I wonder what a what Nolan's idea of a 'modern audience' looks like. I wonder if he ever contemplates what the people queuing up for hours to get into the great architectural masterpieces of europe are consuming. I wonder if he ever grows curious about the ethics sensibilities and skill sets of the builders crafstmen and artists that built these masterpieces and then sacrificed themselves to defend them. Nolans job appears to be making any semblance of reality and mythology inauthentic and forgettable. Nolan is a cultural vandal serving a peverse Hollywood. One positive is its already wetted our appetite for the real thing. Lets see who steps up to deliver it.
I don't watch movies made after the turn of the century, it's all Project Mockingbird filth made to destroy my people. It probably always was but they turned up the volume recently.
Oh sorry, there was one film I watched called "Ford vs Ferrari" about Carrol Shelby & Ken Miles - it put a lump in my throat. No black lesbians, just a story about friendship & the time when the West still loved itself. I'd recommend it.
I think myth always has a stable core, each generation might add specific touches, might focus on certain themes, but the story and characters should be largely consistent across millennia, if it's done right. Some myths are more elastic than others, though.
My favourite Robin Hood is the 80s tv show Robin of Sherwood, it's up there with Excalibur, great soundtrack (Clannad), a savage Ray Winstone as Will Scarlet, a poetic Celtic Robin, real sense of the racial/cultural hostility between Normans and Saxons. It also accidentally created the Saracen team member, as the actor who played the villainous Nasir was so well-liked by the others that they rewrote his death and made him join the merry men. Thereafter, Robin Hood has always had a Saracen among his men. This is how myth develops, often an accident just feels right and then everyone assumes it was always part of the story. I vaguely remember there's an episode with persecuted Jews but in general the show is very based, very rousing. The death of Robin episode is also poignant.
I liked that show very much as a child, though I hardly remember anything. Just as you wrote, I thought that a Saracen had always been a part of the merry men, especially after seeing the Kevin Costner Robin Hood with Morgan Freeman in that role. It´s a fascinating piece of trivia! There´s probably plenty of other myths and stories in which similar details were added over time and people thought they were there from the beginning.
The Saracen actor is himself very interesting, Mark Ryan, he's some kind of quasi Special Forces Military Intelligence operator who ended up acting. He's from Doncaster, because as we know Saracens come from South Yorkshire.
Interesting indeed. As Mr. Morgoth may have pointed out, back in the day having a character or actor that was foreign in some way every once in a while was cool and exotic in a positive sense. But nowadays any such character would be immediately (and probably correctly) seen as just filling a diversity quota. I wonder how somebody like Wesley Snipes feels about this state of affairs. Nobody at the time thought that he was a diversity hire for Blade or for Demolition Man.
Re: "shattered identities and distrust in institutions." You don’t have to have a shattered identity to distrust institutions; in the end it doesn't help--shattered identity is what the social order relies on, a weak subjectivity, which it has worked to weaken. The strong identity (ego) is one that gets past distrust of institutions to trust in their own capacity to make judgments that are universals (i.e. true), and are expected to be constantly updated, rather than be relied upon as absolutes. The flaw in our rulers’ psyche is that they don’t distinguish the two; they trust their universals as absolutes and cannot see them as flawed and update them. They only trust these beliefs (wokeness, postcolonialism, whiteness, etc.) because they were effective as tools of power. Once institutionalized, these beliefs were no longer available for self-correction; power is staked on them.
Re: "Nolan appears to accept that great men should be rendered more recognisably human." But what is recognizable as “merely human” to Nolan is a version of himself and his “clan,” as any honest, consistent relativist would readily observe.The institutional ruling, liberal psyche sees itself as the full, and fully conscious, human, the achievement of Hegelian progression of the Spirit. They want us to identify with civilization, i.e. the culture they determine and control. But we are outsiders to power and are immune to the need to atone for anything "the West" has done.
tl;dw: it's a red flag for nihilistic deconstruction, self-loathing, and resentment. Naturally, the Chinese lady was an effective foil for this attitude, since the Chinese civilization, unlike the Western, is not suicidal.
