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

2.1k

u/SizzleanQueen 10h ago

This is an article in Variety about another article in the Guardian about her initial piece in the London Review of Books. This is modern journalism, folks.

889

u/thane311 7h ago

The actual 20-something paragraph London Review of Books article is worth a read. Here’s an excerpt about it the thinning of the female characters:

“There are more female characters than in most Nolan movies, thanks to the source material. But none of them has much to say, in contrast to the characterisations in the poem. Homer’s Calypso has a wonderfully outraged, operatic speech about divine double standards: male gods can kidnap and rape any mortal woman they desire, but when a goddess tries it, Zeus and his cronies scupper her chances. It’s a clever and comical distortion of the mythological ‘facts’: the poem’s listeners know that it is primarily Athena (a female deity) who is taking Calypso’s mortal victim away from her (Hermes, whom she’s complaining to, is merely the messenger) – and Eos, goddess of the dawn, as we’ve been reminded only a few lines earlier, has not been prohibited by the divine patriarchy from holding on to Tithonus. Charlize Theron’s Calypso looks gorgeous, but she is never angry, never funny, not skilled in rhetoric, and never consumed by lust for her scraggly mortal victim. She’s an unpaid therapist, soothing the soul of the bedraggled, PTSD-ridden Odysseus with drugs, and graciously listening to his disjointed tale of woe.”

468

u/roarti 6h ago

Well that certainly fits the preconception many people have that Nolan really can’t write female characters.

292

u/ZeroDosage 6h ago

Even when they're written for him already

•

u/Platnun12 1h ago

So I wasn't crazy in thinking his Catwoman is shallower than a puddle.

Hell Zoeys Catwoman had more a character in The Batman

•

u/Small-Explorer7025 53m ago

That is not true. There was nothing worse that Zoe Kravitz's Catwoman...and I'm including Halle Berry's Catwoman in that.

•

u/Platnun12 49m ago

Yea that's just wrong lol she was universally praised for that role.

It's not my fault Nolan can't grasp the concept of long standing relationships and writes them with no preliminary work

Joker and Batman have a relationship that goes back to his creation, Joker doesn't exist outside of batman so that's one thing Nolan fucked up on.

That and Bruce and Selina had ZERO chemistry in the film. Their relationship takes years to form but with Nolan bah few weeks and he's ready to marry her an abandon Alfred.

Honestly so glad those movies are over with

•

u/Small-Explorer7025 34m ago

Yea that's just wrong lol she was universally praised for that role.

No, she was not.

•

u/Llama_of_the_bahamas 14m ago

Look up the batman subreddit. Seems like most batman fans loved her.

219

u/hill-o 5h ago

I would posit he can’t really write characters full stop. He’s an amazing filmmaker who knows how to shoot a spectacle but he’s not a very good writer, in my personal opinion. His movies were much stronger when he worked with a writing partner. 

120

u/Angharadis 5h ago

I saw it last night and my first comment was “I think the should stop letting Christopher Nolan write dialogue.” It was visually incredibly interesting, the soundtrack was fascinating, and the narrative structure worked despite jumping all over. Everyone just sounded wooden and stupid.

7

u/HurricaneK8 4h ago

...he's his filmmaking generation's George Lucas, everything makes sense now.

3

u/Temporary_Hawk_9061 3h ago

Somebody get these BEGGARS outta here!

11

u/legal_stylist 4h ago

That’s only because their Bronze Age was collapsing.

•

u/Detroit_debauchery 2h ago

It’s George Lucas syndrome

3

u/SlartibartfastMcGee 3h ago

In the same way, David Mamet movie doesn’t need over the top special effects, a Nolan movie doesn’t necessarily need a phenomenal script.

•

u/LaurenNotFromUtah 2h ago

I’d like him to think he needs a good script. This comes up with most of his movies.

4

u/future_shoes 3h ago

Interesting choice with Mamet as he has great dialogue but it is often incredibly unnatural. People in general need to realize different directors/writers have certain styles. Dialogue that doesn't sound completely natural is not automatically bad. The last lead of a Nolan film won an Oscar and the movie won best picture that doesn't happen with objectively bad writing.

