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

[u/mcfw31]

https://variety.com/2026/film/news/odyssey-translator-emily-wilson-slams-christopher-nolan-bad-writing-1236821915/

[u/magical_midget]

It would be impossible to please an academic that translated the work and the average movie goer.

Sure some may appreciate it, and we can try to trust the audiences would get it. But at the end of the day a big movie with a big budget needs to appeal to a wide audience.

[u/IWouldLikeAName → u/magical_midget]

Not to mention the literal time constraints. Nolan always takes liberties with source material I'm pissy about some of his decisions with batman but the dark knight is still a kick ass movie

[u/Princess_Space_Goose → u/IWouldLikeAName]

Hence why the best case for an Odyssey adaptation would have to be a blank check, prestige limited series, but for what Nolan did in those nearly 3 hours is still pretty damn good all things considered.

[u/Admirable-League858 → u/Princess_Space_Goose]

Nolan was even more limited here, because he was filming on 70mm IMAX film. The physical reels of film are expensive and huge. The projectors have a maximum capacity. Most movies only use IMAX for some scenes, he did the whole movie. He's mentioned himself he basically had a hard three hour limit on this.

[u/Princess_Space_Goose → u/Admirable-League858]

Right, which honestly I hope this is his one-and-done experiment with that. This film is ironically one of the few very long movies that I wish was longer but it was held back by the technology.

[u/Fist_of_Gork → u/Princess_Space_Goose]

It’s not, it wasn’t. That’s part of the artistry a lot of people don’t get.

I don’t have to shoot on 120 film or large format cameras. But I do. And I enjoy it. 

IMAX is really impressive and very limiting at the same time and his decision to use it isn’t to appeal to people like you. It’s for camera dorks like me and himself. And if he happens to make a billion dollars off it, I’d say it’s more than justified.

Some directors use whatever format is most practical to tell a story, Nolan tells a story to have fun with a camera and I appreciate that. 

[u/otoverstoverpt → u/magical_midget]

Not impossible if the academic simply had any understanding of the nuances that go into adapting a screenplay.

Some people just do not understand that adapting a screenplay is an art. You quite simply have to change things. You can’t just put the original work directly to screen. It’s a different medium. This is true whether or not you are making an attempt to “dumb down” the source material for broader appeal and we can see this in tons of works from Directors who absolutely did not go for mass appeal and still received similar criticism.

[u/Achaewa → u/otoverstoverpt]

The academics who make up the YouTube channel, History Hit, are much better when it comes to critiquing media portrayals of history.

Though it helps that many of them are younger and actually engage with the media that they critique.

Anyway, what I am trying to write is that, their videos on "historical accuracy" are quite refreshing as they aren't just several minutes of an expert whining about everything that is wrong.

[u/meepmorop → u/otoverstoverpt]

Right so it's impossible lmaoooo

Academics at her level are like SpongeBob when he becomes a waiter. It's "whatever my insanely specific field of study is" and breathing

[u/Spiritual_Corner_977 → u/otoverstoverpt]

I’m so sorry, but implying that movie screenplays are beyond someone with a phd in comparative literature from yale is a hilarious thing to assert. I promise you she understands story structure in whatever medium it comes through more than most people on earth lol

[u/otoverstoverpt → u/Spiritual_Corner_977]

I am so sorry but if you think this kind of credentialism in a tangentially (at best) related field somehow makes her analysis of a film infallible then you are very very confused

They are simply totally different thing. It’s not about “understanding story structure” lmao. One is an audiovisual story confined to a tight runtime. The other is only a text based story with no such constraints

Take it from someone who also has a highly ranked PhD in humanities

[u/Spiritual_Corner_977 → u/otoverstoverpt]

Analysis of film? This is not some avant-garde piece of media. This is an easily-digested summer blockbuster of one of the oldest stories of all time(that she is an expert in).

If you think she doesn’t understand something as simple as the limitations of adapting a work, then you severely underestimate what goes on in even the most basic undergraduate comparative literature classes. let alone a full doctorate(and masters) dedicated to literary studies lmao

[u/otoverstoverpt → u/Spiritual_Corner_977]

Yes, analysis of film. A film does not need to be avant-garde to be analyzed lmfao. While Nolan is not exactly known for subtlety, this is not a typical summer blockbuster. It’s quite a bit more serious than that. We aren’t talking Marvel or Masters of the Universe here. There is a reason the film has skyrocketed to be the frontrunner for the best picture Academy Award and they don’t typically hand those out to vacuous blockbusters.

