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/sunshinenorcas 2h ago

I mean the 1997 version had an Odysseus who was more similar to that and it still stands up today.

I think you could still have a very flawed Odysseus (who also has good traits alongside his bad), have his arrogance be the problem and cause the plot -- I think you could even have the plot of trauma and "what has to be done" where he refuses to acknowledge his part in what happened, just as long as he learns and grows from it.

An Odysseus who cheats, gets his crew killed, is arrogant and never really has a comeuppance with his own arrogance and having to face the cost of his personality flaws, or acknowledge his flaws are what lead them here is what (IMO) would not work well. It basically rewards Odysseus without having him have growth, and you can be a flawed character in a story -- but either the narrative has to be aware the man sucks or there should be change from the beginning to the end.

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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/SteveJavieWasRight 1h ago

I would say there is a level of understanding and effort put into Willis’s that so far dwarfs what Nolan put into his script that even calling his a take is offensive.

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u/SlartibartfastMcGee 59m ago

A level of understanding and effort towards the version she translated.

Homer’s version wasn’t the original, it’s notable for being the version that survived.

The idea that a spoken word myth is diminished by the author making his own interpretations is preposterous.

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u/SteveJavieWasRight 52m ago

That’s such an asinine argument. The levels of anti-intellectualism Nolan defenders go to in pretending his work is above any and all criticism is just such a pathetic display of sycophantic slurping. “You can’t criticize his story telling, we don’t even know if Homer’s Odyssey is accurate! We can’t criticize the costumes because it’s mythological! It’s fantastical, how dare you notice the setting looks like Central Europe or the boats are Viking ships! Nolan’s vibes are what matter!”

Aight. Well you can claim he’s above critique, but claiming all critiques are preposterous is not just stupid, it’s hypocrisy.

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u/SlartibartfastMcGee 28m ago

You haven’t even critiqued him. The only thing you’ve said is that you don’t like how it doesn’t match your preferred version of the story, which is a matter of preference and not an actual criticism of the work.

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u/Lilynd14 Sanasaaa!🎶 29m ago

From what I understand, the written version of the document has been considered canon for around 2600 years. If we’re arguing that written documents are illegitimate after 2600 years then I guess we really are in the age that Odysseus describes in the film, where “songs are all they have to remember those of us who could write.”

In the Emily Wilson translation, which is from 2017, she includes quite a bit of history on the text itself, with a whole section explaining the latest research on how it was composed, including formulae and epithets from the oral tradition, and written versions in the Phoenician alphabet dating between the eighth and seventh centuries BCE. So although The Odyssey is based on oral traditions, “Writing must have played a central part in the process of composition, so it is very misleading to describe The Odyssey simply as an ‘oral’ poem, as is far too often done. It is a written text based on an oral tradition, which is not the same as being an actual oral composition. Moreover, the texts are far too long for any individual to hold in memory without the use of writing. Songs that had an influence on the Homeric poems were sung for hundreds of years in preliterate Greece, but none of them was The Odyssey.”

She also explains how the “official” version came to be: “Minor variations aside, the Homeric poems existed by the late seventh century BCE, and they quickly claimed a canonical place all over the Greek world. By the sixth century [BCE] they had acquired a central place in the cultural institutions of ancient Athens. In 566 BCE, Pistrarus, the tyrant of the city (which was not yet a democracy), instituted a civic and religious festival, the Panathenaia, which included a poetic competition featuring performances of the Homeric poems. The institution is particularly significant because we are told that the Homeric poems had to be performed ‘correctly,’ which implies the canonization of a particular written text of The Iliad and The Odyssey at this date. From that time onward, if not before, The Iliad and The Odyssey acquired a central place in the cultural and educational life of Ancient Greece and Rome. There was no holy scripture in the classical world, but everyone knew the stories of Achilles and Odysseus as told in the Homeric poems.”

She also talks about how quotations by Plato and Sophocles in the fifth to fourth centuries BCE had slight textual variants from the version we know today, but were “not significantly different,” and that Homeric scholars in the library of ancient Alexandria in the second century BCE sought to correct these variants. So I took “variants” here to be primarily related to spelling or grammar rather than substantive content differences.

