Fandom Pulse

The Odyssey star Ellen Page responds to questions about gender as it's revealed she's playing a male soldier: “In terms of looking at nature as if it’s some sort of cis hetero patriarchal structure is absurd, and that this, you know, gender binary that we’ve created is nothing but a quaint little myth." Does this word salad mean anything?

California AG Rob Bonta, leading a coalition of 12 Democrat-led states suing to block Paramount's $110B Warner Bros. Discovery acquisition, on his motive for the lawsuit: "Antitrust enforcement is a check on billionaires currying favor with the president so he'll do their bidding." Trump's own DOJ already cleared this merger. Twelve state AGs are now asking a federal court to overrule that decision. What's the legal theory for a state overriding a federal antitrust clearance?

Christopher Nolan compares backlash of The Odyssey to backlash with Batman: “When I came on to Batman Begins, writers and artists had been working on this beloved character for almost 65 years, and a lot of freighted thoughts were out there about what he represents. And what I learnt over my time on that trilogy is you can’t worry about any of that at all. What you have to do is honour the original text by interpreting it in the strongest way you personally can.” Did he honor Homer like he honored the original Batman?

Elliot Page, cast as Greek warrior Sinon in Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey opening this Thursday, on critics of transgender identity in a June 24 interview with Democracy Now: "Try and block out the noise from absolute vile losers, who must just be so profoundly uncomfortable with themselves, they can't handle that someone could get to a place that trans people do get to, which is a level of self-acceptance and understanding that I think is really beautiful and profound." A Greek warrior played by Elliot Page opens in theaters in four days. Is this the right way to speak to the audience buying tickets?

Lupita Nyong'o, in her Elle magazine interview in May, on how she approached her role as Helen of Troy and whether she planned to engage with critics of her casting: "I'm very supportive of Chris's intention with it and with the version of this story that he is telling. Our cast is representative of the world. I'm not spending my time thinking of a defense. The criticism will exist whether I engage with it or not." She then spent two months doing interviews criticising Homer's portrayal of women. Is that not engaging with the criticism?

Matt Damon, who plays Odysseus in Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey opening Thursday, on what it felt like to finally work with Nolan after years of hoping for the opportunity: "He's the best. He's just the absolute best. There's nobody doing it like him. The scope of this thing is unlike anything I've ever been a part of. I mean, we built a ship. A real ship." The film is getting called a masterpiece by critics and a disaster by conservative commentators. Elon Musk called Nolan a coward. Does building a real seaworthy ship for a $250 million IMAX epic earn back some trust?

Anson Mount, who plays Captain Pike in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 4 premiering July 23, on why the show's penultimate season is the best yet despite being its second to last: "I have never felt more comfortable and free playing this character than I do right now. There's a liberation that comes with knowing where the ending is. You stop worrying about what happens next and just play the scene in front of you." Strange New Worlds debuts in ten days. The show ends next year. Is knowing the ending the thing that finally made modern Star Trek worth watching again?

Paul Wesley, who plays a young James T. Kirk in Strange New Worlds Season 4 premiering July 23, on how the Kirk-Spock dynamic has evolved after four seasons of buildup: "There's something about how the episodes roll into one another in seasons 4 and 5 that is just really compelling. You can feel the inevitability of these two men becoming who they're going to be." William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy built the Kirk-Spock friendship across three seasons and six films. Paul Wesley and Ethan Peck have ten episodes to close the chapter. Are they ready?

James McAvoy, who played young Charles Xavier from 2011 to 2019, on being replaced in the MCU's X-Men reboot currently in development with Colman Domingo reportedly in contention for the role: "I'm just excited to see what happens next. I was a fan before I was an employee, and I'll be a fan again. Colman Domingo sounds amazing." Ian McKellen is back as Magneto in Avengers: Doomsday. Patrick Stewart is back as Professor X. James McAvoy just endorsed his own replacement. Is the graceful exit becoming Hollywood's rarest skill?

Little House on the Prairie showrunner Rebecca Sonnenshine, on backlash from fans before the show even aired: "I'm not even sure what 'woke' means to people anymore, to be honest... I think it's just become a catch-all word for things that I don't quite understand." She also invented an entirely new character, a widowed saloon owner who "practices free love," to model for Laura Ingalls. Does that sound like a word people don't understand, or one she understood perfectly?

