Elon Musk’s Odyssey Crusade: The Facts vs. The Rant

Elon Musk has found his new culture war battlefield, and it’s ancient Greece. The world’s richest man has spent the better part of this week flooding X with posts attacking Christopher Nolan’s upcoming epic The Odyssey — specifically targeting the casting of Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy — and showing absolutely no signs of letting up.

The flashpoint came when a new Time magazine cover story on Nolan confirmed what had been circulating as rumor for months: Nyong’o, the Oscar-winning actress best known for 12 Years a Slave and the Black Panther franchise, would not only be playing Helen of Troy — described in Homer’s epic as “the face that launched a thousand ships” — but also her sister Clytemnestra, wife of Agamemnon, in a dual role. That was apparently all the fuel Musk needed.

Conservative commentator Matt Walsh fired the opening shot on X, writing: “Not one person on the planet actually thinks that Lupita Nyong’o is ‘the most beautiful woman in the world.’ But Christopher Nolan knows that he would be called racist if he gave ‘the most beautiful woman’ role to a white woman. Nolan is technically talented but a coward.”

Musk’s reply was two words: “True.”

It escalated from there. Over the following days, Musk declared “Shame on Chris Nolan for desecrating Homer! He will never live it down.” He agreed with a post claiming Nolan is “racist against the Greek people and their cultural heritage.” He amplified posts suggesting The Odyssey is part of a left-wing plan to “destroy Western Civilization.” He also retweeted posts mocking actor Elliot Page — who has worked with Nolan before on Inception and is rumored (though not confirmed) to have a role in the film — including an AI-generated image of Page in Greek warrior attire struggling to open a pickle jar. And when Walsh doubled down Wednesday, arguing that Hollywood would never cast a white actress as “the most beautiful woman in Africa” — floating Sydney Sweeney as his hypothetical example — Musk agreed again: “Absolutely true. Such hypocrisy in Hollywood.”

By Friday, Musk had added one more post: “Who specifically is the asshole who added DEI lies to Academy Awards eligibility instead of it just being about making the best movie?”

The Oscar Argument That Doesn’t Hold Up

This is where Musk’s central thesis starts to fall apart — badly.

His core argument is that Nolan cast diversely in order to meet the Academy’s Representation and Inclusion Standards for Best Picture eligibility. The problem? Those rules, established by the Academy in 2020, went into effect for films competing at the 2024 Oscars — meaning Oppenheimer, Nolan’s previous film, was subject to the exact same standards. That film had an almost entirely white cast and still won Best Picture and Best Director. Why? Because a film doesn’t have to cast diversely to qualify. It can meet the standards through crew composition, apprenticeship programs, audience development, executive representation, or a combination of any of the above. A film must satisfy just two of four broad criteria. Musk’s posts amplified a version of the rules that claimed casting diversity was mandatory — that’s simply not accurate.

In other words: Nolan’s Oppenheimer proves his own point wrong.

The broader criticism — that casting a Black actress as a mythological Greek figure is historically inaccurate — also runs into some obvious problems. Helen of Troy is a mythological character. Her father, in the myth, is Zeus in the form of a swan. There is no historical record of Helen of Troy. There is no DNA sample. The ancient Mediterranean world was, by the accounts of actual historians, genuinely multiethnic. As Sunny Hostin noted during a segment on The View this week, historians have long explored how Greek mythology was shaped by influences from ancient Egypt and North Africa.

Whoopi Goldberg, for her part, had a more direct suggestion for anyone bothered by the casting: don’t watch it.

What Nolan Actually Said

Nolan, who famously doesn’t carry a smartphone and keeps his work computer offline, has been characteristically unbothered — or at least performing unbothered very well. In his Time interview, he addressed the controversy around his decision to cast rapper Travis Scott as a Greek bard, defending it as a genuine artistic choice rather than a stunt to lure younger viewers.

“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,” Nolan said.

He also drew a direct parallel between his approach to The Odyssey and the methodology he used on Interstellar — rigorously researching the world he was building and then making the most informed creative choices he could. “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 told Time. “Hopefully they’ll enjoy the film, even if they don’t agree with everything. We had a lot of scientists complain about Interstellar.”

On the question of fan response and repeating certain creative tropes — Nolan is well aware he makes a lot of movies about brilliant men trying to get home to their families — the director was philosophical. “You have to be comfortable with repeating yourself, if it’s right for the project,” he said. “If you’re paying too much attention to what people are pointing out in your work, you’d be paralyzed.”

The Time journalist who interviewed him noted that even without a smartphone, “the internet has found him.”

The Movie Itself

The Odyssey is shaping up to be one of the most ambitious films in recent memory regardless of the noise surrounding it. Nolan’s follow-up to Oppenheimer — which made nearly $1 billion in 2023 and swept the Academy Awards — carries a reported $250 million budget, making it the most expensive film of his career. It was shot across multiple countries, including Greece, Italy, Iceland, and Scotland, though the production also drew some controversy for filming in the disputed Western Sahara territory occupied by Morocco.

The ensemble cast is stacked: Matt Damon leads as Odysseus, with Tom Holland as his son Telemachus, Anne Hathaway as Penelope, Robert Pattinson as Antinous, Zendaya as Athena, and Charlize Theron as Calypso. The trailer, which has already generated its own separate wave of discourse — The Hollywood Reporter‘s James Hibberd wrote that “everybody sounds like they’re from Ohio” — has done nothing to dampen anticipation. IMAX screenings have reportedly sold out a year in advance. Deadline’s summer box office preview projects it as one of the season’s top-grossing films.

A recent promotional campaign featured LeBron James and his son drawing parallels to Odysseus and Telemachus, with James narrating over footage from the film while dribbling a basketball — which, depending on your tolerance for anachronism, is either inspired or absolutely unhinged. The internet, predictably, split down the middle.

Lupita Nyong’o Doesn’t Need Anyone’s Defense — But She’s Getting It Anyway

Nyong’o herself hasn’t publicly responded to Musk’s posts. But the actress — a Yale School of Drama graduate who won her Oscar for Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave, delivered one of the most haunting performances of the last decade in Jordan Peele’s Us, and headlined A Quiet Place: Day One — has no shortage of people in her corner.

The pushback online has been swift and pointed. Many have noted the obvious: that Lupita Nyong’o is, by any reasonable measure, one of the most beautiful and talented actresses working today, and that the outrage over her playing a fictional mythological figure whose own parentage in the source material involves a god disguised as a swan is, at minimum, an odd hill to plant a flag on.

Kevin Sorbo — who played Hercules in the 1990s TV series, itself a show not exactly known for its rigorous historical fidelity — apparently weighed in against Nyong’o’s casting, and was quickly reminded of that fact by pretty much everyone on the internet.

Musk, for his part, has been doing this since January. That’s when he first posted that “Chris Nolan has lost his integrity” in response to early rumors about Nyong’o’s casting. The Time confirmation just gave him a fresh reason to go louder. A recent study found that Musk had tweeted about race approximately 850 times in recent months. This week’s posts fit the pattern.

The Odyssey opens in theaters on July 17. Whatever Musk posts between now and then, the IMAX seats are already gone.