Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey opened July 17 with the biggest domestic debut of his career and crossed $1 billion globally on August 7. The film follows Odysseus's journey home after Troy, with Matt Damon as Odysseus, Anne Hathaway as Penelope, Lupita Nyong'o as Helen of Troy, and Tom Holland, Robert Pattinson, and Zendaya in supporting roles. Emily Wilson — the University of Pennsylvania classicist who published the first English translation of Homer's Odyssey by a woman, and whose opening line Nolan specifically cited as an influence — published a 4,000-word review in the London Review of Books in late July. It crashed the LRB's website. She published a second piece in The Atlantic on August 4. At Academy screenings, Oscar voters called Nolan "the definitive filmmaker of our time."

Wilson: The Script Failed Homer

She says Nolan got the spectacle right and left everything that makes Homer matter behind.

Wilson says the screenplay has no emotional, political, or ethical depth. The film is "very good at conveying big bangs and big giants" — and stops there. Wilson called the characters "too underdeveloped" and the structure "gimmicky." Wilson said: "I would be ashamed to have written any part of this script." She faulted specific elements: Anne Hathaway's Penelope "has nothing convincing to do," scenes of eating and hospitality — central to Homer's xenia, the law of guest-friendship — go underplayed, and the themes of memory, time, and family go unexplored.

Wilson's August 4 Atlantic piece pressed the charge further. "Nolan's Odyssey is itself a kind of Trojan horse," she wrote: "the script grandly insists on the importance of human kindness, while the camera shows us an entirely different set of values." She called the film "visually stunning, emotionally empty" and argued that "we need art that is truthful about the costs and the necessity of compassion." The implicit charge throughout: Nolan borrowed her opening line as a north star, then built a film that doesn't follow where it leads.

Nash and Nolan: Identifying the Mechanism Doesn't Invalidate It

A classicist and the director both say Wilson applied a translator's standard to a film — and got the wrong answer.

Nolan holds the same license as Aeschylus, Nash argues. Theo Nash, a classicist, published in Slate to counter Wilson directly. Nolan depicts gods as elemental forces rather than absent beings — a reading with clear precedent in ancient Greek drama. Nash argues the Sinon subplot Wilson dismisses holds up once you understand Sinon didn't know the full plan behind the Trojan Horse. Nash's core argument: Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides all changed Homer's plots freely, and Nolan is doing the same. "The close attention to the text that informs Wilson's translation is lacking in her reading of the movie," Nash wrote.

Nolan answered his critics in a Beijing podcast on August 3. "To be able to identify the mechanism does not invalidate the mechanism," he said. "I'm thinking more of amateur criticism, because they feel they've identified the mechanism, they feel that it invalidates it." He called it "a real problem in criticism today." He didn't name Wilson. He didn't need to. At Academy screenings in late July, multiple Oscar voters called Nolan "the definitive filmmaker of our time."

Oates Says Wilson Sounded Crude, Not Scholarly

The novelist calls the review ungrateful — and says the rhetoric landed in the wrong company.

Oates says Wilson benefited from the film, then attacked its director. Wilson herself acknowledged her translation is "flying off the shelves" because of the film. Novelist Joyce Carol Oates posted in late July that Wilson's "tone of dismissal and haughty superiority strike a sour note." She said Wilson "speaks in the crude language of MAGA folks attacking someone with ideas that differ from hers."

Oates put Wilson's critique in the same sentence as Elon Musk's. Musk had attacked the film before it opened, calling Nolan's casting of Lupita Nyong'o as Helen of Troy "anti-white" and saying Nolan "wants the awards." Oates appears to mean rhetorical style, not ideology — but the company she placed Wilson in was intentional. She also defended Nolan's right to reimagine the source material: there is "no reason why Nolan, or anyone else, should not re-imagine/re-envision a classical hero through the prism of his own invention."

Where This Lands

Wilson's argument runs into two facts: the $1 billion box office and what Oscar voters said about Nolan at Academy screenings. Wilson says Nolan used her line as a north star and then made a film that ignores what it points to — the script insists on kindness, the camera celebrates something else. Nash says she brought a translator's close reading to a blockbuster that earns its own terms. Nolan says naming a device doesn't neutralize it. Oates says the rhetorical style of Wilson's critique was its own kind of error, separate from whether the critique was right. The film is still in theaters. The argument isn't going anywhere.

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