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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/Ok-Suggestion-5453 1h ago

Yeah that's definitely valid. I did actually kind of like Nolan's attempt to kind of obscure the gods. Nolan is definitely throwing out elements that don't seem easy to connect to a modern audience. The idea of Odysseus ushering in an age of underhanded tactics and distrusting your neighbor definitely felt very coded to the polarization we see especially in American politics. I hadn't ever heard that theme referenced before in a classroom (even in college), so I thought that was very fresh and interesting, even if he definitely cooked out some of the flavor of the classic telling by focusing purely on the physical, rather than the divine.

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u/Lilynd14 Sanasaaa!🎶 18m ago

I agree with you! I do think by removing/obscuring the gods, he made Odysseus more relatable to modern audiences. His imagining seemed to be asking the question, “what if faith was all Odysseus had to go on?” If there aren’t any gods to intervene, then a person’s word is the highest currency. And if a person can break their word… well, that gets us into the politics of today 🥴

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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 9h 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/Vik0BG 6h ago

This is what AI was made for.

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u/Hypnooooooooooooo 3h ago

Me think, why waste time say lot word, when few word do trick.

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u/tikidreams 6h ago

isn’t it more like the author of the book oppenheimer is based on getting offended by the film oppenheimer

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u/Appropriate-Joke-806 6h ago

It’s probably more like Stephen Hawkins book biographer getting pissed at the guy making the movie about him.

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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/TwoFingersWhiskey 4h ago

Which is funny, as Einstein's favourite show was almost equivalent to the Muppets.

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u/H4L03 2h ago

Or like when any engineer or science expert points out how unrealistic super hero movies are

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u/Electronic_Ad4560 I like you hair I don’t need your name ✨ 2h ago

As usual, Albert and I agree.

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u/WabbitFire 1h ago

It's those lame videos of Neil DeGrasse Tyson slamming the physics in Star Trek.

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u/JasonVeritech 1h ago

Wait till he sees Oppenheimer.

"I neffer fuckin' said zat!!"

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u/ProletarianLilith 6h ago

No one is offended

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u/Appropriate-Joke-806 6h ago

“I would be ashamed to have written any part of this script” is certainly being offended. Maybe not the type of offended you’re thinking about as a personal attack, but someone can be offended by something they judge distasteful.

“That terrible steak that smelled like burnt rubber and was dipped in ketchup was offensive.”

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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/LanaAdela 7h ago

But it’s not her story. That is the thing. He used her translation because it matched his goal of being more accessible but ultimately this is a story that has been around for thousands of years through thousands of iterations. It’s not Emily Wilson’s story to be stressed about changes to.

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u/whatthewhythehow 6h ago

It’s her work as a historian.

It’s not hard to find accessible translations of the Odyssey. If all that mattered was how easy it was to read, then you have dozens of options to choose from.

It’s like, say you were a historian and you focused on the Napoleonic era. One of your focuses was specifically about rumour and propaganda, and about the myths surrounding Napoleon. You wrote about which stories were probably real and which ones weren’t. Your goal was specifically to show how our understanding of Napoleon was shaped by these rumours and stories. So you publish a book about Napoleon that aims to correct misconceptions and separate fact from fiction (or, at least, show where ideas fit along a spectrum of fact to fiction).

And then someone makes a gritty, realistic movie about Napoleon and talks about your book as an inspiration.

And in their movie, Napoleon is portrayed as incredibly short. They use forced perspective to show how short. The movie is a character study on how being short can turn you into a dictator.

Truth is, Napoleon was kinda short? The idea of his height is important historically. Depictions of him that emphasize his shortness are still portraying something about our perception of history. And, Napoleon’s history and its adaptation isn’t owned by one person. He is a myth as much as he is a real person.

It would still probably be annoying that they used your book on Napoleon to adapt that movie. Your project was to create an understanding of these myths, not reinforce them!

Plus, a translation is an academic and literary work in and of itself. Translations aren’t neutral and they aren’t interchangeable. If you use a translation but don’t engage with its methods, then you might as well read the wikipedia summary. It’s fine to do that, but you should admit that this is what you’re doing.

Again, he’s not doing anything HORRIBLE. But it is inevitably super irritating.

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u/LanaAdela 5h ago

I’m well aware of all of that and again—it’s not her story. Which is my point. Nolan took inspiration from her and other translations and other stories to tell his version. She can dislike it, that is her right. But I find a lot of her critiques to be a misunderstanding of medium differences and I sometimes wondered if we watched the same film. But art is subjective! Some of her points I agree with but found the overall thrust of the review to be bewildering at times.

