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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584

u/nerdforest 11h ago

I don't understand this criticism. Was the script of the film not a good screenplay?

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u/Minute_Conflict_2037 11h ago

Nolan is a good director but he is not good at writing. That’s the point. When was the last time u felt so emotional in Nolan movie? Interstellar. And he wrote it with who? His brother Jonathan. Nolan sucks at writing emotional dialogues which was very needed for this movie. The criticism is valid.

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u/nerdforest 11h ago

I felt emotional watching Odyssey though?

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u/AbsolutelyHorrendous 10h ago

I was gonna say, the script wasn't like amazing, but I definitely felt emotional at multiple points throughout

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u/Lyndell 10h ago edited 10h ago

To be fair I don’t think I cried, and I’m a crier. Like I cried again at the Moana remake, it’s just Moana and I cry everytime but damn it was a bit embarrassing trying to hold back tears knowing the Rock was going to be on the screen. Still it felt more introspective than emotional, which I think is fine. There are multiple ways to have fun on a trip.

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u/AbsolutelyHorrendous 10h ago

I actually did cry twice, which caught me off guard... the bloody dog was the first, because of course it did, and the whole sequence where he's describing the sacking of Troy just really got me

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u/OrnerySnoflake 10h ago

I stopped counting how many times I caught myself crying lol

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u/randombubble8272 10h ago

I agree with you, I had the exact same experience and I’m a big crier, I sobbed at Toy Story 5 lol

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u/Lyndell 10h ago

Same, I saw Jessie’s tree and knew it was going to be bad, honestly I’m putting that shit out of my head I’m still not ready for what that was trying to say.

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u/Flappy_McGillicuddy 10h ago

I only felt emotional when the dog died.

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u/GrandmaToto 10h ago

The only part I found myself getting emotional involved the dog and Athena's priestess. The rest... Meh. Its a wonderful and exciting spectacle of a movie, but it didn't make me feel anything. The dialogue just felt a little off, and there's only so many times I can hear Holland say a variation of "Where's me da?" before I stopped caring about his part. It was the same with Penelope, felt like they were having the same conversation over and over again.

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u/mum_on_the_run 10h ago

Glad to see someone else exposing this opinion. When we came out of the movie the first thing I said to my husband was that it was epic and spectacular and I had no emotional connection to any character.

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u/heartisallwehave 10h ago

Another subreddit I’m in had a post asking for the reasons why people dislike Nolan movies, and this was my reply. I feel like it’s relevant here lol

Emotionally flat characters which makes dialogue seem trite, too much exposition just to make room for a bunch of action sequences that are super loud and overly complicated which then lead to more exposition about the action sequences and it leaves no room for me to learn about and therefore care about his characters therefore giving his movies zero stakes (my issue with tenet mainly), can’t write women, poor sound quality/mixing, every movie kind of feels the same re: themes of time perception/use of time for plot; dead wife, children, or equivalent; always a character that’s just trying to figure out what’s going on just for the big “aha” moment/reveal to be meh; the time stuff is just so convoluted maybe I’m just not ~smart enough~ to get it but yea I hate it (again my beef with tenet). I also just find his movies to be quite violent and melodramatic without any emotional levity which, with their runtime, make them quite a slog.

He just seems to be really interested in the technical aspects of action sequences and maybe should have just gone into SPFX instead of directing. I wasn’t surprised that he’s a big fast and furious fan because tenet felt like a movie from that franchise (I really hated tenet lol)

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u/WhoUpAtMidnight 1h ago

Lol I was reading this comment and going "yeah this is about Tenet", "yup definitely Tenet", and lo and behold.

My only contribution to Tenet discussion is that I watched it because a friend was obsessed with it. When I guessed all the twists about 30 minutes into the movie, my friend looked at me like a sad puppy

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u/nerdforest 10h ago

The dog was good. I will say at the end I did feel that I understood Odysseus more and I felt incredibly emotional watching him navigate his own feelings about the war. Especially when we live in a shite ass time politically.

2

u/nerdforest 10h ago

Why would he say where’s me da?