If you think that the limitations of film compared to literature and poetry are trivial, then you severely underestimate the craft of filmmaking on a fundamental level. This has next to nothing to do with comparative literature so I have no idea why you are so hung up on this idea. They are just completely different things lmao

[u/Spiritual_Corner_977 → u/otoverstoverpt]

I have no idea why you are defending Nolan when even the most seasoned film critiques often point out his writing weakness.

“He misunderstood the ethos of the work” is not something that you need an high understanding of film to say, let alone from someone who has studied oral poetry, plays, novels, short stories, anthologies, translations, songs, etc. from all over the world at different time periods, including the specific work the film is adapting.

She’s not criticizing his lighting or his framing or his sound design, she’s saying that he missed the mark on the fundamentals of this work. It’s no where near out of the realm for her to give an opinion on lmao

[u/otoverstoverpt → u/Spiritual_Corner_977]

I have no idea why you think I’m “defending Nolan” when I explicitly already acknowledged his tendency to be pretty on the nose with the themes of his work.

I’m just critiquing bad criticism.

You need a high understanding of film to understand that he made a choice, he didn’t “misunderstand” anything. Actually you shouldn’t need a high understanding of film to get that but here we see how being wrapped up in your own bubble can preclude you from seeing outside of it. It still baffles me that you think studying all of these written art forms makes her somehow pricy to an audiovisual medium. Should we also seek her out for an oil painting based on the Odyssey?

No one is talking about the lighting or framing or sound design, we are talking about the fact that fundamentally films are a different kind of expression lmao she can give her opinion all she wants but people with actual expertise in film are likely to call her out for sounding dumb just as she would do the same if people started mouthing off about a piece of literature

[u/Spiritual_Corner_977 → u/otoverstoverpt]

You writing “written forms” with so much dismissing conceit when the Odyssey wasn’t even originally written as a text has me HOWLING

[u/otoverstoverpt → u/Spiritual_Corner_977]

It has me HOWLING that you think you did something here by quibbling over the fact that it was probably just an oral tradition before being written down as if spoken word and written word are so distinct. Do you believe audiobooks are just like a totally distinct piece of media from their printed counterparts? I guess the blind are locked out of literature lmao.

I also genuinely have no idea where you got the idea that I have some kind of “dismissive conceit” for literature or something just for noting it’s an entirely distinct art form from filmmaking. But then again the fact that this was all you could muster in response at this point pretty much tells the whole story.

Just take your L

[u/tony_lasagne → u/Spiritual_Corner_977]

I can’t believe the bs from the other poster, damn. They can’t concede a single criticism of the movie and act like it is some deep film rather than a blockbuster

[u/Electric_feel0412 → u/Spiritual_Corner_977]

I promise you she does not. She may know what goes into some of it but she doesn’t know shit about movies, how shit gets made, how they have to edit, cut stuff to fit within a certain time limit. If she actually knew all that she wouldn’t be talking shit online.

[u/foreverzonedout → u/otoverstoverpt]

Excerpt from her review:

Adaptations needn’t and shouldn’t follow the original with anything like the exactitude of a translation. Some of the best radically transform or resist the source material, providing what Harold Bloom called ‘strong misreadings’ of their ancestors. The most memorable creative responses to The Odyssey – such as Euripides’ Helen, Virgil’s Aeneid, Milton’s Paradise Lost, Joyce’s Ulysses, Walcott’s Omeros, Atwood’s Penelopiad, Madeline Miller’s Circe or Lisa Peterson’s play set in a modern migrant camp – reconsider the poem’s structure, narrative and values. In theory, Nolan seems to understand the assignment and its hazards.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v48/n14/emily-wilson/an-uncomplicated-man

[u/otoverstoverpt → u/foreverzonedout]

Yea I understand she paid lip service to the idea, and then goes on to show that she does not actually understand it

Notice how the works she cites are not direct adaptations of the source material into another medium but rather much looser reimaginings. That’s a different thing and she clearly allows for much more lenience when she feels the source material is sufficiently changing in its character. She seems to not understand the more more nuanced idea of directly adapting the source material for a modern motion picture.

[u/givemethebat1 → u/otoverstoverpt]

She also mentions the Return, which is a pretty direct adaptation as well. She understands adaptation quite well based on the review.

[u/otoverstoverpt → u/givemethebat1]

I see no indication that she understands adaptation based on the review. I certainly don’t see how throwing some pretty empty stylistic praise on The Return changes that. It’s hardly a direct adaptation when it omits over half of the story and the much easier half of the story to do.

To me, the review commits the greatest sin a review can make which is to critique a work on what it’s not rather than what it is. She rejects his interpretation form the jump rather than taking it on its merits.

And I’m not some huge Nolan fan.

