Robert Pattinson has put Antinous at the center of the reaction to Universal’s trailer for The Odyssey, and the numbers are hard to ignore: 651,000 dislikes, 6.1 million views, and more than 34,000 comments. The trailer is still sitting at #3 on YouTube’s movies trending chart while the backlash keeps building.
Jacob in Twilight
Pattinson told MTV UK, “I think they will be rooting for him. I keep comparing it — it’s kind of like Jacob in Twilight.” He was talking about Antinous in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, a role he framed as one viewers would naturally lean toward.
He pushed the comparison further with, “What The Odyssey is about — Penelope just can’t make her mind up between the two guys and I’m just trying to like help her make a decision. It’s like, ‘It’s fine. He’s dead, get over it,'” a line that turns the character into the kind of love-triangle shorthand Pattinson has used before. The directness is the point: he is selling Antinous through a familiar romantic rivalry instead of a grand mythic pitch.
Universal’s trailer backlash
The trailer’s dislike count was first reported at 55,000 on July 1, then jumped to 600,000 within a day of the premiere before reaching 651,000 as of writing. That climb gives the comment a sharper edge, because Pattinson is not speaking into a calm release cycle; he is answering while the response to Universal’s upload is still moving.
Universal’s Official Countdown Trailer went up seven days ago, and the reaction has stayed loud enough to keep the upload near the top of YouTube’s movies chart. First reactions out of the London premiere called the film a triumph, but the public-facing trailer numbers show a different kind of attention, one built on comment volume and dislike totals rather than a simple launch bump.
Antinous and Penelope
Pattinson’s own description also collides with the story mechanics he invokes. He said, “What The Odyssey is about — Penelope just can’t make her mind up between the two guys and I’m just trying to like help her make a decision. It’s like, ‘It’s fine. He’s dead, get over it,'” yet Homer’s The Odyssey is not usually summarized as Penelope choosing between two men in that way. That gap makes his pitch useful as publicity, but loose as a plot guide.
As of writing, the trailer’s 71,000 likes sit far below the 651,000 dislikes, a spread that makes the release look more like a fight over framing than a standard teaser rollout. Pattinson has given Antinous a Team Jacob-style shorthand, and the next audience test is whether that shorthand helps the film beyond the trailer noise when The Odyssey arrives nine days from release.
