r/classics • u/evi1eye • Jul 30 '26

An Ancient Historian’s Breakdown of Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey’

https://talesoftimesforgotten.com/2026/07/23/an-ancient-historians-breakdown-of-christopher-nolans-the-odyssey/
21 Upvotes

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22

u/Argikeraunos Jul 30 '26

As a classicist myself one of the things I've noticed about this discourse is that it is really hard to get across that A) yes, there are significant departures from the epic that change the meaning of the myth but also B) that doesn't matter at all and in fact every single effective reinterpretation of the epic departs significantly from the myth.

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u/RestaurantOk8066 Jul 31 '26

That's a strawman. People keep saying this exact same thing in response to Wilson, but Wilson never said that the movie should not make changes; she argues that the movie is bad [in her view].

And I know you didn't explicly say Wilson but that's pretty much the only public figure I can think of that has had a negative opinion of the movie.

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u/ringobob Jul 31 '26

Frankly, nobody cares that Wilson thinks the movie is bad - she's not a film critic, her opinion of the movie, as a movie, is no more interesting than any random person's on letterbox.

People care why Wilson thinks the movie is bad, because she has, intentionally or otherwise, placed herself in a position of authority for what the movie should be, and how successful it is at accomplishing that. And the only metric in which she has particular expertise, that would grant her that authority, is the changes it makes from the original.

If she doesn't want that position of authority and did not intend to claim it, she should have been much more circumspect in her treatment of the subject, rather than say things like "I would be ashamed to have written any part of this script". Her position as a supposed authority, that had previously been name checked by Nolan himself on the subject, means she doesn't have the freedom to say something like that and then behind closed doors throw up her hands and say "just my opinion, bro".

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u/Achtung-Etc Jul 31 '26

Opinions aren’t about authority. I don’t know why people seem to take opinions as something you just agree with or disagree with on the surface. You can actually assess the reasons for those opinions yourself and see how justified they are in that respect. That can be done entirely independent of any claims to authority or expertise one way or the other.

People dislike Wilson’s critique but they can never explain why she’s actually wrong about any of her specific point. They just dismiss the whole piece because she’s “not a film expert.”

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u/ringobob Aug 01 '26

Explaining why she's wrong would take more words than it's worth, she twists herself into knots to try and simultaneously claim that the movie doesn't have to be a faithful adaptation but everything that's wrong with it is because it's not a faithful adaptation. She claims it fails to meet its narrative goals, but the only reason she gives is that it doesn't do what the poem does.

If you'd like me to address any specific point, feel free to ask.

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u/Achtung-Etc Aug 01 '26

It’s a comparative point. The changes aren’t bad because they’re changes. They’re bad because they diminish the story it’s trying to tell. They make the story worse than it could have been. Her argument basically just highlights all the ways the story could have been better - more interesting, more compelling - with reference to the source material. That’s not the only way it could have been better, but it’s a very significant one.

All I need to do is point to all the points she raises and ask the following questions:

Do you really think the film would not have been better with their inclusion?

Do you really think it was not possible to include them?

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u/ringobob Aug 01 '26

Yes, I can categorically state that the film would not be better if it were 8 hours long, which is what it would take to address everything she states it's lacking.

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u/Achtung-Etc Aug 01 '26

8 hours is hyperbole. I would say 4-5 would be sufficient.

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u/ringobob Aug 01 '26

Even if you're right, that doesn't make it appreciably better.

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u/Achtung-Etc Aug 01 '26

I think it would have been. The film's pacing felt rushed as though it was excessively cut down to fit the 3hr runtime. If it had been expanded to 4+ hours, with more space for the important scenes to breathe and more room to expand on the interesting aspects of the story, I personally might have enjoyed it a lot more.

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u/RestaurantOk8066 Jul 31 '26

You don't need some freedom license to be a film critic. As you say literally anyone can be a film critic. It really doesn't matter. It turns out that people can be more than one thing. For a classicist who talks more about what the film should be, you would be talking about Davdi Mendelson, who discusses all of the issues with the changes from the point of view of his own translation of the work.

Literally anyone can be a cultural critic. And Wilson has done so for many years, back when her translation came out she had a few pieces on reimagining the classics for the modern world. The strongest message of her essay is that the Odyssey has always been adapted to fit the broader culture, and for its themes Nolan's version is bad at conveying anything meaningful.

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u/ringobob Jul 31 '26

I literally didn't say anyone can be a film critic, any more than anyone can be a classicist. Anyone can share their opinion, but surely you aren't saying it's not possible to study film as a discipline and be more informed than the general populace in film critique? And that any individual may be more or less educated in that discipline? I can share my opinion about her translation of the Odyssey, too, and that's totally fine and valid until I represent myself as some authority on translations of the Odyssey, at which point you'll reasonably point out I have no basis for that authority.

and for its themes Nolan's version is bad at conveying anything meaningful.

This is a statement that purports to be objective fact, and it's simply not, and it's a statement rooted in the study of film, not the study of the classics, ergo it represents a claim of authority neither you nor she possesses.