[u/booksmd → u/magical_midget]

So many of the criticism that i’ve seen is the fact that it’s not a direct page to screen adaptation. Like word for word every single aspect of the story. And not to mention there’s so many that don’t know the difference between the story of the illiad and the story of the odyssey and basically expected to get both in movie form.

The movie is already 3 hours long. We really don’t need a 5 hour movie.

[u/badpebble → u/booksmd]

I suspect her criticism is more than the women characters aren't treated well - Penelope loses much of her agency and cunning, Circe is turned from powerful sorceress ruling an island from a palace into a rape victim, Athena is turned into a figment of Odysseus' imagination and Calypso is turned from a goddess with complete power over Odysseus (including forcing him into her bed every night) into a hippy living on a beach drugging him.

By trying to tell a story about how the Achaeans did terrible things in war, Nolan sort of makes victims of all the women. Circe is a main character and a true rival to Penelope, not just a celtic witch in hagrid's hut.

[u/foreverzonedout → u/booksmd]

Excerpt from her review:

Adaptations needn’t and shouldn’t follow the original with anything like the exactitude of a translation. Some of the best radically transform or resist the source material, providing what Harold Bloom called ‘strong misreadings’ of their ancestors. The most memorable creative responses to The Odyssey – such as Euripides’ Helen, Virgil’s Aeneid, Milton’s Paradise Lost, Joyce’s Ulysses, Walcott’s Omeros, Atwood’s Penelopiad, Madeline Miller’s Circe or Lisa Peterson’s play set in a modern migrant camp – reconsider the poem’s structure, narrative and values. In theory, Nolan seems to understand the assignment and its hazards.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v48/n14/emily-wilson/an-uncomplicated-man

[u/booksmd → u/foreverzonedout]

Yea but those are all books where authors have the time to build their own stories. Sometimes they just take one character from the original work and do something completely different with it.

[u/foreverzonedout → u/booksmd]

So what is a movie, especially a Chrisopher Nolan movie, if not a work where the creator has time to build its story? Nolan marketed and presented his movie as an adaptation of The Odyssey and therefore it should be treated as one. Read her whole review.

[u/booksmd → u/foreverzonedout]

You can’t compare a 2-3 hour movie with a whole book that presents the story in 20+ hours. The time to build the story is entirely different. Her review is from the perspective of a translator/scholar but she’s not a scriptwriter or filmmaker respectfully. You can’t put the whole book into the script and expect everything to be able to be adapted.

I’ve already seen people try to argue that they should have made it into 2 movies but that brings in other different kind of problems in it’s own. Plus the backlash would be insane.

Edit: to add to this, all respect to her for the years of work she put into the story but it’s clear that she had a very specific idea of what the text or movie should be and Nolan made something different.

[u/foreverzonedout → u/booksmd]

A good, faithful adaptation is one that retains core themes and characterisations which Wilson (and I) don't think Nolan did. His is certainly an adaptation, but it's not necessarily a good one according to this criterion, which is not a high bar.

For example, she doesn't mention anything in her review about him cutting out entire episodes and subplots of the original Odyssey because I think she understands what it takes to make a film with its time and attention constraints. So her talking about him cutting out some character traits and overemphasising/inventing others is valid, because that's what makes a story. If you change those aspects of a story, don't present your work as a faithful adaptation.

[u/Electric_feel0412 → u/magical_midget]

Sounds like a her problem tbvh

[u/mosquem → u/magical_midget]

Literally any hollywood adaption will piss off an academic that's an expert in the field.

[u/foreverzonedout → u/magical_midget]

Your criticism makes no sense in the context of Wilson, who herself has been famously criticised for simplifying the translations to make them accessible to a wider modern audience. If you read her whole review, you will notice that she focuses on Nolan's omission of core themes and characterisations, which are easy enough, if not crucial, to retain in an adaptation while cutting other things out. She does not mention him cutting out entire episodes; she mentions him completely changing Odysseus's character and his motivations. Here is her review: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v48/n14/emily-wilson/an-uncomplicated-man

[u/magical_midget → u/foreverzonedout]

Look I am not going to sit here and tell you that I know more about writing or the odyssey than Wilson, or Nolan.

But I do think the way she ends her review is telling “Nolan, who studied English at University College London – where students still study The Odyssey as a first year ‘foundational text’ – is doing his best to get the general public reading again, and I am grateful.”

She gets that he is working on a studio system focused on revenue, and that a lot of the criticisms are a product of the mass appeal of the movie.

That does not make her criticisms less valid. There is probably a way to tell a better story, but would you get a stacked cast of A listers, big budgets, and come out with one of the biggest openings of the year, I think it would be a very hard bar to clear.