Well what do we have here? It’s the debut of The Cutting Room, a new whenever column here on Titanquisitor. It’s like The Riot Retort, but for Hollywood; movies, television, and whatever streaming abomination they’re calling prestige content this week.

For this premiere edition, we’re looking at a little piece written by Anthony Nash of Coming Soon, who apparently gets paid to tell you that every decision Christopher Nolan makes is brilliant. Who knew that making dumbass decisions was “actually brilliant?”

So, let’s take a look at Nash’s “Christopher Nolan’s Approach to The Odyssey’s Historical Accuracy Is Actually Brilliant” masterpiece of writing.

Ever since footage was first shown off, Christopher Nolan’s upcoming movie, The Odyssey, has been questioned by some for its purported historical accuracy. Nolan recently addressed why the movie looks to be avoiding a strict adherence to accuracy, and like most decisions in his films, it will likely end up making the movie better.

Purported means not proven or questionable. If we know that casting choices go against the “historical accuracy,” then it’s no longer purported… it’s fact that it isn’t accurate to the source material. Beyond that, it can also no longer be considered “purported” if the director is having to defend his inaccuracies. And the last part of that sentence is worth looking at again.

and like most decisions in his films, it will likely end up making the movie better.

Can you glaze Nolan any harder? Not a single decision made in this film is going to result in it being a better movie in the slightest. They practically guarantee that the film ends up being ass.

Speaking to Time in a recent interview, Nolan touched on a handful of the biggest adaptation choices he’s made, including the anachronistic armor. After the first teaser trailer was released, some criticized the look of the armor in the movie, including that of Agamemnon (Benny Safdie), who wears untraditional, very large armor compared to that of everyone around him.

And with everything that has come out since then, no one cares about what armor Agamemnon wears. That’s the least offensive decision to this disaster of a film.

“There are Mycenaean daggers that are blackened bronze. The theory is they probably could have blackened bronze in those days. You take bronze, you add more gold and silver to it and then use sulfur,” said Nolan. “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.”

I mean I couldn’t possibly care less about authentic armor in this, but we have “theory” and “probably could have” being used here and that’s just not an argument against those saying it isn’t accurate.  I don’t care, most people don’t. The amount of people who would be watching this getting pissy over a darker armor is practically nill.

But when the director has to use speculative language to defend his choices, it’s not “actually brilliant.” It’s just taking creative liberties. Which can, in some instances, be fine, but doesn’t make Nolan brilliant.

Christopher Nolan’s non-traditional approach is best for the movie.

How infected with woke bullshit does someone have to be to think that a non-traditional approach to the Odyssey, a landmark piece of Western civilization literature, is best for a movie version?

Maybe telling the story as it has been depicted for thousands of years would make for a better movie. What’s wrong with just a proper movie version of it? Changing it for the so-called, yet nonexistent, “modern audience” only damages the movie and the story.

Nolan also explained many of his other choices by comparing it to the way Homer told the story of The Odyssey. For Nolan, the way Homer told the story also included depictions of how they were living in current age Greece, even though the events of The Odyssey would’ve taken place hundreds of years prior. To the director, this is just continuing the tradition of using somewhat different ideas to complete a story.

“The oldest depictions of Homeric characters tend to be depicted in the manner of people living in Homer’s time,” he says. “So there’s a pretty strong case there for portraying things that way because that’s the way the first audience received the story.”

While I think this is pretty stupid, it’s fine if you want to use that as an excuse for blackened bronze. Race swapping characters isn’t justified by that. Making the mightiest Greek warrior, even if a ghost, be portrayed by a skinny girl isn’t best for the movie. Unless your intent is to make a bastardized version of one of the greatest tales ever told.

In the days since the film’s latest trailer, more critics have come forward, this time for casting choices. A vocal minority on social media have complained about the fact that Lupita Nyong’o will play Helen of Troy in the movie, as well as the fact that Travis Scott and Elliot Page will appear in the movie.

It’s always a “vocal minority” with you people. In reality, the vocal minority is always people like yourself Anthony Nash who promote and defend woke bullshit. And then when they flop, and they always do, you rush to blame it on racist misogynist and not on the fact that most sane people, those who exist outside your little leftist echo chamber, are completely fed up and fatigued to the max with all forms of DEI in their entertainment (and elsewhere).

