Where Did 30% of America Get This Opinion About The Odyssey?

Nobody arrives at a take on Helen of Troy casting by accident. A YouGov poll shows what Elon Musk and right-wing media's campaign against The Odyssey actually built.

If you've somehow avoided a year of hype: Christopher Nolan's follow-up to Oppenheimer is a three-hour, R-rated IMAX adaptation of Homer's Odyssey, made with $250 million of Universal's money. Matt Damon plays Odysseus. Behind him sits most of working Hollywood: Tom Holland, Zendaya, Anne Hathaway, Robert Pattinson, Charlize Theron, Lupita Nyong'o, Elliot Page. And people wanted this thing badly.

IMAX 70mm tickets went on sale a full year ahead of release, presales crashed ticketing servers when they opened wide in June, and Variety found fans planning cross-country trips around 70mm screenings, including a couple who were reportedly delaying pregnancies over seat availability.

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The movie finally opened on July 17, and it made $124.5 million in North America and $264.1 million worldwide, the biggest global opening Nolan has ever had. The record it broke belonged to The Dark Knight Rises and had stood since 2012. Reviews came in at 95 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, the best of his career, opening-night crowds gave it an A on CinemaScore, and the verified audience score (the Rotten Tomatoes number you can only vote in if you actually bought a ticket) sits at 97 percent as of this writing.

So sure, there’s an easy piece to be written about how everyone who swore this movie would bomb turned out to be wrong, and plenty of people have already written it. I keep getting stuck on a different number, though, one that has nothing to do with ticket sales. Over opening weekend, July 17 through 20, The Economist and YouGov asked 1,602 American adults whether it was appropriate or inappropriate “for Black actress Lupita Nyong’o to portray Helen of Troy” in the film. Thirty percent said inappropriate.

Thirty percent! Over a casting choice in a movie based on a 2,700-year-old poem.

And that opinion is brand new, which is the part I can’t get past. Nobody held it a year ago, because there was nothing to hold it about; the roles hadn’t even been announced yet. Somebody had to go build it, and the building took roughly six months and happened mostly on one website. The campaign against The Odyssey failed as a boycott but worked as a proof of concept, and this piece is about both halves.