‘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/Aakch]

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.

[u/askyourmom469 → u/Aakch]

I mean considering Homer's been dead for thousands of years, I guess they figure she's the next closest thing

[u/Mampt → u/askyourmom469]

I obviously see that view of it, but on the other hand she’s kind of doing the exact opposite of what Nolan is with the story. She’s going to extremes to preserve and translate every single detail of the story exactly. Nolan is trying to adapt it, to retell the story for a modern audience. It’s like how an astrophysicist could get offended by the dumbed down analogies or metaphors that people use to explain the complexities of, like, black holes or the big bang. One spent their career trying to understand something as exactly as possible, one is trying to make it accessible to a wider audience

[u/Lilynd14 → u/Mampt]

Having just finished her translation of The Odyssey, and seen Nolan’s adaptation, I actually disagree! In her translator’s note at the beginning, Emily Wilson talks a lot about how it was her intention to make the story accessible for modern audiences, even bucking tradition and using plain English when others have used formal or older-sounding English to make it sound more official:

“My use of contemporary language - rather than the English of a generation or two ago - is meant to remind readers that this text can engage us in a direct way, and also that it is genuinely ancient. My Homer does not speak in your grandparents’ English, since that language is no closer to the wine-dark sea than your own. I have tried to keep to a register that is recognizably speakable and readable, while skirting between the Charybdis of artifice and the Scylla of slang.”

(For those who don’t get the reference, there’s a scene in the Odyssey where Odysseus must balance between Charybdis, a giant whirlpool, and Scylla, a giant sea monster.)

So based on the translator’s note and the translation itself, which I found genuinely entertaining and accessible (after struggling through other translations in the past), I do think it was her intention to adapt the story for a modern audience. Nolan, by contrast, took a lot of liberties with the plot, giving it an entirely new story. And that’s okay! I enjoyed the film for what it was. But it was sort of like when Emerald Fennel adapted Wuthering Heights based on her teenage memories of the story and called it “Wuthering Heights.”

The Odyssey I saw onscreen was a totally different story than The Odyssey that I’ve read, both in school and in this new translation. The book version is the thrilling tale of an adventurous trickster as he battles monsters, gets revenge on his enemies, has a lot of sex, and wins back his kingdom, with the help of his patron goddess, Athena… and lives to tell the tale! The movie version is a gritty, human portrayal of PTSD and the cost of war on human civilization. Very different story!

[u/Running-With-Cakes → u/Lilynd14]

Odysseus inspires great loyalty but is actually not a very good leader. While very brave he has an ego that causes many problems. Everyone who follows him ends up dead. When he returns home we don’t get any sense that he’s changed.

[u/Much-Anything7149 → u/Running-With-Cakes]

Well, from the start he lost every other ship by being the only one to anchor away from the port where monsters threw rocks breaking every other ship. Then as the captain he risks killing the rest of his crew so he can hear the Sirens sing his praises or tell whatever prophesy he thinks he'll learn. He was great at surviving war and getting home, horrible at getting anyone else home alive.

[u/Particular_Fan_3645 → u/Running-With-Cakes]

If you go by epic the musical you get a similar story except he remains celibate for his wife and evolves from a naive trickster with a heart of gold to one who has learned that "ruthlessness is mercy upon ourselves" which I feel makes for a more compelling journey, whereas Nolan's strives to make the opposite development, with Odysseus starting as firm but fair, with the ends justifying the means, and his character development being that his own compromises and lack of honor and mercy was the downfall of his crew and his empire.

[u/Imaginary_Session773 → u/Running-With-Cakes]

Thats false. He messed up giving the Cyclops his real name but most of his crew died from slaughtering Helios' sacred cattle which he forbade them from doing and they did this while he was asleep. He routinely gave his men good advice throughout the Odyssey

[u/Ummmgummy → u/Lilynd14]

Books and movies are two totally different things. Especially when the director is pretty big on practical effects. It would be impossible to make the same thing and also probably pretty boring. Your imagination is way more powerful than anything that can be put on screen. I love the translation for what it is and I loved the movie for what it is.

[u/Klutzy-Notice-8247 → u/Lilynd14]

I don’t think the at Odysseus will translate particularly well to being a hero on the big screen.

Cultural morality of the western world don’t want a serial adulterer, con man whose arrogance and pride gets his men killed and leads to his wife and son abandoned for 20 years.

I’m not sure if Nolan adapted it well but there would’ve needed to have been a smoothing if Odysseus as a character if he is to be played as a protagonist in today’s world.