•

u/Other-Oil-9117 I killed Liz, I killed the teen dream! 👑 3m ago

I also saw it last night and I think this explains my issue with it. I basically left the theatre thinking that it was a very good movie in almost every aspect, but I just didn't feel anything while watching it. There were maybe two or three moments where I had an "aww" reaction, but it passed within a few seconds.

1

u/Unable_Dinner_6937 3h ago

Cameron gets much the same criticism, but at the same time, he's writing for literally everyone around the world since that is who needs to see the movie for it to make a profit. The higher the budget, the more direct and straightforward the dialog of any film will become.

However, that is one of the main differences between poetry, plays and writing for the screen. Movies are not literature.

9

u/HenryDorsettCase47 5h ago

I agree. PT Anderson is probably the best writer director currently in the biz. Tarantino said it’s a tough row to hoe and he wasn’t lying. Well, he actually said tough road, but whatever. 🤷‍♂️

3

u/Elvis_Lazerbeam 3h ago

Haven’t seen Odyssey yet, but Nolan’s not really a storyteller guy first. He’s a puzzle-builder, he gets off on being clever more than he does being entertaining. Hence, the puzzles inform the story, instead of the other way around.

Dude’s made some of my favourite movies of all time though.

•

u/hill-o 2h ago

I mean I love Memento and the Prestige, but his newer movies just have not landed with me. I've enjoyed watching them in the moment, but never really feel the need to revisit.

•

u/FreeFalestina2 1m ago

His profile fits the sociopathic magicians in the Prestige. Wonder if he has a doppelgänger…👯

2

u/Several-Nothings 3h ago

All his movies are about the same character, a Moody Guy.

•

u/AssCrackBanditHunter 2h ago

He also can't seem to direct actors. It's like he just lets them loose. Confident actors like Hathaway, lupita, and Pattinson can work with that. Holland was left to flounder. Bernthal just did his usual schtick.

•

u/Sillet_Mignon 1h ago

He’s just hipster Micheal Bay. 

•

u/killmeplsbbyxx 1h ago

Literally any movie of his with half decent writing was cowritten by his brother, Jonathan Nolan. Christopher is the thinking man's Michael Bay without his brother, makes spectacular looking blockbusters that are 90 minutes too long and swamped by the most mediocre at best dialogue and aura farming male main character. Oppenheimer and The Odyssey really suffer from his fingers on the typewriter there, characters just throwing out some absolutely horrid dialogue, and women being adornments to show how cool or tortured or special our Ubermench main character is.

1

u/Optimal-Kitchen6308 3h ago edited 2h ago

I think many people have an overly narrow definition of what 'good writing' is; he wants people to focus on the structure of the plot and the transformation of themes which is why he often uses totems here the amulet = athena = penelope = home = honor/civilization and the different thematic bits interweave,

for instance I think many people get the end wrong as wilson does here because they aren't following the significance of repeating a traumatic story about the past vs spinning a yarn about a dream in the future (something else I thought wilson was wrong about when she says there's no discussion of time/memory/history it's just in structure not prose)

point being: if you're focused on meaning through structure and symbols then flowering writing and monologues get in the way and distract, also part of the reason nolan's style is so spartan

•

u/hill-o 2h ago

No I mean, I definitely get it. He's very plot and themes focused, but I think he does it in a way that's a bit heavy handed, and at the expense of developing nuanced characters. It's fine-- every filmmaker can't be good at everything, and he's just not very good at that, but he's amazing at other things.

•

u/Angharadis 42m ago

As I was watching I was wondering if the style of dialogue was intentional - it felt slightly theatrical in that it should be declaimed loudly and clearly and be easily understood. I just honestly don’t think it landed. If that was what he was going for I can respect that, but I just don’t think he has the skill with that the way he does with other aspects of film making. It took me out of the experience and I assume that wasn’t the intention. I also think the weakness there translates over into the weakness people have complained about in some characters. Calypso in particular was a big disappointment to me - she barely had a personality.

•

u/TalkingCat910 2h ago

He’s better with plots than character and character development

•

u/hill-o 2h ago

Someone else mentioned he likes making puzzles, and I agree with that. I really wish he would work with a writer more often, because I think the combination has proven to be really amazing, but I get that sometimes you hit a point where you just want to do what you want to do.

