Breaking News from Pod Save America - Elon Musk Has TOTAL MELTDOWN Over The Odyssey

Episode Date: July 20, 2026

Jon Lovett and Jon Favreau discuss the Right Wing freakout over The Odyssey. CHECK OUT OUR SPONSOR:ACT BLUE: https://ActBlue.com/crooked 0:00 - The Odyssey MAGA Reactions8:34 - Ad Break9:24 - Ben Shapiro Reacts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey John. Hi there. So in the run up to the release of Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey, right-wing commentators were furious about some of his casting decisions. Let's take a look. And I think things have gone from bizarre to absurd for what could be the wokenest Hollywood movie of all time. The Odyssey is finally in theaters with a bald black woman playing the role of Helen of Troy and a four-foot-11 woman playing the role of a Greek soldier. I'm talking, of course, about Elliot Page, formerly. Ellen Page, very attractive young lady. I don't want to make it sound like Nolan is only trying to emasculate The Odyssey.

He's also trying to remove as much of the Greek and Mediterranean influence and character as he possibly can. You see, Greeks are white and white people are bad. Now, Lapidon Yango is, as you can kind of tell, from Kenya. It makes no historical sense whatsoever to cast a sub-Saharan African in this role. Fidelity to the myth is very important. It's very important. I would say, look, I would also note that the film had a monster that was something like 20 to 30 feet tall.

And I don't know where that person was cast from, but certainly wasn't Greek. Matt Damon doesn't look Greek. Do they know what Greek people look like? This is a thing. It's like, first of all, I mean, we don't have to get into it. But it actually is like a process by which when people come, like whiteness as an idea,

it's like the Greeks, like Irish need not apply. There's like a moment where at some point the current American whites are like, you're good enough to be to us to be considered white now. Like even like, you know, just like, oh, the Greeks are white. That would be a surprise to, I think, to the Greeks that came to the United States. But, but so this is the crash out. Elon Musk losing his mind on social media about this. He writes, Chris Nolan, it's nice to call him Chris.

Chris, a first name basis, yeah. Desecrated Homer and groveled on his knees just to meet the woke rules required to win an Oscar. What a worm. Now, just a little bit of a correction here, just on the facts, not that it's that important, but there are rules required to get a best picture nomination now around diversity, but they are incredibly flexible. There are these four different categories. You need to meet it into some of it.

It could be about casting, but it also could be about executives and other quality. Like, it's just not a top threshold. And he did not cast Lupita to make his movie eligible for an Oscar. It's just not true. He just, that is not.

And by the way, like Christopher, like, these guys that like spend years worshiping Christopher Nolan, they got no loyalty to the guy. Like, they can, Consider Dark Night to be one of the great movies. There's no such thing as loyalty. It's you're only as loyal as you are not woke. Right.

This is great that one of the guys who translated the Odyssey, Daniel Mendelssohn, he's like a classicist. He was like, Helen of Troy was also hatched from a swan's egg, so how literal can we really be? This is also where, like, so characters, their heights, you know, their heights are described, their hair color is described. A lot of different qualities are described.

Matt Damon is not Greek. But to Elon Musk and these guys, being white is closer to being Greek. Like being American is closer to Greek than Kenyan or by ethnicity is to being Greek. Because race is so important to them. It is so important. It is inconceivable to them that Christopher Nolan was looking to have someone extraordinary, right? Like, just an extraordinary, beautiful person who stands out in the film, in part because she is black, right?

Like, this is a who's in the film briefly, you know, it's like sort of like kind of as a bookends to the film and who is recognizable and, like, notoriously beautiful. Well, that was the, the, one of the viral tweets from over the weekend was some right-wing person being like, well, she was only in it for a couple minutes and, you know, Elliot Pace, Page was only in it for a couple minutes. So the question is, why did they make such a big deal of this

with the trailers and during all the promotion and marketing? It's like, they didn't. You did. No one made a big deal. But they're like, well, if they didn't want this backlash, they shouldn't have made a big deal of it. If they're only in it for a couple minutes, they just, it's very. That was the response.

It's very, why are you talking about the reflecting pool? So another person who was losing it, I think, in a more intricate and surprising way was the streamer Asmond Gold, who was angry about a lot of different aspects of what he was seeing. Let's take a look. The Odyssey, so the costumes for the Odyssey have been getting a lot of negative attention. This is The Odyssey. You're looking at a film that needs to make a billion dollars. This is a random guy. Just look at the armor, okay? That looks awesome. That looks super fucking cool. This movie costs $250 million, but somehow men.com has better-looking costumes.

And so any... Oh my God. What is this? The UK? Costumes are a random-ass Ulysses Ministries in Italy, by the way? Wow. Yeah. Why does this movie just look worse and worse?

It's actually crazy how many people are negative about this. It makes absolutely no sense what they've stolen from us. This would look way cooler. And I think everybody would agree on that. Menelaus armor from Troy 2000. This guy, look at this guy was a fucking tank. That looks awesome. And then now you have it like this.

So just want the guys to be, I guess, hotter. I'm not like more like the image. Look at what they stole from us. What did they steal? You just, you want hotter, bigger muscle armor man. I don't. Well, there was a whole line of criticism from the right as well that, um, that basically showing Matt Damon, uh, struggling with PTSD and showing

in the film was like a real problem, it was a weakness, because he, you know, sort of seems to regret or feels bad for, has empathy for, you know, after the Trojan horse in the war, like he, I guess he talks about that in the movie, and they're very upset about that because no PTSD, just T, just testosterone. We're about hormone therapy for people, for men at war,

so they can be manlier and tougher. But if you have to, witness the horrors of war, participate in them, then we don't want to hear about it because that's pussy shit. It's also, I know they're very upset about what Christopher Nolan has done to their favorite epic poem, Homer's the Odyssey, something they've read many times.

