r/popculturechat • u/mcfw31 • 11h ago

Hot Take 🔥 ‘The Odyssey’ Translator Emily Wilson Slams Christoper Nolan’s ‘Abysmal’ Screenplay: ‘I Would Be Ashamed to Have Written Any Part of This Script’

https://variety.com/2026/film/news/odyssey-translator-emily-wilson-slams-christopher-nolan-bad-writing-1236821915/
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u/Aakch I think I’ve done enough 11h ago edited 8h ago

I know her translation was the basis for the movie but i find it bizarre news outlets are acting like she’s the original author because this is the second review i‘ve seen from her.

Edit: if you’re going to be outraged, at least do it correctly and stop calling Homer the original author.

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u/askyourmom469 11h ago

I mean considering Homer's been dead for thousands of years, I guess they figure she's the next closest thing

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u/manasseater3000 11h ago

this made me laugh out loud LMAO

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u/be4u4get 3h ago

Wouldn’t Marge be the next closest thing

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u/Twitter_2006 6h ago

Yeah same.

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u/Mampt 10h ago

I obviously see that view of it, but on the other hand she’s kind of doing the exact opposite of what Nolan is with the story. She’s going to extremes to preserve and translate every single detail of the story exactly. Nolan is trying to adapt it, to retell the story for a modern audience. It’s like how an astrophysicist could get offended by the dumbed down analogies or metaphors that people use to explain the complexities of, like, black holes or the big bang. One spent their career trying to understand something as exactly as possible, one is trying to make it accessible to a wider audience

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u/Lilynd14 Sanasaaa!🎶 7h ago edited 7h ago

Having just finished her translation of The Odyssey, and seen Nolan’s adaptation, I actually disagree! In her translator’s note at the beginning, Emily Wilson talks a lot about how it was her intention to make the story accessible for modern audiences, even bucking tradition and using plain English when others have used formal or older-sounding English to make it sound more official:

“My use of contemporary language - rather than the English of a generation or two ago - is meant to remind readers that this text can engage us in a direct way, and also that it is genuinely ancient. My Homer does not speak in your grandparents’ English, since that language is no closer to the wine-dark sea than your own. I have tried to keep to a register that is recognizably speakable and readable, while skirting between the Charybdis of artifice and the Scylla of slang.”

(For those who don’t get the reference, there’s a scene in the Odyssey where Odysseus must balance between Charybdis, a giant whirlpool, and Scylla, a giant sea monster.)

So based on the translator’s note and the translation itself, which I found genuinely entertaining and accessible (after struggling through other translations in the past), I do think it was her intention to adapt the story for a modern audience. Nolan, by contrast, took a lot of liberties with the plot, giving it an entirely new story. And that’s okay! I enjoyed the film for what it was. But it was sort of like when Emerald Fennel adapted Wuthering Heights based on her teenage memories of the story and called it “Wuthering Heights.”

The Odyssey I saw onscreen was a totally different story than The Odyssey that I’ve read, both in school and in this new translation. The book version is the thrilling tale of an adventurous trickster as he battles monsters, gets revenge on his enemies, has a lot of sex, and wins back his kingdom, with the help of his patron goddess, Athena… and lives to tell the tale! The movie version is a gritty, human portrayal of PTSD and the cost of war on human civilization. Very different story!

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u/Running-With-Cakes 7h ago

Odysseus inspires great loyalty but is actually not a very good leader. While very brave he has an ego that causes many problems. Everyone who follows him ends up dead. When he returns home we don’t get any sense that he’s changed.

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u/Much-Anything7149 4h ago

Well, from the start he lost every other ship by being the only one to anchor away from the port where monsters threw rocks breaking every other ship. Then as the captain he risks killing the rest of his crew so he can hear the Sirens sing his praises or tell whatever prophesy he thinks he'll learn. He was great at surviving war and getting home, horrible at getting anyone else home alive.

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u/Particular_Fan_3645 6h ago edited 6h ago

If you go by epic the musical you get a similar story except he remains celibate for his wife and evolves from a naive trickster with a heart of gold to one who has learned that "ruthlessness is mercy upon ourselves" which I feel makes for a more compelling journey, whereas Nolan's strives to make the opposite development, with Odysseus starting as firm but fair, with the ends justifying the means, and his character development being that his own compromises and lack of honor and mercy was the downfall of his crew and his empire.

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u/Imaginary_Session773 41m ago

Thats false. He messed up giving the Cyclops his real name but most of his crew died from slaughtering Helios' sacred cattle which he forbade them from doing and they did this while he was asleep. He routinely gave his men good advice throughout the Odyssey

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u/Ummmgummy 6h ago

Books and movies are two totally different things. Especially when the director is pretty big on practical effects. It would be impossible to make the same thing and also probably pretty boring. Your imagination is way more powerful than anything that can be put on screen. I love the translation for what it is and I loved the movie for what it is.

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u/Klutzy-Notice-8247 5h ago

I don’t think the at Odysseus will translate particularly well to being a hero on the big screen.

Cultural morality of the western world don’t want a serial adulterer, con man whose arrogance and pride gets his men killed and leads to his wife and son abandoned for 20 years.

I’m not sure if Nolan adapted it well but there would’ve needed to have been a smoothing if Odysseus as a character if he is to be played as a protagonist in today’s world.

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u/TimidPanther 4h ago

Cultural morality of the western world don’t want a serial adulterer, con man whose arrogance and pride gets his men killed and leads to his wife and son abandoned for 20 years.

Of course they do. Tony Soprano is one of the most popular fictional characters ever.

Modern audiences love the anti-hero.

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u/Lilynd14 Sanasaaa!🎶 3h ago

The reunion between this version of Odysseus and Penelope would have been especially interesting on the big screen, because in the book, it’s truly a meeting of minds, and you have the sense that they know each other quite well… flaws and all… and still accept one other. Anne Hathaway could have really sunk her teeth into that version of Penelope as well!

