Issue #99: End Of An Odyssey 🏹

Took us while because Cate got laid up with a sore throat so bad death was preferable, but we’d never miss our chance to put our two cents in on Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. This has been an exquisite year for movies and we still have a third of it left to go. Huzzah! As one of the biggest blockbusters of 2026 (so far…?) we couldn’t let it pass us by without adding to The Discourse™. While we both liked it, we still have different — if overlapping — perspectives. Forgive the length. We were enthusiastic. Lucky number 99. Enjoy!

You can’t spoil a 3,000-year old story. I’ll hold to this, even as a spoiler-averse person myself. As theaters fill and box offices burst, it’s important to remember that this is the same story you’ve heard before, the same one your family wore the cassette tape out listening to in the car. What you’re watching is simply one interpretation—or maybe not simply, because, at least for myself, I found not a lot to be simple about Christopher Nolan’s rendition of The Odyssey. 

Such that you can “spoil” something about Nolan’s version, it’s about the particular flairs he puts on the story. Of course here we are once again doing nonlinear storytelling (likely place for him to have been!), and stories of smart men stuck in a labyrinth far bigger than themselves. Emotions are steely but deeply felt, cool like marble and just as dense. As is also Nolan’s way, a lot of this isn’t twisted into the story so much as planted to be better understood later on: When Eumaeus (a great John Leguizamo) tells Odysseus’ son Telemachus (a strong Tom Holland, unafraid to tip the hand on his emotions) that Odysseus was the one who taught him to strategically expose his underbelly in order to draw an enemy in, the table is set on who this Odysseus is before we’ve even gotten to see his face. He tells his men when they leave Troy that they should deviate from Menelaus’ sea route and see what favor of the gods and adventures they can find. 

In a certain respect, lines like this can feel like a script bludgeoning you over the head with plants and payoffs (even mundane things like Odysseus cautioning his men that they shouldn’t kill the sheep they find because “sheep run in flocks” would feel almost like a second-thought ADR’d line if you didn’t see Matt Damon deliver it himself). When Circe warns that she views what she did to Odysseus' men as simply pulling off their disguises, it’s a straightforward way to underline and tease the movie’s runner about the brutalities of war. But I’m not so sure that’s a bad thing. The Odyssey is an adaptation brimming with ideas. They’re anxious, great, weaponized, interrogated, and constantly recontextualized. That they never quite settle into a single narrative thread of interpretation is perhaps the movie’s greatest strength. 

Let’s (as both gods and men have done now for thousands of years) zero in on even just Odysseus. Nolan said he cast Damon because he can be Jason Bourne without losing his everyman qualities, much like Odysseus himself. Beyond that, he’s likeable; you could put him on his own on Mars and let him carry a whole movie. Here Odysseus is fractured, fragmented through war and the eyes of those who watch him. To his son, he’s a legend; to his wife, a hope; to the island-dwellers he and his men encounter, he’s something to be dealt with; to his fallen friends, something else entirely. 

The Odyssey is constantly pushing Odysseus forward towards Ithaca, through his trials, towards that classic Nolan denouement. And yet, the movie resists reduction to any single reading. Odysseus might be different from the version of him across Homer’s 24 books, and different still from the various translations of him across cultures. He’s not as much of a proud trickster, an outright liar, and to some not enough of a “complicated man.” But I’d argue that doesn’t make him not a complex one, particularly given the way the story pulls on his many sides. 

There’s a part of me that is disappointed by the specificity of Nolan’s vision. It’s hard to not feel some texture of the story lost. I love the Borg feeling you get engaging with media that’s so totally on a different wavelength you simply have to surrender your own reasoning in order to comprehend it; that’s lost a little bit here by translating the story so clearly. While I understand the clarity of focus that comes from reflecting the story to and from Odysseus, I can’t say I don’t miss the ways that Calypso, Penelope, or Helen might’ve been fleshed out closer to the original story. Again, there are times when the dialogue of The Odyssey hinges too closely to perfunctory (a shame for a poetry adaptation, but at the very least often counterbalanced by the imagery it inspires—its own form of poetic translation). To adapt something is to lose some part of it. This isn’t the first time I’m miffed by even a small story change, and it won’t be the last. 