Robert Pattinson, who plays the villain Antinous in Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey opening Thursday, on what it was like shooting the film entirely on practical IMAX 70mm with no digital fallback: "There's something about knowing the camera only has two and a half minutes before the magazine runs out. It changes how everyone performs. Everyone is more present. There's no hiding." He went from Twilight to The Batman to a Christopher Nolan Greek epic. The film opens in four days. Is Robert Pattinson the most unlikely prestige career arc in Hollywood history?

Moana hired a full team of Polynesian consultants to police everything from tattoos to how the heroine addresses her elders. The Odyssey cast zero Greek or Mediterranean actors in a story that belongs to Greece. One culture got a "Cultural Trust". The other got mocked for asking. Why is Hollywood like this?

Global Box Office started its five-star review of The Odyssey with: "While Nolan’s screenplay is certainly not the most accurate to its source material..." Should they be giving it 5 stars when they immediately begin with this caveat?

Little House original star Melissa Gilbert, before the reboot aired: "TV doesn't get too much more 'woke' than we did. We tackled: racism, addiction, nativism, antisemitism, misogyny, rape, spousal abuse and every other 'woke' topic you can think of." Netflix's showrunner used almost the same defense. So why does the new version still feel like it's arguing with the original rather than continuing it?

Ellen Page frames the Odyssey casting debate as something to be a victim about: “And I hope for anyone who’s sort of, you know, struggling in this time, and the headlines, and just to know, like, that you’re, you know, not alone, and loved and celebrated by so many, and try and block out the noise from, you know, absolute vile losers, who must just be so profoundly uncomfortable with themselves, they can’t handle that someone could get to a place that, I think, you know — that, you know, trans people do get to, which is a level of self-acceptance and understanding that I think is really beautiful and profound.” Should her mental illness be so

Little House on the Prairie showrunner Rebecca Sonnenshine on why she rebuilt the frontier classic around a new lens: "I think a lot of our pop culture portrays the West as men riding around with guns and solving problems with violence and posturing, but that is just not how it was settled... We really are trying to do a show that does not fall back on tropes of sort of masculinity." Is a story about settling the American frontier supposed to avoid masculinity?

Sebastian Stan, who plays Bucky Barnes in Avengers: Doomsday and previously played Donald Trump in The Apprentice, at the Cannes press conference for his new film Fjord last month when asked how his view of Trump has changed since 2024: "It's just not a laughing matter, to be honest. It isn't. I think we're in a really, really bad place. I really do. When you're looking at the consolidation of the media, censorship, threats, the supposed lawsuits that seemingly never end but don't actually go anywhere — the writing was on the wall." He played Trump at Cannes in 2024. He's back at Cannes in 2026 saying America is in a really bad place. His co-star Ian McKellen shouted Mar-a-Lago on set. Is Avengers: Doomsday secretly a political film?

George Lucas, in a Spielberg oral history published by Vulture this month, on the creative battle behind Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: "Harrison said, 'I'm not going to do another science-fiction movie.' And Steven said, 'I'm not going to do another science-fiction movie.' We did about five scripts, and finally Steve and I compromised: 'Look, what if they're not aliens but from another dimension.'" Kathleen Kennedy confirmed Spielberg and Ford were "not 100 percent on board" and called it the weakest of the four films because of it. Did George Lucas just confirm the worst Indiana Jones film was entirely his fault?

Kathleen Kennedy, in a Spielberg oral history published by Vulture this month, on why Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is the weakest entry in the franchise: "Steven and Harrison were not 100 percent on board with the story direction of Crystal Skull, which is why the movie, out of the four that Steven made, is the weakest. And that's why Harrison was so deeply committed to Dial of Destiny. He didn't want Crystal Skull to be the end." Dial of Destiny made $384 million on a massive budget and ended with Indiana Jones travelling back in time. Did Ford escape one bad ending only to get a worse one?

Film critic Roger Ebert, in a 2010 essay that is currently making the rounds again after Summer Game Fest 2026 showcased Final Fantasy VII Revelation, Alien: Isolation 2 and Resident Evil Veronica: "I remain convinced that in principle, video games cannot be art. Perhaps it is foolish of me to say 'never.' Let me just say that no video gamer now living will survive long enough to experience the medium as an art form." He later admitted he should never have said it. Final Fantasy VII Revelation, Alien: Isolation 2, and Resident Evil all announced at Summer Game Fest. Was Ebert wrong, or just early?