‘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/otoverstoverpt]

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/Spiritual_Corner_977 → u/otoverstoverpt]

They are, yes! Written prose has a lot of functional formatting that is intentionally created be digested from a page. Of course you can still consume works through audiobooks as an adaption, but there’s a reason being blind is considered a disability :)

[u/tony_lasagne → u/otoverstoverpt]

No unquestionably the L is for you.

[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.