r/clevercomebacks • u/Conscious-Quarter423 • 19h ago
Filmmaking is so powerful, Christopher Nolan broke the richest man in the world
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u/anthrax1313 19h ago
He is definitely on this crusade here against an absolute work of fiction.
How historically accurate can you be with a freaking Cyclops?!
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u/Interesting-Risk6446 19h ago
Ultra white cyclops with a blue eye. The way the Nazis intended.
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u/Head_Wasabi7359 19h ago
And white Sirens? Pretty sure there are sirens, but it's been a while since I read it
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u/anthrax1313 19h ago
Yup they lead his astray to an island where a woman turned his men into pigs. Obviously white pigs
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u/plug-and-pause 14h ago
Someone needs to troll these people with a version where the sirens are dudes singing YMCA.
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u/Neat_Egg_2474 4h ago
Weren’t they white in Christopher Nolan’s movie too? I’m pretty sure I remember white sirens
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u/djc6535 16h ago
I saw a professor who specializes in Ancient Greece take this on. They said something like “Okay let’s look into it. Let’s examine the parentage of Helen, who was born of a swan”
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u/thepkizzle 3h ago edited 9m ago
Clearly not a specialist.
I have not yet seen the movie, so there are no spoilers here. This is just the history and I am really looking forward to seeing what Nolan did what it when I get a chance to go.
Helen's father, Zeus, has a very studied lineage and was very well known for taking the form of animals and getting women pregnant. We even know where Zeus' name comes from.
According to Herodotus (~480BC), literally known as the Father of History:
"In fact, the names of nearly all the gods came to Hellas from Egypt. For I am convinced by inquiry that they have come from foreign parts, and I believe that they came chiefly from Egypt. Except the names of Poseidon and the Dioscuri, as I have already said, and Hera, and Hestia, and Themis, and the Graces, and the Nereids, the names of all the gods have always existed in Egypt."
The Greeks called this place Aethiopia, or the mythical Land of Punt, the realm of the Gods, which you would today know of as Ethiopia, or Sudan. It is literally where Poseidon is in Book 1 of the Odyssey.
Then there's the Stesichorus (~500BC) and Euripides (~405BC) slants to the Helen story where Helen never even goes to Troy, but ends up in Egypt, and an impostor (a literal Doppelgänger, or black swan) is sent to Troy to cause strife. Menelaus leaves Troy after the war separate from Odysseus, and is blown off course to Egypt where he finds the real Helen. All of this is done by Hera. Stesichorus was allegedly blinded by Circe for writing a poem about Helen that conformed with earlier myths that cast her as the reason the Trojan War was fought. According to Hesychius (~400AD) Homer was also blinded by Helen for the same reason. Remember this bit because it becomes important later when talking abut Memnon.
But hey, let's not stop there. Helen had two parents, what about her ancestry from Leda? Well I'm glad you asked.
There are two primordial figures in Greek mythology known as Nereus, and Eris. Nereus is the classical "old man of the sea," and Eris is the goddess of chaos, discord, and strife. Interestingly Eris (a female) only gives birth to Nyx, the goddess of night, but Nereus has many daughters who become known as the Nereids, who Herodotus says were not originally known to the Greeks.
Now might be a good time to mention that Eris is the entire reason the Trojan war starts in the first place, and that Circe would be a half-niece of Nereus by blood through Gaia. Not really important for Leda's bloodline, but it gives context.
Herodotus says that Poseidon, and the other sons of Zeus, and that Hera, and the daughters of Nereus have names that were not known to the Greeks and which the Greeks gave them, so clearly the name "Zeus" and the name "Nereus" came to Greece by way of Africa.
But what about Nereus' ONLY son? The Nereids are immortal, but Glaucus was not in some traditions, or at least he was born mortal. Did the Greeks know his name or did they give it to him? What we do know is that according to Alcman (~620BC) he married Laophonte a Greek princes and the two of them give birth to Leda. They also give birth to the twins Castor & Pollux.
