For the last few weeks, Christopher Nolan’s &#8220;Odyssey&#8221; movie has been a more divisive topic for conservatives than the war with Iran. Is it woke or secretly based? Is it <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/what-christopher-nolan-couldnt-bring-himself-to-do">unfaithful to the original</a> (and if so, is that good or bad)? Is anyone who <a href="https://x.com/IMPERATORAUS/status/2078594683832541671">sees it</a> “an enemy of Western Civilization”?
As always, trillionaire entrepreneur and anti-woke crusader Elon Musk is an <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/movies/articles/elon-musk-gets-dragged-saying-173742252.html">eager participant</a> in these debates. This time, though, Musk isn’t just complaining. He’s proposed two ways to make a more conservative-friendly &#8220;Odyssey&#8221; and offered to put real effort behind making them happen.
 The first is a nonstarter. “Before this year ends, Grok Imagine will make a full-length movie of The Odyssey that is historically accurate and true to the art of Homer,” Elon <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2079758604656316619">posted</a> to X last week.
I’m sure that’ll be technically possible, but it’s certainly not desirable. Replacing a creative process that involves real actors in real places where real light strikes real lenses with a guy at a keyboard entering prompts would not be a victory for conservative art. It would be the abolition of art itself. If anyone can, with a few keystrokes, make the exact movie he wants to see, then cinema ceases to play its role as a cultural artifact. It no longer emerges from and shapes the zeitgeist. 
The proliferation of AI-generated &#8220;Odyssey&#8221; adaptations Elon proposes might be aesthetically impressive, but these movies would not bring people together the way Nolan’s has — not even to hate them. They would be pieces of worthless slop that took no effort to create and leave audiences more isolated and demoralized than ever. AI can supplement filmmakers’ efforts, as Ben Affleck’s half-billion-dollar start-up <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/19/netflix-paid-587m-for-ben-afflecks-ai-filmmaking-startup/">InterPositive</a> promises to do. It cannot replace them.
Elon’s other <a href="https://x.com/martianwyrdlord/status/2079640327170728085?s=20">idea</a>, which he <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2079756091232227665?s=20">got</a> from pseudonymous Substack blogger <a href="https://americanreformer.org/2025/06/we-can-fight-the-left-without-repaganizing/">John Carter</a>, is more interesting: “give Mel Gibson $100 million to film an Odyssey adaptation with painstakingly historically accurate ships, armour, weapons, and casting, with all dialogue taken straight from the original poem and delivered in Homeric Greek.”
Gibson is a political conservative and an able director who has proven his ability to handle epic material (&#8220;Braveheart&#8221;), make blockbusters that appeal to the religious right (&#8220;The Passion of the Christ&#8221;), and successfully immerse audiences in a wholly alien culture (&#8220;Apocalypto&#8221;). But if Elon wants to fund a mega-budget project for him, the Odyssey is the wrong choice.
Making Gibson’s &#8220;Odyssey&#8221; as a direct response to Nolan’s would seem reactive, derivative, and petty. Audiences would perceive a rushed-out remake funded by Elon’s money and motivated by his resentments as a political stunt and would understandably avoid it. Too many conservative artists seem content to make “conservative art” that appeals solely to committed conservatives. Instead of winning back the culture, they preach to the choir. Gibson is living proof that it doesn’t have to be this way, and saddling him with a project doomed to languish in the conservative ghetto would be a tremendous waste of his talents.
Fortunately, there’s a far better candidate for an Elon-funded, Mel-directed, swords-and-sandals epic poem adaptation: Virgil’s &#8220;Aeneid.&#8221; This masterpiece, written soon after Rome transitioned from republic to empire, follows a band of Trojans who escape the fall of their city, wander the Mediterranean for years, fight to win a new homeland in Italy, and fulfill their destiny by becoming the forefathers of Rome.
Virgil borrows settings, plot elements, and even his protagonist — the Trojan prince Aeneas — from the &#8220;Iliad&#8221; and &#8220;Odyssey,&#8221; but his poem has a different “vibe” than either of Homer’s epics.
In Homer, time is a flat circle. Odysseus failing to make it home would be bad news for Telemachus and Penelope, but it would have no world-historic consequences. Neither would Troy’s defenders driving the Argives into the sea. No matter what happens, things will go on as they always have. Men strive to win glory in battle, the gods engage in their petty squabbles, and Fate hands down its mysterious, arbitrary decrees.
Everything in the &#8220;Aeneid&#8221; bears the weight of history, and history itself has an end toward which it is progressing. For Virgil, this telos is Roman dominion. Rome’s divine calling is to “rule with all [its] power / the peoples of the earth.” Aeneas’ journeys and wars are sowing the seeds of universal empire, and Virgil constantly reminds us of the growth they’ll one day produce. 
Aeneas himself struggles under the burden of this lofty destiny. In some ways, his sense of duty makes him more human. C.S. Lewis <a href="https://dl.icdst.org/pdfs/files4/2cf71f4fa9ccbe4bbcd655eea8c822e6.pdf">describes</a> him as a “grown-up” compared to whom Achilles seems like a “passionate boy.” In other ways, it has the opposite effect. Edith Hamilton argues that, by the end of the poem, Aeneas “is not a man,” but “something strange and portentous.”
In the hands of most Hollywood directors, an &#8220;Aeneid&#8221; adaptation would probably lean toward the latter. Aeneas would have much in common with Paul Atreides in Denis Villeneuve&#8217;s &#8220;Dune&#8221; trilogy: an initially relatable hero swept up in prophecy until he becomes indifferent to the suffering he inflicts while trying to fulfill it.
But with Mel Gibson behind the camera, we could expect a very different &#8220;Aeneid.&#8221; For 2,000 years, Westerners have viewed the &#8220;Aeneid&#8221; as, in some sense, their own origin story. If Aeneas hadn’t succeeded, then our civilization — so profoundly shaped by Rome — wouldn’t exist.
The stakes are even higher for Christians. If God willed for his son to be born under Caesar Augustus, for the gospel to spread initially within the Roman Empire, and (in Catholic teaching) for the Church to be governed from the Eternal City, then Rome’s founding and rise must have been providentially ordained. 
Gibson is the perfect director to emphasize this angle, not only because he’s a conservative and a Catholic, but also because he’s done it before. For most of its runtime, &#8220;Apocalypto&#8221; is a thrilling chase film set in a society so alien that, as far as the typical viewer is concerned, it might as well take place on another planet. That all changes in the film’s final minutes, in which the chase is interrupted by the arrival of Spanish ships with cross-emblazoned sails. Their arrival signals the end of human sacrifice and the eventual conversion of the Americas.
This ending, in which world-historic forces impinge upon human drama in a way that foreshadows the providential triumph of the viewer’s own civilization, is positively Virgilian. 
Gibson could do something similar with the &#8220;Aeneid.&#8221; Begin with the unfamiliar: foreign language dialogue, Bronze Age brutality, strange gods, and mysterious portents. Maybe even show the Carthaginians engaging in human sacrifice — a practice not mentioned in the poem but well attested historically. Then, amid all that unfamiliarity, drop hints that Aeneas’ predicament is our predicament, that his virtues are those to which we should aspire, that the hearth-fire he carried out of Troy still burns for us — until finally, an &#8220;Apocalypto&#8221;-style climax reveals him as a founding father of Western Civilization and Christendom. All that he suffered, he suffered on our behalf.
An &#8220;Aeneid&#8221; like this would be unmistakably conservative without sacrificing mainstream appeal. It would be original rather than derivative. And for Elon Musk, it would be $100 million well spent.
***
Grayson Quay is the author of “The Transhumanist Temptation” and a former editor at the Daily Caller.
This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/introducing-upstream-a-lifestyle-and-culture-section-of-the-daily-wire" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream,</a> The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.