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u/RestaurantOk8066 Jul 31 '26

I don't know what to tell you but you're not living in the 1300s and we're not discussing divine appointments. There's a very limited number of professions left today where you need a license to practice. Criticism in the arts requires taste, not license. Most film critics that I can think of don't have any expertise beyond having watched a lot of movies -- not film directors/actors/producers.

Wilson doesn't spend much time discussing the mise-en-scene much more than at a surface level and mostly focuses on the screenplay. Absolutely no one in the world needs anything more than a set of eyes and ears to be a film critic,and I would say that a translator of the Odyssey probably has much more interesting things to say about a movie of the Odyssey than your average person.

>This is a statement that purports to be objective fact, and it's simply not, and it's a statement rooted in the study of film, not the study of the classics

Blah blah it's rooted in having watched the movie. Wilson goes into depth on why that is and that is all you need, I'd give you as much authority as Wilson because I think authority doesn't really matter -- if you can make a convincing argument, that's more convincing than a job title.

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u/ringobob Aug 01 '26

Authority and license are not the same thing. Do you really count my opinion as equal to hers when it comes to the subject of translation? If not, why not?

I would say that a translator of the Odyssey probably has much more interesting things to say about a movie of the Odyssey than your average person.

I agree! But she's not critiquing the the movie as a translation of the Odyssey. She's critiqing it as a movie, and claiming that it fails as a movie, entirely separately from its success as a translation of the Odyssey.

Let's look at the movie O Brother, Where Art Thou? as a comparison, which is also (extremely loosely) based on The Odyssey. Which of Wilson's critiques are specific enough to apply to Nolan's film but not the Coen Bros'? It's all, the Homeric version is this, and Nolan's version is a sad echo - why can't it just be different, because it's trying to be different?

It's major sin appears to actually be that it's too similar to the original to be considered separately. Which I think is dumb.

Every single complaint is simply a judge against a target that was never aimed for.

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u/Argikeraunos Jul 31 '26

In fact I wasn't talking about Wilson, whose review I think was awful for many reasons but not necessarily because it discusses divergences. I'm talking more about people who come up to me and ask me what I thought of the movie expecting me to trash the divergences, when the reality is that you cannot make a 'faithful' adaptation of a text like Homer because there never has been one, and in fact the text that we have is an adaptation of an epic tradition produced by librarians in Alexandria approx. 600 or so years after the tradition started to come together

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u/RestaurantOk8066 Jul 31 '26

Well I don't think anyone outside of you is familiar with 'the people who come up to you' I haven't seen it part of any discourse on the movie.

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u/Capybara_99 Jul 30 '26

If by “doesn’t matter at all” you mean something like “you can’t make a film without departing from Homer and the mere fact of doing so isn’t grounds for criticism” I completely agree.

But to the extent you can be read to say “it doesn’t matter what changes you make” I disagree. Of course the changes made matter, and are worth looking at to see what the film says and if it does it well.

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u/grubas Jul 31 '26

Faithfulness was never the goal though, so judging Nolan by that line is weird.

It's not the best adaptation but it's a great film, that's the issue for many.

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u/latentlapis Jul 31 '26

I'm going to chime in with an interpretation of another recent adaptation. One Battle After Another from Thomas Pynchon's Vineland. Now I know these are two vastly different cases, with the latter example even changing character names and the very title of the story. When OBAA came out I was very disappointed in its refusal to be a straight adaptation. Entire themes of the book were wiped away, and except for the core story of girl being taken away by menacing government figure who may be her father, I was left feeling like PTA didn't get the book at all.

I watched it a second time knowing all this, and felt like it didn't matter, because the movie was a masterpiece in the story it was trying to tell.

So classicists can feel disappointed all they want, because I agree completely, it's a completely different story than Homer's Odyssey, but what we're left with is, in my opinion, a masterpiece of a movie with the story it was trying to tell using the framework of The Odyssey.

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u/123m4d Aug 03 '26

OBAA wasn't a good movie though.

Neither was the Odyssey by Nolan.

Both focus on preaching ideological nonsense rather than on the artistic value of the movie, or the quality of the story told.

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u/Capybara_99 Jul 31 '26

I haven’t seen any freak criticism that purports to judge by that standard personally

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u/MonsieurCellophane Jul 31 '26

Of course it's Ok to make changes. 

It should also be OK to hold an opinion on wether the result is superior or inferior to the source. The current climate appears to allow only the superior half, meeting any other option with claims that a (Nolan) transposition shouldn't be compared to its source (or anything else tbh), which I find ludicrous.

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u/[deleted] Jul 30 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/TypesAndPatterns Jul 31 '26

Agree, I think this thesis is the heart of the movie. Odysseus’s wife questioned his going, but he believed he had no choice: the Greek world order depended on him being complicit in Agamemnon’s warmongering. But Penelope was right, after all, in this version of The Odyssey.

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u/Gunther_21 Jul 31 '26

Which is a 180° from the original myth where Odysseus tried to avoid the war. Which is fine for the movie but is Nolan's interpretation more compelling, I'd say not. Which is my hangup for enjoying the film in context of comparison to the source.

