Critical Drinker: The Real Problem with the Odyssey

**Critical Drinker** (0:00)
So good, so good, so good.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:03)
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**SPEAKER_3** (0:27)
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**Critical Drinker** (0:59)
I still stand by my overall assessment in my video, which is, it's meh. I've heard some people talk about this as being one of the greatest movies ever made.

**SPEAKER_3** (1:08)
No.

**Critical Drinker** (1:08)
And it's insane. It's like, how many movies have you watched? I define the Odyssey as a hero's journey with no hero.

**Francis Foster** (1:14)
Do you think Hollywood might actually be waking up and smelling the proverbial coffee?

**Critical Drinker** (1:20)
Yes, they are. They very much pivoted away from all that political identity politics pandering. And it took tens of billions of dollars in lost revenue, probably over a decade to finally realize it. But they got there in the end. It's just a shame that so many of these pop culture franchises that we grew up with, whether it's Star Trek, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, whatever it might be, they've all been casualties of war in the process.

**Francis Foster** (1:51)
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**Konstantin Kisin** (2:03)
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**Critical Drinker** (2:29)
Pleasure to be here again.

**Konstantin Kisin** (2:30)
It's great to have you, man. You're crushing it. Really enjoying your reviews, and there's a lot to talk about.

**Critical Drinker** (2:37)
There is, yes. It's been a busy time in movies, isn't it?

**Konstantin Kisin** (2:40)
It has been, which is somewhat exciting in many ways, but we'll get into all the different ones. The first thing you said when you sat down here, and I was like, well, I really enjoyed your review of The Odyssey, and you were like, I have got so much hate.
I thought you gave a very balanced and fair review, which actually is what generates hate on the Internet nowadays.

**Critical Drinker** (3:01)
Well, yeah. I mean, I think a lot of people won't even have bothered watching the review. They'll just assume that I hate it. And then, yeah, the reality is, like I was fairly meh on the movie overall. You know, I praised some technical aspects of it, recognized that Christopher Nolan is a very competent director.
And really, yeah, my only real issue was the lack of emotional engagement and how kind of removed and cool and sterile it is. But that's just a hallmark of Christopher Nolan movies at this point. So, yeah, it's become a very contentious film, unfortunately. It's just the way it's gone.

**Konstantin Kisin** (3:34)
Yeah. Why do you think it is so contentious?

**Critical Drinker** (3:38)
It's probably because of the race swapping and the casting choices that they've made. Because when it was first announced, everyone was pretty enthusiastic about it, myself included. You know, it's a Christopher Nolan movie. He did great with Oppenheimer. Now he's going to tackle the Odyssey, like one of the foundational stories of Western civilization. Fantastic. I'm sure he's going to do a great job of it. And then you see the first trailer that came out.
You know, you find out that Lupita Nyong'o is going to be playing Helen of Troy. Obviously, that's quite a change from what we know Helen of Troy to be. Elliot Page is going to be in it. The assumption at first was that they were going to be playing Achilles, which would have been really hilarious, but it wasn't that in the end. But still, it just generated this crazy pushback online. I'd never seen anything like it since probably Snow White, with Rachel Zegler and all the stupid things that she was saying. That same level of vitriol was suddenly leveled at the movie.