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The Epic Movie Elon Musk Should Be Making Instead

Culture

Elon Musk

Mel Gibson

Movies

Roman Empire

The Odyssey

Upstream

After criticizing Christopher Nolan&#8217;s &#8220;The Odyssey&#8221; over its casting choices, billionaire Tesla founder Elon Musk said he would be willing to bankroll an alternative adaptation of Homer&#8217;s epic. 
Musk, who previously <a href="https://deadline.com/2026/05/elon-musk-the-odyssey-christopher-nolan-cast-lupita-nyongo-helen-1236901704/">blasted</a> Nolan for &#8220;race-swapping&#8221; characters and suggested he was chasing awards with casting decisions, said he would be willing to pony up $100 million to produce an alternative adaptation directed by Mel Gibson.
It&#8217;s unclear whether Musk was serious, but the idea quickly gained traction after an X user suggested he bankroll Gibson&#8217;s version of Homer&#8217;s classic.
“I want Elon Musk to give Mel Gibson $100 million to film an Odyssey adaptation with painstakingly historically accurate ships, armour, weapons, and casting, with all dialogue taken straight from the original poem and delivered in Homeric Greek,” the user <a href="https://x.com/martianwyrdlord/status/2079640327170728085">wrote</a> on Tuesday. 
“I’m down,” Musk replied.
The original poster was blown away by the response, and even if nothing comes of it, there are already alternative “Odyssey” projects in the works. 
Later Tuesday, Musk posted that his artificial intelligence (AI) platform, Grok, would take a stab at it.
“Before this year ends, Grok Imagine will make a full-length movie of The Odyssey that is historically accurate and true to the art of Homer,” Musk wrote, sharing a clip of a dialogue scene posted by another X user.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
I want Elon Musk to give Mel Gibson $100 million to film an Odyssey adaptation with painstakingly historically accurate ships, armour, weapons, and casting, with all dialogue taken straight from the original poem and delivered in Homeric Greek.
— John Carter (@martianwyrdlord) <a href="https://x.com/martianwyrdlord/status/2079640327170728085?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 21, 2026</a></blockquote>
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The idea of competing adaptations has already begun taking shape. Days before Nolan’s blockbuster debuted, content generator Ash Koosha announced plans to release an AI-generated version of &#8220;The Odyssey&#8221; later this year.
Koosha is best known for debuting another AI-generated feature, “Dreams of Violets,” at this year&#8217;s Tribeca Film Festival.
“We very much hope that Christopher Nolan’s film, The Odyssey, is a raging success at the box office, and in some way that our version of the journey of Odysseus might further that success by bringing to theaters those who might not otherwise come out to see the film, simply because they are curious to see the ultimate in human creation and compare it to one man’s collaboration with AI,” Koosha <a href="https://www.euronews.com/culture/2026/07/15/ai-slop-version-of-the-odyssey-announced-prior-to-release-of-christopher-nolans-epic-block">said</a> of his version.
Meanwhile, “The Odyssey” has become the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/conservatives-had-concerns-about-the-odyssey-now-theyre-praising-it">biggest box-office opening of Nolan’s career</a>. 
While some conservatives initially criticized aspects of the casting before the film&#8217;s release, many have praised it despite those reservations. Others, however, continue to object to several casting choices, including the decision to cast Elliot Page, a transgender-identifying woman, as a male soldier.

Elon Musk Says He’s ‘Down’ To Fund A Rival ‘Odyssey’

Artificial Intelligence

Christopher Nolan

Elliot Page

Entertainment

A frightening monster in theaters this summer doesn’t hide in a closet (but it just might force you to). It takes the form of the person you love most and comes for you precisely because you love him.
That’s the conceit behind &#8220;Leviticus,&#8221; the Australian horror film that has arrived in American cinemas to mostly critical praise. It’s set in a remote, Christian town so fundamentalist that it smacks of caricature. When a romantic relationship between two young men is discovered, the community subjects them to a deliverance ritual meant to burn their desire away. But the rite instead summons a presence that appears to each boy as the other, hunting him whenever his longing stirs. 
Cleverly, “Leviticus” depicts an inverse exorcism: Conversion therapy is not shown as removing a harmful spirit, but as introducing a spirit of fear and shame that results in death. Making the indictment broader than conversion therapy, director Adrian Chiarella says the monster stands for homophobia “in all its shades.” Considering the film’s title, Chiarella indicts the entire biblical ethic that sex belongs only within the marriage of one man and one woman as deadly. 
Ironically, the film’s caricature is self-indicting as it mirrors overgeneralizations happening in law and culture. This past March, in Chiles v. Salazar, the Supreme Court ruled eight to one, with only Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissenting, that Colorado had overreached by forbidding a licensed counselor from even talking with willing clients about unwanted same-sex attraction.
By lumping such counseling with real past abuses — like electric shock therapy, lobotomies, and fringe deliverance rituals — Colorado’s law likely violates the First Amendment. Speech, Justice Neil Gorsuch reasoned, does not forfeit constitutional protection simply because someone calls it therapy. The court did not bless coercion; it directed the lower courts to scrutinize whether Colorado’s ban could inhibit such speech. The point is that overgeneralization, while sometimes rhetorically powerful, ultimately crumbles when thoughtfully critiqued.
Past invasive and coercive practices, whether secular or religious in motivation, are wrong and harmful. Where Christians have traded the gospel of hope and wholeness for fear, shame, and control, they have inflicted real wounds that no theological cleverness can explain away. “Leviticus” camps there but never asks whether such practices are counterfeits of biblical ethics.
In a pivotal scene, the religiously zealous mother of one of the young men tells him, “We need fear. It’s how we survive.” True, fear is a God-given survival mechanism, but enthroning it is un-Christian because it reduces human beings to instinct-driven animals. The gospel message instead enthrones love. “Perfect love casts out fear,” the apostle John writes, “because fear has to do with punishment” (1 John 4:18). God’s love, displayed at the cross, where Jesus bears the punishment we deserve, removes fear and frees us to love God and pursue holiness out of gratitude. Chiarella thinks he has exposed Christianity’s bigotry. But he’s actually exposed a distorted view of both human nature and the biblical sexual ethic.
The horror in “Leviticus” works only if we grant that a person is defined simply by his desires, so that fencing off a desire erases the self. Straining to condemn homophobia in all its shades, the film flattens the very people it means to defend into one-dimensional beings. The biblical account moves the other way, insisting that human beings bear God’s image and that our longings, however powerful, never amount to the whole of who and what we are.
Scripture calls us to be sexually moral, indicting heterosexual excesses as seriously as any other. Writer Matt Moore understands this far better than Chiarella. He has spoken openly for years about his own same-sex attraction and about his stumbles along the way.
In younger years, Moore writes, he “wasn’t worried about being sexually moral.” He simply wanted to be “normal.” What he found was not an easy fix but something sturdier: honesty about his struggle, a forgiving community, and the same winding and uneven path of moral and spiritual formation every one of us is walking. None of that is cinematic, of course. It is slow and messy. It is the unglamorous work of a life being remade, which is the truest story the movies rarely tell.
Consider, too, the figure the film enlists to embody Christian belief: a shadowy “Deliverance Healer” muttering incantations over a crackpot rite. By calling the film “Leviticus,” Chiarella suggests that such a practice is biblical. Yet no church most Christians would recognize runs on shamans and spells. Chiarella’s straw man is actually a backhanded compliment. Genuine Christianity is too sturdy to attack head-on, so the film substitutes a flimsier version the audience can safely reject. What’s kept off screen is the true meaning behind what Leviticus and other parts of the Bible actually teach about sexuality. 
The Bible’s sexual ethic is not a set of dusty prohibitions from men who found homosexuality icky and then baptized their bigotry. It is not arbitrarily prohibitive; it is protective. Every human being is made in God’s image (Genesis 1:27), and sex between a man and a woman is the natural means by which sacred human life is created. Because the product of sexuality is sacred, the process must be sacred too. Without boundaries, the process becomes common, even trivial. As pornography proliferates, humans become objects of gratification. Biblical boundaries, therefore, make sense not only naturally, but morally.
Biblical marriage between one man and one woman is a portrait of unity in diversity in that a man and a woman, unmistakably distinct, become one. The Hebrew carries the idea beautifully. A married man and woman “become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24). The word one is “echad,” which means “unified.” It’s the same word Israel is commanded to confess over God: “Hear, O Israel: the LORD our God, the LORD is one (echad)” (Deuteronomy 6:4).
From a Christian perspective, the unity of diversity between husband and wife echoes the triune God’s unity of diversity. And that echo beckons us to a destination. The New Testament closes with a wedding in which God binds himself forever to a wayward humanity he has cleansed and made lovely, the pattern every human marriage quietly rehearses (Revelation 19). Same-sex sexuality loses that male-female echo by substituting the sacred diversity for uniformity. To protect us from that, the Bible shelters sex under holy wings. 
By the critics’ own accounts, “Leviticus” gives its characters no resolution; it ends in unbroken dread. Christianity proclaims the opposite: God’s gracious love protects human sacredness, removes the dread of condemnation, and calls us toward sexual wholeness. Like the inverse exorcism at its center, “Leviticus” gives us the photo negative of true Christianity. We’re better off with the authentic picture.
***
Abdu Murray is a speaker, author, and attorney who specializes in addressing issues where religious faith and emerging cultural trends intersect. Since founding <a href="https://embracethetruth.org/">Embrace the Truth</a> in 2004, he has spent decades analyzing how the major religious and non-religious thought traditions have attempted to address cultural issues.
This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/introducing-upstream-a-lifestyle-and-culture-section-of-the-daily-wire" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream,</a> The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.