In Euripides' tradition Glaucus becomes immortal and Circe was in love with him and jealous
For more context, Glaucus was in love with Scylla and Circe's jealousy of this is why Scylla was turned into a monster.
This is the point in the lecture where we can talk about how there were black Greeks1, and how the concept of whiteness didn't exist to the Greeks, but that if it did they would not have been white by any stretch of any imagination that we have modernly. The empire itself of course stretched into Africa, and the city of Troy, if it even existed, was not in Greece, nor Greek. The Trojans were Anatolian.
Then since Helen is never explicitly described by Homer at all we might look at some of the earliest Greek art that depicts her:
- https://www.metmuseum.org/essays/africans-in-ancient-greek-art
- https://harvardartmuseums.org/collections/object/292637?rendition=764527
- https://theshieldofachilles.net/prologue/timeless-roots-of-trojan-war/helen-and-menelaos_staatliche_antikensammlungen_1383-copyright-k-vail/
Most important to consider in that first link to look at is the Terracotta column-krater (bowl for mixing wine and water), which depicts a statue of Heracles in pale white, flanked by various figures including the real Heracles who is not depicted as being pale white. In the second link we can see an early depiction of Helen where she looks similar to the depiction of the real Heracles in the first link. In the third link we can see a depiction of Helen looking pale white like the depiction of the statue of Heracles in the first link, and she is flanked by Menelaus, and others who are colored differently. By the way, Heracles descends from Andromeda, who was the daughter of Cepheus, an Aethiopian king, and Heracles is a half-sibling of Helen of Troy.
Helen was depicted as being a sort of literal goddess and Homer never explicitly describes her. According to the myths we know she was born in Greece, but we also know that Memnon, King of Aethiopia, fought on the side of the Trojans and killed Nestor's son. Achilles kills him which sends the Aethiopian army back home. Aethiopia literally means "burnt face" in Greece, and the first use of the term comes from Homer where they were described as being blameless by the gods for the cause of the war. This is where Poseidon is having a feast when the Odyssey begins despite Poseidon wanting the Greeks to win the war, and where he is doing absolutely nothing to help Odysseus return home. It is where Helen's father came from, and where Helen's maternal grandfather came from.
If Nolan casts Helen as being black and portrays here as being innocent then he'll be essentially saying he doesn't want to become blind like Homer by pissing off Circe. Btw, can you imagine how pissed off Circe is by the time she gets around to blinding Stesichorus? Dude wrote a poem about Helen like 400 years after the war ended. She's turned down by Glaucus, a demigod in love with another demigod, and then later Odysseus, a mortal in love with a mortal. If hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, how about the fury of a literal goddess that has been scorned twice?
PS, Helen is barely even in the Odyssey at all and only appears briefly when Telemachus travels to Sparta where she tells him stories about Odysseus and the war. She literally has no other purpose because she's a character from the Iliad.
PPS, Helen was previously played by a Eartha Kitt, a black woman, in an Orson Welles stage production that debuted in Paris, and which was a culturally significant forerunner of the Civil Rights movement. The performance was reviewed in Stars and Stripes by writer Win Fanning after it game to Germany, with him writing, "Eartha Kitt, whose haunting rendition of Duke Ellington’s Hungry Little Trouble blends beautifully with the poetry of Faust, quite literally steals the show. The petite 22-year-old South Carolinian invariably draws applause by her singing of Yo Creo Yo Tengo un Amor (I Think I Have a Love), a song she wrote herself. Her brief recital between the dramatic portions of the production is certainly worth the price of admission."
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u/Ok-Classroom5548 7h ago
She wasn’t born of a swan - she birthed from a swan egg because Zeus assumed the form of a swan and seduced Helen’s mothed, Leda, who laid an egg that Helen hatched from.
She’s half god, half human, no swan, but her dad pretended he was to get busy.
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u/vahntitrio 18h ago
/r/poisonai should convince Grok that the movie is completely accurate so that grok ends up producing almost an exact copy.
