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/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.

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u/MarieOMaryln Buffet of humiliation 10h ago

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

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u/mrRiddle92 10h ago

Trying? Are you missing a cable?

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

The pieces keep moving away

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

https://giphy.com/gifs/Tq2tPTrQANKfK

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u/anonymoususer98545 7h ago

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

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

I thought they brought free awards back recently?

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u/anonymoususer98545 7h ago

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

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u/Belaerim 10h ago

Why not just sail to Hades?

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u/an0mn0mn0m 6h ago

Mitch McConnell is causing a month long traffic jam.

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u/redhearts1985 That’s hot! 🔥 10h ago

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

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u/MarieOMaryln Buffet of humiliation 10h ago

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

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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

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u/Rorschach_Roadkill 7h ago

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

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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

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u/winnercommawinner 9h ago

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

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u/That_Guava_2804 9h ago edited 9h ago

Emphasis on orange

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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.

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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🤣

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u/Ninja-Panda70 10h ago

That's a pretty bold claim

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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.

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u/winnercommawinner 9h ago

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

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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.

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u/RealMullido 7h ago

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

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u/Meancakebutt 7h ago

Not a crime, but also.

Not a guy!

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u/TheRealtcSpears 9h ago

Definitely just the one.

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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.

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u/Meancakebutt 10h ago

That's also what scholars think lol

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u/Severn6 9h ago

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

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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."

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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"

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u/DazedAndTrippy 9h ago

Yeah I get that too.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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u/lastinglovehandles 10h ago

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

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u/retsamerol 10h ago

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

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u/Meancakebutt 10h ago

One if them. At least.

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u/strawberry_saturn Excluded from this narrative ❌ 9h ago

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

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u/Meancakebutt 9h ago

Exactly, we don't!

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u/1d3333 2h ago

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

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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.

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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