I'm sorry you don't have inside sources for this movie like I do, but it's mainly R for a 5 minute graphic sex scene involving two Laestrygonian warriors and Matt Damon. The studio asked Nolan to cut it out and he actually re-shot it with more angles.

Sea Speed said:

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Look at that dudes jaw. Good God.

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Surely Jay Leno had sent a cease and desist notice. That's got to be some kind of infringement.

Universal has decided to skip having word-of-mouth (a.k.a. influencer) screenings for ‘THE ODYSSEY’.

Instead, the film will begin screening just for film critics after the world premiere screening on July 6.

(Source: https://t.co/VXl0SCSqZQ) pic.twitter.com/R35h6nUhZv

— DiscussingFilm (@DiscussingFilm) June 25, 2026

I like this choice

Hmmm, there's a lot that can be interpreted from that choice, and all depending on how you view the film so far from what's been released about it.

FL_Ag1998 said:

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Hmmm, there's a lot that can be interpreted from that choice, and all depending on how you view the film so far from what's been released about it.

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my interpretation is **** 'influencers'

PatAg said:

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FL_Ag1998 said:

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Hmmm, there's a lot that can be interpreted from that choice, and all depending on how you view the film so far from what's been released about it.

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my interpretation is **** 'influencers'

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You definitely have to take what many say with a grain of salt, because they'll say whatever needs to be said to keep getting invited back to early screenings. Unfortunately, they're here to stay and I think they're likely the future of movie reviews. The profession of "movie critic" got watered down with the invention of the internet and the rise of social media is taking over written reviews by non-influencers.

But that's a different discussion. The question is what's behind Universal's decision to only cater to real movie critics? Are they concerned with all of the "hysteria" that's been created by influencers over the casting, etc? Do they believe real movie critics will be more likely to look past that stuff and be more favorable to Holywood's preeminent director?

That's exactly it. They know that critics are going to love his choices and normies aren't. They've got to get a ton of praise before the first wave of chuds see it.

It's as simple as this…

The studios are finally coming to grips with the fact that influencer reactions don't actually influence box office for the better. All the shills and easy lays who gladly pimp whatever movie, just to keep getting invited to premiere after premiere, aren't actually moving the needle, and one-by-one the studios are finally coming to grips with that.

Plus? Talent (i.e. actors and directors) are especially sick of influencers being on press junkets, on the red carpet asking questions, etc. As opposed to most journalists/critics, influencers are always asking insane questions and wanting talent to do dumb, viral bull***** Regardless, in order to be on the press junkets, influencers need to have first seen the movie (so as to be able to ask informed questions, which they of course don't). This has been a growing issue for a while now, with talent starting to put their foot down, saying they won't deal with some of the worst of the influencers anymore, etc. Basically, it's the difference between being asked thoughtful questions about the movie vs having to be a monkey and take part in whatever the latest dumb meme/viral trend is.

Especially on a movie with this many powerful stars, along with one of the most powerful directors in town, none of these people are going to put up with influencer nonsense.

In other words, this isn't some big conspiracy and Universal isn't sweating ***** Reactions will start dropping 11 days before the movie releases, and not only from critics either. Just not from influencers.

Cliff.Booth said:

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That's exactly it. They know that critics are going to love his choices and normies aren't. They've got to get a ton of praise before the first wave of chuds see it.

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Literally every single time I post early positive screening reactions, multiple posters assume said reactions AREN'T critic reactions, and are instead influencer reactions. No one ever believes positive reactions anymore because of how prevalent the whole easy lay / influencer thing has become.

Yet now, simply because it fits your endlessly negative narrative about this movie, suddenly influencer reactions are "normie" reactions? And critics are the shills/easy lays?

All I know is that at this point I cannot wait for this movie to be a massive success - financially, critically, and Average Joe-wise - just so I never have to listen to your conspiratorial bloviating about it again. It's of course totally your prerogative to think it doesn't look good. That's fine. It's just so obvious, though, at this point, how invested you are in it being some bastion of Hollywood wokeness that you get to take down a few notches. Granted, you'll just project your ire onto whatever next blockbuster you deem to be woke or problematic or whatever, but we'll cross that bridge when we get there (and we will, no doubt, get there).

