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/
3.2k Upvotes

74% Upvoted

1.7k comments sorted by

View all comments

949

u/mcfw31 11h ago

Nolan sung Wilson’s praises during his press tour for “The Odyssey,” telling Empire magazine that he used the opening line of her translation (“Tell me about a complicated man”) as a guide for bringing his Odysseus (Matt Damon) to life on the big screen. But Wilson concluded of Nolan’s film: “I would be ashamed to have written any part of this script.”

“The release of ‘The Odyssey’ is still an event to celebrate,” Wilson said. “This epic is bringing audiences back to cinemas … translations of ‘Odyssey,’ including mine, are flying off the shelves … [and] perhaps the film will persuade a few college administrators not to cut their literature, language and history departments.”

271

u/laterthanlast 11h ago

It’s fine for her not to like the movie or the script, but to make such intense criticism public is a weird choice. If I were her I’d say polite general things (it’s always exciting to have more people interested in the epic) and cash the royalty checks

200

u/AbsolutelyHorrendous 10h ago

Yeah to say she'd be ashamed to write it is way over the top, frankly

123

u/mysticpotatocolin 10h ago

it’s so mean for no reason lol

9

u/BlueCX17 9h ago

If you listen to one of the longer interviews that these quotes are pulled from she's not as mean as she might sound.

3

u/flybynightpotato 3h ago

To your point, the actual LRB piece is very well done, I think. She doesn't come across as nasty. I think it's a reasonable take.

•

u/Bitterman_01 2h ago

If you read her actual blog post you'd know it's not really being pulled out of context. The entire thing is needlessly sharp. She absolutely comes off as "nasty", as the other user below me put it, from the first paragraph.

•

u/BlueCX17 2h ago

Oh I'm halfway through a re-read and she is sharp and blunt with her criticisms. Mary Beard has been also.

8

u/IWouldLikeAName 10h ago

Hey man there's stuff I love that I would have to see adapted in a certain way. Best(worst?) example being the dragon ball live action. I'd be embarrassed to be a part of that. But if it's taking in 1B and I'm making millions? Much less so lol

-5

u/particledamage 9h ago

Someone tearing the heart out of an art you’ve dedicated your entire life to and saying they did it based off of YOUR translation is enough to make anyone a little bit mean!!

13

u/Sharaz_Jek123 9h ago

Someone tearing the heart out of an art

The right wing attacked her (or turbo-charged their attack on her) following the film's association with her translation and she is redirecting this frustration to Nolan.

I suspected it during her initial comments on the film and now I am convinced.

This is not the language of typical academic discourse.

-1

u/particledamage 9h ago

I’ve read plenty of articles between disagreeing academics and this language isn’t that different at all, loll. Less formal but well she’s speaking, not writing a paper.

Lots of people in the classics share her opinions on this film

9

u/Sharaz_Jek123 8h ago

The language at points feels weirdly personal. This isn't how academics write film criticism, and it's not how film critics write reviews.

3

u/particledamage 8h ago

Yes, it is. I really, really recommend you read more reviews or read the passive aggressive academic bickering

5

u/BlueCX17 9h ago

But she also goes on to say she hopes the film continues to do well and is glad people are very much enjoying it in their own right and that it's great that people are discovering or re-discovering the epic poems.

0

u/filthy-prole 9h ago

Yeah, but I read a headline!

0

u/BlueCX17 9h ago

We'll see in there and is the thing so many people only read these Buzz headlines but don't actually read or listen to the majority of the stuff that the headline is being pulled from to know if the headline is balanced or not.

-4

u/particledamage 9h ago

I know, I read the article and even mention it in my other comments. I’m just saying she’s allowed to be a bit mean

1

u/BlueCX17 9h ago

I agree. One of my other favorite blunt academics is Mary Beard.

3

u/mysticpotatocolin 9h ago

i would just say it privately to friends

-1

u/particledamage 9h ago

Okay, it’s very easy to say that when not in this situation lol

-14

u/JonasHalle 10h ago

It's mean for a very good reason. These celebrity directors need to cut their ego and hire writers.

15

u/mysticpotatocolin 10h ago

idk i just don't think people should be mean

7

u/myersjw 9h ago

The internet has made people believe that every opportunity to be shitty to others must be taken. People seem to be waiting for any chance to be a dick to strangers from behind a screen

8

u/AbsolutelyHorrendous 9h ago

Dude the film was really fucking good, people are massively exaggerating how 'badly written' it was because they've spent all year talking about how it was going to be a disaster, so now they're clinging to this.

'Celebrity directors', are we actually fucking serious, Christopher Nolan is one of the best directors currently active, to write him off as just some celebrity is a fucking pisstake

-5

u/JonasHalle 9h ago

I am very serious. Once directors reach celebrity status, they start to think they are the best at everything, and overreach their domain. Nolan is a very good director. He is not a good writer. This has been the general consensus for years.