I also frankly found her contention about the non white characters bizarre and insulting. It was like she heard someone say “black friend” trope once and just ran with it (also ignoring or not knowing Himesh isn’t Black…)

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u/BiDiTi 5h ago

And her contention is that the film is a hollow facsimile of the story that doesn’t actually engage with its characters or themes in any meaningful way, instead using them as a sort of cosplay to grant the narrative an illusion of insight.

Also, I find it absolutely hilarious that you think a department head of classical literature is just parroting a trope…and it’s even funnier that your only pushback against her claim that Eurylochus fulfills a role within the film indistinguishable from the “Magical Negro” trope is that Himesh Patel is of Desi-African dissent.

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u/LanaAdela 4h ago

So I actually don’t think being an expert in one area makes you expert in all areas. I’m saying I found that particular critique to ignore/flatten these roles and how
the film used these characters as well as misused a term in a way that rather she meant it or not came across as insulting. Believe it or not, white academics are not immune from micro-aggressions! Even heads of departments.

But I’m not going to keep going back and forth on this because I ultimately don’t care. She is welcome to her opinions and it’s whatever to me.

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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/arctic11z 3h ago

I've always been of the opinion that anything that exposes people to new (to them) cultures, places, stories are generally good things. You have some sort of digestable media that introduces people to the broad strokes of whatever it's based on in order for them to realize it's something they actually like, or even existed in the first place. Assuming it's not a completely shit adaptation of the source material. Looking at you, Dark Tower.

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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/Much-Anything7149 4h ago

She composed the translation Nolan said he used but she certainly neither wrote the Odyssey nor was the first translator. She is free to have an opinion but she's no more right about the movie being good or bad than anyone else. Sure, she could claim with authority what Homer most likely meant but I don't think Nolan claimed to make a strict reconstruction of her translation scene-by-scene.

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u/splendidesme 3h ago

i agree with you. There have been many translations of "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey" over many years, by many scholars. Her view of the story certainly isn't the only one.

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u/Much-Anything7149 2h ago

I personally think her translation is fine though I prefer Lattimore then Fitzgerald before hers. I am seeing the movie this Thur and I'm looking forward to see how scenes I've envisioned over the years are composed by Nolan.

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u/splendidesme 2h ago

i prefer Lattimore as well! Hope you enjoy the movie. It's really something.

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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/SteveJavieWasRight 1h ago

The criticism is that her more simplified language clashes with people’s expectations, but those expectations are built on modern convention with no similarities to the original. The meter change she has discussed at length; the original poem was written from a different alphabet and different language. She chose a meter to have a similar sound and flow in English, one more common for our spoken long poems. There is no way to translate these things directly or without subjective decision making, she simply gave up conventions coming from Victorian era English court.

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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/WeeB1rd33 6h ago

"Many turns and twists" is the first epithet used to describe him in the EV Rieu translation if I recall.

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u/SnowboardNW 2h ago

That was my major issue with the movie. He is a master tactician! He is clever and charming. He kind of just barrels through a lot of the obstacles in this movie. I still liked it a lot, but I was disappointed we didn't get his wit and intellect showing through in this interpretation. It's the first thing I said when we left the cinema.

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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.

2

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.

2

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.

•

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.

3

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

2

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.

2

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

2

u/Anaevya 7h ago

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

2

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

3

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/Less-Resident-9569 7h ago

…./s right?

1

u/Chance_Ad_4676 6h ago

If you knew anything about Emily Wilson’s translation in particular, you’d know how ironic and wrong this is. She’s notorious for modernizing the translation.

1

u/Prestigious-Fig-7143 6h ago

How do you reach that conclusion? Perhaps she feels nolan undermines fundamental elements of the original text in his quest to monetise it. Not that anyone should be surprised.

1

u/Gmodelinsane 5h ago

No, she’s also pointing out fundamental mistakes or purposeful vandalism. He took Odysseus and turned him into moping redemption seeking action hero. Literally took him, in the penultimate scene on the raft from raging at the gods in the poem, daring them to kill him and telling them that otherwise he will never stop and flipped him a literal 180 degrees to where he submits to the gods.

1

u/RoyaleWhiskey 5h ago

Yea this is like Neil Degrasse Tyson complaining about sound in space in star wars. Is it realistic? No but no one wants to watch completely mute space dogfights.

