Christopher Nolan's Odyssey Has One Fatal Flaw

Why Nolan's Odyssey Doesn't Feel Like Homer

The following review contains spoilers.

Christopher Nolan butchered the most important detail in The Odyssey—but that might not be his fault.

I just saw the new Odyssey this past Thursday, and to Nolan’s credit, the film is not only cohesive and engaging but also a fantastic standalone piece of art. I came into the movie with low expectations—especially given the online discourse surrounding its DEI casting—but with the exception of a few minor hiccups—Ellen Page, Zendaya, Travis Scott, and Lupita Nyong’o—I didn’t mind the casting overall. Matt Damon shone in his performance, and the action scenes were both suspenseful and entertaining.

Given my general distaste for contemporary cinema, I would go so far as to say that I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed my overall experience.

But there’s one detail I just can’t get over as a literature lover: Nolan changes the fundamental ethos of the Homeric universe—and the results are disastrous to the Odysseus our civilization has cherished for thousands of years.

At the core of Nolan’s Odyssey is the premise that Odysseus has suffered immense trauma during his time at war and just wants to forget. As the mastermind behind the Trojan horse, he feels responsible for the Trojans’ suffering and experiences PTSD-like flashbacks not unlike those of a Vietnam War veteran. Throughout the film, the goddess Athena haunts him in the form of a young girl his men behead during the sack of Troy, and by the time Odysseus reaches home, he breaks down in tears.

These are all clever plot devices that no doubt resonate with a contemporary audience familiar with the ills of war in the abstract.

There’s only one problem. Homer never wrote such an Odysseus.

In the original Greek text, Odysseus is not only largely unaffected by the Trojan War but actively revels in his conquests. In keeping with the heroic ideals of Homeric Greece, Odysseus is proud of his actions at Troy—and he wants everyone to know that he, the sacker of cities, was largely responsible for the Achaean victory.

It is no accident, then, that Odysseus’s pride also becomes the source of his sufferings.

When Odysseus and his men come up against the Cyclops Polyphemus, our hero tricks the giant by calling himself a “Nobody,” prompting Polyphemus to declare “Nobody is killing me!” Taking these words literally, the Cyclops’ allies leave Odysseus and his men alone, but Odysseus can’t stand the thought that Polyphemus will forever believe that “Nobody” defeated him. In his all-consuming pride, he pompously declares that he, Odysseus, the sacker of cities, gouged out the giant’s eye—before making his final escape.

Armed now with the knowledge of Odysseus’s identity, Polyphemus prays to Poseidon and asks the god to ensure that Odysseus and his men never return home.

In other words, Odysseus’ hubris not only sets the entire epic into motion but is also responsible for the entirety of his sufferings on the way home.

Nolan, however, consciously omits this scene from his film, claiming that it would be far too difficult to pull off such a joke in an English-speaking context. But far more plausible is that including the “Nobody” scene would have undoubtedly thwarted his efforts at creating a weaker Odysseus who believes the Trojan War was all for nothing.

But why make a weaker Odysseus in the first place?

We can only speculate, but boy, do I have some theories.

Sure, Nolan likely altered Odysseus’s character to appeal to a more sensitive, modern audience—perhaps the sorts of anti-war activists who have opposed Israel’s war in Gaza or American involvement in Iran—but it is equally as likely that Nolan simply never got the chance to understand Odysseus’s true character in the first place.

We know for certain that Nolan based his adaptation of Homer’s great epic on Emily Wilson’s 2018 translation. And the fact is that Emily Wilson portrays Odysseus as a moral coward.

It is no secret that Emily Wilson harbors a negative bias against Homer’s eponymous hero. In her introduction to The Odyssey, she calls him an “adulterer,” a “thief and a liar,” a “colonial invader,” a “mass murderer,” and a “soldier with a traumatic past” (among other far-fetched epithets). She portrays Odysseus’s intrusion in Polyphemus’ cave as an “episode” that “seems to meditate uneasily on the processes of colonization,” and repeatedly foregrounds the victims of the Trojan War rather than the Achaeans’ heroic achievements. In a Guardian interview, she admits to changing Homer’s πολύτροπος (polytropos)—an adjective that has previously been rendered as “resourceful,” “skilled in all ways,” and “cunning”—to “complicated” out of a personal belief that Odysseus does not merit a positive description at the outset of the poem.

And, of course, she repeatedly jumps at any opportunity to portray Odysseus as a coward throughout her bizarre translation.

Let’s take a look at her portrayal of the Cyclops episode—that “colonial invasion” that reads very differently between classic translations and Wilson’s abomination of a text. Specifically, we’ll examine the moment that Odysseus reveals his name to his formidable opponent.

I’d like to first show you a translation that’s not mentioned very frequently today but that you may have heard of from another literary genius—George Chapman’s Odyssey that is perhaps most famous for its appearance in John Keats’ poem.

