MP Defends Nolan's Odyssey Amid Controversy

The MP for Bracknell, Peter Swallow, has hit back at the right‑wing reaction to Christopher Nolan's Odyssey in The Guardian. A former classics teacher and academic, he defends the film's casting - including Lupita Nyong'o as Helen of Troy - saying Helen is entirely mythical, born of Zeus and Leda. The film has earned about £676 million at cinemas worldwide.

Swallow accepts some anachronisms, like Corinthian‑style helmets, can be allowed for artistic licence. He also took aim at Elon Musk, who accused Nolan of being an 'anti-White racist' and suggested he could make a 'historically accurate' Odyssey using his AI, Grok.

Swallow highlights the Homeric concept of Xenia - Zeus' law about how hosts treat strangers. Those who behave well are rewarded; those who don't, such as the Cyclops, are punished. He compares Xenia to international diplomacy, which he says the hard right attack.

Mr Swallow writes: "At the end of the movie - Odysseus and Penelope [his wife] see their entire Bronze Age Greek civilisation collapsing. This is based on an actual historical event, the Mycenaean collapse.

"In Nolan's retelling, it happens because the people of the sea are raiding and warring, breaking Zeus's law.

"The message for a modern audience is, again, not subtle: society will collapse if we abandon our rules-based international order. If Nolan's film really is 'woke', this is why - because it's fundamentally a film about the value of multilateralism produced for an increasingly nationalistic world.

"Musk and co seem to have missed this message.

"But it's the real reason why they should hate the film. It pushes back against everything the hard right are trying to achieve and instead makes clear that a commitment to international diplomacy isn't a nice-to-have - it's a prerequisite to civilisation."

Swallow notes that after the Mycenaean collapse, warfare remained a major feature of Greek civilisation for centuries, with conflicts including the Persian Wars (499-449 BC), the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC), the Macedonian conquest (338 BC), Alexander the Great's campaigns (334-323 BC), the Diadochi Wars (322-272 BC), and various wars with Rome.

The Roman Empire brought relative peace in Greece from 27 BC until the 3rd century AD, when invasions by East Germanic tribes in 267-268 AD shattered that stability.

James Aldridge, Local Democracy Reporter