The latest trailer for director Christopher Nolan’s summer blockbuster, The Odyssey, is being heavily downvoted on YouTube in the wake of Nolan’s controversial decisions to race-swap Greek characters and have them speak in modern vernacular, among other things.
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Despite that YouTube now hides the actual number of downvotes its videos receive, there are sites that allow users to uncover those metrics. And as of the writing of this article, estimated metrics show that reactions to this teaser stand at 368,000 downvotes to only 57,000 likes, with 4.6 million views.
That is a disastrous 86.5% percent ratio of dislikes to likes. Several commentators have claimed the number of dislikes breaks a record previously set by Disney’s doomed Snow White remake.
No such backlash affected the first few trailers, which were released over the past few months, before details began leaking out about the director’s decisions.
One of the early controversies centered around Nolan’s casting of African actress Lupita Nyong’o to play the Greek character Helen of Troy, who is famed in the original Greek tale as being the most beautiful woman in the world during the Trojan War. Even Tesla chief Elon Musk blasted the move by dismissing the casting as a mere bid for “the awards.”
The casting is so off-putting that a Greek culture news site slammed Nolan for having no Greeks at all in a film based on one of the most famous Greek tales ever written.
The film was also ripped for the casting 5-foot-one, 105-pound transgender actor Elliot Page in an as-yet-unconfirmed role. Early rumors claimed she would play Achilles; a recent alleged leak says she was cast as the Greek warrior Sinon — who is a character in Virgil’s Aeneid, not mentioned at all in Homer’s Odyssey.
This final trailer is the first glimpse of Nyong’o in her role, and it confirms Page will be shown in scenes of male combat. The two brief shots have spawned countless memes, and the top comments on the trailer are all joking about them.
“The face that emptied a thousand seats,” the most-upvoted comment on the video reads.
“Look at me, I’m the Helen now,” another says, recalling a famous line from an Ethiopian actor in the Tom Hanks film Captain Phillips.
“The Odyssey: Downtown LA edition,” another commenter snarks.
Yet another: “Gotta be a humiliation ritual for Nolan…”
“Shout out to Universal for leaving the comments on,” one viewer remarks, noting that the comment section is almost unanimously mocking the promo.
But the casting is not the only reason the film has taken hits. The costume design has been attacked as quite inauthentic, not matching the armor and clothing of the Trojan War era.
Finally, there is Nolan’s choice of dialogue. As the trailer reveals, many of the characters sound more like Gen Z hipsters speaking in modern vernacular and catch phrases than they do Greek warriors of the Trojan War period.
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