{"id":20195,"date":"2026-07-28T20:06:56","date_gmt":"2026-07-28T15:06:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=20195"},"modified":"2026-07-28T20:06:56","modified_gmt":"2026-07-28T15:06:56","slug":"christopher-nolans-favorite-translator-absolutely-hated-his-odyssey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=20195","title":{"rendered":"Christopher Nolan&#8217;s Favorite Translator Absolutely Hated His Odyssey"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script>\r\n  atOptions = {\r\n    'key' : '644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6',\r\n    'format' : 'iframe',\r\n    'height' : 90,\r\n    'width' : 728,\r\n    'params' : {}\r\n  };\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script src=\"https:\/\/www.highperformanceformat.com\/644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<br \/><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/consequence.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/christopher-nolans-favorite-translator-hated-the-odyssey.png\" \/><\/p>\n<div data-id=\"1614299\" data-title=\"Christopher Nolan\u2019s Favorite Translator Absolutely Hated His Odyssey\" data-url=\"https:\/\/consequence.net\/2026\/07\/the-odyssey-hated-christopher-nolan-favorite-translator\/\" data-page=\"1\" data-pages=\"1\">\n<p>Christopher Nolan spent the press cycle for <em><a href=\"https:\/\/consequence.net\/2026\/07\/the-odyssey-review-christopher-nolan\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Odyssey<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>hyping up <a href=\"https:\/\/link.amazon\/B0eIHuMOG\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Emily Wilson\u2019s translation<\/a>, and when she finally saw the film, she absolutely hated it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI had hoped that Nolan\u2019s affinity with these Homeric themes might push him to new creative heights, and enable him to conjure more believable characters,\u201d Wilson wrote in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lrb.co.uk\/the-paper\/v48\/n14\/emily-wilson\/an-uncomplicated-man\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\"><em>London Review of Books<\/em><\/a>. \u201cBut <em>The Odyssey<\/em> features his usual combination of grandiosity and superficiality.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>To understand why people like Wilson\u2019s more \u201cmodern\u201d version, just compare her opening line to Robert Fagles\u2019. Fagles wrote, \u201cSing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns.\u201d Wilson\u2019s version opens, \u201cTell me about a complicated man.\u201d Nolan apparently loves that line and quoted \u201cTell me about a complicated man\u201d on <em>The Odyssey\u00a0<\/em>publicity trail.<\/p>\n<p>Related Video<\/p>\n<p>Welp, Wilson\u2019s review is titled \u201cAn Uncomplicated Man.\u201d\u00a0\u201cI was humbled to learn that Nolan has read at least the first line of my translation of The Odyssey,\u201d she said. \u201cBut I would be ashamed to have written any part of this script.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Her article gives Nolan a pass for removing most of the Gods, but takes him to task for whittling Odysseus down, mostly to make him more likable to modern audiences. To be fair, some of her complaints are true for pretty much every film adaptation \u2014 I mean, nobody is showing the episode where Odysseus hangs every maidservant in his house who slept with (was raped by?) the suitors. In many episodes, Odysseus\u2019 behavior might strike movie goers as cruel, bloodthirsty, or unforgivably evil.\u00a0As Wilson wrote in the <em>LRB,\u00a0<\/em>\u201cNolan\u2019s vision of the world is not quite big enough to include either real gods or real people who might be different from us.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Apart from some exciting battle scenes, the translator and poet didn\u2019t find too much to love. She saved her most biting criticism for near the end:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cNolan\u2019s <em>Odyssey<\/em> lacks many of the elements that make the poem great. It has nothing convincing to say about time, memory, history, war, or about the relationship between one warrior\u2019s glorious return and the lives of his family, adversaries, comrades, friends and neighbors. It lacks psychological, emotional, political and ethical depth. Its narrative structure is gimmicky. The writing is abysmal. None of the characters has convincing motivation for their actions or words. There are no sex scenes, and all the food looks horrible.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>For more, check out my colleague Liz Shannon Miller on <a href=\"https:\/\/consequence.net\/2026\/07\/the-odyssey-best-translation-homer-nolan\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">what makes Emily Wilson\u2019s translation so good<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><script>\n\t\t!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s){if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod?\n\t\tn.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;\n\t\tn.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0';n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=1;\n\t\tt.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window,\n\t\tdocument,'script','https:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/fbevents.js');\n\t\tfbq('init', '1753966171496536');\n\t\tfbq('set','agent','tmgoogletagmanager', '1753966171496536');\n\t\tfbq('track', \"PageView\");\n\t<\/script><script defer crossorigin=\"anonymous\" src=\"https:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/sdk.js#xfbml=1&#038;version=v7.0&#038;appId=434175690014\" nonce=\"6gwmbCtM\"><\/script><br \/>\n<br \/><script async=\"async\" data-cfasync=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/pl30214220.effectivecpmnetwork.com\/9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<div id=\"container-9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\"><\/div>\r\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Christopher Nolan spent the press cycle for The Odyssey\u00a0hyping up Emily Wilson\u2019s translation, and when she finally saw the film, she absolutely hated it. \u201cI had hoped that Nolan\u2019s affinity with these Homeric themes might push him to new creative heights, and enable him to conjure more believable characters,\u201d Wilson wrote in the London Review&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20196,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/consequence.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/christopher-nolans-favorite-translator-hated-the-odyssey.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-newsweek-trending"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20195\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}