Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey Roasted by Translator He Cited as Inspiration, “The Writing Is Abysmal”
Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey is becoming more than a box office success; it’s becoming a cultural phenomenon. Nolan’s film has sold out premium format screens for weeks, and the box office tally now stands at $652 million (against a $250 million budget). Both audiences and critics are raving about the film, but maybe the same can’t be said for scholars.
The Odyssey is based on the epic poem by the ancient Greek poet Homer. It is one of the oldest known literary texts in existence, estimated to be upwards of 3,000 years old. There have been numerous scholars who have attempted to translate Homer’s words into modern language, so you know they probably feel some kind of way whenever the poem is translated to the big screen.
Nolan’s Favorite Odyssey Scholar Roasts His Movie Adaptation
Now that The Odyssey is being seen by the masses, some scholars are weighing in on the film. One such scholar has pretty harsh criticisms of Nolan’s adaptation, and it has to be especially harsh to hear, as it was her translation of Homer’s Odyssey that inspired his take on the text.
“I think it’s the Emily Wilson translation that begins, ‘Tell me about a complicated man’,” Christopher Nolan told Empire in the fall of 2025 describe his take on Odysseus (Matt Damon). “The genius of the character, the cleverness, the inventiveness of him, that was a huge part of what interested me. He’s not just a soldier. He’s an amazing strategist, a very wily person.”
Emily Wilson is a Professor of Classical Studies at the Unviersity of Pennsylvania, who has published several books on ancient literarture, as well as several translations of ancient texts, including Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. In a recent article published in the London Review of Books, Wilson reviewed Nolan’s The Odyssey, and had some pretty harsh takes on whether or not Nolan captured the deeper subtext and themes of Homer’s story.
“Nolan’s Odyssey lacks many of the elements that make the poem great,” Wilson writes. “It has nothing convincing to say about time, memory, history, war, or about the relationship between one warrior’s glorious return and the lives of his family, adversaries, comrades, friends and neighbours. It lacks psychological, emotional, political and ethical depth. Its narrative structure is gimmicky. The writing is abysmal. None of the characters has convincing motivation for their actions or words. There are no sex scenes, and all the food looks horrible.”
Even Scholars Are Celebrating What Nolan’s The Odyssey Is Accomplishing
Wilson may have had a scholar’s criticisms of The Odyseey, but she was also able to recognize the value in what Nolan’s film is doing for the arts:
“Despite all this, the release of The Odyssey is still an event to celebrate. In what we are told is the streaming era, this epic is bringing audiences back to cinemas. In what we are told is a time of declining literacy and the ‘death of the humanities’, translations of The Odyssey, including mine, are flying off the shelves… Nolan… is doing his best to get the general public reading again, and I am grateful.”
The Odyssey is now playing in theaters and IMAX. Discuss the film with us on the ComicBook Forum!
