{"id":829623,"date":"2026-07-27T17:36:13","date_gmt":"2026-07-27T17:36:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/829623\/"},"modified":"2026-07-27T17:36:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-27T17:36:13","slug":"the-odyssey-translator-trashes-nolans-film","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/829623\/","title":{"rendered":"‘The Odyssey’ Translator Trashes Nolan’s Film"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tChristopher Nolan<\/a>\u2018s The Odyssey<\/a> has won over critics<\/a> and audiences<\/a> while breaking box office records <\/a>for Universal.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut Emily Wilson is decidedly not impressed. <\/p>\n

\n\tWilson is an acclaimed translator<\/a> of Homer\u2019s epic poemsThe Iliad and The Odyssey, and her opening sentence to the latter (\u201cTell me about a complicated man\u201d) was previously cited<\/a> by Nolan.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut her review of the film for the London Review of Books<\/a> was so scathing that it\u2019s going viral, and the publication\u2019s website appeared to go down early on Monday.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI had hoped that Nolan\u2019s affinity with these Homeric themes might push him to new creative heights, and enable him to conjure more believable characters,\u201d Wilson wrote<\/a>. \u201cBut The Odyssey features his usual combination of grandiosity and superficiality.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWilson continued: \u201cThe film\u2019s vision is too confused, its characters too underdeveloped, to deliver what it half-promises in terms of big ideas \u2014 although it is very good at conveying big bangs and big giants.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThen comes the real banger paragraph: \u201cNolan\u2019s Odyssey lacks many of the elements that make the poem great. It has nothing convincing to say about time, memory, history, war, or about the relationship between one warrior\u2019s glorious return and the lives of his family, adversaries, comrades, friends and neighbors. 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWilson then added, \u201cI would be ashamed to have written any part of this script.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tTo be fair, successfully adapting The Odyssey to the screen was an extraordinarily difficult task <\/a>and Nolan clearly erred on the side of making the film as accessible as possible <\/a>for a modern audience. As a result, Nolan has introduced a 2,800-year-old poem to new generations.<\/p>\n

\n\tWilson acknowledges this, noting that \u201ctranslations of Odyssey, including mine, are flying off the shelves\u201d and expressing hope that \u201cthe film will persuade a few college administrators not to cut their literature, language and history departments.\u201d She added \u201cNolan is doing his best to get the general public reading again, and I am grateful.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tIronically, Wilson herself previously drew criticism from some Odyssey readers for making her translation more accessible. According to Vulture<\/a>, Wilson \u201cwas the first woman to have a translation of The Odyssey published in English and immediately scored acclaim and backlash for what some saw as overly simplistic wording.\u201d In her forthcoming U.S. book, Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea, she writes, \u201cI didn\u2019t want to produce a translation that was longer, wordier, or that risked being flabbier than the original.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Christopher Nolan\u2018s The Odyssey has won over critics and audiences while breaking box office records for Universal. But…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":829624,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[49,48,361,101938,75,29185],"class_list":["post-829623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-celebrities","tag-christopher-nolan","tag-entertainment","tag-the-odyssey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/829623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=829623"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/829623\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/829624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=829623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=829623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=829623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}