Completely agree. We're at the point where it would be radical for Nolan to have made his version faithful to the source material and have what used to be normal casting. I'm just looking through the cast of 'Troy' from 2004, just over two decades ago but unthinkable in 2026. I've not seen Nolan's movie and it doesn't really interest me, had no idea the Robin Hood film existed.
Great article Morgoth but you really should go and see The Odyssey, it's heart stirringly based!
The big racial controversy is that an African plays both Helen and Clytemnestra, on the surface a woke nonsense but watch the film! These two characters are the poison let into society, they are portrayed as adulterous, scarred and duplicitous, Helen starts a war and Clytemnestra kills her husband, the king. Message: Let Africans in and they will destroy you.
Throughout the film there is the notion of Zues' Law ie you must welcome strangers and look after them, again wokey dokey on the surface but . . . The great white King Odyseus returns from his travels to his kingdom, it is being destroyed by interlopers, eating his food, coveting his wife and plotting to kill his son. One of the main culprits is black, he is the first one to get an arrow through the throat. The King, Odyseus, returns and slaughters them all, he sails off into the sunset leaving his loyal son to rule over the cleansed land.
The film is a Trojan Horse for our cause we just need to see it.
It may be that the traditional hero's journey is an old and worn pattern, but it has been enjoyed by people for centuries, perhaps even millennia. The problem with film makers is the same problem that ALL artists struggle with: while they might be bored of the traditional structure, no one else is. A pianist might want to put on an avante garde performance full of atonal nonsense and experimentation, but the audience just wants the Moonlight Sonata.
Speaking of Hugh Jackman, in his movie Song Sung Blue his character struggles with this very issue. He plays a Neil Diamond impersonator, and there's a running subplot where he wants to open with a really obscure song called Sulaiman, but the audiences all want a familiar banger like Sweet Caroline.
It's a sign of the times that we are meant to revere film directors simply because they churn out 'big' films. That they always, without fail, reproduce the desired political messaging suggests that talent is not the only basis for selection.
I wonder what a what Nolan's idea of a 'modern audience' looks like. I wonder if he ever contemplates what the people queuing up for hours to get into the great architectural masterpieces of europe are consuming. I wonder if he ever grows curious about the ethics sensibilities and skill sets of the builders crafstmen and artists that built these masterpieces and then sacrificed themselves to defend them. Nolans job appears to be making any semblance of reality and mythology inauthentic and forgettable. Nolan is a cultural vandal serving a peverse Hollywood. One positive is its already wetted our appetite for the real thing. Lets see who steps up to deliver it.
I don't watch movies made after the turn of the century, it's all Project Mockingbird filth made to destroy my people. It probably always was but they turned up the volume recently.
Oh sorry, there was one film I watched called "Ford vs Ferrari" about Carrol Shelby & Ken Miles - it put a lump in my throat. No black lesbians, just a story about friendship & the time when the West still loved itself. I'd recommend it.
Japanese proverb 七転び八起き
（ななころびやおき nana korobi ya oki）
nana : seven, korobi : fall over, ya : eight, oki : get up
fall down seven times, get up eight
I think myth always has a stable core, each generation might add specific touches, might focus on certain themes, but the story and characters should be largely consistent across millennia, if it's done right. Some myths are more elastic than others, though.
My favourite Robin Hood is the 80s tv show Robin of Sherwood, it's up there with Excalibur, great soundtrack (Clannad), a savage Ray Winstone as Will Scarlet, a poetic Celtic Robin, real sense of the racial/cultural hostility between Normans and Saxons. It also accidentally created the Saracen team member, as the actor who played the villainous Nasir was so well-liked by the others that they rewrote his death and made him join the merry men. Thereafter, Robin Hood has always had a Saracen among his men. This is how myth develops, often an accident just feels right and then everyone assumes it was always part of the story. I vaguely remember there's an episode with persecuted Jews but in general the show is very based, very rousing. The death of Robin episode is also poignant.
I liked that show very much as a child, though I hardly remember anything. Just as you wrote, I thought that a Saracen had always been a part of the merry men, especially after seeing the Kevin Costner Robin Hood with Morgan Freeman in that role. It´s a fascinating piece of trivia! There´s probably plenty of other myths and stories in which similar details were added over time and people thought they were there from the beginning.
