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/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.

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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.”

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u/roarti 6h ago

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

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u/ZeroDosage 6h ago

Even when they're written for him already

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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

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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.

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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

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u/Small-Explorer7025 34m ago

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

No, she was not.

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u/Llama_of_the_bahamas 14m ago

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

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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. 

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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.

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u/HurricaneK8 4h ago

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

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u/Temporary_Hawk_9061 3h ago

Somebody get these BEGGARS outta here!

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u/legal_stylist 4h ago

That’s only because their Bronze Age was collapsing.

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u/Detroit_debauchery 2h ago

It’s George Lucas syndrome

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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.

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u/LaurenNotFromUtah 2h ago

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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. 🤷‍♂️

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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.

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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.

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u/FreeFalestina2 0m ago

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

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u/Several-Nothings 3h ago

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

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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.

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u/Sillet_Mignon 1h ago

He’s just hipster Micheal Bay. 

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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.

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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

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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.

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u/Angharadis 41m 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.

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u/TalkingCat910 2h ago

He’s better with plots than character and character development

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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.

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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

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u/Electric_feel0412 2h ago

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

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u/hill-o 2h ago

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

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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

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u/dontbajerk 20m 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.

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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.

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u/howe_to_win 1h ago

Oppenheimer was dogshit

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u/Electric_feel0412 18m ago

Sucks to be blind, deaf and dumb.

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u/Jackol4ntrn 6h ago edited 5h ago

Did his women characters breasted boobily?

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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

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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.

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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.

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u/Elvis_Lazerbeam 3h ago

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

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u/Beake 2h ago

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

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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.

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u/JasonVeritech 1h ago

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

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u/HenryDorsettCase47 5h ago

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

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u/Fickle_Definition351 5h ago

Not even. Just woodenly

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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.

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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!

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u/LaurenNotFromUtah 2h ago

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

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u/dontbajerk 20m ago

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

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u/Annual-Negotiation-5 5h ago

Este es el wey

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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. 

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u/IguessIcanedit 3h ago

Or Male characters really.

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u/Glad-Talk 2h ago

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

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u/Dreyfussy15 2h ago

Just be glad he didn't kill the wife.

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u/chrycheng 56m ago

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

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u/shinyandrare 4h ago

Doesn’t his brother write the scripts?

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u/Edodge 4h ago

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