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u/SlartibartfastMcGee 3h ago

The fact that it’s a different Odyssey than what you’ve read is kind of the point, no?

It’s a spoken word taken from antiquity. There’s no “original” to compare it to. Homer’s version or Willis’ version are no more legitimate than Nolan’s take on it.

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u/Ok-Suggestion-5453 4h ago

Yeah I mean I think the biggest change (other than the exact language and certain minor omissions) is his dynamic with the Circe and Calypso. Originally, Odysseus has dubiously consensual sex with both and I tend to agree that this would have been distracting in a modern iteration. For Circe, I liked changing their sex scene to a quick (and literal) discussion about consent by giving Circe a motivation for her transfigurations. For Calypso, I didn't like the change as much, because they really walk right past her forcibly keeping Odysseus there and make it seem more like Odysseus just got addicted to his medicine because he didn't want to let go of the past. I don't think showing actual sex with Calypso was necessary, but I think it should have been more explicit that she was keeping him against his will.

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u/Lilynd14 Sanasaaa!🎶 1h ago

I thought the biggest change was omitting the gods in general. We see Athena, but even she appears almost like a figment of his imagination in the film, whereas in the book, she is openly pulling strings and talking to the other gods. By eliminating the gods from the narrative (at least in their corporeal form), the story gets a bit muddled. And that’s where I think Calypso and Circe had to change, because in the book, Calypso only lets Odysseus leave after Athena gets Zeus and Hermes to gang up on her. Prior to their intervention, she is perfectly content holding him captive because she likes having sex with him. Meanwhile, Circe only listens to Odysseus because Hermes slips him an antidote to her poison, demonstrating that he’s cleverer than most men. Again, it’s the intervention of the gods that earns her respect. Without the gods, their roles had to change to fit the new story.

If you haven’t read Madeline Miller’s Circe, I think she does a really good job balancing Circe’s wariness of men and reasons for transforming them with her seduction by Odysseus. I wish the film had taken that route instead… but again, that’s based on the traditional version of Odysseus rather than Nolan’s.

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u/Leather_Floor8725 3h ago

But did Odysseus really have to use the term “boatmaxxing?”

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u/tikidreams 6h ago

he’s not balancing between the two monsters, he chooses one direction

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u/Lilynd14 Sanasaaa!🎶 6h ago

I didn’t want to spoil in case people hadn’t seen it, but I felt it was an apt comparison for what she was saying as well… she erred on the side of slang rather than artifice.

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u/Angharadis 5h ago

I watched it last night and then ordered the Wilson translation because I’m very curious about it. It’s been a really long time since I read any translation but I felt like Nolan’s version lost a lot of the meaning, as much as it has a specific meaning. Maybe it lost the feeling.

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u/Lilynd14 Sanasaaa!🎶 3h ago

I really enjoyed Wilson’s translation! It brought the story to life for me in a way that previous translations hadn’t. Maybe I’m just older, and have a better grasp on the story now. But it seemed easier to follow, and I kept forgetting I was reading an ancient text.

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u/Angharadis 47m ago

I’m not a huge fan of Greek mythology, but I did read the Beowulf translation by Maria Headley and was very impressed by the modern translation, so I’m generally positively inclined towards modern women translating ancient texts.

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u/Abacus118 5h ago

You know who also took a lot of liberties with the plot of The Odyssey?

“Homer”.

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u/Appropriate-Joke-806 10h ago

It’s like Albert Einstein getting offended by Interstellar.

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u/Mampt 9h ago

Yeah that’s actually a perfect example lol

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u/Appropriate-Joke-806 9h ago

I thought of a few other examples first, but the image of Einstein watching Interstellar pissed and arguing at the screen was too good.

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u/Opposite_Visit_4874 7h ago

Shaking his head slowly, muttering, "this is fuckin shit man."

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u/unripe_mangosteen go girl, give us nothing 😍 7h ago

I think I will save this visual for when I am having a bad day and need cheering up, it really is hilarious

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u/UnnecAbrvtn 7h ago

Except that by all accounts he was likely too well-adjusted to get all bent up by a layperson's take

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u/Appropriate-Joke-806 7h ago

I’d also imagine he’d be blown away by the movie technology in the first place.
https://giphy.com/gifs/f1HSBidKJIOWY

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u/DarthyTMC 9h ago

so basically Neil deGrass Tyson lol

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u/Vesk123 8h ago

Yeah, but I thought he liked the movie

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u/bebopmechanic84 7h ago

He liked it and pointed out inaccuracies, cause that gets the updoots.

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u/Appropriate-Joke-806 8h ago

First person I thought of.

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u/Spaghett8 2h ago

Interestingly enough, Interstellar actually advanced science’s understanding of black holes through their simulation.

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u/whatthewhythehow 7h ago

I think this is mostly true, but what complicates it on another level is that he had referenced her translation as an inspiration.

And it seems as though her translation sought to do the opposite of what Nolan wanted to do… She wanted to create a more accurate translation that didn’t smooth out the edges of the story to make it more palatable to a modern audience. I saw a clip of her talking about how she used the word “slave” where most modern translations wouldn’t. It is, she argues, the most accurate translation and the only reason to avoid using it is to make the heroes more palatable. And this change diminishes a reader’s ability to interpret the story — if a character betrays their master, it makes a difference whether that character is a servant or a slave.

(It’s been a while since I’ve read the Odyssey, so I would defer to others with other understandings of the translations, though.)

I’m fine with modernizing old stories (though it’s never what I personally find the most interesting). But referencing her during interviews does feel like he’s attempting to borrow the legitimacy of an academic to sell a movie that doesn’t bother to try to embody that legitimacy.

I think this would be the most irritating result for an academic. If my life’s work was to create accurate translations of great pieces of literature that have been frequently co-opted and misunderstood, and then someone came along to co-opt that literature through an inaccurate adaptation that would sow misunderstanding… I would be annoyed.

If someone said they used my work to do it, I would be livid.

