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Emily Wilson’s critique of Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey”
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- Title
- Emily Wilson · An Uncomplicated Man
- Authors
- Emily Wilson
- Published
- Jul 27 2026
- Word count
- 4150 words
This is a genuinely frustrating review to read. I hate it. It has this smarmy ignorance about it. There's a bizarre amount of factual errors as to what's in the film. While Emily Wilson is obviously very qualified to discuss the Odyssey, I'm not convinced her critique of the film is any good. It reminds me of the recurring phenomenon of talented people in one area assuming their skills are applicable or transferable to another area of expertise.
She reduces every dark skinned character's role to Odysseus's "Black best friend", even when they do disagree with Odysseus, never meet him, or aren't even Black. Nolan's inclusion of Travis Scott is very obviously to link storytelling and musical traditions across place and time, relating contemporary Black American music with ancient Greek traditions. Saying that he was just pounding a stick and yelling instead of singing or playing an instrument reads like every other racist criticism of rap music from the last 50 years.
I think there is validity to her discussion of Nolan's treatment of women. It's been a regular issue with his works forever, and it's generally my biggest gripe with his films (just after his dialogue).
But there's some parts to this review that make me suspect she's just never seen a film before and lacks the ability to connect dots together when information is presented in this format. She just can't seem to infer anything!
Rant about obvious inconsistencies between the review and the film that make me wonder if she fell asleep during it.
The Trojan horse is Odysseus's idea that he takes full blame for; why would we need to see him design it? (Also we very much do see some of the construction.)
She says she likes the line where Zendaya states the gods speak through natural forces, but in the same paragraph she can't connect the lightning storm to Zeus speaking?
Her claim that the film says Mycenaean Greece is the only civilisation in the world is very strange to me because that's just not in the film? Textually, Odysseus believes local civility was destroyed with the fall of Troy.
Odysseus calmly watches a puppy being thrown off a cliff, which she doesn't categorise as "cruelty to animals" apparently? Blinding Polyphemus can only be read as "noble" if you missed the next scene where Odysseus is immediately criticised for setting Poseidon against his crew. He doesn't fool Polyphemus, but only if you ignore the ploy to disguise the soldiers with the sheep. Is Agamemnon a failed American family man for killing his daughter or does she think that's not frowned upon in any other time or place? If we don't see any of the Trojans' faces, then who does she think Zendaya is playing?
Honestly, just a terrible review. It's inconsistent with the film it's reviewing. If there was a thematic element from Homer's Odyssey that should have been present, or if there was more of a story involving a female character, I would've loved to learn that. I'd love to learn her thoughts on Nolan making Odysseus regret his betrayal of the Trojan's trust. And I definitely want to read more about the use of the Western Sahara for filming. I think there are valid complaints. But, for example, watching Circe's portrayal in the film - which establishes her actions as reasonable and she even goes unpunished for them - and the only comment on that Wilson has is to suggest Odysseus have sex with her for a year? I'm baffled. I think she truly lacks reading comprehension in the medium.
(Also the food does look good. I really want to try Polyphemus' sheep cheese.)
This kind of seething is not unusual because it's the same gripes any hardcore nerd has when Hollywood adapts his hobby or interest for a mass audience.
I thought it was just some random reviewer because it’s got that “going out of their way to be overly clever while being” snide vibe most reviews do to try and catch attention.
For someone who claims understanding of the original text, it's deeply odd how it seems like she barely watched the movie. Like, what does she mean it's framed as noble when Odysseus kills Polyphemus? It's pretty unambiguously framed as a foolish act that might have been what doomed them all, in exchange for no benefit other than pointless revenge. Likewise, she brushes past the portrayal of the female characters as bad and Penelope as wanting nothing but her husband in a bland and fawning way, but it's clear that the movie explored both her desire to rule and her initially ambiguous feelings on his return. Et cetera.
She's trying to come off as clever and detached but it really just reads as "idk it had a lot of bangs and explosions and i don't like that so i checked out half way through, 0/10".
I understand disagreeing with her but do you really think she doesn't understand the original text of the Odyssey, or the Iliad for that matter? If not why frame it as "claims"?
The framing of some of the replies about her is just weird enough to make me uncomfortable. This and the "lacks reading comprehension" and some other language just makes me feel like she's not being considered as an academic because people disagree with her take (or in some cases admit to not reading it.)
Claims wasn't meant as "makes a verbal claim", I meant it as in "has acquired possession of". Like, she claimed it, it's hers. Because, if I'm correct, she has literally done a popular translation of the work, so that's something she has under her belt.