Chapman writes,

By great necessity conquer’d, in my breast:
‘Cyclop! if any ask thee, who impos’d
Th’ unsightly blemish that thine eye enclos’d,
Say that Ulysses, old Laertes’ son,
Whose seat is Ithaca, and who hath won
Surname of City-razer, bor’d it out.’

Notice Chapman’s glory-filled diction: necessity “conquer’d” Odysseus’s breast; he “impos’d” a blemish on the Cyclops’ eye; his “seat” is in Ithaca, reemphasizing his kingly status; and, of course, he’s a “City-razer.” With Odysseus’s heroic spirit shining through so clearly, it’s no wonder that Keats was inspired to write such a beautiful homage to the epic’s first full appearance in the English language.

And it’s not just this more archaic translation that exudes glory—Robert Fagles’ 1996 translation has the following:

I called back with another burst of anger, ‘Cyclops—
if any man on the face of the earth should ask you
who blinded you, shamed you so—say Odysseus,
raider of cities, he gouged out your eye,
Laertes’ son, who makes his home in Ithaca!’

In Fagles, Odysseus, the “raider of cities” shamed the Cyclops. He’s proud of his time at Troy, and he views his connection to his Achaean homeland as the source of much of his glory.

Let’s take a look now at what Emily Wilson does to this passage.

I was
still furious, and shouted back again,
’Cyclops! If any mortal asks you how
your eye was mutilated and made blind,
say that Odysseus, the city-sacker,
Laertes’ son, who lives in Ithaca,
destroyed your sight.’

In choosing the word “mutilated,” Wilson shifts the emotional center of the passage from the victor’s glory to the victim’s injury. Her word choice frequently alters the tone of the passage, with “Whose seat is Ithaca” and “Who makes his home in Ithaca” becoming the bland “who lives in Ithaca”; similarly, the more neutral “anger”—or even Chapman’s charged “By great necessity conquer’d, in my breast”—takes on a more negative connotation with “I was still furious.”

The language is modern, sure, but it sounds more like a series of text messages rather than a victorious declaration.

Similarly, in an earlier passage, Wilson renders “Nobody” as “Noman” (in one word), deemphasizing Odysseus’s outrage at the thought of himself as nobody. In fact, English readers unfamiliar with the Greek story may miss this pun entirely, believing, perhaps, that Odysseus has simply chosen an arbitrary name for himself to disguise his identity.

But the most telling sign of Wilson’s disparagement of Odysseus’s heroism is not in this passage but in the one that follows.

In the Cyclops’ ensuing prayer to Poseidon, Fagles has the following:

‘‘Hear me—
Poseidon, god of the sea-blue mane who rocks the earth!
If I really am your son and you claim to be my father,—
come, grant that Odysseus, raider of cities,
Laertes’ son who makes his home in Ithaca,
never reaches home...’

In repeating Odysseus’s declaration verbatim, the Cyclops acknowledges Odysseus’s noble lineage and his glory as a Greek warrior.

Wilson, on the other hand, does this:

‘Listen, Earth-Shaker, Blue-Haired Poseidon:
acknowledge me your son, and be my father.
Grant that Odysseus, the city-sacker,
will never go back home...’

She completely omits the line “Laertes’ son who makes his home in Ithaca” (which, by the way, does indeed appear in the Ancient Greek), thereby weakening the Cyclops’ recognition of Odysseus’s lineage and kingship. One can surmise that this is Wilson’s attempt to sever Odysseus from his national ties, creating a sort of omni-cause where all are one and where lineage no longer matters.

But in the world of the Homeric epic, glory—and specifically Odysseus’s glory—is uniquely bound up with the theme of nostos—our hero’s burning desire to return to Ithaca. Indeed, Odysseus’s stubborn pride is reflected in the fact that he will stop at nothing to come home—even if it means enduring a greater amount of suffering along the way.

One of the most revealing episodes of Odysseus’s unwavering devotion to his homeland is when he and his men encounter the lotos-eaters; while Odysseus’s compatriots just want to eat the flowers to forget, Odysseus pulls them all away:

But I brought them back, back
to the hollow ships, and streaming tears–I forced them,
hauled them under the rowing benches, lashed them fast
and shouted out commands to my other, steady comrades:
‘Quick no time to lose, embark in the racing ships!’

Nolan’s Odysseus, however, displays no such steadfast heroism. In fact, Nolan completely alters the storyline in keeping with his depiction of Odysseus as a traumatized war veteran by having Odysseus willingly eat the lotos flowers on Calypso’s island. Instead of glorying in his war efforts, he simply wants to forget them, and at one point in the film, Calypso even warns him against eating any more of the flowers, urging him to remember his wife and son.

The fact that Odysseus would even forget Penelope and Telemachus on Calypso’s island in the first place is so grossly out of keeping with Homer’s original character that one can only presume that Nolan inherited a version of Odysseus already stripped of Homer’s heroic sensibility.