But what fascinates me about this version isn’t just what’s lost in adaptation but what’s gained from it. After months (and months) of speculation and discourse, commentators pretending to have been fed by crumbs of publicity, The Odyssey quietly makes its case for all its anachronisms. The costuming, the parlance—it’s all swept up in a specific vision of the story, coming to us as shorthand to better render the emotions of the text. (Not unlike the cast of Oppenheimer, a full deck who an audience needs to immediately remember as a key character in order to keep up with every development stuffed into that movie.) The Odyssey has to be taken as a whole thing in order to be fully talked about, a rarer feat for a movie to demand of its audience these days, even when it deserves it. But again, that’s Nolan’s whole thing. 

Perhaps the funniest Nolan preoccupation that loops through the Odyssey is his obsession with time. As mentioned, his works often loop in on themselves, exploring the ways time is felt and lived at different speeds (Dunkirk), genres (Tenet, arguably), understandings (Memento, The Prestige) and consequences (Interstellar, Inception). In the past decade especially, there’s a bit of anxiety, a sense that we’re running out of time—to hug our loved ones, to save the world, to get our boys off the beach, to fix our own mistakes. Homer’s Odyssey is, in some sense, the worst-case scenario, losing 10 years to the whims of gods and poor decisions. That may make for some great tales, but it also leaves you far from home, concerned whether your wife will love you, let alone recognize you, when you make it there. Nolan’s movie isn’t sensual in this regard, but it is romantic, in both the capital- and lower-case traditions. Damon’s Odysseus misses his wife and his family, loves his land and his relationships, a heart thread pulling him home even when he literally can’t remember it. Before he leaves for a 10-year war he worries about all he’ll miss, if he’ll ever come home; it takes him another decade to make it home from that. And in the end, he and Penelope still have time to do what they wanted. Who wouldn’t travel years for a few more minutes with someone you thought was lost to you? 

The Odyssey can’t solve the fact that we’re all only given so much time to live. But Nolan ruches the story, folding it in on itself across time. That collapsing brings things together, reminding us of the timelessness of Odyssey’s players, foibles, fascinations, and politics. Like Romeo + Juliet, it exists as very much a product of its time and its own little dream pocket of it. The idea of Greek armor and heroism is melded with our own understanding of story and politics, of character and responsibility, of history, and of Nolan’s preoccupations. It’s like a needle pulling thread through a folding fan, or the way whole cities in Inception curl in on themselves. 

Seen this way it’s the best kind of film: I’ll admit I was a bit shocked to see how many people see it as simply a War on Terror/Iraq War consideration. But I don’t think that’s wrong, per se; when you’re puncturing through so many waves of history and the world, the timelessness of the themes—what we owe to each other, how even a small act might set the world on fire, for better or worse—can map onto so many things. I think it’s great that Nolan can invoke deeper trans readings about the film! Despite what some classists may think, that ambiguity is a strength not a bug. It’s myth as mirrorball. And somehow maybe his fourth or fifth best movie (at least) in my eyes. What a delight! After all, there’s nothing simple about Nolan’s work.

I’ve never read The Odyssey, and I don’t have any particular inclination to do so now. I likely never will. Classics are not my bag and I make no bones about my lack of curiosity in that regard. I have always bumped against the idea of canons and “foundational texts,” however true those distinctions may be. Not because older works don’t have value, but because I’m all too aware of how and by whom said value is ascribed. So when Christopher Nolan announced that his next film would be a blockbuster adaptation of the epic poem, it gave me pause. 