Film Independent Presents “Leviticus”

The Horror Movie That Takes Aim At Christianity

Christianity

LGBT

Matt Damon revealed that a woman served as his stunt double for portions of “The Odyssey,” praising her work and saying she had the “greatest arms.” 
During a recent interview with the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast, Damon said viewers were actually watching a female stunt double for one memorable scene.
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<section><a title="@happysadconfused" href="https://www.tiktok.com/@happysadconfused?refer=embed" target="_blank" rel="noopener">@happysadconfused</a>Matt Damon’s stunt double on the Odyssey was a woman<a title="♬ original sound - joshuahorowitz" href="https://www.tiktok.com/music/original-sound-7664733227759766302?refer=embed" target="_blank" rel="noopener">♬ original sound &#8211; joshuahorowitz</a></section>
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“When we did the forced perspective stuff of the Laestrygonians — I don’t know if there’s been a thing about how we did it — there were these stunt men who were all seven feet,” the actor said of the giant warriors. 
“And then they got stuntmen who were under five feet, and so my double was a woman, a female stunt performer, who had the greatest arms I’ve ever seen,” he went on. Damon also recalled hugging his stunt double in the catering tent and thanking her for “all the work she put in.” 
“So there are those shots in the movie where you see these giants looming over me, and so it was almost 100 percent my arms in the movie, but you gotta give it up where it’s due,” he said.
The double was identified as Canadian stunt performer Devyn Dalton. She replied to the clip, writing, “It was my honour to double @matt_damon_official.” 
Dalton has also appeared in TV shows, including “Once Upon a Time,” “The Last of Us,” “The Fall of the House of Usher,” and “Percy Jackson and the Olympians,” per IMDb. 
One of the biggest issues plaguing “The Odyssey” is the casting of Elliot Page, a trans-identified actress, as a male soldier. Daily Wire Editor Emeritus Ben Shapiro, who had mostly positive things to say about the film, called Page’s casting “an absolute puzzler” because the actress is “about 5’2 and 105 pounds soaking wet and has the voice of a woman. It doesn’t work.”
&#8220;The Odyssey” delivered the biggest opening weekend of Nolan’s career, generating $264.1 million worldwide, including $139.6 million internationally and $124.5 million domestically.

Matt Damon Devyn Dalton

Matt Damon’s Stunt Double In ‘The Odyssey’ May Surprise Fans

Matt Damon

I wanted to hold my opinion on &#8220;The Odyssey&#8221; until I’d actually seen it. I know, weird.
So, here it is: It’s extraordinary. It’s a grand spectacle with a fascinating moral core. As a director, Nolan is unparalleled. He&#8217;s the best director working today without a doubt, and he just keeps creating iconic movie after iconic movie. Also, the actors shouldn’t have said “Dad,” and the casting of Elliot Page is like a chipped tooth — irritating, bothersome, and unnecessary.
On a scale of one to ten, where does this movie lie? Somewhere for me between an eight-and-a-half and a nine. It&#8217;s really, really, really good. But there are certain flaws in the movie that feel enormous to the viewer — like a chip in your tooth that feels like a canyon with your tongue, even though to everyone else there’s nothing wrong.
Now, it doesn&#8217;t hew entirely to Homer’s characterization of Odysseus in the original poem. If you&#8217;re reading Robert Fagles’ version, for example, the film takes liberties with some of the characterization. But when you’re talking about ancient literature, most of the characters aren’t especially well characterized — we don&#8217;t get much interior monologue. The thematic core of &#8220;The Odyssey&#8221; isn’t particularly clear, either. You get a handful of speeches that might insert a theme here or there, but there isn’t really any sort of overarching dramatic theme other than a man trying to get home.
Now, Nolan inserts an overarching theme that I quite liked, but whether you think that&#8217;s true to the theme of &#8220;The Odyssey&#8221; is another matter. But that’s okay. You’re allowed to take liberties when adapting ancient poems.
The cinematography is beautiful — it’s well shot, and the images are so iconic that some of them are hard to get out of your head after seeing the film. Everything with the Cyclops is amazing. The scene depicting the Trojan Horse is amazing.
I do have somewhat of a problem with Nolan&#8217;s sound mixing. He does this thing in a lot of his movies where the sound of the score sometimes overwhelms the dialogue, which is a problem when you’re trying to actually hear what the character is saying. Particularly, there&#8217;s a scene where Charlize Theron, who plays Calypso, is giving us her rationale for Odysseus’ departure, and it gets eaten up by the score. The score itself by Ludwig Göransson is good, but not great. I think the score of &#8220;Oppenheimer&#8221; is better.
The acting throughout is very good, with a few exceptions, which I’ll get to in a moment. I will admit I&#8217;m a big Matt Damon stan. I think he&#8217;s great in nearly everything, and he disappears into Odysseus in a way that he doesn&#8217;t in his other movies. Robert Pattinson as Antinous is an excellent antagonist. Tom Holland as Telemachus is excellent and well cast. Anne Hathaway does a great job as Penelope.
But first, on the theme of the movie: Nolan&#8217;s &#8220;The Odyssey&#8221; is an apologia for Christian morality poured into a Greek vase.
The entire movie is rooted in what Nolan terms “Zeus’ Law,” which they keep talking about over and over in the film. The law is essentially this: treat people as you would want to be treated. But it is presented as the notion that any person may turn out to be a god — a direct rip from the Biblical precept of man being made in the image of God.
Nolan uses Zeus’ Law as the film’s moral glue: the idea is that Odysseus, in utilizing the Trojan Horse, violated Zeus’ Law and led to full-scale slaughter. He is racked with regret over the loss of his men during the Trojan War, and his sin has led to the unleashing of broader globalized sin (the &#8220;sea peoples&#8221; who don&#8217;t respect Zeus&#8217; Law and are invading surrounding areas).
This is a highly Biblical message: That sin is infectious, and that sin also affects the world at large, not just the sinner.
Odysseus must atone for that sin through self-imposed exile. But in the film, he is distraught over his crucial role in violating Zeus&#8217; Law because he, as a character, is not someone who tends to fear the gods. He&#8217;s not someone who tends to think that fate is in the hands of the gods. He&#8217;s constantly rebelling against fate, as he&#8217;s informed by one of the other characters, Athena.
But it turns out that actually he&#8217;s not rebelling against fate as much as he&#8217;s rebelling against human nature. Odysseus must learn that human nature is venal, greedy, and bad, and that he&#8217;s not in control of everything.
Odysseus must also sacrifice his own aspirations to restore the possibility of a moral universe: Because he has unleashed catastrophic violence and violated Zeus&#8217; Law — manifest in the suitors&#8217; cynical use of Zeus&#8217; Law to eat Penelope out of house and home — he must violate Zeus&#8217; Law one last time and then accept the penalty, which is exile.
In other words, when Zeus&#8217;s Law is violated, it is very difficult to put everything back together.
In the original Odyssey, Odysseus just kills all the suitors, retakes the crown, and then he has to broker a peace with all of the remaining lords. But Nolan, in order to respect Zeus’ Law, has Telemachus become the king because he hasn&#8217;t actually violated the Law yet.
It’s a clever reimagining, and I kind of love it.
Now, for the film’s flaws: a lot of conservatives are missing the Biblical forest for the woke trees.
There are five flaws with the film that people on the Right have pointed to — four of which are casting criticisms.
Travis Scott as the bard or Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy doesn’t change the story in any fundamental way. I’m not going to go crazy over those choices. Although Lupita Nyong’o is obviously a beautiful woman, Nolan goes out of his way to explain that the war wasn’t even launched over Helen’s beauty in the first place. He then underscores the point by making Helen and Clytemnestra twins — the idea being that Helen’s beauty is not unique.
Regarding Zendaya, Nolan does something super clever with her character that I loved: In a flashback near the end of the film where Odysseus is recalling the slaughter of Troy, Greek soldiers take Zendaya, who is a young woman living in Troy, and behead her in front of him. At the exact same time, Odysseus is watching a statue of Athena get beheaded. From then on, in Odysseus’ mind, the young woman beheaded in the siege is tied to Athena. Athena is Zeus’ Law in practice: any god can be a human being. Nolan cleverly weaves it into the script, and Zendaya does a fine job.
For those asking why everyone in the movie isn’t Greek: No one in the movie is Greek. Matt Damon is of Nordic extraction. He does not look Greek. Tom Holland does not look Greek. Anne Hathaway does not look Greek. If you want to make the case that everybody needs to be Greek to be authentic, I think you can make that case. But saying everybody has to be white is a lesser case because white people and Greeks are not quite the same thing.
What was actually bothersome was the use of language like “Dad” or “Mom.” It totally takes you out of it. They could have just said “father” and “mother,” and it would have worked, and as far as I’m concerned, anything that takes me out of the film is a thing that should not have happened.
Which brings us to Elliot Page.
This is an absolute puzzler of a decision by Christopher Nolan. Elliot Page’s character is a part of crucial plot points, but Elliot Page is a woman who has had surgeries to make her appear more manly, but still she is about 5-foot-2, 105 pounds soaking wet, and has the voice of a woman.
It doesn&#8217;t work.
Page’s character begins as a young, pudgy boy — which is weird — who ends up going to fight in the Trojan War in the place of Robert Pattinson’s character, Antinous. The character gets killed by the Trojans right away, and then reappears in a second crucial scene where Odysseus visits Hades and has a conversation with Page’s character about heroism in battle and how heroism isn’t really worth that much.
Coming out of the mouth of Elliot Page, the whole thing just doesn&#8217;t land. The shots are beautiful, the dialogue is good — but it&#8217;s coming out of the mouth of a woman. There&#8217;s just no other way to put it.
Now, does it kill the movie? No, of course not. But it could have been easily avoided. Elliot Page’s casting falls into the same category as the use of “Dad,” and “Mom,” because it’s an unforced error with no real rationale behind it.
Overall, I would group &#8220;The Odyssey&#8221; in the same tier as Nolan’s &#8220;Inception,&#8221; &#8220;Oppenheimer,&#8221; and &#8220;The Dark Knight Rises.&#8221; It&#8217;s not as good as the movies that are his very best, but &#8220;The Odyssey&#8221; is better than pretty much anything else anybody else is making today.
For those on the Right who were saying the movie would bomb: If conservatives want to be effective in the culture, reveling in being culturally black-pilled while a box-office hit dominates the cultural conversation is self-defeating.
This movie is going to make a fortune. It should make a fortune — it’s interesting, visually incredible, and the broader theme is very much in line with what many conservatives believe.
If you let Elliot Page kill that for you, I think you&#8217;re missing out on an incredible moviegoing experience.

