Oscar Bait, Audience Repellent

redstate.com

Despite its defenders' best efforts, it's pretty clear that the expectations and predictions made by many a movie-goer about "The Odyssey" are proving correct. 

As I wrote on Wednesday, people are more or less ignoring the access media critics' ratings for the movie, which are unbelievably high, and when I say "unbelievably," I mean it. No one is taking them seriously, as the film hit 99 percent "fresh" on Rotten Tomatoes before it began coming back down. It sits at 96 percent as of this writing, and I'd say that's still way too high for believability. 

People who have actually gone to see it all come back saying the same thing. Christopher Nolan's take on it is grand in scope and has amazing visuals. It's a treat for the eye, with spectacles, landscapes, and settings. Certain scenes really are impressive enough to praise, but while this is all well and good, the film tends to drop too many balls. 

For starters, the casting is atrocious, the dialogue is awful, the sound design suffers from that classic Nolan issue of making the wrong thing louder than it should be, and, too often, the movie just drags on in parts, especially near the beginning. 

The access media critics are behaving as if this movie is perfect. It's clearly not, and the only reason they're claiming it is can be attributed to the socio-political nonsense they've tacked onto the film that brought it from being a movie to a front in the culture war. Naturally, the access media is going to give it applause it doesn't deserve because the message takes precedence over the art. 

READ: Any Positive Press for The Odyssey Means Nothing, and Hollywood Can Thank Itself for That

Some of these decisions were just awful. For instance, casting Elliot Page as "Sinon," supposedly the greatest soldier to ever live, was a massive miscast that, in a logical world, makes absolutely no sense. 

Watch this clip. 

If you had taken a young boy (I know Page is a woman, just take my point at face value here) and put him in his dad's armor and told him to run, this is exactly what it would look like. The armor looks clunky, ill-fitting, and Page's run looks awkward and frantic, not controlled and confident as would befit a great soldier. 

Then, there's the casting of Lupita Nyong'o as Helen of Troy, a woman of such beauty that her face launched 1,000 ships. Yet, as you can see in this clip, she's hardly the most beautiful person in the room, and there's no grace or warmth to her. In these clips, you can see her screaming and killing. 

So many decisions were made that effectively made the film a laughing stock. 

Why?

Nolan polluted his movie for some Oscars. 

Winning an Oscar doesn't mean anything to you and me, but in the industry, it's still a one-way ticket to more money, more independence, and most importantly, respect among your peers. Yeah, it sometimes also earns you a boost in revenue for your film, but what it does to your name within Hollywood circles is far more lucrative in the long run. 

Casting Lupita Nyong'o and Elliot Page was done because Hollywood is not a place where artists rule, but a place where politics, virtue signaling, and socio-political messaging come before everything. Casting a black Helen of Troy and a trans not-Achilles is the same as almost not giving the Academy a choice in the matter. As said in the Nerdrotic daily video above by critic Chris Gore, Page will win "Best Supporting Actor" and the film will win "Best Casting." 

Whether or not it wins "Best Picture" is still up in the air, but obviously, this will be a strong contender thanks to its bastardization of an epic Western story. 

Page and Nyong’o will get their accolades, sure, but Nolan will effectively become a Hollywood darling who can say and do whatever he wants. The industry will just throw money at him, and he and the actors that follow him around can charge a premium for their services that far outweigh their actual usefulness. You think John Leguizamo, the man who constantly complains about representation and respect for Latino actors and Latino stories, is in this movie as a "Greek" for the art? No. He wants the power that comes with being attached to a multi-Oscar-winning film. 

So, Nolan sold the film's soul, so to speak, in exchange for money and power within the industry. 

But I've got news. This is like choosing where the chairs get to sit on the Titanic. This is the very thing that is turning people off to the industry as a whole, and why citizen creators are becoming the chief go-to for entertainment. 

This movie is going to have its 15 minutes, but the repercussions will be long-lasting.