Nolan is my favourite director, and that’s something I’ve always been just a little bit embarrassed about. That’s not to say there’s anything the least bit unique or novel about admiring one of the towering storytellers of our time. But because his work can be so clinical, I often find it hard to articulate why I, as a hopeless romantic, think Nolan is in fact one of the most romantic directors working today. His films have taken on a global scale; they lament the world we have and wish for the world we could build. Far be it from me to spend my time championing the output of some British man who is not hurting for champions. But the reason I connect with his films so deeply is because he operates almost exclusively on an existential plane that I frequent by dint of anxiety: what has the world come to, and how did we get here?

I’ve been saying for years now that Nolan is a technician. His plots are intricate by design, and they greatly reward revisit and study. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve watched and rewatched his oeuvre. But what I’ve found in all that time immersing myself in his fixation with the boundaries of time is that despite his reputation as an analytical and mathematical filmmaker (true), he is also a deeply emotional director, methodically laying out his worries and neuroses onscreen. What I’m now calling his Apocalypse Trilogy (Tenet, Oppenheimer and The Odyssey) paints a picture of a man afraid both of and for the future, and deeply haunted by the world he’s seen us build for ourselves. 

That’s why it was no real surprise that I loved The Odyssey. Aided in no small part by its IMAX bona fides, I found it to be a lyrical and meditative herculean feat. The endless scope of Nolan’s imagination is his greatest asset. He is able to conjure worlds that feel real and lived in, but somehow still impossible. In this film’s “time of apparent magic,” he and his longtime cinematographic collaborator Hoyte van Hoytema make pictures that harken back to our earlier civilization. The world is expansive yet small, with landscapes that continually threaten to reclaim their evolutionary primacy. The action setpieces are visceral and haunting, invoking might and magic only just enough to question their reality. 

Nolan’s expanded company of players is well-chosen to realize this vision. Matt Damon as the titular Odysseus is cursed by hubris to be wracked with age, guilt and forgetting. His theological awakening feels earned and true; he is a man changed by the cost the world has paid for his pride. Anne Hathaway’s Penelope is a fierce queen and abandoned wife left to defend her kingdom from an unruly band of suitors insistent on taking her husband’s place. Her performance is striking and thunderous – a clear rebuke to the critics who drove her into hiding all the way back in 2013. Tom Holland’s Telemachus is a boy playing at manhood; his baby face and teenaged star image work overtime to convey that he can only reach maturity when he opens his eyes to the realities of the world. Robert Pattinson’s Antinous is a slimy opportunist and coward brought to life by his own lanky, comedic physicality; a true standout whose line deliveries have become memes with good reason. 

A returned and renewed Elliot Page brings heartbreaking contemporary subtext to Nolan’s reinterpretation of a character most famously known as a liar. His diminutive stature frames Sinon not as a deceiver, but as a vulnerable young man, abandoned to violence. Lupita Nyong’o makes a meal of her limited screentime, bringing rage, fury and regret to sisters Helen and Clytemnestra as they tangle with the consequences of undeclared ambitions, mere pawns in the quarrels of men. And in Samantha Morton’s hands, Circe becomes a witch all too familiar with the menace men bring with war — vicious in defending her fear and grieving the safety her isolation should afford her.

Thematically The Odyssey is a big film, and it’s a lot to wrap one’s head around in one sitting. But what I came away with is an understanding of a divinity that exists not alongside the natural world, but as one in the same. Nolan’s gods do not reveal themselves in the same way as the text, but they do make themselves known. As Athena (Zendaya) tells Odysseus, “Who doesn’t understand thunder? Fire? A child’s smile? A good harvest?” Zeus sends thunder to castigate Calypso as she holds Odysseus hostage, and Posiedon sends rough seas to avenge his son. The land, the sea, the air; it is all divine. The world is alive and we do not own it. It grants us permission to be here, and the price we pay is adherence to Zeus’s law. Odysseus’ fortunes only change when he accepts this. 

