Ha-ha, gottem! (Round 12 of 13,768)

Disclaimer: the featured image of the Trojan Horse popcorn bucket was likely AI-generated, and was taken without permission from a site that itself seemed likely AI-generated. I’m still anti-AI but will hypocritically use it when it feels thematically appropriate for a topic about things that are manufactured and soulless. This post is solidly in “if I’ve figured it out, everybody else must have figured it out long ago” territory. But I keep seeing online reactions to the not-even-in-its-opening-weekend-yet box office of The Odyssey, and I’ve been getting concerned that maybe people aren’t aware that they’re stuck in a repeating cycle? The story is that the latest Christopher Nolan summer blockbuster movie, which has been advertised as a can’t-miss epic for at least a year now, and which stars every famous person working in movies today1, has somehow, against all odds, already made hundreds of millions of dollars. This is despite all of the very real controversy around the movie,…