Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey was the biggest movie in the world last weekend, raking in $264 million globally. The film had a production budget of $250 million and spent $125 on marketing, according to ABC News, meaning it’s on track to earn back its money for Universal, to say nothing of all the awards it’s expected to win.
But much like everything else in pop culture during the 2020s, The Odyssey has become a lightning rod of controversy on social media. The problem? Right-wingers don’t like that the film has a few actors who aren’t white and one who’s trans.
Those people are trying to insist the movie is actually bad and that there’s a concerted effort on sites like Rotten Tomatoes to artificially inflate its score. They’re also claiming that all of the sold out theaters are “fraud,” something for which they’ve provided no evidence.
BREAKING: The Odyssey is FAKING ticket sales by buying up theaters/seats (Fraud) to make the movie look like a success (already $400 million in the hole) moviegoers are reporting having to take terrible seats (because full) but when they show up the theaters are mostly empty. pic.twitter.com/UR8Q78LYv2
— MR. OBVIOUS (@ObviousRises) July 20, 2026
Aside from anecdotes from anonymous people online, there’s zero evidence that anyone is faking movie ticket sales for The Odyssey. Anecdotally, I can say that a nearby seat which had been sold when I bought my ticket for a screening last Thursday was empty when I arrived. But that’s also happened at other screenings for movies I’ve seen at that theater over the years.
There are plenty of other plausible explanations for some empty seats, including the fact that you can cancel your ticket and get a refund shortly before the movie starts. Sometimes people who buy their tickets well in advance also can’t make the screening for one reason or another and might just eat the cost. The least likely explanation—and one for which there is absolutely no evidence—is that there’s massive fraud going on.
In fact, the evidence points in the other direction. People are clamoring to see the movie in 70mm IMAX to the point that the projectors are reportedly overheating since they’re running 24 hours per day in some cities. And anyone who saw the film on opening weekend, no matter the format, can likely attest to how crowded the theater was, even if there were a handful of empty seats.
Another conspiracy theory currently circulating online is that Rotten Tomatoes is keeping negative reviews from being published, artificially boosting the rating of the film. The movie currently has a 95% positive score from critics and a 97% score from audiences.
But there’s no real evidence that Rotten Tomatoes is actually suppressing negative reviews. Gizmodo reached out to Rotten Tomatoes for comment but didn’t immediately hear back. We’ll update this article if they respond, but a cursory glance at The Odyssey on Rotten Tomatoes shows there are plenty of negative reviews there, they’re just whiny and poorly written.
As one example:
Should have renamed it to The Woke Odyssey. A historical movie with modern hair stylings and New York accents? Terrible dialogue – very cringe. Wrong era set pieces and a full class on woke theory. Very disappointing for a Nolan film.
That person has written four reviews in recent years, including ones for The Little Mermaid (2023) and Snow White (2025), two other culture war movies that were slammed by right wingers for being woke. It’s pretty clear this person has one goal, and that’s to skew the score of movies they may not have even seen.
Another conspiracy theory is that bots are flooding Rotten Tomatoes with positive reviews. The suppose evidence for this theory is that the reviews are too generic. But the more likely explanation is that most people aren’t going to write a long-winded thesis about why they liked a particular movie. Something like “Fantastic movie. Well done!” is going to be the average response.
Are we seriously supposed to trust that these so-called "verified reviews" were actually written by a "human"?
These are so generic it could be for any movie… the kind of comments that bots produce on almost every platform.
Most of the comments don't have anything specific… pic.twitter.com/ndwzkxUByv— Emerald Apple (@AI_EmeraldApple) July 21, 2026
Hilariously, some X users have said there should be a class action lawsuit against Rotten Tomatoes over suppression of negative reviews.
Art is subjective. Regardless of your politics, it’s entirely possible to love or hate The Odyssey for whatever reason makes sense to you. Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro is a fan. And there are plenty of good reasons why a left-wing person might dislike this movie. There’s nothing inherently political about the film, though all art can also be interpreted through that lens.
There have been plenty of jokes on the left about the movie being a cultural victory, but they’re firmly tongue in cheek.
https://t.co/32dJfJwety pic.twitter.com/ctrym22V73
— Kristi Yamaguccimane (@TheWapplehouse) July 21, 2026
The movie will live and die by how much audiences really enjoy it. Most people aren’t on X and have no idea there’s even a cultural battle over this particular piece of mass media. Only about 21% of American adults ever use X, according to Pew Research. That’s absolutely nothing compared to platforms like YouTube (84%), Facebook (71%), and Instagram (50%).
Elon Musk, who bought Twitter in late 2022 and turned it into a far-right radicalization machine, seems heavily invested in the idea that The Odyssey should flop because it’s too woke. He retweeted a claim on Tuesday that Rotten Tomatoes was publishing fake scores and directed people to a site that has the “real” score.
Someone tipped me off to a website where it compiles all the real ratings for movies on Rotten Tomatoes and compares it to the fake push ratings they try to portray as real ratings. Really eye opening.
Will link the website in first reply but it's called PopcornGap. https://t.co/M0HarzRleE pic.twitter.com/kOKrsNEt7q
— Aesthetica (@Anc_Aesthetics) July 21, 2026
The site is called Popcorn Gap and it subtracts any reviews that were submitted through a one-tap push notification system deployed by Fandango. Which is to say that it’s deleting real reviews that these people believe to be insufficiently detailed in their assessments. But, again, the average person isn’t going to write some lengthy review. They’re just going to score the movie honestly based on whether they liked it or not.
The Odyssey is doing really well at the box office and it’s no surprise. The film looks great, it’s well acted, and was made by one of the most popular directors in Hollywood. It’ll win a gajillion awards and will likely be remembered as a solid piece of pop culture for decades to come. And right wingers will likely keep insisting that it’s garbage, all while claiming everyone actually hates the movie because they don’t have any friends who saw it.
X is a fake world of petty grievance where one of the year’s biggest movies is actually a failure. And it’s never been more clear that anyone who clings to that site as a barometer of what’s relevant in American culture is just rotting their brain from the inside.