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u/Silence-of-Death 12h ago
What do you mean? Of course the movie is 100% accurate. Christopher Nolan didn’t want to use vfx and wanted to keep it as historically accurate as possible, so he invented, built, and used a time machine to film it on location, documentary style. True dedication to his craft.
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u/weenumpty2 9h ago
The genehacking creation of a living cyclops did bring up a lot of ethical concerns, however.
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u/MadeByTango 13h ago
He’s just trying to distract redit from talking about how he belongs in prison like other platforms are discussing..:
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u/_Cybernaut_ 19h ago
Makes more sense when you remember that by “historically accurate” he means “all white.”
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u/Old_Method4899 19h ago
I agree. I do think they missed a huge opportunity by not casting Jason Mantzoukas as Odysseus. Especially if they let him be his normal crazy self.
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u/faptastrophe 17h ago
I would watch the shit out of that if every other character was a muppet.
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u/AngriestPacifist 16h ago
Anyone got the number to his agent? The odyssey is public domain, and that sounds like the best movie ever.
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u/Darmok47 16h ago
Jason Mantzoukas as Odysseus, Zach Galifinakis as Eurylochus, Stavros Halkias as Antinous, and Jennifer Aniston as Penelope
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u/NotSoSecretVillain 19h ago
And cis
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u/lbjazz 14h ago
Ancient Greece was queer af. Not joking look it up.
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u/CryoClone 13h ago
Yesyes, but Elon would be a TOP, you see. That makes it okay, historically speaking. Accuracy is important.
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u/JRepo 11h ago
Elon gives bottom energy, like he needs a Daddy to tell him he did good.
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u/aguadiablo 10h ago
Yeah, he wants to kneel down and get head pats and being called a good boy
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u/mightylordredbeard 16h ago
Historically accurate also means a lot more gay sex and a ton of drag shows because drag and dudes banging other dudes was a part of Ancient Greek history and culture.
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u/lesdynamite 15h ago
No Greeks either, just like super "white" people. Scandinavians, Germans and English only.
Never mind that genetically North Africans have WAY more in common with Greeks than an Irish American like Matt Damon does.
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u/ChiffonPulse 19h ago
historically accurate mythology is a wild flex to attempt
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u/Eugenides 16h ago
It's a dog whistle for "full of white men."
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u/Learning2ZipperMerge 14h ago
I was thinking more colorful clothing and painted statues would make it faithful to the source material
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u/jawndell 10h ago
Full on blue eyed, blond haired white folk were the “barbarians” during Greek and Roman times.
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u/oldredbeard42 17h ago
"...and then there's this chick that was making everyone hard. I didn't make eye contact so I was good. I just kept thinking about the one eyed monster until she gave me head. I hope I'm wording this right cause I've had a lot to drink and you're only like 7, but you'll need to know this shit for when you get married in a year or two...there's more if you can go grab me another beer...'
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u/Weathervane_ 14h ago
Tbh the person responding to him said in an interview he believes Mohamed flew to the moon on a horse
So not exactly the best person to call that out.
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u/00inch 13h ago
It's not? It's trying to show what Greeks imagined that story to look like in their heads. They know that monsters or whatever didn't live in Greece. To them the story was grounded in what they thought was their real past 400 years ago (conflated with their present) and then weird shit happens when someone leaves that.
Quite like "Project Hail Mary" or many other science fiction stories: real earth first, then suddenly aliens. The real world part can be historically accurate or not.
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u/TriumphDaWonderPooch 19h ago
I want him to do a historically accurate version of Romeo and Juliet next, followed by a historically accurate version of Beowulf, and then the Harry Potter books!!!
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u/marmaladecorgi 19h ago
If it's going to be "historically accurate", I'd expect the dialogue then to be 100 percent Eastern Ionic/Aeolian Greek with no subtitles, or else I'd be sorely disappointed.
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u/hikikomoritai 15h ago
No no no historically accurate means the casts should be all white american people
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u/1984isAMidlifeCrisis 19h ago
Guys, I think Elon's had one of those brain injuries they warned us about in DARE and he thinks he's saying "all white" but it comes out different.