Like most of Nolan’s decisions though, they’ll likely end up looking just as brilliant as the overall movie will, and for a few simple reasons.

What a bootlicker. On no planet will casting Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy ever look brilliant. Nor will it help make the overall movie be brilliant. Helen of Troy, as depicted for thousands of years, was a white, blonde, Spartan queen who was “the most beautiful woman that ever lived,” “the face that launched a thousand ships.” That’s not Nyong’o, not now and not ever. And it’s not because she’s black, although yes, I do believe established character appearances should be respected and not race swapped.

Making any version of Achilles, the greatest of the Greek warriors and a demigod, a skinny little woman who thinks she’s a dude is not, in any way, shape or form, a brilliant decision. It’s a dumbass decision, and only dumbasses will defend it. It certainly isn’t going to make the story or the movie or whatever any better because of it.

But let’s look at those few simple reasons these casting decisions will end up looking brilliant and see your reasoning.

As Nolan already noted, his desire with The Odyssey isn’t to tell a 1:1 recreation of Homer’s book, but to explore the myth behind the story.

This is such a nonsensical, means absolutely nothing excuse to change stuff. “Explore the myth behind the story,” I would love for you and Nolan to explain what that even entails and how making a very famously depicted character in a Greek tale black helps accomplish that.

I wonder what your response would be if someone took the Epic of Sundiata and turned it into a movie starring Mark Wahlberg as Sundiata Keita. Would that be okay since it is “exploring the myth behind the story” and not a 1:1 recreation? Or what about a movie about Amina of Zazzau and Sidney Sweeney got cast for the role of Amina? I assume we can say that you wouldn’t take issue with it? Maybe it would be “actually brilliant?”

We both know you’d have your panties all in a bunch over either of those. Or maybe we can retell Roots with Tom Holland as Kunta Kinte. I’m sure that’d go over well.

In converting that into a movie, it isn’t strange at all to see Nolan utilizing looks and actors many thought wouldn’t be in the movie, because they serve the specific story Nolan is telling.

Making Helen black isn’t, in any way, serving the story. If, somehow, it were then that story most definitely isn’t The Odyssey and maybe Nolan should come up with an original story to tell rather than bastardizing someone else’s.

Furthermore, actors like Nyong’o are at the top of their game, so those questioning an Oscar-winning actress for being in the movie alone are a bit off.

I, like most people, couldn’t care less if she were the greatest actress who ever walked the face of the Earth (she isn’t). She shouldn’t be cast in a movie as Helen of Troy. Not ever.

We don’t have to look too far to see the last time Nolan distorted history to make a successful film, as he did with Oppenheimer. That movie didn’t rerpesent the exact history of J. Robert Oppenheimer, but it conveyed enough to get his story across in a way fit for the movie, and it’d be silly to begin doubting the legendary director now that he’s ready to tackle this Greek epic.

Taking liberties with history for the sake of a better movie story, and completely changing established people or characters is wildly different. He didn’t make Oppenheimer an African dwarf, so not representing his exact history isn’t comparable to making Helen of Troy, a damn Spartan queen and daughter of Zeus, in an overwhelmingly white society, a black woman.

Tackling a Greek epic would be casting people who could look like what would’ve been in the area at the time. A black Helen, girly Achilles, and a black rapping bard ain’t it.

And how dumb is that anyway? The Iliad and The Odyssey are epic poems written in dactylic hexameter that has a specific rhythmic meter based on syllable length. It has nothing to do with rhyme schemes or beats. They were performed by trained aoidoi who memorized thousands of lines and recited them accompanied by a lyre. That’s the tradition Nash and Nolan are apparently drawing from when they decided Travis Scott should be in this movie.

Someone in that production meeting said “Homer’s poems were performed orally, rap is performed orally, close enough” and nobody in the room had the spine to point out that’s the dumbest possible reading of three thousand years of classical literature. A symphony and a drum circle both use rhythm too. Doesn’t make them the same thing.

The meter in these poems is so complex that scholars spend entire careers analyzing it. There’s no hook. There’s no beat drop. There’s no chorus. Calling it “basically like rap” because both involve a human being speaking words out loud is the kind of argument that sounds clever to people who have never read either Homer or listened to rap with any actual attention.

Yeah, The Iliad is an epic poem, in the classical sense, not in the rhyming scheme of…

Roses are red,

Violets are blue.

Christopher Nolan’s a cuck,

And so are you.