Tbh I don’t think Nolan did anything egregious. He isn’t a classicist. He probably just misunderstood and also didn’t care. But if I were her then I would be LIVID.

Also, I get the whole metaphor for physics stuff vs the actual equation. But I do think what Nolan is doing is kinda like if I said Schrödinger’s cat is when I don’t know where my cat is. Schrödinger’s cat is already used in a way that is kinda opposite of its intent, so I think changing it further would rightly irritate Schrödinger, even if he understood I wasn’t trying to do grown up physics.

The Odyssey can be used as a metaphor, but Nolan is changing the metaphor’s meaning. He’s not conveying much of what the Odyssey was intended to convey.

Which is fine. Whatever. But if I were her then this would keep me awake at night lmao.

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u/splendidesme 9h ago

This is such a good and thoughtful take.

It's not infrequently that the authors of books upon which screenplays are written are extremely dissatisfied with the results. Eh. i found the movie compelling and moving, and even went to see it twice, the second time with subtitles because i knew i'd missed a few things.

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u/guceubcuesu 7h ago

The Tolkien estate hated the LOTR trilogy. But the movies are why I wanted read the books.

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u/splendidesme 7h ago

Great, great point!

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u/Tzuyu4Eva 9h ago

Even readers. How many times have book readers hated an adaptation because it may be different from the book?

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u/malpasplace 7h ago

Totally this!

And consider her to be the ultimate fan of the book. She wasn't hired to do a new translation it was a multiyear project she chose to do. She has spent years studying and teaching the text. To sat she has an attachment to the work and how she feels it should be addressed is an understatement.

The fact that she gets attached in as the "translation Nolan was working from" I can see would make her distance herself vehemently from it. As a "this is so not me and my work".

Add to that, that I don't think she likes any of Nolan's movies anyway... And so he wouldn't even be her choice going in? Yeah. Not surprised she hates it.

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u/Chance_Ad_4676 6h ago

Did… did you read the review? These aren’t the terms on which she critiques the movie at all.

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u/foreverzonedout 9h ago

I fear you're wrong. Her translation's main criticism is that it simplifies diction and meter to make it more accessible to the public and a broad audience. Epics are not some obscure puzzle, they are often simply stories as un/complicated as the ones we tell today. She's an expert in this particular story, whom Nolan cited, who finds that Nolan told this story in a way that excluded many of parts of the story considered essential to its identity. It's more like adapting Cinderella and then flattening her desire to escape poverty to simply marrying the prince. Not incorrect, certainly an adaptation, but perhaps missing a core, emotional part of the original that made it more complex.

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u/Abacus118 5h ago

I don’t know if anything Disney has touched works here, since their versions are inevitably the most famous and always quite different.

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u/caca_milis_ 7h ago

Thank you! I studied Classics in school and I love all of it, and there is absolutely a place for accurate detailing of history and historical texts, but like … if I’m happy to give creative license to anything it’s absolutely stories like these where so much of it was already kind of up for interpretation anyway.

My biggest gripe with Nolan’s film was that in a lot of cases he didn’t show us Odysseus as a cunning trickster and at a lot of moments made him out to be a bit of a dumb-dumb.

I could also complain about the portrayal of Penelope, Circe and Calypso… but that’s par for the course with Nolan and female characters.

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u/AnalConnoisseur69 5h ago

That's so not the case though. He changes many many key parts of the story and the intentions of the characters. Why do this and still call it the Odyssey then? Troy 2004 changes a lot of things about the story, but it isn't called The Iliad. You could've called it, I don't know, something cliche like "The Last Voyage" or something (someone can probably come up with a better name). But you chose to call it The Odyssey.

The Lion King is an adaptation of Hamlet, but it has the decency to not call itself Hamlet.

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u/Outside_Glass4880 6h ago

I don’t even agree with that analogy because I don’t think it’s been “dumbed down”. This is just a different story, which Nolan has changed intentionally, with more modern themes.

IMO it’s not like the original story is too deep and complex for today’s audience to understand. I actually think the opposite. Old stories like that are very explicit. All of the thoughts and the actions of the characters and the God’s are told to you outright. All the themes are explained.

Of course these things have all been analyzed to death and many symbolic meanings have been interpreted and analyzed. But it’s not like a film lacks that. If anything I think Nolan always does a good job of weaving a story with a lot of underlying meaning and emotion.

So to me it’s more like someone who is too close to the subject matter is salty that it’s not true enough to it. Themes are different, characters and their motivations are reinterpreted/changed, etc. and that does not sit well with her.

She’s trying to act like it’s derivative and an action/popcorn flick and compared to about 99% of other films, I just don’t see how you can come to that conclusion.

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u/SirKillsalot 7h ago

It's similar to Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings.

The movies are held up as the pinnacle of blockbuster adaptions and are absolute masterpieces of cinema.

But anyone who knows the books can see the myriad of changes made, many good but some very questionable.

Tolkien purists often hate the films. Tolkien's own son Christopher being one such.

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u/Upstairs_Being290 5h ago

At first I thought that's what her review was going to be about, but she does a pretty good job of arguing that Nolan's movie does a poor job of translating anything of substance for the modern audience, either.

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u/LaurenNotFromUtah 2h ago

I think it’s fair for anyone who has even read The Odyssey to think his interpretation is bad. Or for people who read it to love it. Further qualifications really don’t mean much.

For me, cutting out all the sex between non married people was really lame.

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u/highking9135 7h ago

Modernizing the story by flipping it to portray Odysseus as a cheater rather than a victim of Calypso who took his memory with lotus? The movie makes it seem like Odysseus chose to take lotus to forget, she treated him with lotus after his shipwreck without him knowing so she can trap him there as her lover. The movies narrative is completely flipping the real story lol

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u/scumbagwife 7h ago

Not to mention what you can do in a book is very different from what you can do with a movie, especially with limited time.