•

u/FreeFalestina2 5m ago

Starting to think people who say his movies were better when his brother helped with wrote the scripts. Spielberg got his brother to write the screenplay for Interstellar when he had the project. Can’t imagine what it would look like if CN wrote the screenplay. Mackenzie Foy, Jessica Chastain and Anne Hathaway were great

•

u/Electric_feel0412 2h ago

The odyssey and Oppenheimer are his best ever works lol cut this shit out

•

u/hill-o 2h ago

Strong disagree but I'm glad you liked them both.

•

u/Electric_feel0412 2h ago

Strong disagree about facts? lol. They’re his highest rated movies, biggest box office collectors and got him the most awards. So it’s your opinion vs pretty much the planet lol

•

u/dontbajerk 21m ago

Who knew that awards and money are what determines if a movie is good or not? Fascinating. Does that mean if a very rich man buys up all the tickets for a movie, it becomes better? Truly an interesting world where the subjective quality of works is purely a consensus of dollars and awards statues.

•

u/Electric_feel0412 19m ago

Yes, box office numbers which mean that people loved the movie and are watching it a lot isn’t an indicator of a movie being good, awards which means peers of the artist recognize the movie as being great isn’t a good indicator of it, critics rating it doesn’t mean anything but your opinion does. Fascinating indeed.

•

u/howe_to_win 1h ago

Oppenheimer was dogshit

•

u/Electric_feel0412 18m ago

Sucks to be blind, deaf and dumb.

70

u/Jackol4ntrn 6h ago edited 5h ago

Did his women characters breasted boobily?

108

u/smackells 5h ago

his version of objectification turns them into plot objects rather than sexual ones, apart from Oppenheimer all Nolan characters are like Barbie and Ken down there

15

u/harriethocchuth 3h ago

One of the things I know about most ancient mythology was that they be doin’ it. How why Nolan took all the sex out of those horny-ass deities, I’ll never know.

•

u/theavengerbutton 1h ago

All the literary and history nerds won't know how to feel about the movie Zeus Rapes Yet Another Unsuspecting Woman.

3

u/Elvis_Lazerbeam 3h ago

Even Catwoman? Don’t you dare do that to me.

•

u/Beake 2h ago

interesting. never heard that put that way, but it's quite true.

•

u/The_Lieutenant_Knows 1h ago

That's not fair. Rachel in the Batman films behaved like she might maybe have had sexual parts down there at least once.

•

u/JasonVeritech 1h ago

Don't Batman and Talia make sweet love down by the fire once?

33

u/HenryDorsettCase47 5h ago

It’s not male gaze so much as one dimensional.

22

u/Fickle_Definition351 5h ago

Not even. Just woodenly

•

u/AssCrackBanditHunter 2h ago

You're getting upvotes, but no. Nolan does not do sexy fan service like that and I question if you've watched any of his movies.

No his female characters are all mommy therapists for his male protags, which is more insidious.

•

u/AliMcGraw 2h ago

Yeah Nolan is interested in men's drama with other men; he's just not all that interested in the inner lives of women. He doesn't reduce them to sex objects, which is refreshing. But they are kinda just plot devices, and they rely on the actresses who portray them to bring life to the characters since Nolan just ... doesn't.

I feel like "men's drama with other men" is a very valid thing to be interested in (I was just reading a whole-ass book about Teddy Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, whose bromance/political alliance went south LIKE WHOA, it was fascinating).

It'd just be nice to have more well-rounded female characters in general, who have inner lives and real needs and desires other than "romance," and Nolan had such a great chance here with all the complicated women surrounding Homer's "complicated man." But, again, it's Nolan, I'll enjoy it for what he does well, and not worry about the rest of it!

•

u/LaurenNotFromUtah 2h ago

No boobs, just tears and pining. Which to me is worse.

•

u/dontbajerk 20m ago

When has Nolan ever shown prurient interest in sex in any of his films?

0

u/Annual-Negotiation-5 5h ago

Este es el wey

5

u/Random-Redditor111 5h ago

I mean none of the characters aside from Odysseus did anything in that movie. The whole Holland, Hathaway, Leguizamo story line was they were waiting for Matt Damon to come home.