BenOdysseyReview

Christopher Nolan Just Humiliated Both Sides

Ben Shapiro

Movie Review

Christopher Nolan&#8217;s “The Odyssey” delivered the biggest opening weekend of the director&#8217;s career, generating $264.1 million worldwide, including $139.6 million internationally and $124.5 million domestically, according to <a href="https://variety.com/2026/film/box-office/the-odyssey-christopher-nolan-biggest-global-debut-1236815981/">Variety</a>. 
“The Odyssey” has become the biggest worldwide opening of Nolan’s career, a record previously held by “The Dark Knight Rises” (2012), which earned $249 million, and “The Dark Knight,” which earned $198 million, as the outlet noted. 
The film&#8217;s record-setting debut comes despite pre-release criticism from some conservatives over several casting decisions. After seeing the movie, however, many have praised Nolan&#8217;s latest epic.
Several conservatives admit that despite a lot of build-up about casting decisions Nolan made, including putting in transgender-identifying actress Elliot Page as a male character and race-swapping Helen of Troy by casting Lupita Nyong’o, the movie is absolutely worth seeing. 
Ben Shapiro, Editor Emeritus of The Daily Wire, had heaps of praise for the film, saying there were flaws, but they weren’t enough to spoil the entire movie. 
“Nolan is unparalleled. He’s the best director working today, without a doubt. He just creates iconic movie after iconic movie,” Shapiro said during his review. 
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He also said Matt Damon shined as the movie’s lead. “I think he’s great in nearly everything. He sort of disappears into the part in a way that he doesn’t in a lot of other movies. He’s great as Odysseus.”
As for other casting decisions, Shapiro was also full of praise, save for a few of the more glaring choices. “Robert Pattinson as Antinous is an excellent antagonist. He’s sleazy and gross. Tom Holland as Telemachus is excellent, well cast. Anne Hathaway does a great job as Penelope,” he said.
Shapiro said Nyong’o was actually a fine choice of Helen of Troy unless Nolan was going to cast an actual Greek star in her place.
“So, I know a lot of people were like, ‘Oh my god, Lupita Nyong’o is supposed to look like Diane Kruger.’ I don’t know. Diane Kruger doesn’t look very Greek. She’s German,” Shapiro said. “Lupita Nyong’o is a beautiful woman. But here’s the thing, actually, in the script, Nolan goes out of his way to explain that the war wasn’t really launched over Helen being gorgeous.”
Shapiro did mention Page’s casting as Sinon, saying it was an “absolute puzzler” from Nolan because the actress is “about 5’2 and 105 pounds soaking wet and has the voice of a woman. It doesn’t work.”
Madeline Fry Schultz <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/go-ahead-watch-the-odyssey">reviewed</a> the film for The Daily Wire&#8217;s Upstream, calling it, “a big, glorious summer blockbuster based on a pillar of the Western canon. It explores mercy, hospitality, vengeance, family bonds, honor, and, of course, homecoming.” 
Like Shapiro, she said the issues with the film don’t outweigh the benefits. “With the ‘Odyssey’ controversy, conservatives are getting hung up on the details (some more troublesome than others) when the headline is that one of Hollywood’s best directors just made a three-hour-long film about a father returning home to his family, facing terrifying monsters and deftly wielding his bow and arrows on the way.”
“It’s beautifully shot, it has mass appeal, and there’s little in the film itself to subvert Homer’s epic tale, which is now reaching a new audience,” Schultz wrote. 
Another Upstream reviewer pointed out what many others were saying: that the film is infused with Christian themes.
“Christian morality has become so deeply embedded in Western life that even secular people treat many of its assumptions as universal. They reject Christianity as a religion while continuing to believe that compassion is superior to force, that the weak and downtrodden possess inherent moral worth, that guilt should result from cruelty, and that forgiveness rather than retaliation is a sign of strength,” Rob Henderson <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/what-christopher-nolan-couldnt-bring-himself-to-do?topStoryPosition=undefined&amp;author=Rob+Henderson&amp;category=Upstream&amp;elementPosition=1&amp;row=1&amp;rowHeadline=Top+Stories&amp;rowType=Top+Stories&amp;title=What+Christopher+Nolan+Couldn%E2%80%99t+Bring+Himself+To+Do">wrote</a>. “Nolan can’t resist placing a Christian (or secular Post-Christian) moral code within a pagan hero.”
Critics and audiences agree that, despite its flaws, “The Odyssey” is a masterpiece. It currently has a 95% critical rating and an audience score of 97%.

Conservatives Had Concerns About ‘The Odyssey.’ Now They’re Praising It.