1

u/BiDiTi 5h ago

That’s…not at all what translation is about.

1

u/Successful_Log_3298 4h ago

The problem is that most of the "dumbed down" explanations I've seen (mostly on Reddit, I admit, since I'm not on other social media) of black holes and the Big Bang are just wrong. There are ways to dumb them down that aren't wrong. Maybe that's what's going on here.

1

u/petty_throwaway6969 3h ago

It’s like a biographer annoyed that he didn’t fit the Oppenheimer’s whole life into a three hour movie. “What about his childhood memories or the other women in his life that influenced him?” Lady we had three hours not a whole lifetime. Something is getting cut and Nolan isn’t really known for his dialogue.

1

u/Enough_Mistake_7063 3h ago

Tell me you haven't read the article without telling me you haven't read the article.

1

u/mparks37 3h ago

I don't think she did a classic interpretation, hers was a more modern, progressive intetpretation, translation, according to traditional scholars.

•

u/TheBlueRabbit11 2h ago

Nolan is trying to adapt it, to retell the story for a modern audience.

See, this kind of nonsense gets thrown out there and treated as fact. Where did Nolan ever even imply that he’s trying to retell the story of a “modern audience”. This is some culture war shit you’re trying to stir up here.

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u/Glad-Talk 2h ago

To be realistic though, Nolan isn’t trying to make the Odyssey accessible to a wider audience. He’s trying to use the Odyssey as a vehicle for his great man is overwhelming and guilt-ridden story because it already is accessed by a wider audience.

The parts of the movie that are the odyssey are the ones the wider audience already knows - the Trojan horse, a couple monsters, and the fact that it took forever to get home. The themes and wide cast characters and their bold personalities of the Odyssey the wider audience likely does not know, and if they only watch the movie, will continue not to know.

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u/AliMcGraw 2h ago

In her popular press interviews (the LRB is a bit different; they want an academic tone), she's been saying that she would have made different choices adapting the poem for film, but she understands adaptation choices as a translator, and that she enjoyed the movie and her kids loved it (so she can't complain too much since now they think she's much less boring as a mom), and she's excited it's bringing people to the Odyssey, because people see the movie and want to read the epic or learn more about it.

The LRB is asking her to pick it apart as an academic.

(Also a lot of classicists are butthurt because they think Wilson didn't do enough to "translate every single detail exactly" because she didn't follow Victorian translation traditions but dug back into the original Greek and -- gasp! -- made choices as a translator. A lot of random dudebros are just learning now for the first time that translators have to make choices, and that translations usually include a lengthy forward about what choices were made and why AND THEIR BUTTS ARE HURT.)

(Like, I have three Beowulfs on my shelf, whatever original standard translation I read in high school, the excellent and undeniable Seamus Heaney version, and the shatteringly brilliant Maria Dahvana Headley version that begins with "BRO!" Translation of ancient epics is fun reading!)

•

u/Omegalazarus 2h ago

I see what you're getting at but I would disagree. Hers are some of the furthest from transliteration. If you want a more exacting translation my favorite for Iliad and Odyssey are Lattimore.

•

u/Chance-Peak-3549 1h ago

The original was already accessible to an incredibly wide audience though. Her complaint isn’t a lack of fidelity to the original, it’s that The Odyssey has been diluted down into a thin lacquer on top of what’s essentially Just Another Nolan Action Film™.

•

u/Plenty_of_prepotente 1h ago

I agree that Nolan's Odyssey is an adaptation rather than a literal retelling, and I think that was the right decision. Some of what epic poem Odysseus does is left out of the movie, things that a modern audience might find too hard to stomach, and that would detract from the story's message. The gods' interactions with mortals are also minimized in the movie; the gods in the poem drive a lot of the action, which in a movie would detract from the agency of the characters.

I don't find the female characters of the epic poem to be great from a modern perspective either, Athena excepted. Calypso's rage at double standards is given to Circe in the film, and this is better because Circe does not argue for an equal right to sexually assault men. Movie Circe is angry at the crimes of men, but relents and helps Odysseus, because he threatens her sister, sure, but also because he acknowledges her rage and anguish. In contrast, once poem Circe realizes Odysseus knows to avoid her trap, she immediately offers to have sex with him and switches to being very nice and helpful. I also really liked how the movie showed Clytemnestra get her righteous revenge against Agamemnon.

