Elon Musk’s Days-Long War on The Odyssey, Explained

Elon Musk has a lot of opinions about Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. None of them are new. But this week, they reached a new pitch — a days-long campaign on X that has included amplifying misinformation, agreeing with racist commentary, and personally attacking one of the most acclaimed directors working today.

It started in earnest after a sweeping Time magazine profile of Nolan confirmed what had previously been rumored: Oscar-winning actress Lupita Nyong’o will play Helen of Troy in the film — described in Homer’s epic as the most beautiful woman in the world — and, in a twist, also play Helen’s sister Clytemnestra. The dual casting is one of several bold choices Nolan has made in adapting the ancient poem, which hits theaters July 17 with a reported $250 million budget, making it the most expensive film of his career.

For Musk, the confirmation was fuel. He had already weighed in back in January, writing that “Chris Nolan has lost his integrity” when the casting was still a rumor. This week he went further.

What Musk Actually Said

The posts came fast. Musk replied “True” to Daily Wire commentator Matt Walsh’s claim that “not one person on the planet actually thinks that Lupita Nyong’o is ‘the most beautiful woman in the world,’” and that Nolan is “technically talented but a coward.” When Walsh escalated — arguing that if Sydney Sweeney were cast as “the most beautiful woman in Africa,” people would “literally riot” — Musk chimed in again: “Absolutely true. Such hypocrisy in Hollywood.”

He also replied “True” to a post accusing Nolan of being “racist against the Greek people and their cultural heritage.” He reposted a tweet suggesting Nolan is stomping on Homer’s grave. On Thursday, he endorsed a post claiming The Odyssey is part of a left-wing plan to “destroy Western Civilization.” And on Friday, he attacked Nolan directly: “Shame on Chris Nolan for desecrating Homer! He will never live it down.”

Musk also mocked Elliot Page, who is rumored — though not confirmed — to be playing Achilles’ Ghost in the film. Musk reacted to an AI-generated image of Page in Greek warrior attire struggling to open a pickle jar, amplifying transphobic content to his 240 million followers. Page, who worked with Nolan previously on Inception, came out as transgender in 2020.

The throughline of Musk’s argument was that Nolan cast Nyong’o to chase awards. “He wants the awards,” Musk wrote, responding to a user who claimed the Academy Awards requires diverse on-screen casting for Best Picture eligibility.

The Oscar Rules Are Not What Musk Claimed

That claim is where the misinformation comes in — and it matters.

To be eligible for Best Picture, films must meet two of four Academy diversity standards — and the criteria are far more flexible than Musk’s posts implied. The first standard can be met through on-screen representation, but it can also be satisfied if the film’s main theme centers on an underrepresented group. The second can be met by having six crew members (not just department heads) from underrepresented groups, or by having 30% of the overall crew qualify. The third standard involves studio internship and training programs. The fourth covers diversity in a film’s marketing, publicity, or distribution teams.

In other words: a film could qualify for Best Picture without changing a single casting decision. The post Musk amplified stripped all of that nuance away — and he pushed it to nearly a quarter billion followers.

Nolan’s Response: Calm, Thorough, and Completely Unbothered

Nolan, characteristically, is not playing defense on social media. He doesn’t carry a smartphone. But in his Time interview, he addressed the criticism with a kind of unhurried confidence that suggests he’s thought through every decision and isn’t losing sleep over X.

On the Travis Scott casting — Scott plays a bard — Nolan was direct: “I cast him because I wanted to nod towards the idea that this story has been handed down as oral poetry, which is analogous to rap.” On the armor controversy (critics have taken issue with Benny Safdie’s Agamemnon wearing dark, shiny plating), Nolan explained that blackened bronze was historically plausible and served a visual storytelling purpose. “With Agamemnon, Ellen [Mirojnick], our costume designer, is trying to communicate how elevated he is relative to everyone else. You do that through materials that would be very expensive.”

