The subterranean brawl over the cultural politics of Christopher Nolan’s film The Odyssey echoes an even less important battle from a decade ago.As you may not recall, the 2016 version of Ghostbusters featured an all-female lead cast. The word “woke”, which had not yet reached peak demonisation, scarcely appeared in the yards of misogynist vitriol spilt across fan sites and social media. “There were a lot of dudes looking for a fight,” Paul Feig, the film’s director, said in 2024. “When I was getting piled on, on Twitter, I’d go back and see who they were. So many were Trump supporters.”At any rate, the film underperformed (though not hugely), and the Ghostbusters franchise moved on to another, largely male place. Ask the average punter why they didn’t attend Ghostbusters ’16 and they would be unlikely to mention rants on Twitter. The Wokebusters nonetheless claimed this as an opening victory in their war against mild levels of cultural readjustment. An El Alamein for the baby brained.A decade later, Trump has been elected, defeated and elected again. After recent skirmishes concerning Disney’s Snow White (whose star wasn’t white enough) and DC’s Supergirl (who was an actual girl), the online scolds, emboldened by imaginary triumph, took on their biggest challenge yet: Nolan’s adaptation of a foundational text in western literature.You are either familiar with all the objections or – and this is more likely – you know nothing and care less. The boats were wrong. The armour was wrong. The American accents were wrong. And so on. None of this would have taken root, however, without snipes about casting. Lupita Nyong’o, an Oscar-winning black actor, was cast as Helen of Troy. Elliot Page, a trans actor, was cast as Sinon. Both are very good. (We do not have space to ponder why there was less anger at Zendaya being cast as Athena. These things have their own illogic.)Elon Musk, who was on the front lines of anti-Nolan resistance from the beginning, this week announced that Grok Imagine, his AI platform, “will make a full-length movie of The Odyssey that is historically accurate and true to the art of Homer”. This follows a flurry of posts objecting to supposed outrages. No doubt the AI version will “fix” Nolan’s supposed errors for posterity.[ The Odyssey review: Set aside any doubts. This star-studded film is Christopher Nolan at his bestOpens in new window ]Before The Odyssey’s release, squadrons of right-wing soothsayers foretold financial and critical disaster. “My Prediction: The Odyssey Movie will be the biggest flop,” one wrote. “Even bigger than Howard the Duck and The Marvels.” A repeated argument ran that Nolan had only cast these actors to satisfy new diversity requirements at the Oscars. None of these whiners seemed to have noticed that the same director’s Oppenheimer, with an almost entirely white cast, won in 2024, under the same rules, seven Oscars, including for best picture. A recent article in Variety argued that the current rules would not disqualify a single best-picture winner over the awards’ nearly 100-year history. So forget that argument.How has all this affected The Odyssey’s box office? Not a whit. The film made €231 million – Nolan’s highest ever – on its opening weekend. Ireland registered as the country with the biggest opening per capita worldwide. Nolan’s baby has already taken more than €1 million across this island. The “experts” at Gold Derby, the venerable awards site, are, in a huge majority, already predicting it to win best picture. It is a sensation everywhere.To the surprise of nobody, the online Wokebusters have begun frantic rationalisation. The critics are “paid chuds”. The figures are inaccurate. It will fall away to nothing on its second weekend. Pay no attention. The truth is that these right-wing campaigns to bring down cultural phenomena never have any real purchase. Ghostbusters ’16 and Snow White had poor trailers and bad word of mouth. Meanwhile, an explicitly feminist film like Barbie – much attacked by online blowhards – took well over $1 billion (and became the highest-grossing ever in Ireland). These people are talking only to themselves. It is less that they are being ignored than that they are barely being heard beyond their own quadrangle.Taking on Nolan’s The Odyssey was always going to be a fool’s game. The director has a mass following. Audiences yearn for well-made spectacle. And (not that it matters) there is nothing particularly radical about the film. This is a relatively conservative, largely faithful retelling of an epic poem that reactionaries are always nagging educators to press on schoolchildren. Had it not been for the drummed-up non-controversy about Nyong’o and Page this chatter would never have reached even the low level of background noise it just about achieved. Let’s not pretend these people really care about infelicities in shipbuilding or martial costuming.I’m almost embarrassed for them.