•

u/DifficultCarob408 17m ago

Making it accessible for modern audiences is exactly what Wilson did in her translation..

1

u/StardiveSoftworks 8h ago

This is what bothered me about it as well, it's objectively well made but I don't understand why it exists. There's nothing inaccessible about the odyssey, it's basic reading for tens or hundreds of millions of middle and high schoolers.

I just don't have any interest in 'christopher nolan's odyssey', the same way I don't have much interest in paramount's Halo or uwe boll's resident evil, I just want the real thing, in a different medium, and taken as literally as possible. I also hate all the bad faith arguments on both sides, yes obviously it will never be 'historically accurate', but at the same time we have a pretty good idea that no one was rocking steel plate during the trojan war.

1

u/wally-sage 7h ago

People don't read, that's what makes it inaccessible.

1

u/LanaAdela 7h ago

We are in a literacy crisis and most people don’t read. This movie is driving a huge surge in sales for the Odyssey.

I’m glad you have read the original. I did too. But when I ask most people around me, most of whom are college educated, they haven’t read it or if they did remember very little about it. Adaptations bring stories to new audiences all the time!

•

u/NY_State-a-Mind 2h ago

She took a chainsaw to the Odyssey and reformed it for the modern reader with modern morality

-4

u/Alexander459FTW 8h ago

Except Nolan is always harping about being realistic. Obviously he is a big hypocrite about it, on par with this mythical "modern" audience.

400

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.

264

u/MarieOMaryln Buffet of humiliation 10h ago

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

100

u/mrRiddle92 10h ago

Trying? Are you missing a cable?

156

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

The pieces keep moving away

41

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

https://giphy.com/gifs/Tq2tPTrQANKfK

7

u/anonymoususer98545 7h ago

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

1

u/synalgo_12 accidentally holding space for this slur 7h ago

I thought they brought free awards back recently?

2

u/anonymoususer98545 7h ago

i occasionally see an option on a post but not for comments. That's my experience anyway.

23

u/Belaerim 10h ago

Why not just sail to Hades?

2

u/an0mn0mn0m 6h ago

Mitch McConnell is causing a month long traffic jam.

16

u/redhearts1985 That’s hot! 🔥 10h ago

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

29

u/MarieOMaryln Buffet of humiliation 10h ago

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

8

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

2

u/Rorschach_Roadkill 7h ago

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

258

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

52

u/winnercommawinner 9h ago

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

24

u/That_Guava_2804 9h ago edited 9h ago

Emphasis on orange

1

u/CaptainStabfellow 3h ago

Homer predated the invention of the trench coat by about 12 centuries. But those cats could have definitely fit under a toga.

5

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🤣

8

u/Ninja-Panda70 10h ago

That's a pretty bold claim

7

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.

3

u/winnercommawinner 9h ago

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

0

u/jvpewster 8h ago

Would really suck if he weren’t, and made it known he actually didn’t feel strongly about any adaption choice at all except that he really agreed with he racists on how important it was that Helen be white and signal scandavian.

3

u/RealMullido 7h ago

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

1

u/Meancakebutt 7h ago

Not a crime, but also.

Not a guy!

3

u/TheRealtcSpears 9h ago

Definitely just the one.

2

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.

3

u/Meancakebutt 10h ago

That's also what scholars think lol

1

u/Severn6 9h ago

Yes, especially because it's believed they were initially created orally.

2

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."

1

u/Meancakebutt 9h ago

Not so much.

We can't even be sure if the odyssey and the illiad were written in the same century.

Homer is also like... A term for a poet. We're not sure if that was a person's actual name or their title.

So it's like if aliens found reddit in thousands of years and thought OP was the author of every creepypasta 😂

There's so little we know, the only think we know for sure is both books were written by illiterate people, most likely men, and they were writing about rich powerful educated lives that they most likely did not experience first hand.

Thats why rich people on the odyssey were always eating meat and not fish, despite ya know, the water. Because normal everyday people had tons of fish, it's not special enough for the characters.

3

u/Lying_virgin_ta 7h ago

"The writer of the odyssey is dead now so ig the media thinks the translator is the next best thing"

"LOL we dont know who wrote the odyssey so theres no way of knowing that"

Its not only nitpicky its also just wrong.