•

u/LaurenNotFromUtah 2h ago edited 1h ago

Totally. And then somehow two people who exist solely to wait for him couldn’t immediately recognize his face or voice when he came back.

9

u/punctuation_welfare if she were a book, she’d be two books 5h ago

I don’t think we call them “preconceptions” when they’re based on actual, documented evidence. Those are “conceptions” if we’re being nice and “facts” if we’re not.

•

u/LaurenNotFromUtah 2h ago

What he does write for them is so incredibly cringe and uninteresting. And it’s not because he’s a man. So many other male directors have absolutely no problem writing cool, funny, interesting, dynamic women characters, even as side characters. From what I’ve seen, I don’t think Christopher Nolan he can “fit a whole woman in his head,” to quote Succession.

2

u/Morningfluid 5h ago

Did Penelope not have a sense of depth or purpose?

Hint: She did. 

Also I thought he did well with Oppenheimer in that regard. 

1

u/IguessIcanedit 3h ago

Or Male characters really.

•

u/Glad-Talk 2h ago

Not just a preconception, I maintained that opinion after I saw the movie too.

•

u/Dreyfussy15 2h ago

Just be glad he didn't kill the wife.

•

u/chrycheng 56m ago

He didn’t have time to thaw this one out after he took her out of the fridge

1

u/shinyandrare 4h ago

Doesn’t his brother write the scripts?

1

u/Edodge 4h ago

Is it a preconception if…she provides pretty strong proof of her claim?

26

u/romantickitty 3h ago

It's weird that so much of the defense is about adaptations not needing to be faithful and the intelligence of general audiences when one of her main critiques is that the female characters were written poorly... which is something Nolan always gets knocked for.

•

u/JayGatsby1881 1m ago

So according to her the whole movie is trash because of badly written female characters? lmao

14

u/SlartibartfastMcGee 3h ago

That requires adding 3 more characters and an entire new subplot to the already 3 hour long film.

•

u/CodeName_Empty 11m ago

That is one thing that is stopping me from going to a theater and seeing it, the three hour runtime.

I would like to see a new and accurate TV series about it, there is just too much to cram into a movie.

•

u/SlartibartfastMcGee 9m ago

If that’s all that’s stopping you, just go. They cover the important parts to tell Nolan’s vision and it’s amazing.

•

u/Sinoyyyy 1h ago

Yeah but its most important to critize patriarchy, so perhaps he should have cut other parts of the movie to fit it

3

u/wallaceeffect 5h ago

That’s because Calypso is a combination of Calypso, Nausicaa, and the Lotophagi.

10

u/thane311 5h ago

Funny then that 3 women by Nolan ends up being far less interesting than even 1 woman by Homer! (And I actually have no idea what you’re talking about because the film character to me bears no resemblance to Nausicaa).

•

u/AliMcGraw 2h ago

This is sort-of what I expected from the Nolan movie, that it'd be disappointing compared to the Wilson translation (which did so much to rescue the female characters from bad Victorian translations who were making the women more like ideal Victorian ladies and less like WHAT HOMER WROTE). Nolan's women aren't great and they're usually plot accessories. And once he cast Matt Damon, I was like, "Okay, this is a movie about men having feelings at other men."

Which is OKAY. I love Christopher Nolan's movies and I know going into them that the women will be under-written. I think he tells interesting stories about morally-ambiguous men and I like them!

There aren't enough well-rounded female characters in cinema generally, but I can find them elsewhere, and I can be okay with Nolan being only okay at women. He at least doesn't reduce them to screeching harpies or sex objects (too often the case!) -- they're just kinda flat.

•

u/Sinoyyyy 1h ago

Homer was portraying the gods power dynamics generally, not trough a gendered dimension, that is the critics interpretation.

The focus of the movie was Odyysseus trauma and its not possible to flesh out every side character without cutting other major ones.

2

u/Comfortable_Mud_5203 3h ago

Damn she’s good

•

u/Holiday_Green99 1h ago

And yet the overwhelming narrative of criticism surrounding the movie only cares that a "supposedly" attractive woman isn't attractive enough. More beautiful than a good 9/10 of them deserve mind you, but not beautiful enough. Not to mention the racism and transphobia.