Finally, there is Nolan’s portrayal of Odysseus’s PTSD-ridden flashbacks. War-torn and emotionally destroyed by the time he reaches home, Odysseus dives into a regretful recollection of the Trojan War and gradually admits that he believes it all to have been for nothing. Viewers are thus asked to consider Odysseus’s actions in the context of our present world, and while such an artistic decision works within the universe of the film, it’s certainly not the story that Homer tells in his epic—especially given that such an anti-war ethos would have been completely foreign to the Ancient Greeks.

Nolan, nevertheless, insists on creating a world where the Achaean onslaught at Troy will have civilizational repercussions for the next several centuries—and it’s an idea he borrows again from Emily Wilson.

Let’s first take a look at Fagles’ depiction of Odysseus’s triumph in the Trojan War—and then compare it to Wilson’s.

Retelling the story of the Trojan Horse to the Phaeacians, Odysseus reminisces on his conquests in the following terms:

For Troy was fated to perish once the city lodged
inside her walls the monstrous wooden horse
where the prime of Argive power lay in wait
with death and slaughter bearing down on Troy.
And he sang how troops of Achaeans broke from cover,
streaming out of the horse’s hollow flanks to plunder Troy—
he sang how left and right they ravaged the steep city,
sang how Odysseus marched right up to Deiphobus’ house
like the god of war on attack with diehard Menelaus.
There, he sang, Odysseus fought the grimmest fight
he had ever braved but he won through at last,
thanks to Athena’s superhuman power.

Fagles consistently preserves the epic grandeur of Homer’s scene. Troy is “plundered”; the Achaeans “ravaged the steep city”; Odysseus advances “like the god of war”; the entire battle is “the grimmest fight he had ever braved.” These are the memories of someone who is proud of his conquests at war—and wants everyone around him to revel in his glory.

Wilson, on the other hand, has this:

The town was doomed to ruin when it took
that horse, chock-full of fighters bringing death
to Trojans. And he sang how the Achaeans
poured from the horse, in ambush from the hollow,
and sacked the city; how they scattered out,
destroying every neighborhood. Like Ares:
Odysseus, with Menelaus, rushed
to find Deiphobus’ house, and there
he won at last, through dreadful violence,
thanks to Athena. So the poet sang:

Notice how Wilson immediately downplays the glorious register of Homer’s original text. She translates Homer’s αἰνότατον πόλεμον (awe-inspiring war) as “dreadful violence,” toning down the glory embedded in the Greek to make a political statement about the ills of war from a contemporary perspective. Rather than celebrating Odysseus’s martial prowess, she emphasizes the evils of bloodshed, replacing heroism with shame and judgment. The very fact that she translates poleimon—the word that gave us our word “polemic”—as “violence” suggests that she cannot help but insert her own biased interpretation of the Trojan War into her translation of the poem. Instead of “awe-inspiring,” she puts “dreadful,” giving Homer’s language a distinctly negative connotation and inviting readers to interpret Odysseus as a man filled with sorrow and regret.

To be fair to Nolan and Wilson, there is some nuance at this stage in Homer’s poem. Odysseus does, indeed, start quietly weeping after his recollection of the war, but he’s not regretful in any way. He’s simply a human with deep and conflicting emotions.

And therein lies the beauty of Homer’s Odysseus. He is complex in a way that Wilson’s Odysseus is not.

Despite her supposed expertise in Ancient Greek, Wilson does little to understand the complexity embedded in Homer’s characters—or willfully misrepresents them in order to promote a lopsided worldview. She strips Odysseus of his charisma to appeal to a more liberal audience, resulting in the very Odysseus we saw this past week on the big screen. With this in mind, one can hardly blame Nolan for creating the Odysseus we’ve been shredding to pieces this past week in think-pieces across the Internet—he was simply trusting a supposed authority who gravely misled him.

The reality of any book-to-film adaptation is that it will inevitably make changes to the source material. But in this case, one particular change alters the entire world of The Odyssey, portraying a culture built on shame rather than one that revels in glory. The ending of the film is appropriately bleak, with Odysseus, though reunited with his family, grimly sailing off to honor the dead. Such a bittersweet end inserts a negative ethos into Homer’s otherwise triumphant closing chapter, and while it fits nicely into the world of the film, it’s certainly not an accurate depiction of The Odyssey we know and love.

So should you go see the film if you haven’t already? If you want a three-hour flick with Matt Damon running around trying to get home, then absolutely—and to Damon’s credit, he nails his performance. But if you want an accurate retelling of Homer’s Odyssey, then you can skip out on this latest blockbuster and wait until it hits your favorite streaming platform.

I’ve been posting some other critiques and observations this past week on X and Instagram, so if you’re interested in learning more about my take on The Odyssey, don’t forget to check out my work on social media.

I’m also excited to appear on The Eric Metaxas Show tomorrow at 1 p.m. ET, where we’ll be discussing my take on the film. Hope to see you there!