The Saracen actor is himself very interesting, Mark Ryan, he's some kind of quasi Special Forces Military Intelligence operator who ended up acting. He's from Doncaster, because as we know Saracens come from South Yorkshire.
Interesting indeed. As Mr. Morgoth may have pointed out, back in the day having a character or actor that was foreign in some way every once in a while was cool and exotic in a positive sense. But nowadays any such character would be immediately (and probably correctly) seen as just filling a diversity quota. I wonder how somebody like Wesley Snipes feels about this state of affairs. Nobody at the time thought that he was a diversity hire for Blade or for Demolition Man.
Re: "shattered identities and distrust in institutions." You don’t have to have a shattered identity to distrust institutions; in the end it doesn't help--shattered identity is what the social order relies on, a weak subjectivity, which it has worked to weaken. The strong identity (ego) is one that gets past distrust of institutions to trust in their own capacity to make judgments that are universals (i.e. true), and are expected to be constantly updated, rather than be relied upon as absolutes. The flaw in our rulers’ psyche is that they don’t distinguish the two; they trust their universals as absolutes and cannot see them as flawed and update them. They only trust these beliefs (wokeness, postcolonialism, whiteness, etc.) because they were effective as tools of power. Once institutionalized, these beliefs were no longer available for self-correction; power is staked on them.
Re: "Nolan appears to accept that great men should be rendered more recognisably human." But what is recognizable as “merely human” to Nolan is a version of himself and his “clan,” as any honest, consistent relativist would readily observe.The institutional ruling, liberal psyche sees itself as the full, and fully conscious, human, the achievement of Hegelian progression of the Spirit. They want us to identify with civilization, i.e. the culture they determine and control. But we are outsiders to power and are immune to the need to atone for anything "the West" has done.
Great as usual.
Other than applause, I have nothing to add to this.
This reminds me of Critical Drinker's epic rant on the concept of "modern audiences":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2ngB-zjVmM
tl;dw: it's a red flag for nihilistic deconstruction, self-loathing, and resentment. Naturally, the Chinese lady was an effective foil for this attitude, since the Chinese civilization, unlike the Western, is not suicidal.
Completely agree. We're at the point where it would be radical for Nolan to have made his version faithful to the source material and have what used to be normal casting. I'm just looking through the cast of 'Troy' from 2004, just over two decades ago but unthinkable in 2026. I've not seen Nolan's movie and it doesn't really interest me, had no idea the Robin Hood film existed.
Great article Morgoth but you really should go and see The Odyssey, it's heart stirringly based!
The big racial controversy is that an African plays both Helen and Clytemnestra, on the surface a woke nonsense but watch the film! These two characters are the poison let into society, they are portrayed as adulterous, scarred and duplicitous, Helen starts a war and Clytemnestra kills her husband, the king. Message: Let Africans in and they will destroy you.
Throughout the film there is the notion of Zues' Law ie you must welcome strangers and look after them, again wokey dokey on the surface but . . . The great white King Odyseus returns from his travels to his kingdom, it is being destroyed by interlopers, eating his food, coveting his wife and plotting to kill his son. One of the main culprits is black, he is the first one to get an arrow through the throat. The King, Odyseus, returns and slaughters them all, he sails off into the sunset leaving his loyal son to rule over the cleansed land.
The film is a Trojan Horse for our cause we just need to see it.
I see, well, I'll probably watch it eventually, perhaps on a lazy Sunday.
It may be that the traditional hero's journey is an old and worn pattern, but it has been enjoyed by people for centuries, perhaps even millennia. The problem with film makers is the same problem that ALL artists struggle with: while they might be bored of the traditional structure, no one else is. A pianist might want to put on an avante garde performance full of atonal nonsense and experimentation, but the audience just wants the Moonlight Sonata.
Speaking of Hugh Jackman, in his movie Song Sung Blue his character struggles with this very issue. He plays a Neil Diamond impersonator, and there's a running subplot where he wants to open with a really obscure song called Sulaiman, but the audiences all want a familiar banger like Sweet Caroline.
It's a sign of the times that we are meant to revere film directors simply because they churn out 'big' films. That they always, without fail, reproduce the desired political messaging suggests that talent is not the only basis for selection.
The Hans face kind of the same thing with Mao’s legacy.