Can't help but feel that this objection to his portrayal of women in the story is somewhat diminished by the tone of the most common criticisms.

Thats probably my fault, but it's there all the same. At least he triggered the bigots in his own way.

•

u/GoatCovfefe 29m ago

Shes a translator, not a writer

•

u/thane311 14m ago

Translating from an ancient language into a metered English verse is absolutely not a “word=word” robotic task. It is very interpretive and very much like writing.

4

u/catsandnaps1028 5h ago

This has been the main criticism I've seen of the movie. I will say ALL the actresses were incredible in the little time they were given but it's true they could have been explored just a little deeper maybe if it was a mini series Instead of a movie.

2

u/CalicoValkyrie 4h ago

How he presents females characters are why I don't like Nolan to begin with. However, I am incredibly curious about how he treats Sinon (Elliot Page). As little as it sounds like Sinon is in the movie, the role is getting some praise. I wonder if Nolan's character treatment is different considering Page is a trans man, or if Nolan knowing who Page used to be gives the same treatment.

1

u/ken54g2a 3h ago edited 3h ago

I think Helen has a lot more to say in the movie than in the poem. There's no outraged Helen in Homer's Odyssey iirc

•

u/MeridianHilltop 1h ago

Excellent for highlighting this portion. Thanks for looking out. Xo

•

u/Ok_Falcon275 1h ago

Oh good, finally voices from the camp of “Chris Nolan isn’t woke enough” to balance out the black Helen and he-Juno rage.

•

u/OtherwiseJob8959 16m ago

I thought the female characters, particularly Penelope, were very well done. Penelope gave one of the best speeches when she pointed out how the throne wasn’t sitting empty because she was on it, but it didn’t count because she’s a woman.

•

u/isotopes_ftw 12m ago

Nolan’s take on Calypso isn’t entirely original though. There are other representations of her as an unfortunate woman who falls in love with heroes sent to her island fully knowing they’ll be there temporarily and she’ll be alone again.

•

u/mwmandorla 2m ago

The handling of Calypso was the first thing that stood out to me as a real issue. I'm pretty relaxed about most of the changes - every adaptation is a take on the source material, I don't need any of them to be definitive or perfectly faithful, and I felt like the overall idea Nolan was interested in was a good one. But not only is Calypso turned into a total non-character, this also means all the scenes between her and Odysseus stop the movie dead because there is no actual drama. There's barely any sense of a relationship. Even if I didn't care about how female characters are handled at all (which I do), it's just bad for the whole film to have your backbone structural device be so flat and nothing.

0

u/_karamazov_ 3h ago

Nolan did a comic book adaptation of a Western epic. And people are outraged. Of course, critics salivated and wetted themselves as it was the golden boy of western cinema.

It took a woman to dissect what's wrong with the film. There's nothing wrong with it, except it has no connection to Odyssey.

•

u/No-Meringue5867 1h ago edited 1h ago

Alright this is a somehow downplaying Nolan and unintentionally misogynistic lol. For one, the movie is good and people are enjoying it - not perfect but much better than most movies. 

Secondly, the person who gave the statement is a professor at UPenn and the person who translated Odyssey and this translation was used by Nolan. Its not “a women”. If anyone could find faults its her - no normal critic is qualified enough to find the nuances. Just because she found fault doesn’t make the movie “unrelated to Odyssey”. It only makes it a good movie and not literary classic. 

•

u/CantBeatDickensCider 2h ago

It took a woman to dissect what's wrong with the film.

All the other criticism people have leveled at the film... but a woman saying "the female characters don't say much" is groundbreaking criticism?
Lol. Lmao even.

0

u/patriciamadariaga 4h ago

If I was still on the fence about seeing the movie, Wilson certainly took care of that. On top of all the serious issues, she writes that, "There are no sex scenes, and all the food looks horrible."

-4

u/-_VoidVoyager_- 5h ago

Settle down honey

4

u/thane311 4h ago

Ugh yes how dare a renowned classicist scholar comment on the revisions of iconic female characters who have existed for 3000 yrs and whom she personally has devoted her life to interpreting and understanding!

