When I left you in Part I, I was cataloguing the incompetence of the movie’s director, who some critics, probably all Batman fans, appear to regard as Orson Welles, John Ford, Stanley Kubrick, Stephen Spielberg and William Wyler rolled up in one.

Upon reflection, I need to mention another example at the risk of exposing my lack of fair reference since I never saw the second half of the movie.

Based on various reviews and analyses, I know that many aspects of the performances (Damon seems depressed and unengaged) and the unfolding story ( Why is Athena so passive?) are allegedly explained or justified by revelations in the film’s last scenes. However, with the exception of gimmick films like “The Sixth Sense,” in which fooling the audience is the central purpose of the movie, that is unconscionable story-telling, especially in a three hour movie. Finding out after Matt Damon has bored you stiff for hours and you’ve been wondering “Where the hell are all the gods?” the answer to the puzzle—“Oh! I see! Odysseus is depressed! Its complex PTSD! Now I realize in retrospect that I really enjoyed his nuanced portrayal of a serious human malady!” and “That’s it! There aren’t any gods, and “Athena” was just the hero’s way of dealing with the girls he saw beheaded!”—is unfair to the audience, to the actors, and to the source material. Rare directors, with the right material, can pull that trick off. If the first half of the movie loses the audience, it’s impossible.

2. Incompetence: The screenplay! The dialogue! Nolan is responsible for both, and shame on him. I don’t know that I have ever watched a major movie with such amateurish, hackneyed, stilted dialogue…when you could hear the dialogue. Here I have to also blame the actors as well. At least the stars have some control over what they say. Damon’s dialogue in particular was awful. He has the juice (so does Hathaway) to pull the director aside and say, “Come on. I can’t say that. Fix it.” This may be another example of how Nolan’s inflated reputation for being a genius harmed the film.

As for the screenplay, whoever got Nolan hooked on “Zeus’s Law” should be stuffed in a barrel filled with fat Lithuanian midgets. The best take-down of this thematic conceit comes from Emily Wilson appropriately enough, the scholar who wrote the translation of Homer that Nolan allegedly adapted for his movie, and who wrote, by far, the most thorough and intelligent review of it as well. (She hated it.)

After noting the obvious, that it’s weird how everyone blathers on about Zeus’s Law but Zeus is nowhere to be seen, and Odysseus doesn’t believe in the gods anyway unless they hang around as surrogates for headless girls, Wilson writes,

(See, Alizia? That’s an ethical “appeal to authority,” the opinion of a Homer scholar who has read the work in Greek and wrote the translation the film she’s critiquing was based on.)

Bingo! The movie, characters and plot as envisioned by Nolan are ethically incoherent. (I had the same complaint about Nolan’s Batman movies.)

Remaining notes:

It seems like a good time for one of these. I was working throughout the weekend and couldn’t take the time to ponder several interesting and important ethics developments. I’m also thinking a lot about the future of EA. Both my accountant and my gratis office consultant excoriated me last month for spending the two to three hours I devote every day to researching and writing posts as well as replying to comments (19, 722 posts since late 2009 and 69, 698 personal responses) and demanded that I figure out a way to monetize my work, especially since I have rather serious financial problems that have only become worse since my wife dropped dead in early 2024 (ProEthics is at least a two professional job, and my cloning experiments have failed). Neither understands that Ethics Alarms exists to fulfill the mission of both my business and me personally, which is to inspire, educate, and engage willing people regarding the important role societal ethics must have in the United States, and to do so in a style that isn’t pedantic, academic, or flaccid.

If I could find a way to monetize the website without significantly reducing its readership (“Surely nobody’s going to quit if you had a $50 a year subscription!,” my accountant said. Really? I only have five commenters now when the blog is free…**) My office consultant quit over the matter (and some other things), and hasn’t spoken to me since the discussion about EA.

Well, I’m not going to solve that conundrum today: I have promises to keep, and before I sleep I’m going to see “The Odyssey” tonight, primarily to assess the validity of the political complaints, and I had to wrestle my fingers to the floor to stop a post about people who condemn the film based on hearsay (you know, like I did).

OK, enough about me. Here are my briefer thoughts about…

1. Trans activist insanity. “Jeopardy!” nerd-turned-host Ken Jennings is being attacked on BlueSky for being “transphobic.” Why? Apparently the New York Times is unpopular with the radical pro-trans mob because the paper hasn’t been as aggressive in its pro-woke propaganda efforts on their behalf as with other issues. Jennings had written on the censorious, intolerant, left-wing alternative to Twitter/”X” that he plays the online Times game “Wordle” with his wife every day. This was typical of the BlueSky outrage: “I wish people who care about trans people could understand that playing NYT games is still an insult to trans people.”

