\n<\/p>\n
Sing, muse, of the cunning Christopher Nolan, who has once again achieved the impossible. His new adaptation<\/a> of The Odyssey<\/em> has earned rapturous reviews<\/a>, a coveted \u201cA\u201d CinemaScore from audiences, and the best non-Batman-related opening of Nolan\u2019s career. It\u2019s on track to net more than $120 million domestically and more than $137 million from international markets, per The Hollywood Reporter<\/em><\/a>. That means the film has earned back its reported $250 million production budget without breaking a sweat, and is on track for its box office to reach Olympus-high heights.<\/p>\n Only a cyclops living in a cave could possibly be surprised by this news. Nolan\u2019s been on a hot streak for the past two decades. His last film, a three-hour biopic about a communist-sympathizing physicist losing his security clearance<\/a>, made nearly $1 billion. The Odyssey<\/em>\u2014a starry, action-packed, modern spin on one of western civilization\u2019s oldest stories\u2014is both more accessible and more inherently commercial than Oppenheimer<\/em> was. It would be shocking if Nolan\u2019s latest work didn\u2019t earn even more money than that best picture winner did.<\/p>\n That said, there are two notable takeaways from The Odyssey<\/em>\u2019s dominance. One: Nolan doesn\u2019t need a Barbenheimer<\/a>-style grassroots phenomenon to sell tickets. And two: Social media noise is not real life.<\/p>\n Perhaps a handful of trolls\u2014a small group that includes the richest man in the world<\/a>\u2014has sworn off Nolan\u2019s film because its cast has the audacity to feature both a Black woman and a trans man. But loud as their voices may be, the actual grosses prove that they couldn\u2019t dampen The Odyssey<\/em>\u2019s prospects. One could take this outcome as evidence that the right-wing campaign against the film actually helped it by turning the film into a liberal cause c\u00e9l\u00e8bre, if one were interested in being wrong. The real truth is that normal people, regular folks whose brains haven\u2019t been pickled by constant exposure to the worst opinions on the internet, are unaware of this manufactured controversy. And even if they have heard about it, they certainly aren\u2019t letting it influence their viewing habits.<\/p>\n In a just world, one governed by logic and reason\u2014by Zeus\u2019s law!\u2014The Odyssey<\/em>\u2019s success would also put to bed an old conservative bugbear: the notion that Hollywood movies bomb when they\u2019re overly influenced by the politics and qualities this cohort defines as \u201cwoke,\u201d a concept so broad as to be essentially meaningless. This idea, rendered later as a pithy catchphrase\u2014\u201dgo woke, go broke\u201d\u2014dates back roughly to the intense, misogynistic backlash<\/a> to Paul Feig\u2019s all-female 2016 Ghostbusters<\/em> reboot. A wave that, in retrospect, feels like a harbinger for where that year\u2019s presidential election was heading.<\/p>\n Ghostbusters<\/em> was indeed a financial disappointment; the movie lost millions of dollars<\/a>, killing a potential franchise in its cradle. But Ghostbusters<\/em> didn\u2019t fail because it was \u201cwoke.\u201d It failed because it was a bad movie<\/a>, an only fitfully funny action comedy that couldn\u2019t figure out what it wanted to be or say.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n