Box Office

Hollywood

Amid the controversy over Christopher Nolan&#8217;s odd diversity casting, the director&#8217;s biggest change to &#8220;The Odyssey&#8221; has been ignored. This is not the Odysseus of Homer. He is a man shaped by the later Western tradition, especially Christian ethics and Machiavelli’s vision of human agency. That shift may make him less recognizable to scholars of ancient Greece, but it turns him into a hero today’s audiences can understand.
Three elements make &#8220;The Odyssey&#8221; feel timeless. First, it is about a journey home; the hero tries to return to the place where he began. Second, he succeeds, but his ordeal has permanently transformed him. Third, Odysseus is accompanied throughout his journey by the goddess Athena. She advises him, rescues him, and intervenes on his behalf.
The film retains these aspects of the poem. Still, as film critic Roger Ebert is credited with saying, “It’s not what a movie is about, it’s how it is about it.” In Homer, the great flaw of Odysseus is hubris. In Nolan’s film, it’s moral injury.
Some viewers have described Nolan’s version of Odysseus as suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. But <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2014-14055-003" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2014-14055-003&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1784655581680000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2yn5bZ-LTHT4libmtCBkBQ">moral injury</a> is the more accurate term. It overlaps with PTSD, but it’s not the same thing. Moral injury occurs when a person commits, witnesses, or fails to prevent an act that violates his moral convictions. In war, moral injury can arise when a person does something that violates his own ideals, loyalties, or sense of right and wrong. The result is lasting guilt. A combat veteran comes to see himself as corrupt, unworthy, or beyond forgiveness.
In the film, Odysseus describes his guilt over the violence he witnessed during the sack of Troy. He is conscience-stricken about his Trojan Horse gambit. Odysseus took an object that appeared to be a gift of peace and used it as a weapon of deception. His stratagem allowed the Greeks to enter Troy, destroy the city, and slaughter its people.
But the Trojan Horse is Odysseus’s crowning achievement. Homer’s Odysseus is a wily trickster, and a trickster would not be tormented by the fact that his trick succeeded.
During his journey, he repeatedly deceives his own men for what he believes is the greater good, and these acts clearly trouble him. The war itself is remembered as grim and pointless. Men are drafted rather than rushing eagerly toward glory.
This is not Homer’s moral universe. In the poem, the Greeks rape, rob, enslave, and pillage without displaying anything like modern guilt. We can tolerate this when reading an ancient text. It is harder to tolerate when those acts are placed directly before us on a movie screen.
This may explain Nolan’s decision. Had he shown the violence of the original story without softening it, would the audience still have been able to sympathize with Odysseus?
Consider what happens to the enslaved women accused of consorting with the suitors after Odysseus returns home. Odysseus orders them to be killed, and Telemachus hangs them. Homer does not present the scene as morally complicated. Their punishment is part of restoring order.
Modern films sometimes allow their heroes to inhabit moral worlds very different from our own. Robert Eggers&#8217;s 2022 film &#8220;The Northman&#8221; asks us to sympathize with Viking characters who obey codes that most moviegoers today would find reprehensible. But &#8220;The Northman&#8221; was a mid-budget film. Nolan made a summer blockbuster that cost hundreds of millions of dollars. A blockbuster can’t afford to depict a hero from whom audiences recoil. Eggers could let his Viking be a Viking. Nolan needs his Greek warrior to be one of us.
Yet such individuals lived in societies that existed before Christian morality reshaped the Western understanding of guilt, mercy, and the value of every human life. The moral injury that afflicts Nolan’s Odysseus belongs more naturally to the AD world than the BC one.
In the film, Odysseus grieves for the men he lost and appears to blame himself for their deaths. But Homer presents that suffering as the result of pride, fate, divine anger, and human foolishness. The original story does not depict Odysseus as a man tormented by the fear that he has violated his own moral code.
The difference is clear in the episode of the lotus-eaters. In Nolan’s film, Odysseus eats the lotus because he seeks mental relief, a kind of ancient Greek version of using psychedelics to treat combat trauma. In the poem, Odysseus does the opposite. He refuses to eat the lotus and orders his men away from it.
The ancient Greeks lived within what is often called an honor and shame culture. Moral conflict was largely external. A man worried about his standing, his reputation, his obligations, and the favor or anger of the gods. Their moral psychology was not organized around the same kind of private guilt that later became central to Judeo-Christian ethics.
Christian morality has become so deeply embedded in Western life that even secular people treat many of its assumptions as universal. They reject Christianity as a religion while continuing to believe that compassion is superior to force, that the weak and downtrodden possess inherent moral worth, that guilt should result from cruelty, and that forgiveness rather than retaliation is a sign of strength.
Nolan can’t resist placing a Christian (or secular Post-Christian) moral code within a pagan hero.
The film also gives him a more modern sense of control over his fate. He does not merely endure the will of the gods. He seems to believe that he can bargain with destiny and take responsibility for the outcome. This gives him an internal moral life that feels familiar to us.
Nolan’s Odysseus is skeptical of supernatural power. “We can’t live by omens and sacrifices,” he tells his crew. “The gods help those who help themselves.” This is not quite the Odysseus of Homer. It’s closer to the modern man who believes that fate may set the conditions of life, but human beings must still decide what to do within them.
The film makes this point through Athena. During a flashback to the sack of Troy, Odysseus sees a young Trojan priestess (portrayed by Zendaya) seized by Greek soldiers. The scene is intercut with soldiers beheading a statue of Athena inside her temple. The woman and the goddess become fused in Odysseus’s mind.
The Athena who appears to Odysseus during the rest of the film is not a goddess intervening on his behalf. She is also the memory of an innocent woman. She represents his guilt, suggesting that what drives him is not divine guidance but his own conscience.
This leaves the film suspended between realism and the supernatural. The gods might exist, but the characters are not their playthings. Human beings possess agency and bear responsibility for what they do. Calypso (Charlize Theron) identifies this quality in Odysseus when she tells him, “You’re a man who needs to control his fate.”
Machiavelli explored the same tension five centuries ago. As he wrote in &#8220;The Prince,&#8221; “I judge that it might be true that fortune is the arbiter of half of our actions, but that she still leaves the other half, or close to it, for us to govern.”
In this sense, Nolan’s &#8220;Odyssey&#8221; can be read as a vindication of Machiavelli. Writing in the 16th century, Machiavelli was not shy about his preference for the Roman pagan virtues of strength, glory, and real-world effectiveness over the Christian ideals of mercy, compassion, and otherworldly salvation.
Both pagan and Christian morality can produce admirable lives, <a href="https://www.robkhenderson.com/p/the-machiavellian-maze" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.robkhenderson.com/p/the-machiavellian-maze&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1784655581680000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0VW9M3fW15k5w0yZ2Ln5pV">Machiavelli believed</a>. But they cannot be obeyed fully at the same time. Each moral system asks something different of us, and each defines goodness in a different way.
As the political philosopher and Machiavelli translator <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/M/bo3641326.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/M/bo3641326.html&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1784655581680000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0RqEIZuz7ar32hICH_jJ2p">Harvey Mansfield wrote</a> of pagan morality, “Men cannot afford justice in any sense that transcends their own preservation.”
The most notorious metaphor in &#8220;The Prince&#8221; is as objectionable to modern readers as many scenes in Homer’s &#8220;Odyssey.&#8221; Machiavelli compares fortune to a woman:
<blockquote>“It is better to be impetuous than cautious, because fortune is a woman; and it is necessary, if one wants to hold her down, to beat her and strike her down. And one sees that she lets herself be won more by the impetuous than by those who proceed coldly. And so always, like a woman, she is the friend of the young, because they are less cautious, more ferocious, and command her with more audacity.”</blockquote>
The metaphor is repellent by modern standards. But its meaning is central to Machiavelli’s thought. Fortune favors those who act rather than wait, who impose themselves on events rather than submit passively to them.
Nolan gives Odysseus this Machiavellian impulse. He does not trust omens, sacrifices, or the goodwill of the gods. He believes that fate can be bargained with and contested. Yet the film also gives him a Christian conscience that judges the methods he uses to contest it.
This version of Odysseus feels modern and psychologically rich, but is not recognizably Homeric. In trying to make Odysseus morally legible to us, Nolan makes him less true to the world that created him. Perhaps Nolan softened Odysseus not because he misunderstood the ancient character, but because he understood the modern audience.
***
Rob Henderson, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, is the author of “<a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Troubled/Rob-Henderson/9781982168551" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Troubled/Rob-Henderson/9781982168551&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1784657341321000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0E7N7sJKfTzIT7So29tckK">Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class</a>.” His <a href="https://www.robkhenderson.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.robkhenderson.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1784657341321000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3rvkr_Sr1eCYyNdIhTYZXY">Substack newsletter</a> is sent each week to more than 80,000 subscribers.
This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/introducing-upstream-a-lifestyle-and-culture-section-of-the-daily-wire" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream,</a> The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.