(This makes the fact that she seems so uninterested in the movie seem especially strange to me, since I would figure someone who's super into a work would dissect alternate versions further.)
I didn't mean to sound like I was implying the opposite of what I meant, turns out I just used the english language suboptimally there. Sorry.
I follow, thanks for the clarification and yes she's that translator of the work. It's just been an odd pattern in this thread.
I don't think she was disinterested, I think she was disappointed. I haven't seen the movie yet, but I follow her criticisms and think some are being misstated in this overarching thread. Like for example she says
And her complaint here isn't that specifically we don't see, say, the Horse being built (though again, how precisely did it get there) but that an entire aspect of the character is entirely absent and in fact it's demonstrated that he's quite bad at building fine things.
I also think that people read her as raging when I think she's just being a thorough academic about her thoughts and has written a full essay of a review, not a blog or bsky thread or a YouTube video. She seems to be incredibly thorough and while it's obviously reasonable to disagree with her takes, it's just that she's coming from a particular angle. (And probably could have said more if she'd wanted, it's odd to be criticized for going on and for not going on enough but that's the internet. ). I saw a post that said "anyone who thinks she's being mean has never presented an academic paper at a conference. And that's the energy this has to me. A critique of someone else's work targeted towards others in the field more than everyone else.
I find her general criticisms of Nolan as accurate to my opinion of his work broadly and I'll have to wait and see how I think about the film itself. It's not high on my list. I like adaptations of myth but I think this one seems likely to have missed the boat in understanding ancient Greek culture and I'm not super interested in a less fantastical version of the story. (I think stories of the gods should serve us more than being true to ancient (or modern) belief but this seems to diminish the role of the Olympians in a way that lessens the story for me. Again will have to see. )
Also for others here's her bluesky summary down to bullet points. In case that is in fact more appealing
but, this didn't even happen in the movie? Odysseus was perhaps unnecessarily cruel to him, but Polyphemus was 100% alive when they left that island.
I read him as dead when he collapsed in the ocean, but fair, either way he had a terrible Odysseus-inflicted time.
I guess one could argue that being blinded and left alone is as good as dead, but the blinding itself seemed necessary for them to escape. I thought it was interesting that we didn't get any of the dialog between them.
Here's the thing: she didn't watch the movie.
That is the most polite and savage thing I've read in a while.
The politeness does seem to be masking some rather general disdain that may have been colored by 8+ years of the internet hate machine making this a touchy topic for her though. I think that history and her background of painstakingly analyzing every word of the written work might be biasing her here in some regards. The first and (especially) final paragraphs feel tacked on as if she realized as much retroactively and attempted to introduce a positive note or general audience perspective surrounding her 4000 word very literature-centric original critique.
I have a lot of thoughts and I mostly agree with her points even if I disagree with her opinion on the movie as a whole. But really only in those first and last paragraphs does she actually seem to briefly evaluate the movie within its form as a mass appeal blockbuster movie. Whereas the rest seems to ignore many of the constraints, intentions, and effects that truly come with that and instead attempts to critique the movie's story in isolation against the 120k word original source.
It’s simply a contradiction to encourage the inclusion of ever more scenes from Homer's The Odyssey (with all the layers and emotional beats no adaptation can fully maintain, as with any book vs its movie) while simultaneously lambasting the focus on spectacles in a movie that's already nearly 3 hours long. Especially when said book is famous for being a series of spectacular events happening to someone. To combine those in a way similar to the source material you’d need a full trilogy of movies each more akin to The Return (2024).
It also at times felt like she undersold areas where Nolan may have intentionally strengthened the agency of female characters (Though it's certainly never been his strong suit). Having Clytemnestra kill Agamemnon without any influence from a male lover looking to rule his kingdom for example was a strong empowering change that also fits the constraints of the medium for characters, complexity, and runtime. See also Penelope's clumsily included though clearly pro-feminist argument about her experience ruling Ithaca not being valued in deciding who should rule. This also seems to go against Wilson's critique that "Nolan’s Penelope has no dreams… the script gives her nothing to do except yearn for Matt Damon” as she clearly shows a desire to rule never touched upon in Homer's original.
I’d be curious to hear her commentary on Telemachus becoming king and the lack of King Aeolus in more detail though as she didn’t touch much there.
I do also wish her single paragraph drawing parallels between the movie and the ethical concerns of filming in Western Sahara was expanded further. It also feels tacked on and underdeveloped for something that she calls “The most troubling ethical problem”.