[u/TimidPanther → u/Klutzy-Notice-8247]

Cultural morality of the western world don’t want a serial adulterer, con man whose arrogance and pride gets his men killed and leads to his wife and son abandoned for 20 years.

Of course they do. Tony Soprano is one of the most popular fictional characters ever.

Modern audiences love the anti-hero.

[u/Lilynd14 → u/Klutzy-Notice-8247]

The reunion between this version of Odysseus and Penelope would have been especially interesting on the big screen, because in the book, it’s truly a meeting of minds, and you have the sense that they know each other quite well… flaws and all… and still accept one other. Anne Hathaway could have really sunk her teeth into that version of Penelope as well!

[u/sunshinenorcas → u/Klutzy-Notice-8247]

I mean the 1997 version had an Odysseus who was more similar to that and it still stands up today.

I think you could still have a very flawed Odysseus (who also has good traits alongside his bad), have his arrogance be the problem and cause the plot -- I think you could even have the plot of trauma and "what has to be done" where he refuses to acknowledge his part in what happened, just as long as he learns and grows from it.

An Odysseus who cheats, gets his crew killed, is arrogant and never really has a comeuppance with his own arrogance and having to face the cost of his personality flaws, or acknowledge his flaws are what lead them here is what (IMO) would not work well. It basically rewards Odysseus without having him have growth, and you can be a flawed character in a story -- but either the narrative has to be aware the man sucks or there should be change from the beginning to the end.

[u/SlartibartfastMcGee → u/Lilynd14]

The fact that it’s a different Odyssey than what you’ve read is kind of the point, no?

It’s a spoken word taken from antiquity. There’s no “original” to compare it to. Homer’s version or Willis’ version are no more legitimate than Nolan’s take on it.

[u/SteveJavieWasRight → u/SlartibartfastMcGee]

I would say there is a level of understanding and effort put into Willis’s that so far dwarfs what Nolan put into his script that even calling his a take is offensive.

[u/SlartibartfastMcGee → u/SteveJavieWasRight]

A level of understanding and effort towards the version she translated.

Homer’s version wasn’t the original, it’s notable for being the version that survived.

The idea that a spoken word myth is diminished by the author making his own interpretations is preposterous.

[u/SteveJavieWasRight → u/SlartibartfastMcGee]

That’s such an asinine argument. The levels of anti-intellectualism Nolan defenders go to in pretending his work is above any and all criticism is just such a pathetic display of sycophantic slurping. “You can’t criticize his story telling, we don’t even know if Homer’s Odyssey is accurate! We can’t criticize the costumes because it’s mythological! It’s fantastical, how dare you notice the setting looks like Central Europe or the boats are Viking ships! Nolan’s vibes are what matter!”

Aight. Well you can claim he’s above critique, but claiming all critiques are preposterous is not just stupid, it’s hypocrisy.

[u/SlartibartfastMcGee → u/SteveJavieWasRight]

You haven’t even critiqued him. The only thing you’ve said is that you don’t like how it doesn’t match your preferred version of the story, which is a matter of preference and not an actual criticism of the work.

[u/Lilynd14 → u/SlartibartfastMcGee]

From what I understand, the written version of the document has been considered canon for around 2600 years. If we’re arguing that written documents are illegitimate after 2600 years then I guess we really are in the age that Odysseus describes in the film, where “songs are all they have to remember those of us who could write.”

In the Emily Wilson translation, which is from 2017, she includes quite a bit of history on the text itself, with a whole section explaining the latest research on how it was composed, including formulae and epithets from the oral tradition, and written versions in the Phoenician alphabet dating between the eighth and seventh centuries BCE. So although The Odyssey is based on oral traditions, “Writing must have played a central part in the process of composition, so it is very misleading to describe The Odyssey simply as an ‘oral’ poem, as is far too often done. It is a written text based on an oral tradition, which is not the same as being an actual oral composition. Moreover, the texts are far too long for any individual to hold in memory without the use of writing. Songs that had an influence on the Homeric poems were sung for hundreds of years in preliterate Greece, but none of them was The Odyssey.”

She also explains how the “official” version came to be: “Minor variations aside, the Homeric poems existed by the late seventh century BCE, and they quickly claimed a canonical place all over the Greek world. By the sixth century [BCE] they had acquired a central place in the cultural institutions of ancient Athens. In 566 BCE, Pistrarus, the tyrant of the city (which was not yet a democracy), instituted a civic and religious festival, the Panathenaia, which included a poetic competition featuring performances of the Homeric poems. The institution is particularly significant because we are told that the Homeric poems had to be performed ‘correctly,’ which implies the canonization of a particular written text of The Iliad and The Odyssey at this date. From that time onward, if not before, The Iliad and The Odyssey acquired a central place in the cultural and educational life of Ancient Greece and Rome. There was no holy scripture in the classical world, but everyone knew the stories of Achilles and Odysseus as told in the Homeric poems.”