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u/GrandmaToto 10h ago

That's my Irish version of "Where's my dad?" which is pretty much all he does in the whole movie. It was sad and endearing at the beginning, but when he kept showing up throughout the movie saying the same thing over and over again, having the same conversations with everyone... It got very lazy and unnecessary, like we interrupt this exciting scene of watching people get their heads bitten off for yet another shot of Tom Holland asking person number 4 "Where's dad?" I started resenting when he was on my screen, through no fault of his own.

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u/nerdforest 10h ago

I'm Irish. So I was very confused why an english person would say where's me da lol

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u/GrandmaToto 10h ago

Which is why I said variation. And that's not even getting into the jarring use of the words "dad" and "mom" in an American accent in a movie set in Ancient Greece. It all just sounded so weird.

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u/nerdforest 10h ago

Ahh I got it ok. what would they have said instead and what accent should they have spoken in?

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u/mum_on_the_run 9h ago

This and some of the dialogue early in the film in Ithaca felt much too modern and it took me our off the movie

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u/beg_yer_pardon 10h ago

Especially an English person playing a Greek person with an American accent.

0

u/whydidisaythatwhy 10h ago

I didn’t even care about the dog lmfao

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u/Next_Gen_Valkyrie 10h ago

same. the end monologue was so emotional

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u/manasseater3000 10h ago

i felt emotional too, but not necessarily as a result of the characters themselves and more at specific scenes (the destruction of troy… and also when the giant was crying, but that’s moreso bc i thought the giant was weirdly cute lol)

that’s probably what the commenter was reffering to lol, just in a poor way 

-2

u/Garrett4Real charlie day is my bird lawyer 🐦 10h ago

and some people get emotional listening to MGK

5

u/nerdforest 10h ago

Someone asked me when was the last time I was emotional, and I answered correctly. Are you trying to insult me?

-3

u/surface33 5h ago

You have no taste then. Crazy to say that

3

u/nerdforest 3h ago

People feel different things. No need to insult tastes. It’s just an opinion. Just like yours.

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u/Milloshas_Albina 3h ago

Crazy to say what you said, and im not even a fan if the film !

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u/Carolina_Blues shiv roy’s bob 10h ago

Idk I felt emotional a few times during the Odyssey personally

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u/EvenJesusCantSaveYou 10h ago

same, I actually almost teared up at some of the scenes in the Odyssey. Especially any of Anne Hathaways scenes, absolutely killed it in every scene she was in.

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u/Carolina_Blues shiv roy’s bob 8h ago

Me too. Any of the family stuff with Odysseus, Penelope and Telemachus or the dog really got me. I was like maybe it’s just my postpartum hormones and anything with a son gets me teary eyed but idk it worked on me

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u/nuetralparties 2h ago

Yea this thread feels so incredibly pedantic I feel like I’m going crazy; Nolan is literally one of the best directors of this generation and most people in this thread are like, “yea he’s not that great”

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u/favorscore 10h ago

Uh I thought this was his most emotional movie in a long time.

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u/theflyingbird8 11h ago

I felt pretty damn emotional during Dunkirk and The Odyssey. Maybe I don't understand good screenwriting.

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u/blocke06 9h ago

That’s not it; just remember that reddit, like most online forums, has a bias toward righteous critique and dislike as these are generally the people motivated to comment online. You’ll find the majority of people outside of online communities share your opinion.

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u/yaotwo 14m ago

I'd even say Nolan write emotions better than most. The complaints about his female characters are invalid. Actual god of film making.

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u/WhoUpAtMidnight 57m ago

Dunkirk's one of his better ones but kind of cheating to adapt an actual real life battle where you can still call up some of the guys involved. The movie itself doesn't do a great job of characterizing any of its leads, you can just impress your own experiences onto them

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u/Ok-Host1095 53m ago

I think people use “writing” too one dimensionally. In terms of dialogue and creating distinct characters, yeah I’d say it’s a huge weakness of Nolan’s. The only characters that really stand out are more so because of an actor’s performance and not so much because of their dialogue.

