The Odyssey Students Say Christopher Nolan’s Adaptation Ruined One Character

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Christopher Nolan’s new movie model of “The Odyssey” takes lots of liberties with the unique Homeric poem from about three millennia in the past, one thing that will upset the poem’s longtime followers. The most important distinction being the ending of the film, which is a daring departure from Homer’s epic poem. As most highschool college students know, “The Odyssey” ends with a homecoming of violent proportions, with the previous king of Ithaca, Odysseus, lastly returning house after a long time overseas and heroically slaughtering the various suitors that had moved into his house. The story ends on a second of triumph, with order lastly restored. 

The film, nevertheless, is a extra tragic affair, with Odysseus (Matt Damon) spending the majority of his time on display mourning the dying he induced through the Trojan Struggle. The movie ends with Odysseus returning house to Penelope (Anne Hathaway), however by then, Odysseus is so wounded and wracked with guilt that it hardly seems like a triumph. In his voyage house, the previous common traveled into the land of the lifeless and talked to the troopers who died in his cost. From their perspective, they have been chaff within the battle effort, dishonored and left on the battlefield, killed through Odysseus’ techniques. In Nolan’s imaginative and prescient, the Trojan Horse isn’t any completely different from the atomic bomb that Oppenheimer invented in “Oppenheimer.” 

If the theme of “The Odyssey” is to be battle guilt, as Nolan dictated, then it could be essential to make a elementary change within the titular hero. Odysseus, as he’s depicted in Homer’s epic, is a shrewd, intelligent, fast-thinking, trickster character. He disguises himself quite a bit, obfuscates, and distracts folks with tales. In keeping with a translator named Daniel Mendelsohn, as quoted in an AP interview, the Odysseus in Nolan’s movie was just about ruined in translation. 

Daniel Mendelsohn’s new translation of “The Odyssey” was revealed in 2025, and it has lots of glowing pullquotes on the again cowl praising its poetry. Mendelsohn famous that Nolan’s adaptation of “The Odyssey” was a powerful cinematic manufacturing, but additionally that it was extra in tune with Christopher Nolan’s private pursuits as a filmmaker somewhat than loyal to the characterization of Homer’s authentic epic. Within the poem, as said, Odysseus is a blinding, slippery character, in a position to twist out of a bind and stay stalwart. The way in which Matt Damon depicted the character, Mendelsohn stated, displayed “no cleverness, no humor, no wily allure.” He continued: 

“This tormented, guilt-ridden Odysseus, stripped of humor and wit, seductiveness and cleverness, is a sibling of ‘Memento’s’ anguished amnesiac, of Batman, of Oppenheimer, males laid low with pasts they wrestle with in several methods. […] Nolan has merely remade Homer’s hero in his personal picture.”

And he is not unsuitable. Lots of Christopher Nolan’s male protagonists (he would not sometimes write girls very properly) are tortured not directly, wrestling with angst and emotional wounds. Odysseus was marked by the sins he dedicated throughout wartime, one thing he undoubtedly didn’t do within the authentic epic poem. 

The AP additionally talked to Emily Wilson, who revealed a extremely celebrated translation of “The Odyssey” in 2017, and whose translation Matt Damon has namechecked as an inspiration for his efficiency. She was relieved that the general public was studying “The Odyssey” once more, “However on the identical time,” she stated, “I had the sense that Christopher Nolan was attempting to pack all the pieces in whereas lacking themes that have been important to the poem.”

Emily Wilson, it also needs to be famous, is a professor of classical research on the College of Pennsylvania, and she or he criticized (with none snobbery, thoughts you) that Christopher Nolan made a really uncommon literary alternative in omitting the Olympian gods from “The Odyssey.” In Homer’s epic, the gods are lively individuals within the motion. In Nolan’s movie, solely Athena (Zendaya) seems on display, whereas the important thing characters of Zeus and Poseidon are absent (though they’re talked about in dialogue quite a bit). Wilson additionally hated the discount of Penelope’s function and contemplated aloud how her marriage to Odysseus was purported to work. 

However Wilson wasn’t so ticked off by the omissions that she did not get pleasure from “The Odyssey” as a film. “It was enjoyable to be there with my children,” she stated. “I did not really feel it was pulling enamel to interact with it. In case you can see it on a giant display, it’s best to completely go.” A excessive suggestion certainly. 

There have been screen-accurate variations of Odysseus prior to now, after all. Many, many Italian cinema epics (normally of very low budgets) depict Odysseus as a intelligent, enthused character who aids his friends in battle efforts. In fact, lots of these outdated Italian peplum films have been constructed as lighthearted entertainments and never ponderous meditations on war-associated guilt. And the world, it appears, is greater than prepared for the latter; “The Odyssey” has, to this point, been very profitable on the field workplace. /Movie additionally beloved it, with our personal Chris Evangelista giving the film an 8 out of 10. It might not be correct, however “The Odyssey” is putting a nerve.