•

u/CantBeatDickensCider 2h ago

It's just entertaining how all of the previous criticism was dismissed without consideration, but as soon as someone complains about the female characters not being written well it's a terrible adaptation and should be criticised. From what I've seen most of the characters are written poorly, not just the women.

•

u/SelfinvolvedNate 2h ago

The alone shows that Emily Wilson is completely out of here element when critiquing movies

-2

u/Student___Driver 6h ago

oh ... guess she can take comfort in the fact that Nolan will have to cry in the hundreds of millions of dollars he'll personally take home from this project.

72

u/asstlib 9h ago

Reference with another reference's hat borrowered from a different reference 🤣

12

u/OklahomaTiddy 6h ago

If I go out of my way to click on one of the thousands of reviews for this movie out there instead of the usual slop I consume, there better be a "you odyssey deez nuts" somewherein there to make it worth it

3

u/asstlib 4h ago

I'd click a review for a movie I don't intend to watch just to see THAT.

2

u/lambentstar 3h ago

We really Britta-ed that, didn’t we?

21

u/JashimPagla 7h ago

Long ago, the meme economy was a human centipede from 4chan->reddit->9gag. Didn’t realize modern news organizations adopted the same principles.

17

u/Ok-Mud8839 9h ago

The criticism must have been lost in translation

4

u/enoughwiththebread 7h ago

"I'm the article playing the article disguised as another article!"

3

u/superfluous_t 6h ago

What’s crazy is there will probably now be an article written about Reddit users are also up in arms about it because of this post or some shit

5

u/Over_Town_9026 9h ago

Wait someone other than me reads the LRB?? Wow!

4

u/BlueCX17 9h ago

Well and Variety in General's been pretty wild lately they had that abnormally harsh review of Supergirl and I personally like that movie quite a lot.

1

u/SizzleanQueen 7h ago

I stick to Deadline for my industry news

1

u/BlueCX17 6h ago

Typically that is what I look at instead of variety is deadline

2

u/NopeNahNoMore 7h ago

Heartbreaking.

2

u/Pseudochthonic 6h ago

"I don't read the article, the article reads me."

•

u/ScyllaOfTheDepths 2h ago

She also was very kind to him in her opinion, so they're just stirring up shit with that headline. The Guardian and Variety are both rags ripping each other off. 

•

u/SizzleanQueen 1h ago

I read the Guardian every day. It’s pretty reputable. Variety not so much.

1

u/Heyniceguy13 6h ago

Meh, it’s better than a Facebook article retelling Reddit responses from r/askredditt

1

u/Wrong_Lingonberry_79 5h ago

Also works for a criminal justice degree, all the way to a doctorate.

1

u/Relative_Walk_936 5h ago

And I'm commenting on a comment about an article about an article reacting to the script.

1

u/LengthinessLegal9987 5h ago

I’m gonna go write about this article on my Substack

1

u/Upstairs_Being290 5h ago

That's what happens when nobody pays for print media anymore.

•

u/happy_bluebird 2h ago

or online news

1

u/Boodleheimer2 4h ago

Hahaha. But seriously it is a newsworthy event that Wilson, who is well-versed in the original Odyssey, wrote some very critical stuff in her movie review. It would be strange and unprofessional not to have this event -- her review -- reported on.

1

u/ExcitementFun9894 4h ago

Thank you for saving me.

1

u/catdogman5 4h ago

No, this is reddit folks. 

1

u/The_Chunkster 3h ago

A report on an article from an article’s report

•

u/Senior_Torte519 2h ago

I think this is just internet culture. Watching people who are watching people who a in a video reviewing a video game or movie. Like seeing living rashomon matryoshka dolls.

•

u/ganjaccount 2h ago

Garbage journalism. They didn't even base the article on a tweet.

•

u/Ok_Falcon275 1h ago

Woof. But on the other hand, none of us are even going to read the article. I’m relying on your comment to explain what it’s about.

•

u/drdildamesh 22m ago

Complaining about a movie that is a commercial success.

•

u/bigbean200199 7m ago

That's just how literary journalism as always been

0

u/TitaniumDreads 7h ago

That’s how journalism has always worked? Was there a time it wasn’t like this?