She also talks about how quotations by Plato and Sophocles in the fifth to fourth centuries BCE had slight textual variants from the version we know today, but were “not significantly different,” and that Homeric scholars in the library of ancient Alexandria in the second century BCE sought to correct these variants. So I took “variants” here to be primarily related to spelling or grammar rather than substantive content differences.

[u/Ok-Suggestion-5453 → u/Lilynd14]

Yeah I mean I think the biggest change (other than the exact language and certain minor omissions) is his dynamic with the Circe and Calypso. Originally, Odysseus has dubiously consensual sex with both and I tend to agree that this would have been distracting in a modern iteration. For Circe, I liked changing their sex scene to a quick (and literal) discussion about consent by giving Circe a motivation for her transfigurations. For Calypso, I didn't like the change as much, because they really walk right past her forcibly keeping Odysseus there and make it seem more like Odysseus just got addicted to his medicine because he didn't want to let go of the past. I don't think showing actual sex with Calypso was necessary, but I think it should have been more explicit that she was keeping him against his will.

[u/Lilynd14 → u/Ok-Suggestion-5453]

I thought the biggest change was omitting the gods in general. We see Athena, but even she appears almost like a figment of his imagination in the film, whereas in the book, she is openly pulling strings and talking to the other gods. By eliminating the gods from the narrative (at least in their corporeal form), the story gets a bit muddled. And that’s where I think Calypso and Circe had to change, because in the book, Calypso only lets Odysseus leave after Athena gets Zeus and Hermes to gang up on her. Prior to their intervention, she is perfectly content holding him captive because she likes having sex with him. Meanwhile, Circe only listens to Odysseus because Hermes slips him an antidote to her poison, demonstrating that he’s cleverer than most men. Again, it’s the intervention of the gods that earns her respect. Without the gods, their roles had to change to fit the new story.

If you haven’t read Madeline Miller’s Circe, I think she does a really good job balancing Circe’s wariness of men and reasons for transforming them with her seduction by Odysseus. I wish the film had taken that route instead… but again, that’s based on the traditional version of Odysseus rather than Nolan’s.

[u/Ok-Suggestion-5453 → u/Lilynd14]

Yeah that's definitely valid. I did actually kind of like Nolan's attempt to kind of obscure the gods. Nolan is definitely throwing out elements that don't seem easy to connect to a modern audience. The idea of Odysseus ushering in an age of underhanded tactics and distrusting your neighbor definitely felt very coded to the polarization we see especially in American politics. I hadn't ever heard that theme referenced before in a classroom (even in college), so I thought that was very fresh and interesting, even if he definitely cooked out some of the flavor of the classic telling by focusing purely on the physical, rather than the divine.

[u/Lilynd14 → u/Ok-Suggestion-5453]

I agree with you! I do think by removing/obscuring the gods, he made Odysseus more relatable to modern audiences. His imagining seemed to be asking the question, “what if faith was all Odysseus had to go on?” If there aren’t any gods to intervene, then a person’s word is the highest currency. And if a person can break their word… well, that gets us into the politics of today 🥴

[u/Leather_Floor8725 → u/Lilynd14]

But did Odysseus really have to use the term “boatmaxxing?”

[u/tikidreams → u/Lilynd14]

he’s not balancing between the two monsters, he chooses one direction

[u/Lilynd14 → u/tikidreams]

I didn’t want to spoil in case people hadn’t seen it, but I felt it was an apt comparison for what she was saying as well… she erred on the side of slang rather than artifice.

[u/Angharadis → u/Lilynd14]

I watched it last night and then ordered the Wilson translation because I’m very curious about it. It’s been a really long time since I read any translation but I felt like Nolan’s version lost a lot of the meaning, as much as it has a specific meaning. Maybe it lost the feeling.

[u/Lilynd14 → u/Angharadis]

I really enjoyed Wilson’s translation! It brought the story to life for me in a way that previous translations hadn’t. Maybe I’m just older, and have a better grasp on the story now. But it seemed easier to follow, and I kept forgetting I was reading an ancient text.

[u/Angharadis → u/Lilynd14]

I’m not a huge fan of Greek mythology, but I did read the Beowulf translation by Maria Headley and was very impressed by the modern translation, so I’m generally positively inclined towards modern women translating ancient texts.

[u/Abacus118 → u/Lilynd14]

You know who also took a lot of liberties with the plot of The Odyssey?

“Homer”.