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What Christopher Nolan Couldn’t Bring Himself To Do

Film Reviews

Steven Spielberg has spent much of his career asking audiences to believe in the impossible. In &#8220;E.T.,&#8221; &#8220;Close Encounters of the Third Kind,&#8221; and &#8220;A.I.,&#8221; he treated the unknown with awe rather than fear. &#8220;Disclosure Day&#8221; continues that fascination with first contact, but this time Spielberg aims higher than simply telling another alien story. He wants to ask what happens when humanity learns, beyond all doubt, that we are not alone — and more provocatively, what happens to religion and civilization itself when that truth arrives.
It is an ambitious premise. In many respects, it is exactly the kind of grand, philosophical science fiction Hollywood rarely attempts anymore. Which is precisely why it&#8217;s so disappointing that Spielberg settles for arguments that are far less sophisticated than the filmmaking surrounding them. &#8220;Disclosure Day&#8221; is a pretty film, it is often an exciting film, it is occasionally a fascinating and mysterious film. However, it ultimately undermines itself by constructing a theological debate in which only one side is allowed to be intelligent.
Visually, &#8220;Disclosure Day&#8221; is a delight for the eyes. Shot on 35mm film, the movie finds Spielberg returning to the warm, glowing aesthetic that defined much of his earlier work. There is a softness to the image that digital cameras struggle to reproduce. Neighborhood streets, dark hotel rooms, laboratories, warehouses, forests — even scenes bathed in fluorescent lighting — carry the nostalgic warmth of &#8220;E.T.&#8221; and &#8220;Close Encounters.&#8221; Rather than chasing blockbuster sharpness, Spielberg embraces the old texture.
His camera remains as inventive as ever. Tight compositions from unusual angles constantly reveal information in fresh ways without calling attention to themselves. Nothing feels static. Even simple conversations possess an energy created entirely through visual language.
As with all of his outings, John Williams&#8217; score is remarkable, and historic in this case, &#8220;Disclosure Day&#8221; is Spielberg’s and Williams’ 30th film together. The low brass themes accompanying the escalating confrontation between government factions possess genuine weight, while the recurring clarinet motif accompanying scenes of psychic manipulation gives the alien presence an eerie identity without resorting to horror clichés. At 94, Williams might have composed his final film score, and in the theater I relished it. 
All that is to say, technically, Spielberg has lost very little with age.
The performances are similarly strong across the board. Josh O&#8217;Connor gives Daniel Kellner enough humanity to remain engaging despite a screenplay that often treats him more as a passenger than an active protagonist. Emily Blunt delivers perhaps the film&#8217;s strongest emotional performance as Margaret Fairchild, whose gradual psychological collapse — and eventual rediscovery of purpose — anchors much of the movie&#8217;s emotional core.
Colman Domingo&#8217;s Hugo Wakefield is intriguing almost immediately because the audience senses they&#8217;ve arrived at the final chapter of a much longer story. Hugo carries himself like someone who&#8217;s spent decades fighting battles the audience never witnessed. Rather than feeling underdeveloped with his limited screen time, he feels mysterious, but lived-in.
The standout, however, is Colin Firth&#8217;s Noah Scanlan. Scanlan begins as what appears to be a conventional corporate villain but slowly reveals himself to be something considerably more interesting: a man convinced that secrecy is not merely necessary, but morally righteous. He isn&#8217;t protecting power for power&#8217;s sake, contrary to Hugo’s accusation. He&#8217;s protecting civilization itself — or at least he believes he is. That conviction gives the film its best dramatic tension.
Throughout &#8220;Disclosure Day,&#8221; the audience gradually realizes they&#8217;re watching the final moves of a years-long chess match between Scanlan and Hugo. The younger protagonists frequently feel less like central characters than pieces being maneuvered by two men who have spent their lives preparing for exactly this moment. Ironically, that dynamic also exposes one of the screenplay&#8217;s biggest weaknesses. Neither Kellner nor Margaret possesses much agency for large portions of the film. Events happen to them more often than they happen because of them. The word passenger gets used on more than a few occasions by Hugo to describe both Kellner and Fairchild.
Curiously, the characters with the most meaningful agency are actually their romantic partners. Kellner&#8217;s girlfriend — Jane, played by Eve Hewson — believes him, supports him, and willingly joins his increasingly dangerous mission. Margaret&#8217;s boyfriend — Jackson, played by Wyatt Russell — reacts in precisely the opposite way, attempting to stop her because he believes she&#8217;s losing her mind.
Their contrasting responses create one of the screenplay&#8217;s more subtle observations about faith, trust, and love. Unfortunately, subtlety becomes increasingly scarce once Spielberg begins engaging directly with religion.
This is where &#8220;Disclosure Day&#8221; begins sabotaging itself. Spielberg recently remarked that alien disclosure could fundamentally shake religious belief. That concern forms the central thesis of the film. The problem isn&#8217;t that Spielberg asks the question. The problem is that he refuses to let serious religious voices answer it.
Instead, nearly every explicitly religious character exists primarily to demonstrate how easily faith can be manipulated. Religious belief is repeatedly portrayed as fragile, irrational, emotionally driven, and ultimately incompatible with objective truth. It is an astonishingly simplistic treatment of a remarkably complex philosophical subject.
The film repeatedly frames the conflict as one between reason and religion, as though Christianity has spent two thousand years opposing truth itself. That simply isn&#8217;t true. Spielberg either doesn&#8217;t know this or chooses to ignore it. The result is a debate in which science argues against caricatures rather than genuine theological positions. This becomes particularly frustrating because the film repeatedly hints at far richer conversations.
One remarkable sequence involves Scanlan invading Jane&#8217;s mind and manipulating her through her own religious convictions. The conversation itself, however, collapses into another straw man. Rather than confronting sophisticated religious arguments, Scanlan manipulates simplistic ones that were designed to lose from the outset.
Spielberg clearly wants to champion objective truth and transparency, and while the audience may recognize that as a good thing to stand for, problems arise when he constructs the opposing side so poorly that victory becomes meaningless.
Oddly enough, Scanlan himself becomes the film&#8217;s most compelling victim of this weak writing. Everything about his characterization suggests tremendous intelligence and fortitude. He physically deteriorates throughout the film as repeated psychic intrusions into the minds of Jane and other protagonists gradually destroy his body. Every time he staggers, refuses assistance, and insists he&#8217;s fine, we see a man literally sacrificing himself for what he believes is the greater good.
By the film&#8217;s conclusion, when he quietly accepts defeat rather than continuing to resist, Spielberg perhaps accidentally grants him more dignity than intended. Scanlan&#8217;s final moments on screen suggest a man honestly wrestling with the collapse of his worldview rather than merely a cartoon authoritarian. 
Unfortunately for Spielberg, this isn’t the only stumbling block. For a film centered on exposing history&#8217;s greatest conspiracy, &#8220;Disclosure Day&#8221; develops an enormous plot problem that becomes impossible to ignore. The protagonists possess overwhelming evidence proving alien existence. Their chosen method of revealing it? Cable news.
Not social media, not WikiLeaks, not public document dumps. Cable news. What year does Spielberg think it is? 
The screenplay even acknowledges this problem early in the film. Kellner suggests uploading everything online. The antagonists marvel that there are no internet leaks as they hunt down Kellner and the files he possesses. Then everyone collectively decides the better option is commandeering a television broadcast.
The finale becomes increasingly absurd as virtually the entire planet appears to stop what it&#8217;s doing to watch one American cable broadcast simultaneously. Russian soldiers watch it. Civilians watch it. Military command centers watch it. The entire world apparently abandons the internet in favor of live television. It’s an extraordinarily out-of-date solution to a modern problem.
Ultimately, &#8220;Disclosure Day&#8221; is defined less by what it gets wrong than by how close it comes to greatness. The technical elements work. The music, perfectly, works. The performances work. Some of the story works. The central ideological conflict simply doesn&#8217;t.
Rather than trusting audiences to wrestle with competing visions of truth, Spielberg rigs the debate before it begins. His religious characters become foils rather than equals, reducing what should have been genuine philosophical inquiry into something much closer to a lecture.
Ironically, &#8220;Disclosure Day&#8221; spends two-and-a-half hours arguing for the importance of confronting uncomfortable truths. Yet whenever the screenplay encounters ideas that might genuinely challenge its own assumptions, it quietly looks away, as if afraid it may not hold up. The bones of a great film are here. What it needs is just a little more confidence in the audience&#8217;s ability to think through difficult questions.
A few changes might have elevated &#8220;Disclosure Day&#8221; into Spielberg&#8217;s best science fiction film since &#8220;Minority Report.&#8221; Instead, it settles for being a well-made movie that ultimately lacks the intellectual courage its premise demands.
Grade: B-
***
This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/introducing-upstream-a-lifestyle-and-culture-section-of-the-daily-wire" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream,</a> The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.

