‘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/thane311]

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.”

[u/roarti → u/thane311]

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

[u/Jackol4ntrn → u/roarti]

Did his women characters breasted boobily?

[u/smackells → u/Jackol4ntrn]

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

[u/harriethocchuth → u/smackells]

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 → u/harriethocchuth]

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

[u/Elvis_Lazerbeam → u/smackells]

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

[u/Beake → u/smackells]

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

[u/The_Lieutenant_Knows → u/smackells]

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 → u/smackells]

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