Famed The Odyssey translator slams movie of the year as ‘abysmal’: ‘I would be ashamed’

Emily Wilson, whose 2017 translation of The Odyssey largely influenced Christopher Nolan’s film, has slammed the $250 million adaptation for its “abysmal” screenplay.

In a scathing review of Nolan’s adaptation for the London Review of Books, as per The Guardian, the expert criticised the film for lacking “psychological, emotional, political and ethical depth”.

“The writing is abysmal,” wrote Wilson who is also a professor of classical studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She concluded: “I would be ashamed to have written any part of this script.”

Wilson explained the film lacked many of the elements that make the ancient Greek poem, attributed to Homer, so memorable.

“I had hoped that Nolan’s affinity with these Homeric themes might push him to new creative heights, and enable him to conjure more believable characters,” Wilson wrote in the essay.

“But The Odyssey features his usual combination of grandiosity and superficiality.”

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She argued the film, projected to be one of the biggest releases this year, failed to elicit any emotion as a viewer “even for Argos the dog”.

Instead, her essay implied she was “exposed” to three-hours of “thumping sticks, staffs, swords and clashing armour, thunderbolts, crashing waves, grunts, screams, toppling palaces and burning temples”.

Wilson acknowledged the film was not at all boring “thanks to the source material, which is impossible to mess up entirely”.

Drawing parallels to the ancient Greek poem, she argued Homer’s Calypso (played by Charlize Theron), Penelope (Anne Hathaway), and Athena (Zendaya) were far more complex and dynamic than their on-screen counterparts.

This was at no fault of the actresses themselves, but rather how their characters were written or rather “underwritten”.

The lengthy essay went on to critique the film’s costumes, architecture, male characters and even the “poorly designed” Trojan Horse, at least in her mind.

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But, there was praise to Nolan’s ambitious film. Wilson was “humbled” to learn Nolan had cited her translation in interviews, and praised Robert Pattinson’s performance as villain Antinous as Oscar worthy.

The classicist also celebrated the film’s cinematic impact on the film, literature and historic industries in a world of streaming – and for that, she is grateful.

Homer’s Odyssey remains one of two major epic poems of ancient Greek literature. Wilson made history by becoming the first woman to translate Homer’s Odyssey into English.

Nolan’s 2026 adaption, led Oscar winning actor Matt Damon, pulled in a massive US$264.1 million ($380 million) globally during its opening weekend, setting a personal best for the director’s previous releases.

Nolan is a two-time Oscar-winning director most known for his work on 2023 biographical epic Oppenheimer, The Batman and Dark Knight trilogy, as well as Oscar-winning blockbusters Inception and Interstellar.