I only kind of skimmed it because I didn’t want spoilers for the movie, but she honestly just seems kind of illiterate about the language of film. Like she says the war crimes and stuff are glossed over and it’s mainly centering the experience of Odysseus as he perpetrates them which is. . . You know. . . DUH he’s the protagonist. But also, in the trailer the only thing you hear during the sack of Troy is screaming women. And Agamemnon looks like a fucking demonic monster. Like the visuals are about as unsubtle as can be that this is a terrible thing that’s happening.
This also seems to be in that genre of critique that I absolutely hate which is “why did the creators make the movie/game/book/show they made instead of the one I would have made? What do you mean that just because something isn’t being made for ME specifically doesn’t mean it’s bad!?” The whole tone of this review seems like everything obnoxious about academia wrapped up in a bow. The hyperfixation on ONLY their specific narrow range of expertise with zero intellectual curiosity about anything outside it is just plain snobbery and in-group signaling. The fact that it is just being a snobby hipster is obscured by the fact that it’s aimed at Christopher Nolan, but it doesn’t read like this attitude is going to be turned off if a PhD candidate comes through her department with a different take on things. And the open disdain for making or doing anything that’s accessible to a general audience, or that the broad strokes of the story are being interpreted through a lens to address modern moral conflicts and ideals is the classic case of why the influence of academics in general intellectual commentary and popular culture has waned so significantly. They only care about talking to each other rather than making their fields of study relevant to the outgroup.
I’d hate to think how she would have reviewed The Green Knight movie from 2020 if she was a scholar of that era. “What do you mean Gawain isn’t an exemplar of chivalric conduct? You’ve clearly missed the entire point of the story!” Or what would she have said about Oh Brother Where Art Thou?
Skimming it doesn't do it justice because she mainly points out the internal inconsistencies throughout rather than the individual oddities. O Brother is internally consistent throughout the film, never straying too far from the real world to an implied potential magical realism at best, while also giving our protagonist a distinct personality that remains faithful throughout. Other characters call him on his behavior too.
I don't think the review of "is it a good Odyssey" rather than "is it a good film" will sway me either way, but it's interesting nonetheless.
I mean what is an “Odyssey?” One of the gripes I have about this review, as an amateur student of folklore and mythology myself, is that she seems to be heavily privileging an engagement with the Odyssey as a textual work rather than the more freewheeling and adaptive bardic tradition it actually comes from. What we have today is an artifact of the story as it was told at a specific point in time, which happens to have been frozen in amber because they wrote it down. But the way to engage with mythology has, historically, been to continually riff on the story sometimes in very dramatic ways. Pretending there is a single canonical “Odysseus” and a single canonical “Odyssey” is antithetical to the tradition Homer was coming from.
I gripe about this as a Hindu specifically because Hindu folklore comes from a distant cousin branch of the same Indo-European bardic tradition and, over time, much of our mythology has been sort of canonized based on whatever the most popular mass-market written format of it is, which winds up erasing so many other subcultural takes on the same major story that were transmitted from grandparents to their grandkids. There is a specific “canonized” version of the Ramayana by Valmiki that has a level of deference to it on par with Homer’s of the Illiad and Odyssey, but there are tons and tons and tons of vernacular versions of the story. These existed in parallel, everyone knew the Valmiki story but then their communities also told these other forms of the stories that interpolate tons of things and sometimes even invert who the villains and heroes are. These are all valid and make the core story richer to have this large ancillary body of permutations that can cover it.
People very much want there to be a single “what REALLY happened” canonical take on the story but the entire reason these tales endure is specifically because they DIDN’T do that. They didn’t freeze their perspectives on their own mythic history to a specific point in time. The reason the works are so layered is because they have accreted many stories and themes and topics over time as the culture that tells the stories have accrued more events and experiences into their shared history. Over that long span of time the chain of storytelling manages to keep elucidating and refining themes that resonate across different communities and societies and ways of life. This makes them rich and thematically conflicted and layered in ways that few things can ever be.
By focusing on the specific text as written as the “correct” form of the story she is privileging a method of engaging with the story that is the method she is expert in and attempting to invalidate or write off every other way of interpreting or engaging with it.
No she doesn't. She calls out how it's internally inconsistent, not that the story is incorrect. She even points out anachronistic clothing in the film is actually also part of Homer's Odyssey.
Don't call him cunning, show him to be so.
