Asmongold TV - Hollywood never learns.. | Asmongold TV

Episode Date: May 12, 2026

Hollywood never learns.. Asmongold podcast for all of his stream highlights, competitions, reactions & more. --- Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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I think a lot of people do. Uh-oh. If there's one genre I'd love to see make a serious comeback, it's the historical epic. Swords and Sandals, gods and monsters, battles and adventures, legendary warriors and terrifying villains. I mean, Hollywood's flirted with the idea from time to time over the past couple of decades, some more successful than others. Don't worry though, 300, you'll always have a special place in my heart. True. This is Sparta!

But it seems like this year, things might finally be changing. Christopher Nolan has turned his gigantic quantum space brain away from discovering the secrets of the universe and assembled one of the biggest all-star casts in modern Hollywood for The Odyssey. A retelling of Homer's epic saga about the Greek king Odysseus and his decade-long journey to get home to his family after fighting in the Trojan Wars for another 10 years before that. Meanwhile, his wife has to keep the home fires burning and contend with the unwanted advances of men who want the crown. It's actually kind of hilarious when you look at all this on a map because a journey from Troy to Ithaca is only like 500 miles by sea and it should have taken him a couple of weeks. But man, the gods just had it in for that fucking guy.

Any, shouldn't it talk shit to Poseidon? It's a bad call. I'm home. What? Look who the fate's dragged in. Anyway, stories don't get much more epic than the audience. It truly is one of the great adventures in human history, blending together mythology, religion, monsters and the unbreakable determination of the human spirit, and bringing it to life on

screen is a challenge that will strain the very limits of modern filmmaking. But now that I've seen the trailer and I've considered the artistic vision behind this movie, I have to say my reaction was... I don't know what it is, man. There's just something about this movie that doesn't quite stir anything in me, which is pretty surprising, because I'm not really surprising, because in theory at least it's got all the ingredients for success. The kind of source material that's practically tailor made for epic Hollywood filmmaking, the kind of all-star cast that only comes together once in a generation, and a director

with a, mostly, good track record as a filmmaker. So why the fuck does it feel so bland? Well, to try and answer this, let's take a closer look at those key elements again, shall we? First of all, there's the source material. Nothing wrong there, right? Wrong. Well, the problem is that the Odyssey was originally written in ancient Greek, obviously, meaning that it has to be translated into English for it to be legible.

And what kind of story you ultimately get very much depends on which translated version you reads. In this case, Chris... I feel like this doesn't matter. I feel like it doesn't matter. Like, I mean, you have obviously the high points. There's the fucking sirens. There's like the witch. There's the fucking the cyclops.

There's like him fighting the suitors. Like, I mean, there's commonalities. For Nolan, has publicly stated that he's a big fan of the 2017 adaptation of The Odyssey, which was... What? Translated from Greek by British writer Emily Wilson. Why exactly does that matter? Well, because Emily Wilson just so happens to be a hardcore progressive feminist, who specifically set out to rewrite...

Sorry, re-imagined. The newcomer's text through a female coded, gender critical, post... What the fuck is going on? Oh my god. No! Take it back! Well, I mean like, I didn't... I thought you meant like it was a translation.

I didn't know you meant like this. Modernist lens. No. Because of course she did. Basically stretching the very limits of the original text to bend it around modern sensibilities. It's the same kind of creeping, Well, I think what he really meant to say here was bullshit that gave us 2026s Animal Farm,

a story that went from a parable about the Russian Revolution to a ridiculous, shallow, capitalism, bad piece of Hollywood slop. That is the... Is that true that they remade Animal Farm? And instead of being anti-communism, it's anti-capitalism, is that true? I heard about this. Isn't it crazy how right George Orwell was on, like, All the little things.

Because, like, I get the big things, right? Like, yeah, you could predict. But it's all the little things. That's crazy. How does that happen? Version we're likely to get here with all its gender identity, naval gazing. And if that doesn't raise a few red flags, then let's take a closer look at that all-star cast, shall we?

Now, Matt Damon and Anne Hathaway are solid enough as the two leads, at least. I mean, if I was to be super critic, I'd say that Hathaway hasn't done anything particularly significant since, well, the last time she was in a Christopher Nolan movie, and she was arguably the worst thing about Interstellar, but that's a conversation for another day. I can't say I'm ever particularly excited by an Anne Hathaway project, but holy shit, is she making a comeback this year? In 2026 alone, she's in five separate movie projects, one of which is playing in the cinemas right now. But speaking of over-exposed actors that we could all use a break from, Zendaya is in this. movie is Athena the goddess of wisdom. Hathena?

