After many on social media apparently became Homeric experts in time to tear apart his yet-unreleased epic adaptation, Christopher Nolan has seen the hot takes.

Following outcry over some of his casting choices for The Odyssey, the 2x Oscar winner explained the online discourse “comes with the territory” of adapting a major piece of IP, noting he dealt with similar perspectives while bringing his version of Batman to the screen.

“But look, these conversations that happen before people see the film – they’re always irrelevant, because no one having them knows what the film actually is yet,” he told The Telegraph.

“But remember, I spent 10 years of my life dealing with Batman,” added Nolan, who helmed Batman Begins (2005), The Dark Knight (2008) and The Dark Knight Rises (2012). “When I came on to Batman Begins, writers and artists had been working on this beloved character for almost 65 years, and a lot of freighted thoughts were out there about what he represents. And what I learnt over my time on that trilogy is you can’t worry about any of that at all. What you have to do is honour the original text by interpreting it in the strongest way you personally can.

Nolan’s comments come after criticisms from the likes of Elon Musk and Matt Walsh over Oscar-winning Black actress Lupita Nyong’o’s dual casting as Helen of Troy, “the face that launched a thousand ships,” and her sister Clytemnestra.

“In the end, fans of the property – even when we were doing something that was not what they would have done – enjoyed the sincerity of the attempt to put as good a version of it on screen as we could,” said Nolan. “All I can do is make the best film I possibly can in the most sincere way. It’s very different from how anyone else would do it, but that’s what adaptation is.”

Walsh previously took to social media to complain that “not one person on the planet actually thinks that Nyong’o is ‘the most beautiful woman in the world,'” adding that Nolan “is technically talented but a coward.” Musk agreed, accusing Nolan of changing the character’s ethnicity because “he wants the awards.”

Nyong’o has since dismissed the backlash, emphasizing that they’re adapting “a mythological story,” despite many treating the text as historical record. “Our cast is representative of the world. I’m not spending my time thinking of a defense. The criticism will exist whether I engage with it or not,” she said.

Others have also criticized Nolan for casting Black musician Travis Scott as a bard and trans actor Elliot Page as Greek soldier Sinon.

An adaptation of one of the first stories in human history, The Odyssey follows Odysseus (Matt Damon) through the incredible trials and mythical encounters he faces on his decade-long journey home to wife Penelope (Anne Hathaway) and son Telemachus (Tom Holland) after the Trojan War.

The film also stars Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, Lupita Nyong’o, Charlize Theron, Jon Bernthal, Benny Safdie, John Leguizamo, Elliot Page, Himesh Patel, Bill Irwin, Samantha Morton, Jesse Garcia, Will Yun Lee, Rafi Gavron, Shiloh Fernandez, Mia Goth and more.

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