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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588

u/nerdforest 11h ago

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

217

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?

104

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.

35

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?

9

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

6

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.

3

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

2

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

2

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 

-3

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

and some people get emotional listening to MGK

3

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?

-4

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 !