Hathena? Holy fuck man, this girl's become the female equivalent of Pedro Pascal. She is just everywhere all of a sudden, and for the life of me, I cannot understand why. I have never seen a single Zendaya performance in my life and thought, oh my god, she absolutely carried this movie. I think she was fine in Dune, but like, she was like a side care, like, whenever it's like, whenever she was on the screen, you knew that it was okay to look at your phone because nothing important was going to happen. Nobody gives a shit.

Gives a fuck. But really? I mean, like, it was fine, right? But, like, it didn't really matter. Tell me, what's your favorite Zendaya expression? The angry frown, the confused frown, or the confused angry frown? Yes, yes.

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I don't fucking know. A drummer boy maybe. Pages like five feet tall and weighs 90 pounds soaking wet, so I don't really see how they're gonna fit in amongst all those big Greek soldiers and terrifying monsters. Lupita Niyongo is widely rumored to be playing the Greek princess Helen of Troy, which of... I mean, there's no way there's... they're going to do that, right? There's no way. It turns out to be true.

We'd make about as much sense as Papa or Swedo playing Severus Snape. But hey, what can I say? It's Hollywood, baby. Thank you, Rachel. Dude, there's no way that's going to happen. I'm sorry. Like, I already did it. It's been confirmed.

I will not believe it until I see it. Because that is so ridiculous and silly. Why would you ever do that? It's gonna happen? Trust your gut. I mean, I don't know, guys. The thing that stood out for me about the entire cast in this trailer

was just how bland and mundane they all looking sounds. Every time I saw one of them, all I thought was, oh yeah, there's Robert Pattinson, there's Charlie's Theron, there's Tom Holland. Where are the larger-than-life

mythical figures of legend that should be leaping from the pages of Homer's epic to amaze us all? I do think, that, I mean, the Agamemnon with like his armor and everything, I think that absolutely farms aura. It's fucking badass. It's great. But like you do have to have like, yeah, you have, Achilles has to be like a total fucking badass, right? He does. Like I mean, like what do you? Duh,

of course. It feels weirdly subdued and underwhelming. And a big part of that decision is to have them speak with American accents using modern terminology. My dad is coming home. Oh, your dad's coming back, is he? Did he take some bitching selfies? Hope he didn't get godmogged along the way. There's a reason movies like this traditionally use theatrical English and formalized language for their dialogue. It gives them a sense of grandeur, seriousness and dramatic weight that naturally...

He's right about this. That's true. I think like I notice this a lot watching Rings of Power versus watching Lord of the Rings. Man. That was a really big thing. That was a really big difference. That's a crazy big difference. To the epic story they're trying to tell. Having your actors talk like they just walked in off the street in downtown L.A.

just feels weirdly lazy and immersion breaking. And before anyone chimes in with little pearls of wisdom like, Drinker, you know as well as I do, they would have spoken Greek in a story like this. So why does it even matter what accents they use? Well, if somebody says that, they're obviously not engaging in good faith. they don't really care about it. They're just lying to you in order to push their agenda. Everybody knows why.

Everybody knows what the reasoning is. So if you're intentionally trying to misunderstand it, like you can't convince a person like that because they've already made up their mind. Hypothetical straw man, we all know the language they would have spoken, but we also know that having your entire cast learn a whole new language, just so the audience can sit through three hours of subtitles,

is neither practical nor logical. Elliot Page is Achilles. That doesn't mean that you have to go in completely the other direction. There's no way Elliot Page is Achilles. I'm sorry, I will not believe that. And give us shit like this. No way. And this all brings me back to the man at the center of all of this.

Christopher Nolan, the director and writer. Now, I know the man has a fan base so rabidly loyal that they make Snyder Bros look like fucking Normies, and he's giving us some fascinating films to chew over in his time. He's made a number of great movies, I think. think? He has. I mean, like, I... To be honest here, the guy can also be his own worst enemy at times. Sometimes he really is just too smart for his own goods. Rightly or wrongly, he's developed a reputation as a clinical, intellectual and slightly sterile kind of director, a master of ideas who

can't seem to wrap his head around simple humanity. And I get the impression that's always chafed at him, especially with his more recent movies where it feels like he's got something to prove. Like the weirdly out of place love scenes in Oppenheimer that feels like two androids replicating their understanding of a human relationship. The man definitely has a niche but character-driven historical epics don't seem to be it. And with Odyssey, it's like he's saying, see, there's more to me than sci-fi thrillers and slightly overrated superhero movies. And I don't know, man, from the casting to the dialogue to the bleak washed-out cinematography,

I can't shake the feeling that he just isn't the right man to direct a movie like this. I mean, shit, maybe I'm totally wrong on this one. Maybe the Odyssey will be the crowning achievement in Nolan's career and raking more money than Avatar, or maybe it'll time. I think that if you're doing race swaps with characters, you're going to have a lot of problems. I don't think that there's anybody who's actually asking for race swaps. That's the big issue is that. So here's the reason why race swapping is bad. Race swapping is bad.

