The New Odyssey actually isn't woke

Overview

The video argues that Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey (also referred to as The New Odyssey) is less about “wokeness” and more about a Trojan-horse-style retelling of Homer. Its real controversy is theological and moral—specifically, how the film rewrites the Odyssey’s ending and what that implies about civilization, trust, and redemption.

1) A specific overlooked “internet-avoided” scene: Greek identity and a lie

The presenter focuses on a village shore raid:

• Attackers speak English, while only the robbed peasant speaks real Greek.
• When asked if they are “people of the sea,” the attackers’ reply is translated by Odysseus’s crew and then answered by Eurylochus:

  “No, we are Greeks from Ithaca.”

The presenter claims this matters because the movie later undermines that statement—sparking disagreement about whether characters (or audiences) are meant to recognize deception.

2) The “Odyssey prophecy” is reversed: inland-and-oar vs monument-and-no reign

The video argues Nolan quietly rewrites the prophetic ending from Homer’s Tiresias:

• Homer: Odysseus sails inland, makes peace with Poseidon, then rules Ithaca and dies old.
• Nolan: Odysseus is ordered to sail west and erect a monument, with no reign mentioned.

This is presented as a major shift: the film’s ending implies abandonment of home rather than restoration.

3) Two critics agree on the film’s moral “spine,” then split on what it means

The presenter compares two interpretations from:

• Jonathan Pio (metalsmith; symbolic analysis; watched twice)
• Jonas Kilker (Homer-focused; catalogs more of Nolan’s changes)

Shared conclusions (“non-controversial spine”)

1. The plot is driven by xenia (Zeus’s hospitality law) and its violation.
2. Nolan’s treatment of the Trojan Horse: not clever trickery but sacrilege/weaponization; its destruction is morally charged.
3. The suitors mirror Odysseus’s violence at Troy—hospitality becomes occupation.
4. The film explicitly frames identity through the dialogue “Are we people of the sea?” and the answer “yes” (as the film presents it).
5. The opening “cold introduction” village scene is intentional: the “barbarians” are part of the “homeward” Greek journey.

Where they diverge

• Pio’s reading (more optimistic / recovery):

  • The ending is about rebuilding home, cleaning the house, restoring order.
  • Even if civilization is morally compromised, xenia/hospitality can still prevail.

• Kilker’s reading (darker / abandonment):

  • Nolan’s inversion of the prophecy means Odysseus never returns to a real “peace with the sea.”
  • The world is ending (symbolized by the “Bronze Age” collapse), so the proper audience response becomes withdrawal and starting over elsewhere in the west.

4) Evidence via Nolan’s specific changes: Sinon, sea identity, and omitted/altered episodes

The presenter supports a “text-first” claim—that critics’ interpretations must be grounded in what Nolan actually changed—using film-structure details such as:

• “Sinon” backstory: treated as a later-tradition invention (linked to Virgil’s Aeneid) rather than Homer. Nolan uses it to reverse blame:
  • A lie by Odysseus indirectly leads to a replacement person going to war and dying,
  • while the “abdicating” coward avoids duty for years.

Other edits (as Kilker catalogs them) include examples:

• The “nobody” trick removed.
• An arrow fired in anger at the Cyclops eye rather than using the classic ruse.
• The Lotus episode repurposed to intoxicate Odysseus personally.

5) The presenter’s own synthesis: it’s a Trojan horse, but no one fully controls it

The presenter concludes:

• Pio is right about the mechanics/text (xenia, the multilingual “people of the sea” framing, Elena’s lack of causal responsibility, etc.).
• Kilker is right about the darkness, but the video argues he overreaches by treating the film as purely hopeless.
• The film’s ambiguity is intentional: Nolan constructs an ending that allows different moral interpretations depending on the viewer’s approach to redemption and pessimism.

6) Nolan’s interviews are used to justify dual readings

The presenter claims many reactions miss Nolan’s emphasis on balance:

• Nolan reportedly described the finale as balancing pessimism about causes with optimism about recovery.
• Nolan also implies that redemption is partly what the audience brings, rejecting the idea of one fixed “hidden meaning.”

The video likens this to Nolan’s broader pattern: narrative mechanisms that function differently for different viewers without directly “answering” moral questions.

7) Broader Nolan pattern: institutional collapse, sacred lies, and the rule that must not be broken

The video draws an analogy to The Dark Knight:

• Batman and Gordon agree to lie to preserve public trust after Dent’s crimes.
• That lie holds for years, then collapses when exposed.

The presenter frames this as a Nolan “leitmotif” (without directly quoting Spengler): when the trust rule between strangers breaks, civilization collapses.

8) Final unresolved question: what “clever trick” won the war?

The video ends by connecting the thematic question to possible answers:

• Pio’s suggested answer: Hiroshima
• Kilker’s possible answer: the post-war system itself

The presenter hints Nolan may have framed this earlier in Oppenheimer, tying the question to how the West won—without it necessarily redeeming anything.

9) The ending idea: “sea people” don’t know they’re lying—or no one believes them

The presenter returns to the beach villager:

• The villager asks if the attackers are “people of the sea.”
• The attackers’ response comes from someone who didn’t even know he was lying.

The presenter suggests the film’s “real idea” may be that, from the inside, “sea peoples” are simply Greeks from Ithaca going home—and that identity and honesty are fractured by what others refuse to recognize.

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Presenters / Contributors

• Jonathan Pio (critic referenced)
• Jonas Kilker (critic referenced)
• Himesh Patel (actor; referenced role as Eurylochus)
• Lupita Nyong’o (actor; referenced)
• Elliot Page (actor; referenced)
• Christopher Nolan (director; repeatedly referenced)