Guardian film critic Catherine Shoard questions whether women will enjoy Christopher Nolan's new adaptation of The Odyssey as much as men appear to, noting that the film has received almost universally glowing reviews, the vast majority written by male critics. She draws on her own experience as a female critic reviewing Nolan's Tenet in 2020, when she faced a barrage of sexist online abuse for a negative review, to argue that Nolan's fanbase can react fiercely to criticism, and that his post-Dark Knight films tend to resonate more strongly with male audiences.

Shoard points out that Stephanie Zacharek's lukewarm review for Time is one of the few she has found that echoes her own doubts, while most other critics have raved about the film. She argues that even enthusiastic reviewers and classicists broadly agree that the film's female characters, including Zendaya's Athena and Charlize Theron's Calypso, are given little to do beyond passive or supporting roles, raising questions about whether women's experiences are represented with the same depth as men's in Nolan's vision of Homer's epic.