Reflect on the horrors of war, but don't let us feel nothing as he mows down faceless antagonists.
Those are the poignant parts of this article.
Is he not shown to be cunning?
Just because a film doesn’t spend a lot of time ruminating about the horrors of war while depicting them on screen does that mean you feel nothing? This, again, really just sounds like being mad at a film for not being a book.
This is a frequent criticism of the film despite the film showing many times how smart he is.
There’s a moment inside the horse, when a soldier of Troy is stabbing inside of it with his sword. He hits one of the men inside the horse. The crew covers his mouth and Odysseus immediately wipes the blood off the blade.
There’s moments like that throughout the film but I guess because we don’t see him planning the building of the horse it doesn’t count.
“You need to show not tell!”
Shows
“WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL ME YOU WERE SHOWING!?”
I mean coming from the epic tradition Homer DOES spend a lot of time going over how people’s emotional states come through in their actions. That’s a big part of what makes it so compelling is how loaded every action that drives the plot is strung to an entire rich backstory. But it’s a movie! The only way to do this is to have a narrator talking over the action saying LOOK AT THIS! The whole time.
I'd say that I expect my reaction to this piece wouldn't have been very dissimilar to yours, but I saw the movie Sunday, and I think she makes good points. I went in skeptical, came out enjoying it, but it's soured really rapidly for me, for many, many reasons.
Hell if I know, I haven't seen it yet. She could be wrong, sure, but at least we should be criticizing what she's actually saying not what we think she's saying by skimming it.
@cloud_loud's comment answers your question appropriately though, and it appears the author may be incorrect.
I was going to say that parts of this reminded me of the obnoxious lefty critique of One Battle After Another not being radical or revolutionary enough, as if major studios have any interest in doling out hundreds of millions of dollars for something that isn't geared towards a general audience.
Personally, I'm usually grateful when something in the public consciousness can be a stepping stone toward my passions, even if it's imperfect. I don't know if the movie will be Top Gun for Classics, but it will probably draw some people in who otherwise wouldn't have taken an interest.
It is a constant thing for people to say that O Brother Where Art Thou is a better Odyssey adaptation than this one. And they’ve been saying that since the trailer came out. I suppose it’s the high brow thing to say.
I don't think so; or at least, that's not what I took from it. Wilson isn't critiquing Nolan's Odyssey for being an unfaithful adaptation of Homer's Odyssey; indeed, as she points out, Homer's Odyssey is itself already an unfaithful adaptation of earlier oral mythology. Rather, she's critiquing it for being internally inconsistent, in ways that Homer's Odyssey is not. You can write good literature about a lunkhead who gets lost at sea and beats everyone up until he gets home again, and you could even get away with calling it "The Odyssey", but you probably shouldn't have characters extol the lunkhead protagonist's scheming brilliance, as—apparently (I haven't and am not likely to watch it)—Nolan's Odyssey does, against everything it actually presents.
Honestly, I think the first paragraph ("like an elaborate Fourth of July fireworks display – and with about the same level of narrative and emotional depth") is the most savage part.
I’ve only seen the film once and I’ve not read Emily Wilson’s review yet, but I’ve seen people critique this specifically a few times and my interpretation was that the world spun taller and taller tales about Odysseus, his cleverness, and his exploits after the war (with the world taking the wrong lessons from his story, and in a kind of meta way this became the poem) while the “reality” was that his greatest trick was a sin against gods and men alike that haunts him as he begins to observe its consequences on the wider world.
His “scheming brilliance” was not extolled by his men, they love him but gradually lose their trust in him over the course of their cursed journey. It’s the rest of the world that sings his praises, and that’s all largely rooted in a single act. (The Trojan horse that ended the war.)
And unlike the traditional story, Athena haunts him rather than guiding and protecting him. She’s not enamored with his cleverness, she’s horrified at what he did in her name. She’s the goddess of wisdom and war, and while what he did was clever, it was neither wise nor honorable.
I loved the movie, and I loved the reframing, I thought the whole thing worked exceptionally well.
MikeB and cloud_loud have covered the other half better than I ever could on this post, but on the "Rather, she's critiquing it for being internally inconsistent, in ways that Homer's Odyssey is not." point:
I'd agree that's one of her strongest angles, and her list of the film’s unresolved moral contradictions is great critique, but my point is rather that the consistency of Homer's version is necessarily a product of it being an ancient poem.