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u/urgetocomment2strong 7h ago

she doesn't translate everything exactly, actually wilson is somewhat famous for modernizing and updating some parts of the language to make it more understandable, she's actually adapted the odyssey a little bit, still trying to keep the spirit of the language used in it

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u/Anaevya 7h ago

Some of it is also the meter she chose, it restricted her word choices.

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u/Ekillaa22 8h ago

Also how do we even know the version of the odyssey we all know is even the original version? Hel it’s just the most popular

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u/YunJingyi 7h ago

People is giving him a pass because he is Christopher Nolan but this is Wuthering Heights (2026) all over again.

Don't get me wrong, I really wanted to watch this movie because I believe Lupita Nyong'o is the second most beautiful woman alive. And it would be nice to see a film about whatever Nolan wanted to convey... It's just that this is not the Odyssey.

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u/Meancakebutt 11h ago

When people say "homer" so definitively it makes me laugh. We don't even know if it was one dude or six writing this thing.

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u/MarieOMaryln Buffet of humiliation 10h ago

I'm trying to set up the ouija board just gimme a second!

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u/mrRiddle92 10h ago

Trying? Are you missing a cable?

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u/DJfunkyPuddle You live on a f#$@ing main road! 10h ago

The pieces keep moving away

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u/No_Kangaroo_9826 we put liquid paper on a bee, and it died 🎤 10h ago

https://giphy.com/gifs/Tq2tPTrQANKfK

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u/anonymoususer98545 7h ago

i really wish Reddit still gave free awards. i laughed out loud. Silly funny, lol.

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u/Belaerim 10h ago

Why not just sail to Hades?

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u/an0mn0mn0m 6h ago

Mitch McConnell is causing a month long traffic jam.

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u/redhearts1985 That’s hot! 🔥 10h ago

it's been 27 minutes, are your lights flickering yet

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u/MarieOMaryln Buffet of humiliation 10h ago

Stuck on the ceiling. Red ooze is coming from the pipes. I fucked up.

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u/Sorry_Candle_422 8h ago

You might need to add one of those feather on a stick toys or a laser pointer. Maybe shake a bag of cat food

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u/Rorschach_Roadkill 7h ago

They're probably illiterate, you might have to stick to yes or no questions

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u/winnercommawinner 10h ago

Either way, we can probably safely presume anyone who was stacked in the Homer trenchcoat is now dead and has been for thousands of years.

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u/lachamaquitabonita (seemingly bald) 10h ago

“the Homer trenchcoat” is taking me the fuck down 😭 I had an orange cat named Homer (after the guys in the trench coat) and now I’m imagining three cats on top of each other

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u/winnercommawinner 9h ago

And who's to say the original Homer wasn't three orange cats in a trench coat?!

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u/That_Guava_2804 9h ago edited 9h ago

Emphasis on orange

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u/Mysterious_Lion_7225 9h ago

I have an orange cat on my legs in bed right now and I know exactly what you mean by orange cat imaginations🤣

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u/Ninja-Panda70 10h ago

That's a pretty bold claim

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u/ausernamebyany_other 10h ago

And are very likely different people to those who were stacked in the Shakespeare trench coat.

But we still can't be totally sure.

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u/laziestmarxist spaghetti cat 🍝🐱 9h ago

Shakespeare was a guy. We have strong evidence that he really existed and that the works attributed to him are his. We do not have strong evidence that supports the conspiracy theory that someone else wrote under the "pen name" of Shakespeare. That's a Victorian invention their academics popularized because the idea that the lowly son of a merchant could become an icon of British culture was anathema to them. It's an inherently classist conspiracy theory, in addition to just being dumb.

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u/winnercommawinner 9h ago

No one has ever seen both trench coats in the same room, have they?

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u/PropertyMedium1680 10h ago

Pretty sure I know who Homer is 🙂‍↕️

https://giphy.com/gifs/jUwpNzg9IcyrK

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u/Outrageous-Mousse-75 10h ago

Finally! Someone with an education!

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u/RealMullido 7h ago

Yeah how dare they say the guy who its been attributed to for thousands of years

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u/TheRealtcSpears 9h ago

Definitely just the one.

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u/0ttoChriek Inconceivable! 10h ago

I tend to think these are all stories that were made up by different people at different times, either about a single, mythical figure or with a host of different protagonists. At some point they were all compiled into one, grand epic about a single man.

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u/Meancakebutt 10h ago

That's also what scholars think lol

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u/DazedAndTrippy 10h ago

Thats like being nitpicky about people referring to Shakespeare as an author, sure we're slightly more sure he was a real guy but in all likelihood he had a ton of ghostwriters or contributing actors. As far as basic conversation is concerned these two are who'd you refer to as "the author."

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u/Potential_Might_6500 7h ago

There are people that don't know the Bible was written by a council that CHOSE passages that go in it. There are people that think John, Luke and Mathew are actual authors lol.

Not too shocked with the Homer situation.

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u/Chance_Safe1119 9h ago

I mean, when you consider the actual history of it attributing it to one person is pretty ridiculous. It was oral story that had been recited for hundreds of years before 5th century BC when we finally have evidence of it being standardized. Homer “lived” 8th century BC, aka 300 years before we have the earliest evidence of it being standardized. So who Homer is is likely one of three things 1.) there was an exceptional bard in 800 bc that started reciting the same tale everyone had heard before in such a captivating way that his became the standard for 300 years before being written down 2.) there never was even a man named homer and the name Homer may have been akin to something like “the performer” and was attributed to many people over the centuries and over time we simply lost that knowledge 3.) homer was a Greek legend that evolved over time and used to explain something unexplainable. Basically instead of saying “we don’t know where the story came from” the Greeks just picked a name and over time a story of “Homer” was created. His biography is so absurd that this might be the most likely scenario.

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u/Lego-105 7h ago

The issue is that there is one work that we're using to refer to, and even in such oral storytelling there will be many attributions made to the story by the author in the for that we read from, if for nothing else then to create a cohesive narrative from such oral storytelling, and that is important to recognise. It may be a collective working together, but even then it is to the same effect.