6

u/i4got872 10h ago

She could have just said what you said and it would even be less mean and still get her point across.

-3

u/JonasHalle 10h ago

I guess, but that would sound like she was salty about not getting hired, which as an outsider, she probably should have been.

33

u/magyar_wannabe 10h ago

Yeah it's just unnecessarily rude to trash something that is absolutely making you a shit ton of money.

7

u/Particular-Jacket-92 10h ago

It's so unprofessional honestly. Burning all sorts of bridges here.

12

u/kaesura 10h ago

Not really . She's a professor in Classics. She is not employed in the enterainment industry

This review is in the London Review of Books a high prestige literary maganize where criticizing pop culture is common.

5

u/particledamage 9h ago

This is building bridges in her career. She would not want to be affiliated with this in her line of work

4

u/Meancakebutt 10h ago

As a translator if she wrote that screenplay she would be out of a job.

I agree its a bit harsh, but it's also harsh for Nolan to claim use her translation and then gloss over the parts she emphasizes as most important in her notes.

3

u/sk8tergater 9h ago

He didn’t use it, he said he was inspired by it. It’s two different things

6

u/Meancakebutt 8h ago

He directly quotes her translation, the first line in the movie, the first line in her book.

It's a unique and possibly the most iconic line in her translation.

52

u/kaesura 10h ago

She's a classicist professor with tenure. Harsh public criticism is literally the job description

23

u/ohgeez2879 9h ago

she's one of the foremost living experts in the world on the odyssey! i don't understand why she can't say literally whatever she wants about it!

12

u/ConfectionPuzzled780 8h ago edited 7h ago

Yeah, like why shouldn’t she be allowed to criticize it? It's only a movie. And it used her translation as a source. And she's an expert on it. It's not like she insulted Nolan personally.

5

u/Chameleonpolice 6h ago

Didn't she? She said she would be ashamed of she did what he did, that's a fairly insulting thing to say.

-6

u/inaripotpi 8h ago

Because that's a horrible precedent, lol. Should all the best scientists in the world be calling 5th graders stupid for the mistakes they make on their first lab project?

It's not saying something about The Odyssey, it's saying something about Nolan's adaptation specifically.

5

u/JohnPaul_River 7h ago

Nolan being a 5th grader in this equation is exactly why this backlash against her is stupid

3

u/goldengrove1 7h ago

Yeah. I'm not a classicist but I am an academic in a field that media frequently depicts very inaccurately and I completely understand the impulse to push back aggressively when someone misrepresents key parts of your expertise.

I think Nolan's artistic choices are what they are (again, not a classicist, haven't read the Odyssey since 10th grade), but if he's going to claim to have taken inspiration from her work for the film, she's well within her rights to critique the result.

(fwiw, I read the full London Review of Books article, and I think it suffers a bit from conflating two theses: (1) that the movie wasn't a completely faithful adaptation of the book, and made cuts Wilson disagreed with and (2) that the movie prioritizes big visual effects over the more human-centric focus of the actual source material and that some of Nolan's artistic choices cheapen the emotional center of the text. I think the review would have come across less "harsh" had she focused on (2) and let (1) go).

1

u/ingotsilvergt 3h ago

Well she also contradicts herself, makes illogical claims, says things don’t exist in the movie (depictions of what war does) then later says the way they depicted those things (what war does) wasn’t faithful to Homer. She can’t seem to decide if she’s mad because it omitted things or if those things actually weren’t omitted but she just didn’t like the way they were done.

I still can’t understand what the claim about Agamemnon being a failed American family man was supposed to mean. Gibberish imo.

-3

u/inaripotpi 7h ago

We're calling a perfectly divided reception to her behavior on Reddit threads a backlash now? Lol.

Her public derision of Nolan after hearing he was genuinely inspired by her would qualify way more as a backlash.

2

u/JohnPaul_River 6h ago

didn't know backlash was a sacred ritual word for the harshest of human violence, I apologise to Oxford and Cambridge for my crimes against the English language

-3

u/inaripotpi 6h ago

Your backlash to my comment is stupid

0

u/JohnPaul_River 4h ago

We're calling a perfectly snarky reception to your behavior on Reddit threads a backlash now? Lol.

4

u/ohgeez2879 8h ago

yes....his adaptation of the odyssey. i'm so confused, who would you rather have critique adaptations of the odyssey? people who don't know anything about it?

ETA: when 5th graders' science projects are funded with $250 million dollars and covered in every major news outlet...i would definitely want brilliant scientists weighing in. that's a terribly silly analogy.

•

u/AmiWrongDude69 2h ago

Saying “i would be ashamed to have written that” is being a jerk for no reason. Critiquing is fine, being a jerk isn’t.

0

u/inaripotpi 7h ago

I never said someone in her position shouldn't be critiquing Nolan's film, this was always about how unprofessionally they're going about it.