As a poem it’s able to express the character’s inner thoughts directly without needing separate dialogue framing scenes or the addition of direct narration. This is where some of the complexity she’s looking for is difficult to display in the film form, a form I don’t feel she engaged with enough. And as an ancient work it never has to splice in modern values or answer for its original value system and themes, they’re able to hold together consistently with the content of the plot precisely because those were the values during the periods in which it was told and set. A modern blockbuster on the other hand needs to be modified to fit currently relevant themes and values, and to do so while still remaining faithful to the original plot will almost inevitably introduce seams and thematic contradictions between different segments of the movie.
Something like The Return (2024) is able to satisfy the consistent values she’s looking for precisely because it shrinks the story to cut off almost all of the original poem that would contradict its framing. It may be possible to square the circle here and maintain the full original plot while adapting it to film language and modern values, but it would certainly require a masterpiece of a film and falling short of that isn’t enough of a criticism to justify the disdain for Nolan’s adaptation.
Wilson herself attempted to do a light and faithful modernization of just the register of the original poem with far more tools available to her within the written word, and even just doing that provoked arguments that the gravitas of earlier translations was lost. That perception of gravitas across general audiences is precisely what a blockbuster needs to maintain when approaching The Odyssey as something that people already have a cultural idea of going into. And not just the gravitas of the old translations’ flowery language, but the actual weight of one of the world’s oldest stories being faithfully adapted to match the idea that audiences already have of it. Nolan then gets boxed in from either direction, he needs to modernize it enough for it to resonate with a general audience in 2026, which will necessarily introduce some inconsistencies, but he can’t modernize it so much as to remove those inconsistencies while still holding the weight of it being a faithful adaptation of The Odyssey.
So my disagreement isn't really with the fact that she was able to find thematic inconsistencies in the film, it’s that I believe those inconsistencies may be part of the price of making a large movie like this, at this time, and with this source material. I then don't believe they justify her level of criticism that seems to ignore that framing.
What makes it interesting is that Nolan cited her translation as an inspiration for him, and clearly drew from it in how he wrote his dialogue in modern day English. He was her most high profile supporter lol.
And I think maybe that's where she's feeling misunderstood in her translation, or perhaps used for marketing as he then ignored basic changes she had made like plainly calling the "servants" slaves?
I can't get inside her head obviously, but something feels particularly mean about this review. It makes me sad because it weakens her voice from my perspective by exposing some bias even though most of her critiques hold up to scrutiny.
She very clearly looks for very different things in a movie than general audiences or even most film critics. It leaves you wondering what tentpole movie she might actually like, or if she's ever willing to offer appreciation to any of the emotional escape or filmmaking spectacle of a movie like this that well over 90% of people clearly are according to its reviews.
It feels slightly akin to if I asked one of my parents to review an anime or something, in which they'd simply never get past the fact that it's a "cartoon" and that the form contains many eye-rolling tropes. You'd hope in that situation someone would recognize "this just isn't the right form of media for me" and try to find some merits as opposed to being strictly critical. She briefly gestures at this at the end but it did not seem to be weighted in her head when she wrote the rest.
Still, she is uniquely qualified to call out some of the film's faults against the source material and I appreciate her for that. My initial very negative reaction to her critique slowly softened as I worked through it point by point and found myself agreeing with her at least in part on many though. I personally doubt many other movie enjoyers will take the time to do the same.
I disagree with this. Although I very much enjoyed the film, when I read a review I am interested in someone's distinct perspective. Why do we need Emily Wilson to tell us that general audiences will love this when we already have IMDB and the Tomatometer? I think her focus in this, with a lot of emphasis on the original poem, is exactly what I would expect from someone of her expertise.
True, and I made some quick but not quick enough edits to that effect haha.
I fear it limits the reach of her critique though and places the audience as people who are already very likely to listen to her, as opposed to attempting to reach more people who might have their perspective expanded otherwise if you meet them on a more common ground.
Nobody has any obligation to debate this way, but I'll still always push for that approach. Especially in the context of her very brief "I am grateful" at the end that tries to take this angle at the last moment.
I think it comes down to her being an expert and probably being asked her opinion a hundred times over the course of casting, filming, and then watching it, and then being disappointed (or maybe she anticipated that disappointment I haven't followed her takes) so she got it all out.
Like, you see getting hung up on anime tropes as anime just not being for someone but to me those tropes actively drive me away from the thing I want to enjoy. There are animes without those tropes and thus I'm even more frustrated at having to experience them in something recommended to me. I suspect she'd have preferred to enjoy it even if maybe there was no way she could have been satisfied because she's an expert.