We're looking forward to this, are now disappointed. But the whole idea of the story, in every iteration, is the punishment of the gods visited upon Odysseus and his men as they tried to get home. Like, that's the story. It's about what happens in Troy and their efforts to get home. Like, that's the whole thing.

That's the whole fucking thing. It's the whole thing. That's why it's survived 3,500 years, one of the greatest stories ever told and been reimagined out by different cultures throughout history. The metaphor of eating the lotus flowers and avoiding your pain and losing touch with yourself and trying to shake yourself out

because you're trying to figure out where you sit between the things you've done and the person you're trying to be. you're trying to be. Just sort of themes that have been kind of revisited over and over again by different generations. No, he's got to be what? Like, just, just proud of it? It's got to be jacked and happy to kill. Is this really the equivalent of the big? There were no civilians in Troy. They're all, they all supports. They all support what the, I can't even, who's the fucking leader of Troy? It's not Agamemma. It doesn't fucking matter. It doesn't fucking matter. There's no

civilians in Troy. That's what they're, that's what they want. That's what they want. That's what they want. We're just trying to keep the straight open. Where, where are you? You're complaining about what happened in Troy, but you're not willing to talk about what happened to Helen and they're taking of Helen from Agamemnon. Potsay of America breaking news is brought to you by Act Blue. With so much at stake, campaigns need the right foundation. For over two decades, Act Blue has been the go-to platform powering Democratic candidates across the ballot by providing the digital tools to fundraise and win. And this year, they've launched an organization, organizing platform built specifically for the people doing the work.

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The work that wins those races starts this summer, and it starts with you. Get started at actblue.com slash crooked. Did you see they lost Ben Shapiro though? Yes. Now, the movie then comes out. It is a massive hit. 264 million dollar opening weekend, 95% from Critica Rotten Tomatoes,

but they're woke and they're lying to their audience. But how does the audience feel? 97% huge hit. Even with like a campaign on the right to try to criticize it and leave critical reviews too. Now, Christopher Nolan is impervious to this. And part, like, the movie is, I saw it in IMAX, 70 millimeter.

I want to see it so bad. Excellent. It is so far. So fucking good. It is so good. It is undeniable. It is also like, man, these guys on the right, it's like they want their people. You can't watch baseball.

You can't watch the movies. You got to be mad about the NBA. You can't like Christopher Nolan anymore. They're just trying to take more and more from these people. The movie is- Look what they've taken from us. But they haven't. But they haven't.

But we won't let them. So Ben Shapiro sought and here's his reaction to the movie and the controversy. It doesn't take me out of the film that there's a multiracial cast. If you want to make the case everybody needs to be Greek to be authentic, I think you can make that case. If you want to make the case everybody has to be white, I think that that is a lesser case because white people and Greek are not quite the same thing.

There we go. Seems very common sense. Yes, I would say that, like, you know, we're dancing a little bit on the head of a pin around like the race of the Greeks versus the whites. But, you know, we were having a similar kind of, you know, I think we're probably approaching it from different directions. I think that's right, right.

But he, like, the, the Elliott Page part is so, brief and is not like is just like Christopher Nolan cast people from his like players like Elliot Page has been in other Chris Nolan movies like it is he calls upon the people that he likes working with like Anne Hathaway is an interstellar and plays Catwoman like Matt Matt Damon is makes a interstellar like that he calls upon people that he thinks are great and that he can like bring in and become part of this world also It's just like the whole, I mean, the casting, did you see the Greeks are mad too?

Oh, what are the Greeks mad about? The Greeks are mad that they didn't hire Greek actors, Greek American actors or Greek actors of the thing. So everything goes back to identity. And it is, can't just, just fucking cast a movie. Right. Just cast a movie. It's, well, just like, that's it.

Who's gonna be in the movie? Cast people that you want in the movie. And the movie is amazing. And it's funny, there's an interview. Christopher Nolan does an interview with Fox News and the guy like bends over backwards to praise it. And he's sitting there watching this guy, Chris, Chris, Grisvonel is who I think is a,

he has just sort of that brutal, rye, British stare as this man fumpfers across his question. But when Chris Renollin came face to face with Fox News got nothing but praise. And the idea that these people, like, he knows what he's doing. He's making something, like, you all were furious before you saw the movie. And now you're embarrassed.

They're all like doing conspiracy theories about the scores can't be real, that kind of thing. Because they got to do some kind of cope because they got so over their skis. Because they lost. They lost this one. And the other side didn't even realize that it was a fight.

Yeah. And that is a good point. Listen, you can subscribe to this channel and help build progressive media. But I think what's even more clear is that if you want to defeat the right, you got to go see the Odyssey now in theaters. That is true.

And subscribe to us. Subscribe to us. Two things you can do. right now to defeat the right. And those are the most important things. Yeah. Right? I would say see the Odyssey, subscribe to Crooked Media on YouTube

and POTS of America on YouTube to help get this information to more people. Vote in the midterms. Yeah, vote in the midterms, complain on the internet. But mostly subscribe. Yeah.