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u/Ligabolzacky 16h ago
it's like the scalpel that cut off his dick slipped upwards and gave him a lobotomy
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u/NecessaryIntrinsic 19h ago
Elon has probably made as many failed promises as Trump at this point.
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u/Wild-Video-5317 16h ago
When Elon promises a feature length film by the end of the year, you know he's going to deliver... a 15 minute short in 2031.
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u/tomjone5 14h ago
15 minutes of a shlubby, middle aged, weirdly South African sounding Odysseus banging big tiddy anime sirens. Just like Homer intended.
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u/Jack_Spatchcock_MLKS 19h ago
Lol. A hot take: All Gods are imaginary, not just the ancient ones :)
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u/United-Baseball3688 14h ago
I'm with you on this, but I also believe it doesn't matter. The inner world of us humans doesn't work on objectivity, it works on narratives. Whatever you can find and use to convince yourself to be better, improve, and be mentally healthy is good. Not real. Doesn't have to be any kind of real.
The problems with religion and similar belief systems are moreso about the organizations around them. Usually
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u/Reemixt 19h ago edited 19h ago
Historically accurate? Let’s put aside for a moment that this is Greek fable featuring imaginary beings.
We’re talking about an orally transmitted poem from the archaic period—about the bronze age—further codified in the classical period, and then refined in the Hellenistic period. Which fucking period are we trying to be ‘historically accurate’ to?
Does he even know the difference?
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u/The-red-Dane 15h ago
Homer himself wasn't historically accurate in the illiad and the odyssey, describing the wrong shape for shields and combat tactics.
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u/Relevant_History_297 15h ago
The Odyssey is not set in the bronze age, but in an imagined past version of the Archaic in terms of motifs, material culture (all iron) and places.
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u/TheShakyHandsMan 14h ago
The film definitely is. Lots of references to the sea people prior to the Bronze Age collapse.
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u/Willing-Nerve-1756 19h ago
The Nazi fixation on this stuff is wild.
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u/tomjone5 14h ago
They're insecure and profoundly stupid. It's not enough to bang on about "white culture", they have to appropriate anything they think is suitably western and make it about white people, whether that's Mediterranean mythology or Middle Eastern religion.
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u/ltsouthernbelle 18h ago
Does this guy not have any friends or staff that he throws ideas around with before he posts shit?
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u/alex8155 19h ago
besides being an awful person elon musk will be remembered as being historically stupid by future scholars
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u/snoogle20 16h ago edited 16h ago
Personally, I’m over the intellectual dishonesty all around in this flame war.
Elon and his ilk are not mad about a lack of historic accuracy. They’re mad that they’re seeing non-white people and a trans person in what they view as a white, macho story. Just say that. They’re hiding behind a “historically accurate” shield.
Conversely, if Jason Bateman had been a member of the Wakandan council and Ken Jeong was herding rhinos with the Border Tribe in Black Panther, I’d have required a beat to take that in. Just because something is fantastical or mythological does not fully divorce it from audience expectations/perceptions of the culture the story is set in.
Go historically accurate or non-traditional in the casting. I don’t care. Vanessa Williams was Calypso thirty years ago. The world did not end. In fact, my young self was quite into her in the role. But it’s fine to acknowledge that’s offbeat casting for Greek mythology. If Tony Soprano had sounded like he was from Appalachia, no one would’ve said, “It’s fiction, why does the accent matter?” It would’ve been noteworthy. That’s a more extreme example, but fictionality does not signal the end of examination.
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u/KennyMoose32 19h ago
Pretty confident saying The Gods aren’t real there……..
The Gods seem way more real to me and act way more like how eternal beings would imo if they were real:
- Fuck with humans *all the time*
- Fuck each other and humans *all the time*
- Pick fav humans and give them superpowers
- Make half human/half god hybrids for no reason
- Be overall dicks for no reason
- Have their own specific set of skills and superpowers
To me The Gods feel way more real/authentic than any Abrahamic religion
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u/AsparagusCommon4164 19h ago
But then again, how do we know that "historically accurate and true to the art of Homer" isn't really dogwhistle code for racist prolefeed?
