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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2879 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for July 24, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Just got back from The Odyssey. What did you guys think of it apart from culture-war implications?

I'm glad that there were no gratuitous sex scenes. I guess I'm one of those sexless zoomers. I actually think they went too far in this regard. They could have gotten some topless models as sirens or had Calypso be thirstier.

Lupita Nyong'o, E. Page, and Zendaya really are miscast. It's not a meme. Charlize Theron should have been Athena.

It was pretty cool how they tied in the establishment of the oral mythic history of the Trojan War and forshadowed the collapse of the bronze age (spoiler alert: the Greeks are the sea peoples).

I'd say it's better than Dunkirk and Batman Begins but worse than all of Nolan's other films (I've never seen Tenet or Insomnia).

I just saw it and thought that it was what Nolan does well, which is do a popcorn flick that gives you enough of a "it's not just a popcorn flick, there's something greater there" while you're watching it to sufficiently give you an illusion of a deeper experience than it is, contributing to the enjoyment (for the duration of the flick). The incongruous aspects were there, but in the end the silliest stuff were the constant "people of the sea" / "age of bronze is over" style "historical" callbacks.

One thing I've seen people comment on is that it goes against the myth to cast Odysseus as a traumatized war veteran from the sack of Troy and that this, too, is a woke modernist intervention, but I think it mostly just tries to answer one of the central actual problems of Odyssey from a modern view; that we're constantly told that Odysseus is the smartest of the Greeks, but he also continously behaves like a moron, like taunting the Cyclops while escaping from it, wanting to listen to the sirens (sure, nothing happens, but it's still stupid and impulsive!) and so on. Sure, in the original culture he's smart because he comes up with clever tactics and stratagems while still being a standard Bronze Age warrior leader in other ways, but in modern storytelling a smart character needs a special reason if he's continuously behaving stupidly, and Nolan attemps to give him one. Could this have been handled better? Perhaps, but it's one way to do it.

Incidentally, when it comes to Zendaya as Athena, I think the movie very strongly suggests that "actual" goddess Athena is not actually really talking to Odysseus at all and Odysseus is just hallucinating the priestess he saw getting killed at the temple in Troy as Athena. They make sure to contrast the white, European-featured Athena statue at the temple with Zendaya-as-priestess in that scene, and no-one else seems to be seeing Athena anyhow, and the discussions are centered on Odysseus's attempts to handle that trauma.

that we're constantly told that Odysseus is the smartest of the Greeks, but he also continously behaves like a moron, like taunting the Cyclops while escaping from it, wanting to listen to the sirens (sure, nothing happens, but it's still stupid and impulsive!) and so on.

I haven't watched the film and the only version I read was a novelization for 5th graders, but those strike me less as stupid (though they are) than as conceited, arrogant, and hubristic. Intelligence and cleverness is one of those things that's jagged enough and not sufficiently anti-correlated with negative personality traits that very intelligent, high performing people being bumbling idiots in certain contexts such as things regarding their egos which are sometimes way overinflated even beyond what they deserve to be is a common cliche among humans IRL and in fiction today.

Charlize Theron

Nah, it's Angelina Jolie while we still have her. In full Javazon spear menace mode.

Apart from the culture-war aspects, which are basically minimal,

I don’t see how you can say this, considering the egregious miscasting of that (widely ridiculed on the right as obviously ugly, with attendant counter-signaling on the left against any sense of objective beauty) subsaharan as Helen, alongside a transgender Ellen Paige as Sinon. Both are ripe for CW rows which are visible on X and Reddit. Then there is the African-American coded injection of hiphop into trailers and even a rap song sung by the cast. For the right, it appears as yet more cultural vandalism mocking White heritage. There’s also the attempted woke morality lesson abusing the concept of Xenia by tying it into accepting the dissipation of the Occident by replacement migration. Not minimal on the CW front by any means.

widely ridiculed on the right as obviously ugly, with attendant counter-signaling on the left against any sense of objective beauty

I think that's harsh. I think I'd probably put Nyong'o in the top percentile of majority-sub-Saharan-African women I've ever seen. The blackwash is objectionable, and one of the multiple reasons is that absent SJ threats on the judges no SSA woman could ever win Helen's canonical status of "most beautiful woman in the world", but they don't seem to have selected for ugliness over and above the blackwash.

This is all very weak counter - “just close your eyes when passing by the vandalism and it isn’t there!” or “It only shows up in the outside promotional materials or in the post credits!” But it is there, it is noticeable, and it was placed there and praised for very culture war reasons. In interviews Nolan himself admits he constructed the film around his deceitful interpretation of Xenia. People aren’t reading into this at all, it is plainly apparent. Your reply is just pissing on someone’s leg and telling them it’s raining.

No, this kind of denial tactic died in 2016 if not before. We are not stupid, we have eyes to see. You should move on to Yes Chadding at this point, it would be less dishonest.

I haven’t watched it and don’t plan to ever watch it. What upsets me is the denial of its CW elements and the political project behind it. That denial itself is waging CW.

If you don't care, why not let us have our way?

Tenet is very underrated. It’s basically Nolan’s take on a James Bond film. In terms of woke politics, everyone should just be glad that the film didn’t present anything even remotely close to real historically accurate Grecian sexual and social dynamics.

I have a deep hatred of Tenet. While I was watching it, I disliked it. The guy's torture followed by cushy onboarding is really blatantly manipulative, the existential threat to reality conveniently justifies all collateral damage, and the bad guy is...a nihilistic Russian oligarch, who the MC has to rescue a White Woman from. This is aside from the questionable internal consistency of everything.

My (later-ex) friend who had reconfigured his personality into what was maximally appealing to college-educated white women at the time (so, a black gay communist who works in Finance) was absolutely transported. "I Identified with the main character, because he is black and I am also black. I also liked the themes of internationalism."

At that point, I went from dislike to disgust.

Well like I said, it’s a James Bond movie, so a certain level of eye-rolling CIA military-industrial-complex propaganda is just the cost of entry. The old Sean Connery ones were just as bad, you just don’t notice the subversion because it was the last generation’s brainwashing program, and theirs was a bit different.

There's the propaganda being present, and then there's explicitly approving of a film because the propaganda happens to be what you ally yourself with

Yes but that sounds more like a “@Skulldrinker’s boorish friend problem” and less of a “me problem”.

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