I alluded to studios having to realize that the jig was up with those early screenings in my @ebertvoices essay last week, but I didn’t think it was be this soon. I figured there would be at least another 10 months of it. https://t.co/7kV7npZcXT

— Brandon Lewis (@blewis1103) June 25, 2026

This is a great decision. You only have to look at the recent flops that have used influencers to push the movie to know that it has no effect on the box office. Most people are savvy to this disingenuous form of marketing. https://t.co/1Ol2Cy2hTk

— Dino’s Reviews 🍿 (@reviewsdino2) June 25, 2026

Influencers, if you’re still looking to attend an early screening of The Odyssey I have an idea that might sound crazy.. https://t.co/q9SwV4H6QX pic.twitter.com/2esT1NNqnO

— Tyler (@TylerCWhitmore) June 25, 2026

If that's the truth and Hollywood is actually realizing that influencers with a whopping 10k subscribers on YouTube have zero real influence that's fantastic. It will also help if sites like rotten tomatoes and IMDB would cull about a thousand of their so-called certified critics. I'm just saying that'll be a complete about-face from what's happening right now.

I'm curious how one becomes a "real movie critic." The Siskel and Ebert days are long gone.

I look at so-called influencers as random idiots spouting about things they don't know a damn thing about. Good decision to remove those clowns from this marketing process.

The term influencer should be deleted anyways. It's not a job it's a parasite.

I'm not disagreeing with any of you (see my post above), but we're all "old", lol. Younger generations watch Youtube and Tiktok as their preferred choice of media. They pay more attention and give more credit to some random Youtuber with 200k subscribers than to the type of "real critics" that we all grew up with and are used to.

I think there are some that truly have an impact but their follower list is in the millions.

I may be speaking in hyperbole and have no fact to back it up but aren't the majority of "followers" bots or did social media companies finally start to crack down on that?

Madmarttigan said:

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I think there are some that truly have an impact but their follower list is in the millions.

I may be speaking in hyperbole and have no fact to back it up but aren't the majority of "followers" bots or did social media companies finally start to crack down on that?

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To some degree I agree. The guys with larger subs have a bigger net to pull in views of course, but my 17 yr old watches a guy called 3CFilms who I believe only has like 300k subs. The guy is goofy and always leans on the favorable side, if not outright sunshine pumping the movies he reviews. And he gets invited to early screenings (he was at early scrednings last year for Superman).

As for how many subs are bots? No idea. I'm sure plenty are, just like plenty are people who subscribed years ago but stopped actually listening or watching the "influencer" years ago as well.

zap said:

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I'm curious how one becomes a "real movie critic." The Siskel and Ebert days are long gone.

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This. In this day and age, it seems like a large gray area. They are all influencers to some degree. They are all essentially people telling others what they like and what they don't, and for one reason or another, the followers care about their opinion.

I normally like movies that Matt Damon is in. This one looks super bad though

AgBQ-00 said:

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I normally like movies that Matt Damon is in. This one looks super bad though

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No, Matt Damon wasn't in that one.

I'm 39. I have NEVER given two ****s about the opinions of "critics"; even the big ones like Siskel and Ebert.

I also think the term "influencer" is stupid, but it's just the term used for these content creators that actually make things many of us like to watch. Call them whatever you want.

Throw a pissy-fit about it all you want, but my taste and worldview tends to align closer to someone like the Critical Drinker than any Hollywood insider or critic. One simply needs to look at how out of whack the "critic" ratings on Rotten Tomatoes differs from the audience ratings on movies I genuinely like and others I think are complete trash.

Hell, even YouTubers who aren't political or obviously leaning one direction but tend to be very objective and open to give every movie/show a chance are infinitely better than establishment critics, for me.

Make all the arguments you want. You cannot deny the fact that only allowing establishment critics the opportunity to screen your movie reeks of hiding something the mass audiences could possibly find objectionable. Even giving Nolan the benefit of the doubt and wanting this to be good, it is not a good look, imo.

Cinco Ranch Aggie said:

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I look at so-called influencers as random idiots spouting about things they don't know a damn thing about.

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So, TexAgs posters?

FL_Ag1998 said:

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Is that guy seriously warning people to avoid spoilers? As if this is a new story Nolan created, and we don't already know the ending to?

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SPOILER.... Odysseus goes home.

Belton Ag said:

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Cinco Ranch Aggie said:

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I look at so-called influencers as random idiots spouting about things they don't know a damn thing about.

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So, TexAgs posters?

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Well if TexAgs posters are influencers, they're doing a piss-poor job on influencing me to do anything.

I'd wager to say that, despite what it seems like in this thread, more of the general audience still uses Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic scores than doesn't, when trying to see if a new movie is good. So you may not have a lot of faith in critics, but most people still have some faith in the aggregate at least.

I think most people who have used Rotten Tomatoes for a while have also learned how to discern the ratings, based on how the critics AND audiences review movies, and use both metrics to determine where a movie may ultimately fall.

