mean, like, let's be honest, guys. Like, it's not a race thing. Like, if it was Halle Berry, people would understand it. But like, she's definitely not. So, like, what are you doing? What why why are you doing something that everybody knows is [ __ ] And so, it's a Martin Yeah. Brad Pitt is Martin Luther King. Exactly. And so whenever you see something like that and you see somebody in that movie that's this way, it's an immediate immersion break because it reminds you of the fact that you're watching something that was made for modern audiences. You're watching something and the reason why she is in that role playing that character in this way is because of a social reason that the director invented in order to put into the movie. So it reminds you immediately that you're watching a TV show because it becomes unbelievable. Like obviously you're not going to start the entire Trojan War o over there. And and also by the way like very clearly there wouldn't be a person that's black there. Helen Troy wasn't black. Everybody knows this. Like what are we talking about? So you're inventing these like his like historical lies, right? And I think that it's being done in order to push a narrative. I think that overwhelmingly you have this narrative being pushed regularly that you know these other forms of beauty and attraction are greater or more morally they have like more of a moral foundation or they're being more represented in media in order to make people have this viewpoint and in order to make people like this type of person. And I think it's very problematic. I do because it's being pushed on people turn out to be his own personal albatross or shoving it on our faces. Yeah, exactly. It's very odd and and that's another big issue too, right? Where you have every single time that you do one of these forms of race swapping. It only happens in one direction and it's only for characters that are generally completely universally good or seen as like a high uh you know a a high value or high status character. something like for example Athena or Helen of Troy which are both like you know very highly regarded for different reasons. So that's I think the problem is that not only are you doing race swapping but you're doing it in a dimension that is very clearly trying to push an agenda. Time as always will tell but I'll be interested to see how it pans out one way or the other. Anyway, that's all I've got for today. Mhm. Go away now. That'll be a race flop right now. Yeah. And so it's racially charged. It is. It's racially charged. And I I don't I don't think people will like that. And like I don't I think that movie will be successful. Like I'll link you guys the video. It's a critical drinker video. I watch them all the time. But uh soon you start seeing Only Fans models playing these roles. Good. I mean, you should have like there's I've got a list of like my top uh 250 Only Fans models and Instagram girls that I think should play Helen of Troy. Yeah. Uh they could Christopher Nolan could just DM me and uh I can give him my list and so yeah only 250. Exactly. Right. And so uh no I I I have listen I there's no problem wi with having something like that. It's a better idea. And so anyway and uh can we get the list? Yeah. Just look at my following. So people are retards. Veil of Hollywood was lifted six years ago and people are still wondering why directors race and gender swap. Well, what I'm saying is that whenever you're making one of these swaps, I think that you lose the trust of your audience. You lose the trust of your audience and you make the audience angry at you and resent you. And does it really matter? Helen was a hoe. She had many lovers, but her husband, yeah, of course it matters. Helen of Troy was regarded for being ridiculously insanely beautiful and they started an entire war over her. If you put a person inside of that role that does not embody conventional beauty standards, you're doing it for a political and a social reason. That's the reason why. And anybody looking at it, if you're not seeing that, you're intentionally trying not to. That's just the way it is. It's beautiful. Yeah. Exactly. And so, and uh was trying. Yeah. Exactly. You're playing games. Yeah. I was going to look at like maybe one other thing and then I'll I'll start doing it. It wasn't about Helen. is about them polling or getting butt hurt. Yeah, I guess so. Right. And they don't care. They have all the money. Sure. I'm sure there are other people auditioning and they didn't get the didn't get the royal period. Yeah. Exactly. And I think that you make decisions like that for a social political reason. And I don't want to see any other explanation for it. It's so obvious. And don't let people gaslight you into thinking that, oh no, this is normal or something like that. It's probably being done for a social reason. And I feel like that's a bad