Beware of Geeks Bearing Grifts: Nolan’s Cowardly Betrayal of The Odyssey and the Greek People

By John Kass

Sunday July 26, 2026

The Odyssey of Homer is an intensely  personal book for me, the most important book of my life. It is the foundation of the Western cannon, and like a trail of breadcrumbs can show lost men  and women of the West the way home.

Some pilgrims latch onto the Bible for their journey, but as a boy, sadly I was not drawn to the Good Book. Instead, I was drawn to the sacker of cities, the cunning man of many devices, the Son of Laertes, Noman, the Man of Wrath, Odysseus.

I stole a children’s version of the Odyssey—Odysseus the Wanderer by well-known classicist Aubrey deSélincourt—from another child’s desk when I was 11-years-old years old. I never apologized. And I never looked back. Many immigrant sons were falling into the great melting pot when the national epic of the Greek people fell to me. The kid I stole it from was Irish. I figured that Zeus put it in my hands.

I am a Greek. I deserved it.

Loyal readers know that I was a boy when the Oak Lawn tornado tore through the Southwest suburbs of Chicago. Thirty-three people were killed that afternoon in 1967, buildings, homes, and schools were destroyed. Our parish, St Nicholas Greek Orthodox church opened its extra classrooms to the Roman Catholics in need. The Odyssey compelled me to go to down to the sea alone when I was a boy of 19, to the jungles of Guyana, the crowded violent chaos of Lagos, Nigeria,  to see the flying  fish bursting silver and red from the Atlantic, the oil fires red against the gray low-hanging sky.

I have treasured it since that time.  And though I have suffered several strokes and now must use a claw foot cane to walk, if the original owner showed up at my door angrily demanding a return of the book  I would happily fight him in the driveway,

But now there is a movie version  based on a woke feminist translation  What do I think? It is a coward’s version of a great story that has been cheapened and diluted with corporate fear. It is far worse than I feared or  expected. From the race swapping of important characters to satisfy Hollywood race/diversity police, to the imposition of a gender confused female actor portraying a thoroughly gender confused and tiny man pretending to be a woman or Greek warrior. Whew.

It is is feminist trash from a woman who hates the Greek warrior class for their male egos and male rage. Wilson despises the king of Ithaca. And I’m not the only one to say this about her. It sucks.

Both Homerically and epically.

 

 

Look at the above painting called Ulysses and the Sirens by John William Waterhouse. A copy hangs in my library. It is precious to me. Odysseus has stopped the ears of his crew with wax so he could listen alone to the song of the sirens that drive him to the verge of madness.

What is missing from Nolan’s Odyssey? Almost everything, including this exchange between Odysseus and the hero Achillies.

“I would rather be the slave of a landless barbarian than king of the underworld,” says the specter of Achillies.

Much has been made about the race swapping for the role of  Helen of Troy. And I am supposed to say that hers is the face that launched one thousand ships? Not bloody likely. Casting directors could have found many beautiful accomplished actresses to play the role who had actually read the epic poem unlike N’yongo who was busy flaunting her illiteracy during the publicity promotions for the movie.  There was not one Greek actress or actor in the entire main cast.

And what was the medieval armor on the  7 foot giants all about? It serves as the breaking of the fourth wall, for moviegoers-the fourth wall being the suspension of disbelief necessary for the audience to buy into the fact that they are seeing events from 700-800 B.C .

This mish-mosh is a result of Nolan falling in love with Emily Wilson’s feminist antiheroic translation of the epic. Viewers would have been better served if Nolan had reached out to Victor Davis Hanson America’s greatest classical historian alive today. The entire movie is depressing because it begins by stripping the heroic out of it, there is nothing to inspire men of the West in this Odyssey. And that is why ultimately it fails. There is nothing memorable about it except the gyrations of critics desperate not to be pinned in with racists for opposing the ridiculous casting decisions.

 

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About the author: John Kass spent decades as a political writer and news columnist in Chicago working at a major metropolitan newspaper. He is co-host of The Chicago Way podcast. And he just loves his “No Chumbolone” hat, because johnkassnews.com is a “No Chumbolone” Zone where you can always get a cup of common sense.

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Comments 7

  3. Read the book in high school. I am going to reread it now, doing the companion Hillsdale College online class at the same time. Then, I will see the movie.

    Revisionist history is the Marxist way

  4. This is an epically brilliant take-down of the gobshites who have destroyed Western Civilization. My compliments, Sir! Worthy of Cuchulainn, Achilles, Aeneas, Hiawatha and Siegfried, this cudgel of a critique should be wielded by every literate soul . . .especially us guys!

    Thank you, John Kass!

  5. Glad to see you back writing again, hope you are well. I won’t bother to see the film. In truth, the 1950s Kirk Douglas version “Ulysses” is still by far the best. We would show it to our students while they were reading “The Odyssey”. It also conveniently left out some parts so we could see who actually read it by the tests. Most Gen-xers and Millennials did, few Zoomers though. They seemed to lack the concentration needed to read ANY novel. Lock-down still haunts them.

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