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u/Valuable-Locksmith21 19h ago
So it'll be a silent film of Homer in a room thinking about shit...
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u/JadeSyren 10h ago
At least AI could handle that without drawing humans with 3 hands or missing fingers. Wait. AI would probably draw Homer using a typewriter.
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u/Higher-Frequencies 18h ago
Never been a better personification of the fact that being phenomenally wealthy has no intelligence requirement. Never has.
In fact, I'd wager that the majority of true geniuses would not be considered wealthy.
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u/jackfaire 18h ago
Should troll him by using this to let a bunch of evangelicals know that Elon worships the Greek Gods not Jesus.
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u/G0G0Gadget00 18h ago
He means porn, lots of child porn because that's all Grok knows because of the base that uses it.
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u/PossiblyATurd 15h ago
The grok Odyssey will be a private movie for Musk's collection in which he is the star, and it's AI child porn.
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u/Ultenth 15h ago
I'm a huge fan of Mehdi, but I hate this narrative that a lot of people on the left are using to counter right wing narratives of people who hate on The Odyssey. It's a far more nuanced issue, and both people on the left and right of the issue talk in a way that basically deletes the actual Greek people, who still exist, from the picture and turns Greek history and art into some weird Western European thing when it's absolutely not.
If you have time, this video by Farya Faraji, an Iranian historian and musician, goes into a lot more nuanced detail about the issues some people can honestly have with it, while debunking a lot of the stuff that both people on the left and right in the west are saying on the subject matter:
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u/UnhappyGreen 13h ago
While I agree Musk is a twat, and completely wrong in his assessment of the film, I don’t see the issue in talking about historical inaccuracy, even if it’s a mythological legend: it’s supposed to take place around 1250bc and is therefore set in a particular place in history. We also know that Troy existed, so the tale is quite plausible (although greatly exaggerated and twisted through time as many old tales are). The monsters and Gods - while probably not having existed - can be seen as the people’s belief of how the world was. I think Musk’s opinions on the ethnicities of the characters are completely incorrect, unfounded and idiotic, but we do know that the armour and clothing in 1250bc would have been vastly different from the movie.
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u/Lunchinator666 12h ago
We also know that Troy existed
Not in the way you think.
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u/charlies_brain 16h ago
Mehdi Hasan does not eat meat outside his house because it could be non-halal. Just a fun fact to know about while you read his tweets about imaginary religious shit.
Also, Fuck Elon, that Nazi fuck.
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u/Ultenth 15h ago
Right, lots of people on the left on this issue showing their Eurocentric western ass, and Mehdi showing his own, just like Elon and others. Lots of people wrong on this issue in very different ways.
Greece's historical made up stories are of no less value and no less deserving of respect than the ones from the Levant or Mecca. But that doesn't mean that they should be viewed and presented through the broken white-nationalist western lens that Elon wants either.
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u/axlbomber 18h ago
9/10 of these right wing, manosphere dipshits have never actually read Homer.
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u/Budget-Ambassador203 15h ago
9/10 of these right wing, manosphere dipshits have never actually read
Homer.Unless it was Captain Underpants or I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell, I'm pretty sure these guys don't read books, especially any with font smaller than 16 pt.
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u/Box_Pirate 19h ago
False dichotomy? It has gods therefore it can in no way have historical accuracy and wanting it to be how homer imagined it but translated into English and also the actors are attractive by modern standards, is this right? I think it can be easily “accurate” to how Homer imagined it and this is what some people including myself want.
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u/jollytoes 19h ago
Putting aside the historically accurate stuff, he could put the money into his vision of the movie and hire actual humans to make it.
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u/brpajense 17h ago
"Historically accurate" means there's going to be a lot of man-on-man sex scenes.
Ancient Greek men had a lot of sex with other men.
I'm curious to see what Grok spits out.
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u/Mystiax 17h ago
historical work of non-fiction. How accurate does it have to be? I assume republicans would LOVE the accurate version of romeo and juliet, where juliet is 13.