“Zeus’s law” is the driving principle of the film’s plot, but it’s nothing more than the much-lauded golden rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Treat others as you wish to be treated. What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. Any way that you slice it, the message is clear — the foundational operating principle of our civilization is a basic expectation of dignity, equality and kindness. 

Odysseus’ flouting of this principle during the sack of Troy — his original sin — is precisely what becomes his undoing. He “turned a fight into a hunt” through his trick with the Trojan horse, and “to burn the walls of Troy was to burn the world entire.” That initial violation, that unleashing of a decade’s worth of frustration over an unjust war transformed him and his men into, not victors, but predators — of every kind. By betraying his fellow man and taking advantage of the people he meets along his journey, he breaks the world, and with it becomes the mythic menace that collapses the home he’s so longed for. That one of the biggest blockbusters of the year asserts and reasserts (and reasserts) that our world only works if we resolve to extend each other grace and consideration is a marvel. To hear Nolan tell it, when we don’t, we destroy the very fabric of society and ourselves. Even the most minute awareness of the world we live in right now would make it self-evident as to why he might currently find himself preoccupied with such an idea, and why he might feel compelled to explore and process it in his work.

As has been endlessly observed, Nolan’s Odyssey is not a faithful adaptation of Homer’s original. Notably, classicist Emily Wilson — from whose translation Nolan drew inspiration — wrote a scathing review for the London Review of Books. In it she opines the film’s thematic changes as misguided and claims that she “would be ashamed to have written any part of this script.” But lucky for us she is no screenwriter, and she’s a piss poor film critic to boot. Proof positive is that the essay’s most controversial — and nakedly reductive — assertions no longer even appear in the piece. 

Though some share a measure of her critiques, Wilson’s impressive writing belies a fundamental misunderstanding of the very function of filmic storytelling. A novel is not a script, and an adaptation is not a copy. One would think a distinguished translator would understand that this medium is itself an act of translation, and in fact she demonstrates that the concept is at least a familiar one. Yet she somehow fails to see that in the same way her own lauded retelling of the poem reconsiders the roles of women and brings them closer to a current understanding of how we should interface with these stories, so too does Nolan’s thematic transformation. His Helen and Clytemnestra stand in for the physical and psychological toll women pay for men’s unending violence, and his Circe gives voice to the gendered sexual brutality that always accompanies war, ever-present at the edges of the frame. 

In the leap from page to screen, the changes he makes reflect the ideas and understanding he wishes to convey. This version of The Odyssey is an ancient tale turned contemporary fable for a world that is falling apart at the seams — drowning in capitalist exploitation, and overflowing with concurrent genocides. And it has to be. What would be the point of retelling the story if not as a means to reveal some new fundamental truth about who we believe ourselves to be? 

Put plainly, what gives Wilson’s reinterpretation cultural authority that she cannot or will not extend to Nolan? It’s an egregious epistemic trespass from someone most famous for doing precisely what she now denigrates him for doing in turn. Film theory and scholarship do not cease to have meaning or rigor simply because you’ve decided that movies are a lesser medium and are therefore beneath you. It sits in stark contrast to doctoral candidate Zhong Shu’s excellent interview with Nolan, in which she both interrogates and pushes back on his perspectives. Nolan’s Odyssey may not be the one Wilson wanted, but it serves its function; to use an ancient text as scaffolding to hang the anxieties of today. Every film is a time capsule.

Nolan’s Odyssey does precisely what myths are meant to — use the stories of our past to weave truths about the fabric of our present-day lives. His lack of fidelity to the original is a feature, not a bug. It is in fact, the entire point. We have broken the world, and with The Odyssey he tries to show us how we might put it back together. 

If Netflix starts being a better TV friend then we will too 😤. The tiny rain icon on your weather app is crushing small businesses. Pop stars are being kinda rude about their vinyl releases. The soothing unsubtlety of the Shen Yun documentary. Someone is mysteriously snapping up used books around the world…

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Zosha + Cate <3