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Great Filmmaking, Lazy Philosophy: How ‘Disclosure Day’ Settles For Straw Men

Some on the Right have spent the last several months complaining about Christopher Nolan’s “Odyssey.” The controversy has largely centered on two things: transgender-identifying Elliot Page playing a male soldier (but not Achilles, as rumors suggested) and the race-blind casting, particularly the choice to feature black actress Lupita Nyong&#8217;o as Helen of Troy.
Elon Musk <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2055338961841869105" target="_blank" rel="noopener">tweeted</a> in May that “Chris Nolan desecrated the Odyssey.” Earlier this month, the X account Wall Street Mav, which has over a million followers, <a href="https://x.com/WallStreetMav/status/2073851956343312386" target="_blank" rel="noopener">predicted</a> “financial disaster.”
Just a day after its release, “The Odyssey” is already proving haters wrong. Forget the critics’ score (though that is hovering at 95%). On Rotten Tomatoes, audiences <a href="https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_odyssey_2026" target="_blank" rel="noopener">gave</a> the film an even higher 97% score. It <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/conormurray/2026/07/17/the-odyssey-earns-huge-176-million-in-previews-biggest-haul-of-the-year/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">earned</a> $17.6 million on Thursday, the day before its official release, and the numbers keep growing.
Online outrage doesn’t always translate to the real world. And in this instance, perhaps the legendary “Interstellar” and “The Dark Knight” director knew a thing or two about what audiences were craving.
“As a filmmaker, you’re looking for gaps in cinematic culture, things that haven’t been done before,” Nolan <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/unreal-first-trailer-for-christopher-nolans-the-odyssey-drops" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> in an interview last year. “And what I saw is that all of this great mythological cinematic work that I had grown up with — Ray Harryhausen movies and other things — I’d never seen that done with the sort of weight and credibility that an A-budget and a big Hollywood, IMAX production could do.”
In a year dominated by sequels — the year’s top films so far have been “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” and “Toy Story 5” — Nolan’s “Odyssey” revives a classic story for a new generation who, if we’re being honest, probably were never going to thumb through a copy of “The Odyssey” (even the Emily Wilson translation favored by liberals). It’s become popular internet slang to respond to a lack of pop culture knowledge by saying “we’re losing the ancient texts.” But when it comes to stories such as “The Odyssey,” we <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/this-one-family-habit-could-save-reading" target="_blank" rel="noopener">actually are</a>.
This means Nolan’s “Odyssey” comes at the perfect time. The archetypes, the themes, and the drama of Homer — it&#8217;s all there. Nolan <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-ancient-lesson-christopher-nolan-may-have-completely-stripped-out-of-the-odyssey" target="_blank" rel="noopener">raised some eyebrows</a> by marketing the film with the tagline “defy the gods.” If you know anything about “The Odyssey,” you should know that you cannot, in fact, defy the gods. But in the actual film, Nolan makes that clear.
“The Odyssey” is a big, glorious summer blockbuster based on a pillar of the Western canon. It explores mercy, hospitality, vengeance, family bonds, honor, and, of course, homecoming. The score is bracing, the 60-foot puppet cyclops is nightmare-fuel, and Robert Pattinson is particularly chilling as the suitor Antinous.
That said, Page’s role as Sinon (a character from Virgil’s “Aeneid”), does distract from the narrative. Nolan worked with Page on “Inception” in 2010 (a decade before she began identifying as a man), and he likes to recast actors he’s worked with before. But with just a few minutes of screen time, Sinon’s brief appearances can’t distract from the greatness of the rest of the film.
The race-blind casting, on the other hand, allows for some stellar performances, mostly notably Zendaya as Athena and Himesh Patel as Odysseus’ second in command, Eurylochus.
With the “Odyssey” controversy, conservatives are getting hung up on the details (some more troublesome than others) when the headline is that one of Hollywood’s best directors just made a three-hour long film about a father returning home to his family, facing terrifying monsters and deftly wielding his bow and arrows on the way. It’s beautifully shot, it has mass appeal, and there’s little in the film itself to subvert Homer’s epic tale, which is now reaching a new audience.
Ignore the performative “Odyssey” hate, and go enjoy the film.
***
This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/introducing-upstream-a-lifestyle-and-culture-section-of-the-daily-wire" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream,</a> The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.

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Go Ahead, Watch ‘The Odyssey’

Social media users are losing their minds after discovering how Netflix chose to describe one of the most iconic films of all time. 
The streamer’s short <a href="https://www.netflix.com/title/70020694">description</a> for the historical drama “Gone with the Wind” reads: “A 1939 American Civil War epic known for its racism. To learn more about Black lives in America, search ‘Black Lives Matter.’”
The title does not appear to be available to stream in the United States currently.
Screenshots of the description went viral on social media, with commenters saying the whole thing was no surprise from a woke company like Netflix. Elon Musk also <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2077362080286412981">reacted</a>, saying simply, “Needs to change.”
This is not the first time “Gone with the Wind” has come under attack by would-be censors. In 2020, HBO Max <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/backfire-gone-with-the-wind-sales-explode-after-leftists-target-movie-sales-of-other-classics-also-skyrocketing">pulled the title</a> from circulation amid the public outcry over George Floyd’s death. The move ended up having the opposite effect, with sales of the film exploding.
It was later <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/gone-with-the-wind-returning-to-hbo-max-will-feature-a-disclaimer">restored to HBO Max</a> and included an introduction from Turner Classic Movies host Jacqueline Stewart. She argued in an op-ed, also published in 2020, that the film deserved to be circulated so everyone could learn more about the evils of the past. 
“‘Gone with the Wind’ is a prime text for examining expressions of white supremacy in popular culture,” Stewart insisted, arguing that the film “taps into long standing myths about the gentility of the antebellum South.”
“As the title indicates, ‘Gone with the Wind’ looks back nostalgically at idyllic days that are no more (because they never were),” she continued. “By harkening back to the great old days, plantation dramas invite white viewers to imagine appealing but false pedigrees. When working class and poor white viewers identify with a noble white lineage, for example, they might be less likely to form what could be beneficial alliances with their black working class and poor counterparts.”
“Gone with the Wind” is a historical romance film based on the 1936 novel of the same name by Margaret Mitchell. It’s an enduring classic that most people believe to be representative of its time, but it has still become the subject of controversy at different points in time, especially in the last decade.
In 2023, the book’s publisher defended <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/gone-with-the-wind-publisher-calls-the-book-harmful">adding an introductory warning</a> without changing any of the book’s text.
“‘Gone with the Wind’ is a novel which includes problematic elements including the romanticization of a shocking era in our history and the horrors of slavery,” the publishers wrote at the time. “The novel includes the representation of unacceptable practices, racist and stereotypical depictions and troubling themes, characterization, language and imagery.”
“The text of this book remains true to the original in every way and is reflective of the language and period in which it was originally written,” the disclaimer went on. “We want to alert readers that there may be hurtful or indeed harmful phrases and terminology that were prevalent at the time this novel was written and which are true to the context of the historical setting of this novel. Pan Macmillan believes changing the text to reflect today’s world would undermine the authenticity of the original, so has chosen to leave the text in its entirety.”
“This does not, however, constitute an endorsement of the characterization, content or language used,” it said in conclusion.
“Gone with the Wind” is one of the best-known classic movies of all time, earning 10 Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, following its release in 1939. Hattie McDaniel, who portrayed Mammy in that film, was also the first black person ever to win an Academy Award.