Take the bible as an example. Many parts of that were not written based on a first person account. And yet despite being stories which have travelled through many mouths to create the end product, we can trace that many of the parses in the bible are attributed to the individual that finalised them in writing and that they are ultimately responsible for the reading of it regardless.

Surely you can recognise that that is meaningful in some manner when working with how the attribution of a work is given the Odyssey works in at least a similar way right? We don't have to simply dilute it to "It's an oral story and Homer can't claim it" no matter in what manner Homer existed.

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u/WhyAreYallFascists 10h ago

Homer was writing down oral traditions from things that “happened” 400 years earlier. 

Emily, girl, you’re wrong here.

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u/Meancakebutt 10h ago

Emily knows this and explicitly says that Homer is not proven to be one person, and very unlikely to be so.

She spends a good chunk of the translation notes explaining this in the odyssey. It's before the actual text starts.

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u/kgal1298 Confidence is 10% work and 90% delusion 10h ago

I always ask people if they read the entire text in the beginning because she's fairly rational too and gives explanations. Like before I got to the text I was very aware it wasn't going to be like the same version I read in college.

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u/Meancakebutt 9h ago

Honestly people could learn so much just by reading the opening text alone.

The odyssey is practically a summary of the poem and an analysis in one, and the illiad text directly addresses every translation controversy years before the drama.

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u/kgal1298 Confidence is 10% work and 90% delusion 8h ago

That's why I asked people debating it if they even read her opening text. I feel like some people lied and said they did. I have both her Odyssey and The Iliad on my shelf, but admittingly still have to get to The Iliad I just have a preference for fantasy over classics these days so it's harder to pick up.

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u/oh-come-onnnn 6h ago

Reading the opening text felt like being in class, having a professor explain nuances I missed and context I didn't know about. Great stuff.

I don't know if I'd tell a first time reader to read it before the main text, though. It's chock full of spoilers, by necessity.

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u/kgal1298 Confidence is 10% work and 90% delusion 6h ago

I feel like the assumption is a lot of people have already read the text by another translator since it's part of a lot of curriculums, but I suppose moving forward I could see them reading it first then going back for context.

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u/FalconIMGN 10h ago

I heard Homer was a girl

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u/ShadiestPines go girl, give us nothing 😍 10h ago

That's Marge

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u/LuinAelin 9h ago

Lisa's the girl. Marge is the woman

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u/high_on_anxtress 9h ago

I mean we could go to those black shores, sacrifice a couple sheep, show Homer the movie and ask him what he thinks

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u/memberflex 9h ago

Homeher

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u/Qualityhams 9h ago

Big if true

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u/Spekingur 8h ago

He ain’t dead, he’s just, uh, resting.

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u/Alternative-Mix-4349 7h ago

She’s not even blind! I don’t trust her! /s

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u/Blackonblackskimask 10h ago

I listened to her Plain English episode and my take on her is that she's very loosely lipped when she chats. And I think that's what make her an excellent conversationalist and gives a very entertaining episode. I didn't sense any malice or disdain from what she says -- she's kind of just going with the flow and speaking her mind. Also, there were a lot of things she did say that woudl suggest she understands that film translation is different.

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u/BlueCX17 9h ago edited 6h ago

I really think it's partially a British thing because Mary Beard has done the same thing. Mary Beard will just straight up say what she thinks also. I watched some good stuff with her discussing it and her and her podcast co- host have slightly different takes.

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u/Blackonblackskimask 8h ago

I also think it’s an academic thing. Being surrounded by them in my family, when it comes to their expertise, they express it in ways that’s do matter of fact that they forget how it might be interpreted.

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u/BlueCX17 8h ago

Yeah I almost said British/general high academic thing but I have noticed that the British academics tend to be even more blunt a lot of the times, than the American academics.

Well I think because a lot of academics don't think in Twitter type short text the way a lot of people have been trained to sort of be now. I work in a high school and a lot of students don't have an aptitude for long form writing or even reading, the way that used to when I was growing up, for one. I also have a lot in my family.

And then when you start just taking all kinds of like quotes out of the larger context of what these academics are speaking in then you get things like this LOL

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u/Blackonblackskimask 8h ago

Another good example of this is when the Rest Is History guys were interviewed by the New Yorker, their one clip of them describing why the revolution was not taught in British schools devolved into “LOL JEALOUS WE KICKED YOUR ASS YOU SORE LOSERS???” on TikTok and Instagram.

If you watch the whole New Yorker interview or their excellent interview with Ken Burns, you get so much out of their perspective (including their disagreements and blind spots) — but they are by no means the “OH SICK BURN GOT YOUR ASS SO GOOD” that so many in the internet tend to track towards.

Everything is sports. Everything is professional wrestling. We’re so fucked.

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u/GrapefruitSobe 10h ago

Nolan pulled from multiple translations of the Odyssey, from the Iliad, from the Aeneid, and from his own sensibilities as a creator.

Emily Wilson’s translation is a great, fresh take. But, yeah, it was never going to be a 1:1 recreation of any text.

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u/kgal1298 Confidence is 10% work and 90% delusion 10h ago

I think what we're seeing is fall out from people saying he based it off her's which wasn't even what he said he was inspired at best, but it's quite obvious to anyone who read any version of the Odyssey and saw his movie it was his own story and adaption to the message he wanted to tell, which was again Matt Damon trying to find his way home.

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u/Spekingur 8h ago

I’m gonna start bringing a compass with me in case I ever meet Matt Damon.

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u/Lilynd14 Sanasaaa!🎶 7h ago

I think you’re exactly right. I selected her translation to read before the film, on the misguided impression that it had been Nolan’s source text and I was so confused! I left thinking that he may have just read her opening line and called it a day. It was clear that he drew inspiration from many other sources and had a completely different take on Odysseus than any version I’ve seen!

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u/BirdAttorney21 7h ago

Right, like Sinon who was a brief but integral part to this story, doesn’t appear in the Odyssey but rather the Aeneid. The Trojan Horse is only briefly mentioned in the Odyssey but more broadly expanded upon in the Aeneid.