And also the person playing, if that's actually Helen of Troy, for example, right? I mean, like, number one, like, I would say that on average, like, I don't mean to be rude, right? But, like, I mean, I don't think that she would, like, I mean, I'm sure everybody's attracted to different people. But, like, she's not hot enough to be hell of Troy. I mean, like, let's be honest, guys. Like, it's not a race thing. Like, it was Hallie Berry, people would understand it. But, like, she's definitely not.

So, like, what are you doing? What are you doing something that everybody knows is bullshit? And so it's a Martin, yeah, Brad Pitt is Martin Luther King. Exactly. And so whenever you see something like that and you see somebody in that movie that's this way, it's an immediate immersion break because it reminds you of the fact that you're watching something that was made for modern audiences. You're watching something and the reason why she is in that role playing that character in this way is because of a social reason that the director invented in order to put into the movie. So it reminds you immediately that you're watching a TV show because it becomes unbelievable. Like obviously you're not going to start the entire Trojan War over then. And also, by the way, like very clearly there wouldn't be a person that's black. There, Helen of Troy wasn't black.

Everybody knows this. Like, what are we talking about? So you're inventing these like historical lies, right? And I think that it's being done in order to push a narrative. I think that overwhelmingly you have this narrative being pushed regularly that, you know, these other forms of beauty and attraction are greater or more morally. They have like more of a moral foundation or they're being more rep. Staple's preferred business membership built for busy business owners because you've got bigger things to think about.

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Presented in media in order to make people have this viewpoint and in order to make people like this type of person. and I think it's very problematic. I do because it's being pushed on people. Or not to be his own personal albatross. Or shoving it on our faces. Yeah, exactly. It's very odd. And that's another big issue too, right? Where you have every single time that you do one of these forms of race swapping, it only happens in one direction. And it's only for characters that are generally completely universally good or seen as like a high, you know, a high value. you are high status character, something like, for example, Athena or Helen of Troy, which are both,

like, you know, very highly regarded for different reasons. So that's, I think, the problem is that not only are you doing race swapping, but you're doing it in a dimension that is very clearly trying to push an agenda. Time, as always will tell, but I'll be interested to see how it pans out one way or the other. Anyway, that's all I've got for today. Go away now. swap right now. Yeah. And so it's racially charged. It is. It's racially charged and I don't I don't think people will like that.

And like I don't, I think that movie will be successful. Like I'll link you guys the video. It's a critical drinker video. I'll watch them all the time. But soon as you start seeing OnlyFans models playing these roles, good. I mean, you should have, like there's, I've got a list of like my top 250 OnlyFans models

and Instagram girls that I think should play Helen of Troy. Yeah. Christopher Nolan could just DM me and I can give him my list. And so, yeah, only 250. Exactly, right? And so, no, I have, listen, there's no problem with having something like that. That's a better idea. And so anyway, and can we get the list?

Yeah, just look at my following. So people were retards, Avail of Hollywood was lifted six years ago and people are still wondering why directors race and gender swap. Well, what I'm saying is that whenever you're making one of these swaps, I think that you lose the trust of your audience. you lose the trust of your audience and you make the audience angry at you and resent you. And it doesn't really matter. Helen was a ho. She had many lovers, but her husband? Yeah, of course it matters. Helen of Troy was regarded for being ridiculously, insanely beautiful,

and they started an entire war over her. If you put a person inside of that role that does not embody conventional beauty standards, you're doing it for a political and a social reason. That's the reason why. and anybody looking at it, if you're not seeing that, you're intentionally trying not to. That's just the way it is. It's beautiful. Yeah, exactly. And so, and I was trying to, yeah, exactly, you're playing games. Yeah, I was going to look at like maybe one other thing, and then I'll start doing it.

It wasn't about Helen. It was about them plying her getting butt hurt. Yeah, I guess so, right? And they don't care. They have all the money. Sure. I'm sure there are other people auditioning and they didn't get the role period. Yeah, exactly.

And I think that you make decisions like that for a social political reason. And I don't want to see any other explanation for it. It's so obvious. And don't let people gaslight you into thinking that, oh, no, this is normal or something like that. It's probably being done for a social reason. In Toronto, every arrival is a statement. And nothing says it better than this. Cadillac Optic was the number one selling luxury EV in Canada for 2025.

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