Gone with the Wind

Netflix Slaps Bizarre Disclaimer On ‘Gone With The Wind,’ Plugs Black Lives Matter

Netflix

Racism

Acclaimed actor Sam Neill passed away this week at the age of 78, and while most people remember him for his iconic role as Dr. Alan Grant in the Steven Spielberg blockbuster &#8220;Jurassic Park,&#8221; my immediate thought was of one scene in the 1990 thriller &#8220;The Hunt for Red October.&#8221;
In that film, Neill played Soviet Captain Vasili Borodin — serving under Captain Marko Ramius, who was played by the late Sean Connery. When Ramius reveals his plan to defect to the United States, his loyal second-in command is ready to follow him. But knowing nothing beyond his life in the Soviet Union at the height go the Cold War, he struggles to wrap his brain around the concept of liberty.
WATCH:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="The Hunt for Red October (5/9) Movie CLIP - Living in America (1990) HD" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/P8JW75Lv25k?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
&#8220;I will live in Montana. And I will marry a round American woman and raise rabbits, and she will cook them for me,&#8221; Borodin begins, his dreams getting bigger with every word. &#8220;And I will have a pickup truck &#8230; maybe even a &#8216;recreational vehicle.&#8217; And drive from state to state &#8230; Do they let you do that?&#8221;
&#8220;I suppose,&#8221; Ramius replies.
&#8220;No papers?&#8221; Borodin is incredulous.
&#8220;No papers, state to state,&#8221; Ramius repeats.
Borodin continues: &#8220;Well then, in winter I will live in &#8230; Arizona. Actually, I think I will need two wives.&#8221;
&#8220;Oh, at least,&#8221; Ramius agrees.
Spoiler alert: Borodin is killed before the end of the film and never gets to realize his dream. His last words are, &#8220;I would have liked to have seen Montana.&#8221;
But in his real life, in his own way, Neill lived out that Soviet&#8217;s dream.
Born in Ireland, Neill moved to New Zealand with his family when he was just seven years old, and for the rest of his life, he felt more connected to his adopted home than to his birthplace.
Even after reaching the heights of fame — in major releases such as &#8220;Jurassic Park,&#8221; &#8220;The Hunt for Red October,&#8221; &#8220;Event Horizon,&#8221; and more — and building a film career that spanned more than five decades, Neill often preferred the open space and quiet he found at home, making acclaimed pinot noirs at his Two Paddocks winery.
Neill filled his life with animals, many of whom he named after his celebrity friends, joking that the names were meant to ensure that he&#8217;d never eat them. He always asked friends&#8217; permission before naming animals after them, he said, and noted that &#8220;many of them then take an interest in their namesakes. Helena Bonham Carter is always keen to know if she’s calved again.&#8221;
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&#8220;I am so honored to have a pig named after me,&#8221; actress Annette Bening told Kelly Clarkson on her eponymous show in 2024 — and then revealed the reason she&#8217;d been so tickled to have Neill recognize her in that way.
&#8220;Well, it’s Sam Neill! I mean, oh my god. I have a crush on him, I’m just going to put it out there,&#8221; she admitted.
For Neill, the move to a simpler existence was about balance. He loved acting to the very end, but it was his animals and his wine-making venture that truly made him happy. As he told the West Australian, &#8220;I’d like the vineyard to support me but I’m afraid it is the other way round. It is not a very economic business.&#8221;
As it turned out, he loved the feeling of caring for the land and creating something with his own sweat and toil.
&#8220;It is a ridiculously time- and money-consuming business. I would not do it if it was not so satisfying and fun — and it gets me pissed once in a while,&#8221; he explained. &#8220;I wanted to produce a good pinot noir that would, at the very least, be enjoyed by my family and friends &#8230; Frankly, my friends will pretty much drink anything, so this didn&#8217;t seem too hard.&#8221;
Neill was far from alone in his desire to embrace the simpler things. Story <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/weekend-plans-with-gary-sinise-the-most-patriotic-actor-in-america">after story</a> has surfaced in recent years highlighting celebrities making the move away from industry hubs such as New York and Los Angeles, particularly when it means they can raise their children away from the Hollywood bubble.
What is it about the simpler existence that&#8217;s so appealing? Maybe Neill had it right all along: There&#8217;s something truly gratifying about the idea that you can pour your own blood, sweat, and tears into a project and create something that wasn&#8217;t there before — whether it be a healthy family, your own peace of mind, or just a really good pinot noir.

SPAIN-CINEMA-FILM-FESTIVAL

The Late ‘Jurassic Park’ Star’s Life Offers A Lesson America Still Needs

Celebrities

Montana

New Zealand

Soviet Union

Disney’s live-action version of “Moana” starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson did abysmal numbers at the box office over the weekend, thanks in part to poor pre-sales and terrible reviews. 
The film brought in $43 million across 3,827 North American screens, barely making a dent in its massive $250 million production budget, which doesn&#8217;t even include the astronomical cost of marketing efforts.
Many of these remakes have earned a massive haul for Disney, notably “Beauty and the Beast” (2017) and more recently “Lilo &amp; Stitch” (2025). But there have also been some fantastic flops like “Snow White” last year. 
As of last month, &#8220;Moana&#8221; was <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/movies/articles/moana-live-action-movie-box-215720407.html">predicted to pull in</a> $80 to $105 million during its opening weekend. But those numbers dropped as its July 10 release day grew closer. 
It currently has a 33% critical score on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. “Virtually every line, beat, and song in the new movie is identical to the 2016 version, apart from a few minor punch-ups or extra comedy tags here and there&#8230; There’s no artistic or aesthetic reason for the live-action Moana to exist,” one <a href="https://www.polygon.com/moana-review-live-action-2026/">review</a> says. 
“The film doesn’t worry about novel turns. It just walks us through the familiar avenues like a dutiful tour guide. A lazy, lazy work that sullies the good name of ‘content,’” <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/film/review/2026/07/08/moana-review-lazy-disney-live-action-remake-sullies-the-good-name-of-content/">says</a> another.
“It evoked in me a similar reaction to AI slop, where I cringe at the unnerving blend of the familiar and the not-quite-right,” a third <a href="https://mashable.com/entertainment/moana-live-action-2026-review">reviewer</a> agreed.
Movie fans point out that something is lost when animated films are redone with real actors — a criticism that keeps coming up in the early reviews of Moana, too. “From start to finish, ‘Moana’ stands out as one of the ugliest films of the year. The cinematography is washed out and dull, even when it is simply attempting to capture the beauty of Motunui, shot on location in Hawaii,” one <a href="https://discussingfilm.net/2026/07/08/moana-review-heartless-remake-disney/">review</a> says. 
“There are visual gags from the original film that look bizarre in live-action, such as the way Maui repeatedly tosses Moana off her boat. The non-human characters, once full of expression and personality, have lost all their charm.”
Interestingly, the audience score on Rotten Tomatoes is far more positive, holding strong at 90% as of Monday morning. This includes verified viewers.
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&#8220;Same as the animated film. Nice summer movie, however if you’ve seen the animated film you’ve seen both!&#8221; one reviewer wrote, echoing what many others have said.
But another movie fan disagreed, writing, &#8220;Where’s all the hate coming from? Moana is a really good movie that’s [sic] best decision is to stick to the original.&#8221;
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Moana

Disney’s Latest Live Action Bombs At The Box Office

Disney's Live Action Moana Totally Bombs At The Box Office

Disney

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