Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Mike Redmond | News | July 13, 2026
Like most things these days, Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey has found itself smack in the middle of the culture wars thanks to the thin-skinned owner of Twitter having a meltdown over the casting of Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy. It’s gotten so bad that Elon Musk is just straight-up foaming at the mouth and calling historian Tom Holland a “cuck” at this point. (Ever the good lad, the other Tom Holland has apologized to the historian for getting him dragged into this mess.) As for Nolan, he’d like it known that this isn’t his first rodeo.
In a new interview with The Telegraph, Nolan revealed that he doesn’t own a smartphone, which already makes him the smartest man alive. Not content to stop there, he also learned a long time ago to never, ever give a crap about what the internet says. Based on that alone, the man is a God-tier genius in my book.
Via Variety:
“Remember, I spent 10 years of my life dealing with Batman. When I came on ‘Begins,’ writers and artists had been working on this beloved character for almost 65 years, and a lot of freighted thoughts were out there about what he represents. And what I learnt over my time on that trilogy is you can’t worry about any of that at all. What you have to do is honor the original text by interpreting it in the strongest way you personally can.”“In the end, fans of the property — even when we were doing something that was not what they would have done — enjoyed the sincerity of the attempt to put as good a version of it on screen as we could,” Nolan continued. “All I can do is make the best film I possibly can in the most sincere way. It’s very different from how anyone else would do it, but that’s what adaptation is.”
It’s easy to forget because his performance became instantly iconic through a combination of both tragedy and a devotion to the craft, but Heath Ledger being cast as the Joker was not greeted warmly. It was a huge debacle, and Nolan clearly prevailed on that one.
That said, the current flavor of detractors is a notably different beast. For starters, the richest man in the world is one of them, and he is not being subtle about his motivations. (Racism. Lots and lots of racism.) However, as is always best with any internet comment, Christopher Nolan isn’t reading any of it. He’s not recasting his movie nor is he taking notes from an idiot who thinks the Cybertruck looks like something that “Bladerunner” would drive. Nolan remains unbothered, doing what he does best, while Elon shrieks about the “woke mind virus” hiding in breakfast cereals or whatever he’s even on about anymore. Please don’t ever tell me. I already know it’s something dumb.