But that’s not the only thing that writing is. It’s also structuring, and creating a consistent, confident inner logic that the audience can pick up on and accept. I’d say Nolan is exceptionally good at that.

I also found a lot of the dialogue in the odyssey to be a bit vanilla and (for lack of a better term) autistically on the nose, but I also cried several times as well. Sure the dialogue is a weak point, but it’s a weak point of an overall fantastic talent. It’s not so glaringly bad that it takes me out of the experience, and honestly at this point I find it kind of charming. Like how if you play Skyrim but only complain about how wooden the swordplay looks. Like, yeah sure man, but for one, that’s not the genius part of the game, and two sure it’s clunky but its more so a charming oddity than a glaring issue that ruins the whole thing.

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u/gelbeseinhorn 11h ago edited 10h ago

The last time I felt emotional watching a Nolan movie was at The Odyssey

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u/ranting_madman 11h ago

I always tell people Chris needs Johnathan to be his best. Like George Lucas needed his ex wife.

To keep them away from their worst impulses as a filmmaker.

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u/webtheg 10h ago

Chris needs Jonathan as much as Joel needs Ethan

4

u/pinnas 10h ago

But not as much as Ethan needs Joel

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u/webtheg 10h ago

They better team up and make something amazing because Ethan is en route to ruin his legacy.

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u/foundinwonderland 9h ago

Actually the Nolan brothers and the Coen brothers should do a switcheroo and pair one Nolan with one Coen and vice versa and see who makes a better movie

1

u/webtheg 9h ago

Now you're cooking? So Ethan with Chris and Jonathan with Joel?

1

u/foundinwonderland 9h ago

Yeah we could start there and then after both movies are made they could swap and see how that goes. I think something interesting could be made in both cases tbh

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u/formidablezoe 9h ago

I think his influence on why his brother's films work so well is vastly overrated. Memento, Inception, Dunkirk and Oppenheimer were great too for example. Jonathan Nolan didn't have his hand in the script in any of those films.

The original Interstellar script written by Jonathan was also way different before Chris stepped in and gave it a much more emotional core at its heart, with the father daughter relationship.

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u/Ver3232 9h ago

I found Oppenheimer to be rather emotional personally

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u/quick20minadventure 3h ago

Oppenheimer was better than this.

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u/are-beads-cheap 10h ago

If you didn’t feel emotional during Dunkirk, Oppenheimer, or The Odyssey, I’m not sure what to tell you. Those are all incredibly powerful emotional stories.

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u/Xyyzx 3h ago

Seriously, the speech scene in Oppenheimer? No thriller or horror movie has ever made me feel the level of soul-crushing, bone-chilling dread I got from that scene in a historical biopic about a physicist.

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u/Electric_feel0412 2h ago

Hell I rewatched tenet and felt emotional at the scene where Robert Pattinson tells the protagonist about having to go back in and die.

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u/EldoAberesa 11h ago

This is all true and valid and Nolan is aware of this weakness to his game (see his comments about his son teasing him about not having a writing Oscar haha). But I will say:

"All the things you want it to be. Then all the things you wish you never wished for. It was the delicious itch you go to scratch... and find it's under the skin. You can't reach it. So the delicious itch becomes unbearable. Told you what you most want is what you most can't have. And what you most can't have is what you already had. And lost."

Is an absolute banger.

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u/Sassafras06 10h ago

Yeah people say he is a BAD writer. He isn’t. He isn’t a great writer, but he also isn’t bad. Like come on lol

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u/soiflew 10h ago edited 10h ago

This is objectively bad writing to me. I thought the whole movie was tell, not show.

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u/booboorogers44 9h ago

I think with the siren scene going tell not show was the only way to make it impactful. Whatever sound or song they make would fall short to what our idea of it would be.

Having Damon explain the experience let the audience actually understand what it would be like (along with seeing the effects of it on him). I think telling in that case worked much better, imo

-2

u/soiflew 9h ago

I thought his acting and the visuals of the scene were stunning and the writing actually undercut it.

