{"id":159708,"date":"2026-07-21T04:17:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-21T04:17:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/159708\/"},"modified":"2026-07-21T04:17:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-21T04:17:10","slug":"musk-seethes-as-the-odyssey-conquers-at-the-box-office","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/159708\/","title":{"rendered":"Musk seethes as \u2018The Odyssey\u2019 conquers at the box office"},"content":{"rendered":"

Director Christopher Nolan\u2019s latest film, \u201cThe Odyssey,\u201d opened<\/a> over the weekend at No. 1, earning millions more than expected.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Odyssey,\u201d based on the classic Greek myth by Homer, earned $124.5 million in North America and more than $264 million worldwide. Select IMAX showings of the film have been sold out<\/a> for more than a year.<\/p>\n

\"ChristopherChristopher Nolan, director of \u201cThe Odyssey\u201dAP<\/p>\n

The film\u2019s success at the box office comes after weeks of a bigoted right-wing campaign led by multibillionaire GOP donor Elon Musk, who railed against the film for casting people of color and LGBTQ+ actors, including Lupita Nyong\u2019o and Zendaya\u2014who are both Black\u2014and Elliot Page\u2014who is transgender.<\/p>\n

This was a sticking point for Musk, who loudly complained<\/a> on X about the actors being cast in roles portraying fictional characters like Helen of Troy and Achilles.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Musk hailed one X commenter for arguing that Nolan would \u201cbe called racist\u201d if Helen of Troy, who was said to be the most beautiful woman in the world, was played by a white actor. In another post, Musk promoted a sexist joke about Page.<\/p>\n

The bile promoted on X is part of a broader trend since Musk purchased the platform in October 2022. The algorithms powering the site have often surfaced hateful commentary and prioritized issues comporting to Musk\u2019s bigoted, right-wing views.<\/p>\n

The success of \u201cThe Odyssey\u201d once again lays bare how X has become a self-reinforcing ecosystem for misinformation and hate and doesn\u2019t reflect the real world. If Musk and his supporters were reflective of real-world opinion, it\u2019s unlikely that the film would have performed as well as it did.<\/p>\n

The stark contrast between Musk\u2019s world and the real world was revealed<\/a> in a February poll from The Argument, which showed that heavy users of X were strongly supportive of President Donald Trump, while those with a different media diet were not.<\/p>\n

\"PhotoActor Lupita Nyong\u2019o attends the premiere of \u201cThe Odyssey.\u201dAP<\/p>\n

Musk\u2019s failure to influence public opinion toward \u201cThe Odyssey\u201d comes as he continues to wield an outsized influence<\/a> within the Republican Party. Musk spent millions to help Trump win the 2024 election, and he\u2019s among the top donors to the party\u2019s 2026 campaign.<\/p>\n

Musk led Trump\u2019s failed Department of Government Efficiency and saw the value of his company, Tesla, take a beating as public opinion turned against Trump and DOGE\u2019s cruel and disastrous behavior<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The crusade against \u201cThe Odyssey\u201d is well within the tradition<\/a> of conservatives railing against Hollywood and its purported liberal values. The right has often fumed at the influence that progressive artists have had, even as conservatives have amassed massive political power.<\/p>\n

Despite its political influence, the right has been unable to produce entertainment content that attracts a wide audience or to dissuade<\/a> the public from consuming so-called \u201cwoke\u201d media.<\/p>\n

In response to that ongoing failure, the right has been working behind the scenes to buy up media conglomerates like Paramount, giving them control<\/a> over key news and entertainment outlets.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But at the end of the day, conservatives are failing to prevent people from seeing and enjoying \u201cThe Odyssey,\u201d and that\u2019s something that they\u2019ll never get over.<\/p>\n

\tWe’ll get straight to the point: The financial hardships that Daily Kos is facing this year are tough.<\/p>\n

We continue to be paywall-free. We continue to be supported by our readers, not billionaires or corporations. But we need to bring in more revenue. We are leaning on our community more than ever to help make ends meet.<\/p>\n

\t\tPower matters.<\/p>\n

Sign up for our daily top stories newsletter so you don’t miss how it’s being used\u2014and what comes next.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Director Christopher Nolan\u2019s latest film, \u201cThe Odyssey,\u201d opened over the weekend at No. 1, earning millions more than…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":159709,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[122],"tags":[73942,73943,6404,202,40649,8295,1072,203,546,73944,8734,1369],"class_list":["post-159708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-elon-musk","tag-bigot","tag-christophernolan","tag-donaldtrump","tag-elon-musk","tag-elonmusk","tag-film","tag-media","tag-musk","tag-racism","tag-theodyssey","tag-transgender","tag-x"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/116956040606654399","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159708\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/159709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}