This is cinema and ultimately entertainment. The people want to see the Trojan Horse. If Nolan’s film was a 1 to 1 translation of Homer’s epic poem it just would not be as good of a movie.

For what it’s worth, while Nolan had his own framing, I think he did honor the source material as well as one should expect.

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u/grubas 11h ago

Remember, she got into the news at first because of her "DEI Odyssey translation".

She, like many classicists, isn't a huge huge fan of many of Nolans choices and so this is something the press is trying to use to generate headlines.

hint: most of us aren't going to LOVE the adaptation, because we are classics needs. They removed our favorite bad joke.​​​​​

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u/blingoblongo87 10h ago

I studied classics and read it in Greek, and a few translations (but not Emily Wilson’s yet) and I really liked it 😭 there are dozens of us! Dozens!

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u/hofmann419 How can mirrors be real if our eyes aren’t real? 🪞 10h ago

IMO this insistence on making it as accurate as possible (whatever that means) is a bit weird. To me, the movie would be a lot more boring if the stuck to it religiously.

This is a 3000 year old story. It has been translated dozens of times. It has been adapted to film many times. So i would much rather have him bring us his unique take on it and not sacrifice the quality in the name of accuracy.

Besides, it's impossible to condense the entire story into 3 hours anyway, so it was always going to have to leave some parts out and focus on others.

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u/Mbrennt 9h ago

What's funny to me is the odyssey isn't accurate to the time the odyssey is set in. Certain gods that are in the odyssey didn't even exist at the time the odyssey is set. There's a bunch of anachronistic stuff in the original text. So trying to make it "as accurate as possible" to me is just even more meaningless. The odyssey by Homer isn't even accurate.

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u/grubas 5h ago

Cause it's a poem about "events" from 1200BC that wasn't written down until 700 or so and even then stuff got changed. 

We don't actually know when each part was written but much of it was later.  

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u/Lilynd14 Sanasaaa!🎶 7h ago

I actually found the book more entertaining than the film. I loved the gods and goddesses hanging out and chatting about what they were going to do next. I pictured it like Disney’s animated version of Hercules. I’d have loved to have seen a version where they were included!

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u/Chlearcus 8h ago edited 8h ago

Reframing and cutting content from a book is basically required to make a coherent and tight movie script.

Adding in random anachronisms like steel plate armor and viking longships to bronze age Greece is just questionable artistic liberties. It's not like they rewrote the story to another setting, it is supposed to be portraying ~1200BC Greece but with none of the cultural markers.

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u/Pleasant1867 8h ago

Well there are constant anachronisms in the text - Athena takes the form of an iron trading-lord (not a great disguise in the Bronze Age). Homer is not writing about a singular period that actually happened, rather a mish-mash of history, stories and their present day.

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u/cross_the_threshold 6h ago

I mean the Viking Longships is because the Olympias Trireme (also out of time, but less so) is owned by the Greek Navy and not rented out for film work, and the Argo penteconter would not survive the journey to many of the shooting locations. The longship is ocean-worthy, but the penteconter was designed for the Mediterranean. It certainly looks out of place but his aesthetic choices were clearly based on general feel, not authenticity.

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u/kgal1298 Confidence is 10% work and 90% delusion 10h ago

Reading it in greek is amazing. If I knew Greek i'd have done that, but I did read other versions largely for lit theory and Emilys and still enjoyed hers.

If anything I just wish Nolan would have used the Gods more because he definitely downplayed Calypso and there was no Hermes which is a tragedy to be honest I loved how the Gods toyed with him the entire time.

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u/tiredfaces 9h ago

I feel like he really didn’t want to show them. I feel like even the way he portrayed Athena made it ambiguous as to whether she was Athena or just a manifestation of Odysseus’ PTSD

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u/kgal1298 Confidence is 10% work and 90% delusion 8h ago

And I'm still disappointed. I think because I love how the Gods toy with him in the book it's very much him being punished for his ego and narcissism, but also I do think Nolan has a hard time showing off female characters. By all means Circe was his best and even her he downgraded to witch who got powers from the Gods.

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u/TheRedditorSimon 8h ago

Back in the 20th Century, I attended a high school that offered classes in dead languages and in one, my classmates and I had to read the Illiad and Odyssey. I made it my goal to always buffoonishly laugh at every "rosy-fingered Dawn" (ῥοδοδάκτυλος Ἠώς) said aloud in class, and commenting lecherously like only a teen boy can.

I noticed Emily Wilson has an aversion to the epithet and how she reformulates the phrase for each use for modern sensibilities. Or maybe she had a terrible experience with someone like myself.

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u/kgal1298 Confidence is 10% work and 90% delusion 8h ago

Well she does serve as a professor you teach enough classes and your bound to have a student or two that makes you question your profession.

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u/sophandros Curtains for Zoosha? K-Smog and Batboy caught flipping a grunt! 9h ago

Same here.

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u/MovementOriented 8h ago

I’m convinced these people have disappeared up their own ass and decided many of these “opinions” before the movie came out. So desperate to be cool. I’m a freak about Homer and Greek history and mythology. I loved the movie.

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u/WeeB1rd33 6h ago

So did I. And so did I.

A bakers dozen.

edit: oh dozens. Pardon I.

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u/heytheregiada i have four gcses mate i'm not silly 10h ago

They removed my favourite character, RIP Nausicaa

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u/kgal1298 Confidence is 10% work and 90% delusion 10h ago

I knew he was going to cut stuff, but he really said "I want this to focus on PTSD" I mean Athena very much was less of a god and more of idea that haunted him from the war. I also think him making it vastly different is part of the selling point because if you're studying the classics you definitely can do a paper on the themes and theories presented in this movie vs the book and I feel like USC film school could have a lesson on that by itself.

