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Christopher Nolan\u2019s epic adaptation of The Odyssey<\/em> isn\u2019t out in theaters til Friday, but it\u2019s already the film that launched a thousand tweets. For months, conservatives like Elon Musk have been having racist tantrums<\/a> about Nolan\u2019s decision to cast Oscar winner Lupita Nyong\u2019o<\/a> as Helen of Troy, the most beautiful woman in the ancient world. They\u2019re also in a transphobic tizzy about Nolan casting Inception<\/em> star Elliot Page<\/a> as a Greek soldier. But angry as they were about a rumor that Page would play Achilles, the mythic hero with a bum heel, they\u2019re going to be furious about his actual role in the film\u2014assuming they see it at all. They\u2019re not going to like the greater message of Nolan\u2019s Odyssey,<\/em> either.<\/p>\n That\u2019s because the first person we see in The Odyssey<\/em> isn\u2019t Matt Damon\u2019s Odysseus, the epic poem\u2019s titular sojourner\u2014a brilliant strategist and king whose 10-year trip home from the Trojan War forms the spine of the story. It\u2019s not Anne Hathaway\u2019s Penelope, his long-suffering queen, or Tom Holland\u2019s Telemachus, his long-fatherless son. It\u2019s not misandrist enchantress Circe (Samantha Morton), sexy enchantress Calypso (Charlize Theron), or gray-eyed Athena (Zendaya), goddess of wisdom and Odysseus\u2019s celestial champion.<\/p>\n The film opens, instead, on Page\u2019s character: an infantryman named Sinon, a figure based in mythology who doesn\u2019t actually appear in Homer\u2019s Odyssey.<\/em> (Musk and co. are going to love that.) Sinon is the poor bastard responsible for telling the Trojans about the giant wooden horse that the Greeks have left behind: a horse the Greeks would simply love Troy to have as a gift, Sinon says. The Trojans kill the messenger, then haul the horse past their walled city\u2019s impenetrable gates. You can guess what will happen next.<\/p>\n Yet Nolan, a filmmaker who never met a complicated timeline he didn\u2019t love, doesn\u2019t actually show us the resulting carnage right away. After this prologue, he moves the action instead to Ithaca: Odysseus\u2019s seaside homeland, which has devolved into a hive of scum and villainy in the 20 years since its king first set sail for Troy.<\/p>\n The polytheistic Greeks abide by a strict code of hospitality, which The Odyssey<\/em> calls Zeus\u2019s Law. As the film rather didactically explains, they\u2019re obligated to treat strangers well because for all they know, those strangers could be gods in disguise. Ithaca\u2019s extraordinary circumstances have turned this religious duty into an albatross: Because she can\u2019t break Zeus\u2019s Law, Odysseus\u2019s wife Penelope must indefinitely host the ill-mannered suitors who have flooded her home, each of whom hopes to marry her now that Odysseus seems to be gone for good. (The standout of the group is Antinous, a smarmy SOB played to villainous perfection by Robert Pattinson.)<\/p>\n Penelope can\u2019t rule the kingdom alone, due to the ancient laws of misogyny. Telemachus can\u2019t officially take over as long as Odysseus may still be alive out there somewhere. And Ithaca isn\u2019t the only chiefdom that\u2019s gone to seed following the war.<\/p>\n Telemachus learns from another king, Trojan War\u2013vet Menelaus (Jon Bernthal), that there\u2019s unrest among his subjects as well. In the wake of the conflict, Sparta\u2019s citizens have become consumed with fear about unspecified \u201cpeople from the sea\u201d invading their country and destroying their way of life. The people of Ithaca, too, have heard that the \u201cpeople from the sea\u201d are coming.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n