Wilson attacks Nolan’s Odyssey script despite crediting her translation
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Emily Wilson, translator of "The Odyssey" and a classical studies professor at the University of Pennsylvania, has sharply criticised Christopher Nolan's film adaptation in a review for the London Review of Books, despite Nolan having credited her 2017 translation as a key influence on the movie. She described the screenplay as "abysmal" and said she "would be ashamed to have written any part of this script," arguing that the film lacks the psychological, emotional, political and ethical depth of Homer's original despite its spectacle.
In the review, Wilson said the adaptation has "nothing convincing to say" about time, memory, history or war, called its narrative structure "gimmicky," and said no character has convincing motivation for their actions or words. Nolan had praised Wilson during the press tour, telling Empire he used the opening line of her translation to shape Matt Damon's Odysseus, and Wilson, while damning the writing, acknowledged the film has still driven renewed public interest in Homer and boosted sales of Odyssey translations, including her own.
- Emily Wilson blasted Nolan's Odyssey screenplay as "abysmal" in a review.
- She said she'd be "ashamed" to have written any part of it.
- Despite this, she credits the film with reviving interest in Homer.
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Kicking off in 1240 BC, "The Odyssey" is one of the oldest works of Western literature, telling of the Greek hero Odysseus's ten-year journey home from the Trojan War. Emily Wilson, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, became widely known in 2017 as the first woman to publish a major English translation of the poem, praised for its clarity and accessibility. Christopher Nolan, the director behind films such as "Inception" and "Oppenheimer," has made his own big-screen adaptation of the story, starring Matt Damon as Odysseus.
Nolan has said publicly that Wilson's translation shaped his approach to the film, even crediting her opening line with influencing how Damon plays the central character. That connection matters because it means one of the story's most respected modern interpreters has a direct, acknowledged link to the film, making her opinion of it carry particular weight among readers and critics of classical literature.
The wider interest lies in the gap between a scholar's close reading of an ancient text and a filmmaker's creative reworking of it for a mass audience. Adaptations of classic literature often spark debate over faithfulness versus artistic licence, and this case has drawn attention because it pits a leading academic authority on the source material against one of contemporary cinema's most prominent directors.
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Originally published by Variety as “‘The Odyssey’ Translator Emily Wilson Slams Christoper Nolan’s ‘Abysmal’ Screenplay: ‘I Would Be Ashamed to Have Written Any Part of This Script’”.