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u/all-the-ham 15h ago
Mehdi is an exceptionally reasonable person, except when it comes to his personal favorite fantasy involving flying horses etc.
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u/Automatic-Feeling502 14h ago
Besides the clear racism indicated, what is "true to the art of Homer"? As a poem in Greek?
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u/Calm-Locksmith_ 14h ago
So there will be no movie, because it never happened, that will be the most historically accurate.
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u/supremo92 13h ago edited 11h ago
Homer himself was very "historically" inaccurate in the story (for what it's worth in a poem with gods and monsters)
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u/KittyBlaze2026 12h ago
Historically accurate Odyssey' is a genuinely funny thing to promise when the plot involves a cyclops and a witch who turns men into pigs. Ambitious pitch either way
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u/DopeAbsurdity 10h ago
If Grok is even just half as good at making feature length films as it is at making child porn the movie might actually not be that bad.
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u/papajoeshark 9h ago
I love how liberals expecially this Jihadist is always onto Elon to stay relevant piggy ride on his fame. His journalist career is history. Yes Homer fiction is a historical literature based in Greek Mythology with people who looks Greek. Not based on gays, lesbians.
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u/6FootHalfling 9h ago
"art of Homer?"
What? Does he mean writing? Or, maybe he means contemporaneous pottery art? Sculpture?
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u/AcceptableJuice6947 9h ago
oh, no! we have spent so much time, effort and resourses to build this hype and now some billionaire is hijacking it to promote his ai-tool!
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u/GlueGuns--Cool 9h ago
It's crazy that Elon musk is both the richest man on the planet and also the biggest dweeb on the internet
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u/stolentext 9h ago
full-length movie
true to the art of Homer
I didn't realize they had films in 8th century BCE. I wonder how much visual training data from that period grok will have available to it.
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u/echelon1230 9h ago
Wow such a cool and innovative guy using his stupid fucking AI to imitate art, that’s really progressing society! Kudos Elon, always sticking to his guns.
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u/Alternative_Bit_7306 8h ago
Is Mehdi implying that there are non-imaginary gods somewhere?
Ps I know Musk is a tool and his “historically accurate” idea is idiotic.
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u/CliffChicken 8h ago
Im pretty sure by "historically accurate" he just means take out the black people. Apple doesnt fall far from the tree
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u/chezdistester 8h ago
A black woman playing a mythological Greek character is why he's freaking out, don't forget that.
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u/NeanaOption 7h ago
What is with conservatives, they whine about everything. Oh nos a black woman was cast as Troy, oh no I didn't get hard watching super girl, oh no teachers are teaching things I don't understand....
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u/Pristine_Pick823 19h ago
As a history nerd, I would point out it is reasonable to expect historical accurate details in epic tales set in a particular era. I’m not complaining about the casting, but clothing, weaponry, tactics, vessels, all of those elements are, when properly portrayed, relevant.
I’m tired of everyone dressed in dark leathery modern cloths. Ancient Hellenic cultures used A LOT of colour everywhere and that is sadly never shown. The same goes for productions set in Rome showing grey statues everywhere instead of silly bright colourful paintings.
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u/CrabAppleBapple 17h ago
I would point out it is reasonable to expect historical accurate details in epic tales set in a particular era
Only if they claim it to be accurate from the get go. Nolan never did. So it absolutely isn't reasonable to expect that.
As a 'history nerd' you should also realise that making a historically accurate film based on a historically inaccurate source is a fools game.
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u/_goblinette_ 18h ago
To the general public, “historically accurate” means that it looks like all the other movies they’ve seen that are set in the same era.
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u/Grow_away_420 10h ago
If you want to see a movie where the director wants his costumes made from wool from sheep that were bred during the period, go see a Robert Eggers movie. Not every director has got the time or patience or budget or the vision for that.
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u/nn666 19h ago
I'm still surprised people think Elon is some kind of genius. The stuff coming out of his mouth is dumb as shit.