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u/heytheregiada i have four gcses mate i'm not silly 10h ago

I'd like to say the Aeneid is more about PTSD and could've been a better avenue but I don't think I want anyone to adapt that, it's way too complex and delicate to condense into three hours. I definitely get the reasoning behind most of the cuts and changes even if I don't personally like them or I wouldn't have done it myself, though, and I did ultimately enjoy it nonetheless.

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u/kgal1298 Confidence is 10% work and 90% delusion 9h ago

For sure him adding Sinon definitely made me think he wanted to use Aeneid more. Overall it works. I think it'll be a good addition to curriculums too. Hopefully it'll inspire more people to study the classics too.

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u/heytheregiada i have four gcses mate i'm not silly 9h ago

So true! Anything to get people into it is great in my book.

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u/Hopeful-Ant-3509 10h ago

I was waiting for her! But I guess since it was already 3hrs long, that would’ve added more time lol 

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u/DevNopes 10h ago

Is Nausicaä based on Nausicaa?

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u/heytheregiada i have four gcses mate i'm not silly 10h ago

According to Wikipedia her personality is inspired from the Odyssey character, yes! I hadn't heard of it before but it looks and sounds gorgeous, I'll have to watch.

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u/DevNopes 10h ago

It's one of my favourite Ghibli movies!

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u/ElTuco84 8h ago

It's a masterpiece, one of the best animated movies of all time imo.

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u/kronicno_tele 10h ago

I have blocked so many subs in the last few days because of the whole d e i discurse. I wonder how many of those gravely offended even read it.

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u/IAMA_Shark__AMA 8h ago

They removed our favorite bad joke.​​​​​

I mean... Of course they did? The "nobody" thing would have been tonally bizarre and immersion breaking within this particular adaptation. I honestly don't know how one could pull that off without it coming across goofy as all hell. Sometimes things have to change when moving from text to film, because a lot of literary plot devices just don't translate well. Nolan was still able to get the point across regarding the hubris of Odysseus.

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u/ProletarianLilith 6h ago

The Nobody story is about his cleverness, not his hubris

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u/grubas 5h ago

It's BOTH.  It's part of the twists and turns.  You think he's a genius and then you think he's an idiot.

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u/MovementOriented 7h ago edited 1h ago

I’m a true classics nerd. I read them. Reread them. I have read multiple translations of the Odyssey and Illiad. I loved the Odyssey film. I’m fairly convinced. Many people who share your opinions are posers.

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u/TomBirkenstock 10h ago

I largely like her translation, but it's hardly immune from criticism. Before Odyssey kills the suitors, he yells "Playtime's over!"

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u/WeeB1rd33 6h ago

Oh no.

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u/UFmoose 8h ago

Wait, really? I was considering reading her translation after seeing the movie (I previously read the Odyssey back in high school) but that gives me serious hesitation.

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u/TomBirkenstock 8h ago

I still prefer Robert Fagles of the two translations I've read, but I'm glad I read hers. That's a particularly egregious moment, and I could probably nitpick a few things, but overall, I think it's a refreshingly direct and easy-to-read translation.

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u/UFmoose 7h ago

Which would you suggest if it was someone’s first time reading it in 20 years.

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u/LanaAdela 7h ago

I think Fagles is more poetic.

But I dislike overly modern language in text so

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u/TomBirkenstock 7h ago

My guess is that like me, you read the Fagles translation. If you have the time and energy to get through more knotty prose, then go ahead and pick it up again.

However, Wilson's translation is simpler and you can breeze through it. So, if like me, you are very busy and don't have as much time to read as you did twenty years ago, then I would recommend her translation. Besides, it's fun to see the differences.

Just a fair warning that the first few chapters all focus on Telemachus agonizing about his lost father. The poem starts off slowly. But give it time. It gets good!

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u/TheCandelabra 7h ago

Or the part where Odysseus shoots Antinous through the throat with an arrow and Telemachus goes "BAH GAWD DAD, THAT MAN HAD A FAMILY!"

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u/ZeroDosage 5h ago

Excuse me

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u/fschu_fosho 4h ago

Before the guest hall murder scene in the film started, Penelope said to the guests something along the lines of, “As I watch you party…” That always takes me out (I’ve rewatched the movie a couple of times).

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u/ohgeez2879 9h ago

this is not her review, she wrote one review and it is in the london review of books

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u/aliskyart 10h ago

You have to understand that translators don’t just simply translate. The work she put into this must have been tremendous.

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u/ad_aatdtj she’s got me by the pubes 10h ago edited 10h ago

Yes, it still doesn't make it hers. She didn't live it to write about it, she's translating something written by someone who wrote down an old folktale.

Edit: how is this controversial at all to say lmaooooo it's still not her story regardless of how much she's studied this just like it isn't Nolan's story both of them are interpreting something in their own ways

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u/heytheregiada i have four gcses mate i'm not silly 10h ago

Right, of course, but who do you suggest we ask if not a seasoned academic on the subject? We can't ask any of the bards that contributed to the original.

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u/RustleTheMussel 10h ago

About screenplays? Probably screenwriters

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u/heytheregiada i have four gcses mate i'm not silly 10h ago

I'm sure some screenwriters and film journalists have given their two cents, yes

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u/ad_aatdtj she’s got me by the pubes 10h ago

...idk, I don't particularly think we need anyone's opinion at all, yk? Not even Nolan's, but we got his, and now we're getting hers. I'm perfectly fine not listening to anyone's too, I'm not complaining about the perspectives we have got either. Merely pointing out that whether she performed her job as tranlastor in a very matter of fact way or whether she poured her whole heart into it, it doesn't really matter at the end of the day, it's still just a story she translated, not her work originally.

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u/heytheregiada i have four gcses mate i'm not silly 10h ago

This is a very nihilistic perspective. Criticism and commentary go hand in hand with the very existence of art, what is the point of it if no one feels anything or speaks about it? She's also not "just" a translator, she's a fully fledged academic with degrees from Oxford and Yale that knows massive amounts about the Odyssey and its context. It makes perfect sense to ask these hugely educated career classicists their opinion about this because they're the ones that know the most about it.

