<\/p>\n
Emily Wilson, whose translation of Homer\u2019s \u201cThe Odyssey\u201d published in 2017 served as inspiration to Christopher Nolan<\/a> when crafting his blockbuster adaptation of the nearly 2,800-year-old poem, has some thoughts on the film. <\/p>\n In a biting missive for the London Review of Books<\/a>, the British American classicist dissected Nolan\u2019s work with a scalpel so sharp that he may need to borrow some of Matt Damon\u2019s armor to read it all the way through. Last fall, the acclaimed director quoted Wilson\u2019s translation when telling Empire magazine why he was drawn to the story. \u201cI think it\u2019s the Emily Wilson translation that begins, \u2018Tell me about a complicated man,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cThe genius of the character, the cleverness, the inventiveness of him, that was a huge part of what interested me. He\u2019s not just a soldier. He\u2019s an amazing strategist, a very wily person.\u201d<\/p>\n Wilson, although admittedly \u201chumbled\u201d by the nod from the filmmaker, wrote: \u201cBut I would be ashamed to have written any part of this script.\u201d<\/p>\n A professor of classical studies at the University of Pennsylvania, Wilson has also translated Seneca and Euripides, as well as Homer\u2019s \u201cIliad.\u201d In her takedown of the film, she likens Nolan\u2019s nearly three-hour epic to Peter Jackson\u2019s \u201cLord of the Rings\u201d trilogy and \u201cGame of Thrones\u201d and says that, by the end, she \u201calmost expected everyone to break into Elvish.\u201d<\/p>\n Earlier this month, The Times\u2019 film critic, Amy Nicholson, wrote that \u201cNolan has sacrificed Odysseus himself<\/span> to serve his own needs, scrapping the character\u2019s prickly personality to Trojan-horse a message about how empires collapse. … Aghast at the ways of men, he\u2019s dug his own Circe-like fingers into Homer to manipulate the tale into a moralistic \u2018Oppenheimer\u2019 prequel.\u201d<\/p>\n Wilson appears to share the sentiment. <\/p>\n \u201cUnlike some of Nolan\u2019s other films,\u201d she wrote, \u201c\u2018The Odyssey\u2019 is not boring, thanks to the source material, which is impossible to mess up entirely. It\u2019s a family-friendly audiovisual spectacle, like an elaborate Fourth of July fireworks display \u2014 and with about the same level of narrative and emotional depth.\u201d<\/p>\n When casting was announced for the film, it was no surprise that culture wars<\/a> broke out over the choice of Oscar-winning actor Lupita Nyong\u2019o to play Helen of Troy, with Elon Musk leading the charge<\/a>. <\/p>\n Nolan responded, telling the Telegraph<\/a> earlier this month before the film hit theaters, \u201cThese conversations that happen before people see the film \u2014 they\u2019re always irrelevant, because no one having them knows what the film actually is yet.\u201d <\/p>\n According to Wilson, Nolan\u2019s race-neutral casting had \u201cnothing progressive about it.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMost of the non-white actors \u2014 Zendaya, Lupita Nyong\u2019o, Himesh Patel, Corey Antonio Hawkins, Travis Scott \u2014 play versions of the Black best friend, whose only role in the drama is to provide aid to the white protagonist,\u201d she wrote. <\/p>\n Wilson zeroes in on the portrayal of Homer\u2019s female characters in another major critique: \u201cThere are more female characters than in most Nolan movies, thanks to the source material. But none of them has much to say, in contrast to the [characterizations] in the poem.\u201d <\/p>\n Where Charlize Theron\u2019s Calypso ought to have been angry, funny, skilled in rhetoric and libidinous, according to Wilson, she\u2019s \u201can unpaid therapist.\u201d On Anne Hathaway\u2019s <\/a>Penelope, Wilson writes that the script \u201cgives her nothing to do except yearn for Matt Damon, for reasons unknown.\u201d And Zendaya\u2019s Athena \u201cturns out to be a vulnerable victim of war, or perhaps a projection of Odysseus\u2019 conscience \u2014 not a scheming and bloodthirsty war goddess.\u201d <\/p>\n And then there\u2019s the human cost of war \u2014 the central theme of the film, and one that Wilson says contradicts Homer\u2019s poem.<\/p>\n \u201cThe representation of Odysseus as a reluctant warlord makes a nonsense of the movie\u2019s imagined world,\u201d she writes. \u201cWe are not shown that war or killing are bad, only that good men sometimes feel bad about it \u2014 a very different point. Any serious depiction of violence, ancient or modern, must show the perspectives of the victims as well as the perpetrators, and the Homeric poems easily clear the bar \u2014 but Nolan doesn\u2019t. <\/p>\n \u201cThe film asks us both to be horrified at war and to celebrate the action-movie sequences in which the reluctant warrior finally gets his hands on his bow and the blood starts flowing.\u201d<\/p>\n Since Nolan announced \u201cThe Odyssey\u201d back in December 2024, various versions of the poem have been in high demand at bookshops and libraries \u2014 especially the only English version written by a woman: Wilson\u2019s 2017 translation. Louise Brockett, spokeswoman and head of communications at W.W. Norton, told USA Today<\/a> that domestic sales of Wilson\u2019s translation surpassed a million copies this year. <\/p>\n Concluding her critique of Nolan\u2019s \u201cOdyssey,\u201d Wilson says the release of the movie is \u201cstill an event to celebrate.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIn 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 \u2018death of the humanities,\u2019 translations of The Odyssey, including mine, are flying off the shelves.\u201d <\/p>\n