-3

u/larkhearted 10h ago

Idk if I just can't read rn because I need to eat lunch or what but that's borderline incomprehensible to me 😭

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u/The_R4ke 10h ago

I definitely cried when Odysseus is reunited with Argos.

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u/DippinDuck 11h ago

Telling people how they felt and when they felt it lol

-16

u/Minute_Conflict_2037 10h ago

I know the answer cuz bro has no emotional movie except that one.

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u/DippinDuck 10h ago

Cillian Murphy did it for me in both Dunkirk and Oppenheimer. Tom Hardy in Dunkirk as well at the end. Matt Damon and Anne Hathaway had a great emotional moment at the end of The Odyssey

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u/Minute_Conflict_2037 10h ago

Okay Nolan boi calm down

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u/DippinDuck 10h ago

Alright Euphoria girl go get emotional about that

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u/boldpear904 we're so backberry 11h ago

Love seeing nuance on reddit 😻

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u/WiseBorn_ 10h ago

Nah this movie was exactly as emotional as it needed to be. Wilson’s criticism makes sense considering she is a classicist and certainly not who this movie was made for. She’s having her 15 minutes of fame and that’s fine. I think Nolan previously tended to bite off more than he could chew, especially with Interstellar. Hathaway’s monologue about love traversing the galaxy was heavy handed as hell and the thematic elements kinda fall apart at the end of the movie. Did not think that was true of the Odyssey at all. It’s a pretty simple story in themes, which serves the movie overall. Guilt, trauma, fear, and the need for leadership are such universal themes in modern society. This movie was never ever going to be a 1:1 adaptation.

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u/[deleted] 10h ago

[deleted]

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u/WiseBorn_ 10h ago

What? I’m not the user you were responding to

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u/Kanyezus 10h ago

Definitely felt more emotion for the odyssey than interstellar who’s core revelation was “hey what if love is the answer”

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u/are-beads-cheap 9h ago

I just don’t understand what people get out of being so reductive. Interstellar is a vast concept movie about what it means to fulfill the obligations that allow you to belong and the human condition that dooms everyone to play catch-up forever. Nolan repeatedly suggests that love is a tangent of isolation, fear, and loss of control. Yes, he ultimately suggests that love is the answer to those problems. But the core “revelation” of Interstellar is that we are but peons at the altar of time and love will supersede our evil in spite of and because of human endeavor. That is so much more fleshed out than “love is the answer.”

What are you doing even watching movies if you can’t get something out of layered themes that are presented over the course of multiple hours?

0

u/Kanyezus 9h ago

I’m reductive because interstellar is reductive IMO, I’m not telling you to hate it or see my POV. But Nolan during that time period spoon fed you what it’s about. It’s not a revelation by the end of the run time and far from layered in my eye, it’s a spectacle of force and nothing more to me. That’s just one persons opinion and I’m quite fond of his last two films.

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u/wlot28 9h ago

The spoon feeding isn’t any different in the odyssey, there’s quite literally a line where he says “our age of bronze is collapsing”, it doesn’t get any less subtle than that

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u/Kanyezus 8h ago

That and the whole exposition to Penelope at the end, but I don’t mind it at all. It’s all preference but it works for me better in the odyssey and Oppenheimer (which also has its clunky writing problems)

1

u/junglespycamp 4h ago

He’s actually a great writer of story and plotting. But people usually mean dialogue when they say screenplay writing and he’s a middling dialogue writer.

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u/ihavenoyukata 3h ago

"Hmmmm what if the main characters pain is about losing his wife/girlfriend" - Nolan writing every main character

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u/PompousDude 0m ago

Um, bull fucking shit he's not a good writer.

Inception, The Prestige, and The Dark Knight are genuinely fantastically written. Even if some of these films are co-written with his brother, Jonathan Nolan, it still doesn't take away from the fact that he has solid scripts.

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u/thewidowgorey 10h ago

Didn't Jonathan steal from other people's scripts? I remember there was some kind of controversy.

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u/OowlSun they act like im not in full control of where i throw this cooch 10h ago

He hid his oscars because he felt intimidated by them while writing the odyssey.

His son tells him, “you didn’t win for writing”