Elon Musk’s tirades against Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey proved to be less epic and more ephemeral as the box office haul proved.
Musk, a fan of repeating the right-wing mantra “go woke, go broke” who blabbed about The Odyssey’s casting choices and gave baseless opinions concerning Nolan’s intentions with putting Kenyan-Mexican actress Lupita Nyong’o in the role of Helen of Troy, was proven wrong once again after the adaptation of the Greek epic raked in more than $50 million in U.S. theaters on Friday. The movie is estimated to finish the weekend U.S. run with upwards of $137 million, as reported by multiple ticket trackers. Globally, the film is on track to garner $257 million in its opening weekend, making back its $250 million production budget and more right out the gate.
Critics have been as close to unanimous as they get in praise of The Odyssey with the New York Times celebrating the film as having “passion in every frame.” Consequence called the movie “the epic we truly need right now.” The Odyssey reached a peak of 98% on Rotten Tomatoes before dipping to 95% as of Sunday morning, the highest percentage of all films by the Oscar-winning director.
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By every measure the film is a success bound for Oscar recognition, and that achievement won’t be because Nolan met an imaginary diversity quota as Musk posited in his campaign against the film.
Since January, the tech mogul has been trashing Nolan’s latest film, going as far promoting false claims about the Academy Awards’ diversity standards for nominations and saying Nolan only “wants to the awards” after casting a Black actress as Helen and Elliot Page, who is transgender, as young soldier Sinon. Musk also amplified a social media post demeaning Page’s appearance.
Musk babbled on and on about the film, saying that Nolan “lost his integrity,” is “pissing on Homer’s grave,” and has “shown total contempt for” and is “racist” against Greek people, though, as a columnist for The Atlantic pointed out, Musk “doesn’t seem terribly bothered by Matt Damon’s role as Odysseus, despite the actor’s lack of Mediterranean ancestry.”
All that just proved yet again how out of touch Musk really is.