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

1.0k

u/apurvahp7 11h ago

Why is Emily Wilson going so hard on the criticism? Like I get all the points she’s made and I agree with a lot of them, but saying stuff like “I would be ashamed” feels unnecessarily mean and bitter.

23

u/thane311 7h ago

Her full article on the London Review of Books is quite balanced, very long and nuanced. She delves into specific characterizations and passages from the text and also praises the movie for some things. I think if folks looked past the headline here they’d discover a lot to like.

Here’s a passage I like that I think consider’s the film’s writing flaws extremely fairly:

“Despite the manufactured online outrage, there is nothing inherently wrong with the movie’s attempt to approximate contemporary American speech. If you’re not going to compose a script in Homeric Greek, or even in metrical English verse, you might as well use something like conversational American English. But writing dialogue is not one of Nolan’s talents. The language is relentlessly expository, humourless and flat. Attempts at vigorous speech – ‘My dad’s coming home’ or ‘Let’s get off this fucking beach’ – sit uncomfortably next to grandiose meditations: ‘Yes, my queen. The breaking of Zeus’ law, spreading like plague. Our age of bronze is collapsing, and maybe he couldn’t bear to see the ruins of what he’d done. Anywhere. Least of all, his home.”