Christopher Nolan is a gifted, top-tier Hollywood director whose films have won multiple awards, including two Academy Awards. He’s so well respected that just having his name as director on a film is almost a guarantee that it’ll be a blockbuster.

Thus, when it was announced that Nolan would take on Homer’s epic, The Odyssey, there was much excitement and anticipation.

However, as the months passed and news about the casting began trickling out, a couple of rather strange, and even downright absurd, choices emerged. Those choices were two female actors.

The first controversy, which has been confirmed, was that Kenyan actress Lupita Nyong'o would portray Helen of Troy, a woman Homer described as fair-skinned, blonde, and “the face that launched a thousand ships” because of her great beauty. Helen was considered to be the most beautiful woman in the world.

Nyong'o is certainly a beautiful woman. But it’s not her beauty that is controversial — it’s her race. Put simply, Homer’s Helen was not black.

The second, and possibly most absurd, is Nolan’s choice of Ellen “Elliot” Page, rumored to portray Achilles’s ghost. Page is a cast member, but her role has not yet been confirmed. Regardless of whether Page depicts Achilles or some other male role, it is clear that by casting her, Nolan is virtue signaling his support for the “transgender” agenda.

Page has worked with Nolan before, on the popular film “Inception.” However, that was before she decided she no longer wanted to “identify” as a woman.

Predictably, these two choices provoked outrage and mockery online. Elon Musk, who is famously a fan of Homer’s The Iliad and The Odyssey, surmised that Nolan was concerned about meeting the Academy’s DEI rules, posting on X, “He wants the award.”

The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh blasted Nolan’s choice of Nyong'o as Helen of Troy posting, “Christopher Nolan knows that he would be called racist if he gave ‘the most beautiful woman’ role to a white woman. Nolan is technically talented but a coward. Too afraid to do anything that even slightly challenges the spirit of the age.”

Of course, Leftmedia outlets slammed the criticism of Nolan’s casting choices, noting that Hollywood has long made significant changes to famous stories, and charging opponents with racism.

It is true that Hollywood has long made various changes to classic stories. And it is also true that, depending on how drastic those changes are, criticism often ensues.

In any case, it is perfectly legitimate to ask why Nolan would make these drastic changes. They appear to be an intentional poke in the eye of not just conservatives, but most of mainstream American culture. How is this not a woke virtue signal?

Over the last decade or more, Hollywood appears set on destroying American and broader Western culture’s history and mythology. Hollywood seems bound and determined to inject a woke message into everything. It’s gotten so bad that it’s become nearly impossible not to see a movie or show on a popular streaming platform like Netflix that does not include gay characters or an unbelievably racially diverse cast.

Furthermore, wholesome concepts, such as a stable nuclear family consisting of a father, mother, and children who love one another and espouse and uphold a common moral value system, have become nearly extinct in the stories Hollywood tells. Yet at the same time, Hollywood elites lecture the rest of the country, demonizing red America as a bunch of bigoted, racist rubes.

Irrespective of whether Nolan’s woke Odyssey ends up being a commercial success, hopefully, it serves to motivate more non-Hollywood-based films that uphold the values of the West that inspire hope.