July 27, 2026
Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures
Matt Damon stars as Odysseus in Christopher Nolan's adaptation of 'The Odyssey.' Zendaya plays the goddess Athena. Emily Wilson, the Penn professor who translated the poem that inspired director Christopher Nolan, says she would be 'ashamed' to have written the script.
Emily Wilson, whose 2017 translation of "The Odyssey" is flying off bookshelves, recently dropped another tome.
In a 4,220-word review for the London Review of Books, the University of Pennsylvania professor offered her assessment of the big-screen adaptation currently playing theaters. The movie has been smashing box office benchmarks and, according to writer-director Christoper Nolan, Wilson's translation was an inspiration. But in her view, the filmmaker's take is about as hollow as that Trojan horse.
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Wilson criticized Nolan's script for essentially taking on more than it can handle, overloading "underwritten" characters and "confused" themes with spectacle. She likened the experience to Fourth of July fireworks — "with about the same level of narrative and emotional depth" — and, in one especially blistering paragraph making the rounds on social media, she wrote:
"Nolan's Odyssey 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's glorious return and the lives of his family, adversaries, comrades, friends and neighbours. 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."
As the Cyclops on the other end of Odysseus's flaming stake might say, ouch.
Among other critiques, Wilson took Nolan to task for smoothing out the rough edges of the poem's slippery, philandering hero Odysseus (played by Matt Damon) and flattening other characters like Calypso (Charlize Theron), a nymph who traps Odysseus on her island for seven years out of infatuation. Theron, Wilson wrote, "looks gorgeous, but she is never angry, never funny, not skilled in rhetoric and never consumed by lust for her scraggly mortal victim. She's an unpaid therapist, soothing the soul of the bedraggled, PTSD-ridden Odysseus with drugs, and graciously listening to his disjointed tale of woe."
Even actors whom Wilson singled out for their performances, like Anne Hathaway (as Penelope) and John Leguizamo (as Eumaeus) are rising above a screenplay that gives them "nothing to do" or "nothing to work with," she argued.
Wilson is, by this point, quite aware of her apparent influence on Nolan. But she made her disappointment in her pupil plain.
"As they say at the awards shows, I was humbled to learn that Nolan has read at least the first line of my translation of 'The Odyssey' into iambic pentameter," she wrote. "In at least one interview, he cited my version of the first line of the poem: 'Tell me about a complicated man.' But I would be ashamed to have written any part of this script."
Despite the unreserved pan, Wilson ended her review by commending Nolan for getting audiences into movie theaters and bookstores to read the original tale. It's a small concession after slinging a few dozen literary arrows his way, but perhaps there's hope for peace in the "Odyssey" discourse wars.
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