We don't know yet if Christopher Nolan's upcoming retelling of Homer's epic 'The Odyssey' will be this summer's blockbuster movie, but what we do know is it will be this summer's most controversial film. Nolan is adapting the story based on the 2017 translation by British-American classicist Emily Wilson, which uses "contemporary language that strips away archaic, patriarchal interpretations of the original text." That's academic speak hiding the fact that it's a feminist interpretation of the work, of course.
On top of that, he's cast Lupita Nyong'o as Helen of Troy and her sister Clytemnestra. While Nyong'o is a fine actress, she's not the face that launched a thousand ships. There are also unconfirmed rumors that Elliot Page, formerly the actress Ellen Page, has been cast as Achilles. Critics of the movie have slammed the casting, pointing to Hollywood's insane DEI rules for Oscar nominees as part of why Nolan has gone so far off the rails. The media and Left are defending Nolan, of course.
This reveals their hypocrisy, because if they didn't have double standards, they wouldn't have any. Not too terribly long ago, Scarlett Johansson had to back out of a project where she was cast to play a transgender prostitution ring owner in 1970s Pittsburgh. Advocates said the role should go to an actual transgender person. In the same vein, they argued that only Black actors should voice Black characters, that able-bodied actors shouldn't be allowed to play disabled people, and that casting should be more sensitive to certain communities.
Weird how all of that went out the window with 'The Odyssey,' huh? Nolan's film, based on a Greek story featuring Greek mythology, seems to have cast no Greek actors.
The Greek City Times penned a letter to Nolan about this.
Greek City Times published an open letter to Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey this week. It reads in part:
— Fandom Pulse (@fandompulse) May 27, 2026
"We did not vanish. Greek people did not disappear after the age of myth. Greek culture was not frozen in classical marble. We are still here. For more than 3,000 continuous… pic.twitter.com/RFf4fddImQ
Here's some of what the letter said:
We write to you as Greeks, not as fragments of antiquity, not as echoes from museum displays, and not as characters sealed in marble, but as a living people whose story has never stopped being written.
...
Cinema has always carried the power to reimagine ancient texts, to cross borders of language and time, and to reintroduce old stories to new generations. Homer’s Odyssey belongs, in many ways, to the shared cultural imagination of humanity. We understand the ambition behind bringing it to the screen on a global scale, and we recognise the artistic tradition of reinterpretation that has surrounded these epics for centuries.
But we also ask you to consider something that is often overlooked in modern retellings of Greek stories.
Greek people did not disappear after the age of myth. Greek culture was not frozen in classical marble. Greek language was not extinguished in antiquity.
We are still here.
For more than 3,000 continuous years, Greek identity has persisted through transformation rather than disappearance. From the Mycenaean world that gave rise to the Homeric epics, through the Classical city-states of Athens, Sparta, Corinth, and Thebes, into the Hellenistic period that spread Greek language and thought across the Mediterranean under Alexander’s successors, through the Roman and Byzantine eras where Greek remained a dominant language of administration, philosophy, and theology, into the Ottoman centuries where identity was preserved through language, faith, and community, and finally into the modern Greek state that emerged through revolution and continues today within Europe and the wider world.
...
That continuity matters when stories like The Odyssey are retold.
Odysseus is not only a universal symbol of endurance, struggle, and homecoming. He is also part of a cultural inheritance that has been carried through every one of those historical layers — retold by Byzantine scholars, preserved in manuscripts copied through the medieval world, studied during the Renaissance, and still taught, spoken, and reinterpreted in Greece today.
This is why conversations about representation matter deeply to us.
We are not asking for exclusion or limitation. We are not arguing against diversity, nor against reinterpretation. Greek culture itself has always been shaped by exchange, migration, and encounter across centuries.
What we are asking is something simpler and more human.
That when Greek stories are retold on a global stage, Greek people are not rendered invisible within them.
They even present a helpful list of the cast and nationalities. This includes Matt Damon who is American with English, Finnish, and Scottish ancestry; Tom Holland who is English; Lupita Nyong'o is Kenyan-Mexican; Charlize Theron is South African; John Leguizamo is Colombian-American; and Zendaya, who is African-American with German and Scottish ancestry.
"Where are the Greeks, or the Greek Americans in this Greek story?" they ask.
Nowhere to be found.
You don’t get Oscar consideration for casting Greeks. Simple.
— Zachary Miller (@mil60170) May 27, 2026
That's it. Greeks have fair skin, so they're White, according to the woke crowd.
It’s cultural appropriation. Casting Helen as a black woman abducted by Paris creates a subtext of slavery. It’s going to cast the Trojan War as an exercise in DEI guilt.
— Mark martin (@marcusmaxum) May 27, 2026
Bingo.
The Greeks are right! Shame on Nolan! https://t.co/AZSeZIR6bJ
— Metatron (@pureMetatron) May 27, 2026
It's funny how no one throughout the process of scripting, casting, and producing 'The Odyssey' stopped to think about the Greeks.
casting american actors that have zero connection to greek culture to meet diversity criteria that strictly appeal to american sensitivities is actually not just MORE racist, but a PURPOSEFUL taunting display of american soft power and political leverage over greece. https://t.co/2DWb7lVLwk
— 🇬🇷🏛️η απόγονος του προστάτη🏹🏺 (@alexxozydu) May 27, 2026
This writer spent time in Greece last summer. It is a beautiful country with a proud people, people who boast of its heritage and hope for its future. That the entire country and its rich history were overlooked by Nolan's team is appalling but on-par for Hollywood.
Editor’s Note: Hollywood, academia, and liberal elites are out of touch with the average American.
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