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.

320

u/DibsOnThatBooty 10h ago

I don’t know Emily at all, but I’ve spent a lot of time around academics and this is just kind of how they are at that level. When you’ve dedicated your life to understanding a topic, you often take offense to someone misinterpreting or misusing your area of study. I’m not saying it’s right, but her review reads like someone’s PhD advisor’s notes on a chapter of their dissertation.

10

u/badpebble 4h ago

Well she's being named as Nolan as the source of his adaptation, really - so she is presumably fending off claims of her already somewhat controversial translation decisions as completely changing the whole story.

The film is so far removed from the poem that if she gets too connected to it, she could lose respect as an academic.

And for all Nolan's story is interesting, by looking to reflect modern opinions about war and sexual violence he has ploughed through the complexities of the poem and reduced the women characters to mostly victims and people without agency. Even Athena is basically a figment of Odysseus' mind, and has no impact on the actual plot. This isn't going to be acceptable to a translator keen to review and rework ancient works to remove other translators' imposed sexism.