To his credit, Jennings has so far refused to dignify the insanity with a serious response. “This may be true of others but I actually got express permission from the trans community to keep NYT games and recipes,” he replied to the lunatic. “I also have a news subscription, which is arguably worse, so I had to specifically send in a written request. Took 30 days but I got it approved. They were like ‘trans people are not a monolith’ and ‘like-minded allies may disagree on specific media boycotts’ and stuff like that. It was a huge load off my mind!” Naturally, this just triggered the crazies more, and Jennings is now under daily attack, with calls for boycotts of the iconic quiz show he hosts and for him to be fired.

As of today, Jennings has refused to grovel an apology (or to stop playing Wordle). But why would he have an account on BlueSky if he weren’t hostage to The Great Stupid’s bubble?

2. Speaking of fearless truth-tellers who refuse to be intimidated…J.K. Rowling, the “Harry Potter” author who has been vilified world-wide for simply expressing common sense and logic regarding trans insanity, posted a masterpiece on “X” along with a frighting video of a rant by a self-declared woman who not only looks and sounds male, “she” looks and sounds like a male maniac. This is not going to get Rowling off the LGBTQ+ hate list:

If you don’t think he’s a woman, you’re transphobic. When he claimed to be a woman, he became a woman. He now belongs in women’s changing rooms, bathrooms, hospital wards, prison cells and rape support centres.

If you try and differentiate between him and a trans woman who looks more convincing as a woman, you are promoting patriarchal beauty norms. If you admit to seeing an aggressive and possibly unbalanced man in this video, you’re saying all trans people are mentally ill predators. If you refuse to let him into female-only spaces, you’re removing his right to exist. If you suggest he could comfortably use male facilities, you secretly want him assaulted. If you refuse to call him ‘she’, you are guilty of unpardonable cruelty. If you’re a woman who wouldn’t want to share a locker room with him, or a man who wouldn’t want your daughter, sister or mother to get undressed in close proximity to him, you belong to the far-right. If you point out that there is no objective difference between his claim to be a woman and that of any other biological male claiming a trans identity, you are too stupid to understand the circular arguments explaining why he’s not really trans whereas other men who say they’re women are really trans.

If you’re righteous, you must argue that this man’s self-declared identity overrides any consideration of the safety and rights of females. To be godly, you must agree he’s as ‘valid’ as every other trans woman, because people are who they say they are. No matter what your eyes, ears and common sense are telling you, if you don’t want to end up on the wrong side of history, you must pretend to believe that this angry, intimidating man is actually a vulnerable, oppressed woman.

You know…when Dr. Fauci revealed himself to be a narcissist, a coward, a fick, and an all-time American villain.

The Fauci Ethics Train Wreck is yet another integrity test for the American Left and the Axis of Unethical Conduct. It has flunked the others, so it is not surprising that it is flunking this one. The ethical course would be to admit the truth:

“Yes, they were thrilled with the pandemic lockdown, because it wrecked the Trump economy and gave them a chance to install a puppet President who could be manipulated by extreme left unelected functionaries. Yes, that made us especially willing to accept Dr. Fauci and Co.’s draconian measures, especially since it gave Democratic elected officials an opportunity to play dictator and constrain Americans’ civil rights in the name of “safety.” Yes, we sanctified Dr. Fauci beyond all reason to enhance our irresponsible “follow the science” grift, which has been so successful in the climate change policy debate. Yes, we were complicit in installing ruinous and unnecessary policies, based on panic that our media sowed, that retarded a generation’s education and social development, ruined businesses, permanently damaged whole industries, and killed people.”

Nah! That’s not how the American Left rolls in 2026. How much better it is to deflect, lie, ignore multiple metaphorical elephants, and maintain a position that has become completely untenable.

The op-ed titled “What We Really Learned From the Fauci Hearing” (gift link, but this is no present) from the New York Times could have been designed by an AI bot with the instruction, “write an op-ed denying that the Fauci hearing was what it was, using the topic to blame Republicans while avoiding inconvenient facts.”

This paragraph, near the end, is a masterpiece of dishonesty and sophistry:

“Dr. Fauci is a complicated man who has been both elevated and reduced to a symbol. His legacy after a decades-long career at the intersection of science and politics is now defined by incompatible, contested accounts of his pandemic-era impact. There is little hope of resolving that contest any time soon.”

“Complicated”! The smoking gun of brazen sophistry, prevarication and equivocation. There’s noting complicated about Fauci. He’s a lifetime bureaucrat who became intoxicated with power when the opportunity arrived, and abused that power for the benefit his own ego, his political party, and the detriment of millions. It is an old story. Faucis have been analyzed by historians, playwrights and novelists for centuries. “Complicated” is an anodyne, toothless word used to excuse wrong-doers.