I don't know anyone who simply looks at the Critic aggregate and takes that at face value. If a movie is over 90% from the critics, I want to see how the audience compares. If a movie is over 90% for the audience, I frankly couldn't care less what the critic aggregate is.

You are not someone who I would consider general audience. The very fact that you are talking about a movie on a message board means you are thinking about movies more than general audiences do.

I do agree that people have their reads on rotten tomatoes, but they are still using traditional critics as a guide for taste, whether they handicap that or not.

TCTTS said:

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Cliff.Booth said:

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That's exactly it. They know that critics are going to love his choices and normies aren't. They've got to get a ton of praise before the first wave of chuds see it.

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Literally every single time I post early positive screening reactions, multiple posters assume said reactions AREN'T critic reactions, and are instead influencer reactions. No one ever believes positive reactions anymore because of how prevalent the whole easy lay / influencer thing has become.

Yet now, simply because it fits your endlessly negative narrative about this movie, suddenly influencer reactions are "normie" reactions? And critics are the shills/easy lays?

All I know is that at this point I cannot wait for this movie to be a massive success - financially, critically, and Average Joe-wise - just so I never have to listen to your conspiratorial bloviating about it again. It's of course totally your prerogative to think it doesn't look good. That's fine. It's just so obvious, though, at this point, how invested you are in it being some bastion of Hollywood wokeness that you get to take down a few notches. Granted, you'll just project your ire onto whatever next blockbuster you deem to be woke or problematic or whatever, but we'll cross that bridge when we get there (and we will, no doubt, get there).

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Relax, bud.

Nothing says confidence in a movie than by banning real critics and opening it only for the shills that are prior approved.

This movie will make a $1B, but that doesn't mean it will be good. I will still be waiting for the audience reviews before buying a ticket. I care not what aggregate of Hollywood approved critics say. They've either lied or been just plain wrong on too many movies in recent history.

Lathspell said:

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I'm 39. I have NEVER given two ****s about the opinions of "critics"; even the big ones like Siskel and Ebert.

I also think the term "influencer" is stupid, but it's just the term used for these content creators that actually make things many of us like to watch. Call them whatever you want.

Throw a pissy-fit about it all you want, but my taste and worldview tends to align closer to someone like the Critical Drinker than any Hollywood insider or critic. One simply needs to look at how out of whack the "critic" ratings on Rotten Tomatoes differs from the audience ratings on movies I genuinely like and others I think are complete trash.

Hell, even YouTubers who aren't political or obviously leaning one direction but tend to be very objective and open to give every movie/show a chance are infinitely better than establishment critics, for me.

Make all the arguments you want. You cannot deny the fact that only allowing establishment critics the opportunity to screen your movie reeks of hiding something the mass audiences could possibly find objectionable. Even giving Nolan the benefit of the doubt and wanting this to be good, it is not a good look, imo.

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Look, I could be wrong, but the Critical Drinker will likely be part of the critic screenings, seeing as he's been invited to critic screenings for years now, and I don't consider him part of this latter "influencer" trend at all.

To that end, I think we need to define what "influencers" likely are in this instance, which are mostly the fanboy sites/accounts who give effusive praise to every superhero/Star Wars/genre blockbuster movie under the sun, in exchange for being invited to premieres and getting to participate in the press junkets.

The Critical Drinker is, very obviously, not that.

Once again, we're almost assuredly talking about the shills and easy lays, not people who are actually critical of movies.

hunter2012 said:

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Nothing says confidence in a movie than by banning real critics and opening it only for the shills that are prior approved.

This movie will make a $1B, but that doesn't mean it will be good. I will still be waiting for the audience reviews before buying a ticket. I care not what aggregate of Hollywood approved critics say. They've either lied or been just plain wrong on too many movies in recent history.

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This is the exact opposite of what Universal is doing.

Well, if that's the case, then I have no issues with it.

When I hear "influencers" i immediately think of any internet personality who isn't tied to some publication, but that may just be because I am now becoming an old.

Influencers are a much more mixed bag and far harder to predict. 95% of the critics they'll let see this will hype the **** out of it, and they know that. It's damage control to keep negative word of mouth from getting too out of control too early on. Could be wrong, but that's my guess.

hunter2012 said:

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Nothing says confidence in a movie than by banning real critics and opening it only for the shills that are prior approved.

This movie will make a $1B, but that doesn't mean it will be good. I will still be waiting for the audience reviews before buying a ticket. I care not what aggregate of Hollywood approved critics say. They've either lied or been just plain wrong on too many movies in recent history.

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You got this backwards