He compared his research process to Interstellar: “For Interstellar, you’re looking at, ‘What is the best speculation of the future?’ When you’re looking at the ancient past, it’s actually the same thing. ‘What is the best speculation and how can I use that to create a world?’” He added: “Hopefully they’ll enjoy the film, even if they don’t agree with everything. We had a lot of scientists complain about Interstellar. But you just don’t want people to think that you took it on frivolously.”

On the broader pressure of internet scrutiny, Nolan was equally measured: “You have to be comfortable with repeating yourself, if it’s right for the project. If you’re paying too much attention to what people are pointing out in your work, you’d be paralyzed.”

Matt Damon, who plays Odysseus, echoed the director’s confidence. “He’s very faithful to Homer because that’s not somebody you rewrite. But thematically, what he looked at was really interesting,” Damon said. The Time profile also revealed that this is the first feature-length film shot entirely on IMAX — a technical achievement that required, among other things, inventing a special camera casing to muffle the notoriously loud IMAX camera during intimate scenes, and building a mirror system so actors could make eye contact around the enormous equipment.

The Casting That’s Actually at the Center of This

Nyong’o is, by any measure, a remarkable choice for Helen of Troy. A Yale School of Drama graduate, she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave, built a global following through the Black Panther franchise, and delivered a quietly devastating lead performance in A Quiet Place: Day One. The idea that she’s some kind of compromise casting is, to put it plainly, absurd.

Defenders of the film have also pointed out something the loudest critics keep glossing over: Helen of Troy is a mythological figure. There is no historical record of her existence, no evidence of what she looked like, and no archaeological basis for the claim that she was “fair-skinned and blonde.” She is a character in a poem, not a historical person — which is why, as some have noted on Reddit and elsewhere, adapting her appearance is no more of a distortion than the entire concept of a film about a man escaping a one-eyed giant.

Sunny Hostin made a related point on The View, noting that historians have explored how Greek mythology was influenced by ancient Egypt and North Africa. Whoopi Goldberg was more direct: “I don’t know if you realize this, Lupita is also considered one of the world’s most beautiful women. So, I’m not sure what you’re trying to say.” She also had a message for Musk specifically: “Don’t bother to clown me, baby. I know what I look like. There’s so many things I want to say to you that are rude and awful, but I won’t do it. But know that I’m thinking it.”

Goldberg did wade into murkier territory, remarking that Musk was “OK with apartheid” growing up in South Africa, before quickly walking it back: “I don’t know if he was an ‘apartheid apologist’ and I take it back.”

The Accents, The LeBron Promo, and Everything Else

The casting controversy isn’t the only thing drawing fire. When the latest trailer dropped, The Hollywood Reporter’s James Hibberd wrote that “everybody sounds like they’re from Ohio,” noting that Tom Holland and Robert Pattinson appear to be using American accents. Hibberd pointed out that other historical epics, like Gladiator, defaulted to British accents — also historically inaccurate, but at least carrying the weight of tradition.

The trailer also features the word “Daddy” — used by Telemachus to address his father — which became its own mini-controversy online. And a promotional clip featuring LeBron James and his son as parallels to Odysseus and Telemachus, with LeBron dribbling a basketball over imagery from the film, raised eyebrows in some quarters.

None of it seems to be dampening anticipation for the actual film. Deadline reported last week that The Odyssey is projected to be one of the summer’s top-grossing movies — and IMAX screenings have already sold out a full year in advance. Nolan’s follow-up to Oppenheimer, which made nearly $1 billion and won seven Oscars including Best Picture and Best Director, was always going to be an event. The question is whether the noise surrounding it will matter once people actually see it.

Nolan, who has been dreaming about making this film for over 20 years — he was briefly in talks to direct 2004’s Troy before that fell through — seems to already know the answer. “Like the Trojan Horse,” Time’s profile noted, “The Odyssey can be enjoyed as pure spectacle — or it can be cracked open to reveal something deeply human.”

Elon Musk has yet to weigh in on the skin color of the Cyclops.