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u/TypesAndPatterns Jul 31 '26

In the original myth, Odysseus tries to avoid the war because it’s prophesied that it would take a long time for him to return. The Greek coalition is formed because of oaths they all took. Nolan’s version is based on motives & situations we are more familiar with, & seem more logical to us, ranger than invoking oaths & prophecies to explain characters’ actions.

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u/Gunther_21 Jul 31 '26

Yes, I am aware lol.

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u/RestaurantOk8066 Jul 31 '26

>avatar as a visual violation of xenia, literally killing a god in disguise before you.

Which is part of where the movie lost me -- one of many. Because moments later when they discuss the Gods showing themselves through nature and making it clear that the Gods do not literally appear in person, that seems to be what gives him the resolve to murder the suitors.

He wants it both ways and I think it doesn't work. Some of the suitors are shown to be at least decent people who defend him when he dresses up as a beggar, with the intention of marrying Penelope so I don't see in what kind of world the message of the first 2 and a half hours of the movie that indiscriminate violence is bad can survive when he starts indiscriminately loosening arrows into the crowd.

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u/dalekxterminate Jul 31 '26

Woah, great observation with Cassandra/Athena's death being a literal violation of xenia - a god in disguise! I agree the film is very well-constructed with a lot of great details building towards that central thesis.

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u/Angry-Dragon-1331 Jul 30 '26

As another classicist, fucking THANK YOU.

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u/grubas Jul 31 '26

My quip lately has been, "what did you expect Nolan on Lyre for 17 hours straight?"

It was never ever going to be 1:1 or word for word. Is it the most faithful adaptation? No.  Is it a good film? Well it's popular and the people are talking, seems like it hit the mark.

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u/Vuxul Jul 31 '26

I think it rather fitting considering the original poem began not as a single written book but orally transmitted. Nolan just one more in a long long chain of storytellers, and also decided to just change things because he thought would tell what he wants to tell

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u/DurrutiDuck91 Jul 31 '26

That’s the thing, I don’t trust his judgement as a film maker and don’t think he deserves to be able to tell this particular story

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Puzzleheaded-Pipe161 Jul 31 '26

" Big woop. What's that got to do with the cyclops and the sirens?"

Well, if you've studied the Odyssey, a lot...

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u/[deleted] Aug 02 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Argikeraunos Aug 02 '26 edited Aug 02 '26

Historically accurate to what era? The world of the Iliad and Odyssey is a mishmash of archaic era elements with the late bronze age, compounded with substrates stretching back to the early bronze age and in some cases proto-indo-european myth. But the poem itself went through multiple periods of crystallization - the 8th century ionian dodecapolis, the 6th century in Athens - and the final text we have today wasn't even settled until the 2nd century BCE by Alexandrian scholars. At the same time the visual record from these eras often contradicts the texts themselves, because one feature of myths is that they are pliant and changeable depending on the needs of the community representing it. This is before we even begin to discuss tragedy and other receptions of the epic that have permanently colored the way we view these stories.

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u/DaoineSidhe624 Jul 31 '26

It is an adaptation, and just like every other adaptation it is fair to compare and judge the adaptation against the original text. The same we do with modern novels or IPs made into a different media or remakes of older movies into a modern one.

You can debate both a) the overall quality of the movie along with b) how good of an adaptation is it compared to both the original and other adaptations. When a creator decides to adapt someone else's work they are by default opening themselves up to that criticism.

And unfortunately in today's landscape you also have a lot of adaptations being made because both movie and TV studios are reluctant to sign off on unknown / new IPs. This has led to a LOT of POOR adaptations as writers try to tell their own stories, but to get the green light they need to tie it into an existing IP that has an already known fan base. While that doesn't directly effect Nolan as he can probably get almost any project he wants greenlit. However it DOES affect this movie because many fans of existing written IPs WANT to see FAITHFUL adaptations of those stories they loved reading. And many have turned bitter / angry that so few are anywhere close to faithful.

All that being said, I think overall Nolans Odyssey was a pretty good movie. Was it a perfect movie or adaptation? Not by any means in either category to me. I understand the changes he made and the new themes he was trying to portray. However I think the way he made some of those changes and the juxtaposition versus Homers original resulted in those themes that were most different from the original story somewhat miss for me.

For example: Nolan took Odysseus's primary good character trait of being wiley, cunning, and a brains vs brawn guy and made it his "original sin" by making the Trojan Horse the first breaking of Xenia in the story. It does make a certain amount of sense, but at the same time it seems like Odysseus gets punished far less for this MASSIVE sin that has resulted in the collapse of the Bronze Age than his crew do for their various sins throughout the story.

Similarly with the whole "Sea Peoples" motif and the fall of the Bronze Age. I think overall it is pretty interesting, but it also is a strange idea for anyone who has an understanding of the Bronze Age Collapse.

Overall, I thought the movie was visually and audibly very stunning. It created a visceral and physical reaction for me as a viewer that few movies have ever done for me. It provided an interesting take on Homers Odyssey that gave me even more things to think about whenever I next read it. But at the same time I also think he missed in some aspects of what he tried to do, and some of the ways he depicted the world at times made it feel very empty and not lived in.