Wait… Travis Scott Is in 'The Odyssey'?
Who knew Christopher Nolan was a rager? The beloved auteur's highly anticipated next film, a retelling of Homer's 'The Odyssey', is still about six months away and thus shrouded in the typical Nolan veil of CIA-level secrecy. (In a recent interview, co-star Robert Pattinson happily talked about his other projects while noting of 'The Odyssey', 'you get assassinated if you talk about it.' ) Despite a cool teaser trailer and an even cooler six-minute clip that played ahead of Avatar last month, we still don't know much about the adaptation and where Nolan is going to take it.
So imagine the nation's collective surprise when a TV spot that teased previously unseen footage—craftily placed during Sunday's AFC championship game between the New England Patriots and the Denver Broncos, a game the majority of households are tuned into while half of the country is shut-in from a snowstorm—featured none other than Houston rap A-lister Travis Scott in a speaking role. Which, what?
It's hard to tell if this is just a glorified cameo or something more significant; Scott appears to be in a scene between Jon Bernthal and Tom Holland, parts of which appear in the trailer that's already been out. If you asked me to guess potential surprise performers in this film, I would've named at least 100 people before I threw out the guy who made 'Mamacita.'
That's not to hold anything against Scott, or his acting ambitions. He's been vocal about his love of film for years; theatrical experiences have been a big part of his album rollouts, and he even had a production deal with A24 that may or may not still be in play. (Most impressively, to me at least, during a recent house tour video with Rolling Stone, when asked which movie he'd play in the mansion's home theater his immediate pick was Tarantino's underrated 'Death Proof.' ) He even has a pre-existing relationship with Nolan, having provided the end credits song for 'Tenet', and using his IMAX-camera filmed music video for 'Franchise' as a hook to lure young audiences in during post-pandemic theater wariness.
But Travis Scott is one of the biggest avatars of modern pop culture that we have right now, it's hard to think of him seamlessly blending into an old word aesthetic. Stunt casting isn't really Nolan's thing either; Harry Styles was in 'Dunkirk' but honestly who can really tell that cast apart, am I right?
This is a bemusing decision, that also raises a million questions about how it came about and ups the intrigue on a movie whose curiosity level was already peaking, so the joke's still on us. All I know is that end credits song better be a heater.