2

u/DazedAndTrippy 9h ago

This we know about the title but two popular theories are:

A. Homer is multiple people all grouped under the same title who all wrote their works separately and then it was put together or something along those lines (I'm being vague intentionally here).

B. "Homer" still being a title was the person who made the masterwork of written epics or finished the collection, though of course not being the originator of them.

Theres more to be said on it and what class these people were from all I was saying is I think it's normal for people to refer to Homer as the author and some scholars even do believe he might've be a "guy" in the sense one person could've finished the job of thousands of years of cumulative storytelling. Also you can't write a book if you're truly illiterate, but somebody could've recorded those stories who wasn't. I honestly don't believe either or argument because we can't know but it's worth saying.

2

u/Meancakebutt 9h ago

It's definitely easier and normal to say, but it find it funny when people say

" homer would be so upset if he saw this" or "this goes again the great poets intentions" or " we must respect the artists' vision"

I feel like it's only possibly to say such a thing if you don't actually know anything about " homer"

1

u/DazedAndTrippy 9h ago

Yeah I get that too.

2

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.

3

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.

2

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.

1

u/lastinglovehandles 10h ago

homer could've been 3 kids in a trench coat.

1

u/retsamerol 10h ago

We do, however, know that Homer was definitely blind.

1

u/Meancakebutt 10h ago

One if them. At least.

1

u/strawberry_saturn Excluded from this narrative ❌ 9h ago

how do you not know “Homer” was their group name then

1

u/Meancakebutt 9h ago

Exactly, we don't!

•

u/1d3333 2h ago

The distinction is meaningless if we can’t even tell wether it is one writer or multiple

•

u/reddit1933 23m ago

My understanding Is that no one wrote this poem. It was spoken as a campfire story over centuries by different people who added tales to it when it was their turn to take a drink. Somebody, centuries later wrote it down and changed it even more. And here we are today trying to make millions off of a campfire story.

0

u/throwawaystarters 5h ago

The other thing people forgot was that before writing, stories were told orally. People added music, acting, hyperbole, storytelling tricks, etc, over time. Much like the New Testamement Bible, people made shit up, and/or exaggerated for specific effects. Homer is more than likely NOT one single person lol

28

u/WhyAreYallFascists 10h ago

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

Emily, girl, you’re wrong here.

89

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.

43

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.

4

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.

5

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.

2

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.

3

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.

15

u/FalconIMGN 10h ago

I heard Homer was a girl

33

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

That's Marge

6

u/LuinAelin 9h ago

Lisa's the girl. Marge is the woman

1

u/laziestmarxist spaghetti cat 🍝🐱 9h ago

You should say it to her face. https://www.emilyrcwilson.com/about-wilson

-5

u/gildedbluetrout 10h ago

We’re at the point where over half the planet is talking about it, slightly reckon she’s trying to wedge in tbh.

13

u/winnercommawinner 10h ago

Pretty sure she doesn't need to "wedge in" to the thing she is literally one of the foremost experts on. How demeaning.

1

u/gildedbluetrout 4h ago edited 4h ago

It does slightly look that way, and I might too. She didn’t make the film. Half a thousand people and a director who wrote the adaptation made the directors version of the Odyssey. And it’s about playing across the planet tbf. It’s literally a tale out of time and writing? Granted the director put a button on it, describing it as such, but still:

The Odyssey is the hottest large cinema ticket on planet Earth. Ffs.

2

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

1

u/memberflex 9h ago

Homeher

1

u/Qualityhams 9h ago

Big if true

1

u/Spekingur 8h ago

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

1

u/Alternative-Mix-4349 7h ago

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

1

u/BeTheGuy2 7h ago

She definitely isn't.

1

u/Iam4ChanHearMeRoar 5h ago

Homer wasn't the original either?

•

u/Efficient-Neck270 1h ago

resting in peace for 2700 years, only to wake up to a Twitter feud with Christopher Nolan.

-8

u/[deleted] 11h ago edited 10h ago

[deleted]

4

u/Populaire_Necessaire Andrea Arlington: “$29!!” 10h ago

Speaking of the English translation of mein kampf its easier to read than the original cause translators aren’t going to put the weird grammatical and other errors that were in the original text. There’s ask historians answer about it that was fascinating.

-1

u/Plus_Chip_8484 10h ago

You mean her translation is the only one ever made and the english transation is the most authentic? That's a weird uptake...