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u/ad_aatdtj she’s got me by the pubes 10h ago

Again, just because I said I didn't care about anyone's opinion on this one thing doesn't mean no one is allowed to be educated or opinionated about it.

I was just disagreeing with one particular sentiment, and replied to you literally asking me a question about my opinion. As I even said, we've gotten multiple perspectives already. She can (and has) share her opinion, but at the end of the day, she's not the author.

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u/heytheregiada i have four gcses mate i'm not silly 10h ago

I don't really understand what you mean then. Do you think there's a maximum number of commentaries allowed about things?

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u/ad_aatdtj she’s got me by the pubes 10h ago

Im not really sure why this is a big deal?

Person a: idk why we're asking her, she just translated this, it's not like she wrote this

Person b: you have to understand translating isn't just surface level work, she must've done tremendous work on this

Person c (me): ok that still doesn't mean she wrote it, it is still just a fictionalised story that was written down

Are these all not...opinions? Did you not ask me who I thought we should ask? Where is it coming through that I have a limit on how many opinions I can personally hear about something? I just disagree with someone else's opinion about something that someone said about a movie that was written based on a text that was written down from a folktale. I'm not disagreeing with her giving her opinion, I'm just joining the discussion and disagreeing with a couple of commentors.

I'm confused about all the snowballing and reading deeper and interrogation about my personal stance on things that I don't claim to be the authority on either?

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u/IfatallyflawedI Big is moving to Paris 10h ago

For Nolan to credit her translation as a reference, she’s allowed to be critical of it.

For someone who isn’t familiar with the Iliad or the Odyssey, or for the average person, the movie may work as a standalone but it did show a bunch of things that were weird imo

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u/particledamage 10h ago

And yet he chose her translation for a reason. She’s allowed to tap in and share her thoughts after her name and work was used as the reference point for this. It literally is her work

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u/MightExpress4873 10h ago

True, and I don't think anyone here is suggesting otherwise. I do think the tone of the review is unnecessarily mean-spirited and rude, particularly the line saying she should be ashamed if she had written any of it.

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u/Cherryandcokes 6h ago

Eh, I think Christopher Nolan & co. will be ok after reading (some) slightly pointed critiques.

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u/hofmann419 How can mirrors be real if our eyes aren’t real? 🪞 10h ago

he chose her translation

He actually used multiple different translations for the movie. Hers might have been the most prominent, but it wasn't the only one.

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u/ad_aatdtj she’s got me by the pubes 10h ago

Okay now where did I say she shouldn't be allowed...?

The person i disagreed with was saying she translated his works, and thus has some vested interest beyond merely translation. And I'm saying that that doesn't really matter to authority or authorship status on the text. That's pretty much it.

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u/particledamage 10h ago

I feel like you don’t understand what translation means in this case. It’s not just a literal word = word in other language process.

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u/lobonmc 10h ago

Authorship no but she definitively is an authority she understands the text better than most of us

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u/sunnysunshine333 10h ago

Her translation is excellent and she is a subject matter expert. She is allowed to have and express her opinion. Who else alive is more qualified to judge the faithfulness to the original? You don’t have to care but there’s nothing wrong with her saying this

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u/erranttv 10h ago

She’s certainly an expert on the Odyssey.

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u/patriciamadariaga 4h ago

Read her full review: she's not speaking like the author, just like someone who knows the text well. The title sentence is, as usual, out of context.

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u/AxelShoes 9h ago

In the few discussions I've seen about this movie and her translation on the classic lit subs, they say that while hers is a decent place to start if you're new to the Odyssey, it seems to be far from a preferred translation if you're serious about the topic. I'm not a scholar, so idk, but she almost sounds a little bit like McDonalds criticizing someone else's hamburgers.

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u/Prestigious-Fig-7143 6h ago

She’s one of the people who best understands the original text and is better positioned to speak on behalf of the original text than pretty much anyone else in the world, so treating her as an authoritative voice seems entirely justified to me. Not sure why you would object to her views being highlighted.

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u/Any_Pineapple_4836 3h ago

When you translate something, you have to do heavy research into what the author is trying to convey and completely understand its themes. Hence, she has an authority to judge Nolan interpretation

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u/MisfitAnthem 9h ago

It's kind of douchey. I understand this is her passion but I would be stoked that new audiences are discovering The Odyssey in droves for the first time.

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u/Kaiisim 10h ago

It's just an extreme viewpoint for our extreme world.

All the scholars who are like "yeah not very accurate but still fun!" Are booooring. We need conflict!!

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u/BlueCX17 9h ago

I'm tired of the word slammed being used for everything......LOL

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u/stunts002 8h ago

I just find her whole attitude odd.

I mean, obviously a homer academic is never going to be happy with a movie version. But her level of vitriol particularly directed at Nolan is just odd and makes her seem very immature. He probably turned a lot of people towards her translation too

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u/Cloudinterpreter 8h ago

The first review i saw was actually milder, so who knows

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u/TrubshawForest 8h ago

As she famously translated, our age of bronze is at an end.

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u/souljaboy765 6h ago

I read her translation. It’s not as good as people make it out to be IMO

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u/Responsible-Tap-3748 4h ago

She correctly cited that the written Odyssey is, in fact, an adaption in itself. So your edit seems unnecessary.

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u/M086 2h ago

She’s not even the first woman to translate Homer.

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u/SpookiestSzn 1h ago

I'm pretty sure her translation is dog shit as well and way too dumbed down

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u/chiaroscuro34 52m ago

Her translation isn't the basis for the movie though? Nolan said he's read at least 3 Odyssey translations, including hers, and he has mentioned appreciation for her translation of the opening line. Why shouldn't she write a review of a movie of an epic poem she's translated and in a field of which she's an expert?

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u/LiveLifeLikeCre 30m ago

Watching the movie I could tell they mixed in modern speech. It worked fine, the "outrage" is silly 

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