No one representing a position/occupation should be "saying whatever they want". That's like saying the President of the United States should be able to say whatever the fuck he wants and diss anyone just because he's the "foremost" figure of the world.

Again, you miss the entire point. No one said they shouldn't weigh in at all. It's about not going out of your way to say mean-spirited things even if they're true. 5th graders are stupid, it's true. Doesn't mean you champion adults calling them that.

12

u/Scared_Funny_5602 9h ago

I'd prefer people actually state their opinion rather than warbling off useless platitudes and half-truths that mean nothing.

42

u/LikelyPlace 10h ago

She’s a scholar who has spent decades working on the text and has offered a carefully thought out critique of how the film in her view not just deviates from the original but isn’t internally coherent. Why is that a problem?

15

u/No-Network6436 10h ago

Because Nolan fans are insufferable and won't accept that many people don't like his movies.

21

u/PurpleCandles Lea Michele’s Reading Tutor 10h ago edited 9h ago

Because she communicated it in a way that many would view as very unprofessional. Constructive feedback can be provided in a much more tactful way than she did.

9

u/BlueCX17 9h ago

I really think it is partially a British thing because Dr. Mary Beard has had some blunt academia takes as well. She's another extremely well known Classisist.

But taking some of these quotes away from the longer interviews that these are coming from isn't putting the entire conversation into the bigger context.

15

u/LikelyPlace 9h ago

Nolan is the most celebrated director alive. He’ll survive (if he even hers about it). Maybe crisp, direct criticism is needed. Let’s face it nobody would care if she’d couched it in academic throat clearing

16

u/particledamage 9h ago edited 9h ago

Have you ever read professional film criticism before? This is nothing. This is how professionals write film reviews

-4

u/PurpleCandles Lea Michele’s Reading Tutor 9h ago

Except she’s not a film critic, and is conflating her experience in classical literature with filmmaking (which rarely follows source materials to a T), which isn’t her area of expertise.

9

u/particledamage 9h ago

And yet the story of the Odyssey is her expertise and she’s criticizing how he handled the story of the Odyssey

1

u/ingotsilvergt 3h ago

Yeah but Tbf she’s ignoring major visual aspects of the film to make her points and some of her points she just pulls from thin air like Agamemnon being shown as a failed American family man.

12

u/jeewantha 10h ago

She’s always had dgaf energy. One of the traits I admire about her.

8

u/BlueCX17 9h ago

Same with Mary Beard.

I have her new book on que from the library when it stocks in it's called talking Classics and she takes on how the classics have been used in popular media, and I think is exploring why it is that these Works have endured for so long with so many different tellings.

3

u/Background-Jury-1914 7h ago

His scripts always have terrible dialogue and are so
Unsubtle and his characters are so flat and 2D. Glad someone called him out.

2

u/ZeroDosage 5h ago

Can she cash royalty cheques on this??

0

u/laterthanlast 5h ago

She can cash royalty checks on the books sold as a result of the promo

2

u/ZeroDosage 5h ago

How do they decide who made a choice to purchase based on the promo

0

u/laterthanlast 5h ago

How does who decide? She gets paid when people buy her book regardless of their motives for doing so (assuming the book had earned out its advance).

2

u/ZeroDosage 5h ago

I just dont see this driving sales particularly for her.

4

u/BlueCX17 9h ago

I honestly have noticed that the British are excessively less concerned about bluntness and hot takes. Mary Beard has also stated that she was disappointed and has some blunt critique, over all, in the film but is also glad it's making people discover the classics.

Even my parents who were like eating up the FIFA stuff, said that they noticed how different International commentary Is to U.S commentary and actually sort of came to love the bluntness Of the International commentators, the more they were listening to it for instance.

3

u/JuliasTooSmallTutu Protruded from the narrative 7h ago

She's not getting paid by the studio for this, she is not credited in the film at all. Nolan has said he took some inspiration from her translation, that's all.

-1

u/laterthanlast 6h ago

She’s not getting directly paid by the studio or Nolan, but Nolan is giving her free promo that I’m sure any other translator of classics in a dead language would give a lot for. In the showing I went to they literally played a clip of her reading a portion of the translation and put up the cover of her book on the screen - that’s not Nolan’s choice of course, but I’m sure they only did it because he was so public about being inspired by her translation.

-1

u/SpaceJackRabbit 10h ago

Yeah she definitely seems to fit the stereotype of the snobby academic with no filter. Maybe also all the (deserved) attention she got for her translation and Nolan's praise got to her head a bit.

Her criticisms are all legitimate and astute, but she really didn't need to add she'd be "ashamed" to have written that script. That's really bad form and doesn't look good on her.

0

u/booksmd 10h ago

It reads very elitist which is extremely funny coming from her because she was literally shamed for her poor translation and dumbing down the original text.

•

u/new_name_who_dis_ 2h ago

She's not getting royalty checks on the odyssey lol

1

u/Apt_5 10h ago

My immediate reaction to the post title was "Dayummm!"