Christopher Nolan's "The Odyssey": I Can't Believe I'm Defending Homer

I have been sitting with this review ever since I walked out of the theatre because I genuinely wasn’t sure where to begin.

So let me begin with my, already low, expectations. I knew that since the movie is almost 3 hrs long, I would have to wait for some of my favourite moments to make their way onscreen. So I waited. I waited for the movie to come alive, for it to surprise me, for it to make me feel something, and… it just never happened. It all felt bland, and strangely colourless. It felt like a film that couldn’t quite decide what it wanted to be. More than anything, it felt like a film that had stripped away so much of what makes the Odyssey one of the greatest stories ever told.

I left the theatre feeling like Nolan had made choice after choice to soften Odysseus, flatten the women, remove the religious and cultural context of ancient Greece, and drain so much of the emotional complexity from the story that, by the end, I honestly felt... nothing.

Matt Damon tried his best, and I actually think he was quite good in the deeper emotional scenes, so I don’t necessarily think this is entirely his fault. But he was given no opportunity to sharpen his cunning skills, no possibility to expand a trickster energy, no sense of humour, no smirk, nothing that makes you think this is the man who outwitted monsters, kings, gods, and entire civilizations.

This is definitely an Odysseus apologist take. Everything becomes about poor Odysseus wanting to return to his wife and son, and while that certainly exists in Homer, it isn’t all that exists. Odysseus is one of the most complicated characters in literature because he is brilliant and manipulative, compassionate and selfish, deeply human and deeply frustrating, often all at the same time. He’s supposed to make you question him. He’s supposed to make you uncomfortable. He’s supposed to have that little smile that makes you wonder whether he’s already ten steps ahead of everyone else in the room.

Instead, Nolan seems determined to explain away almost every difficult thing about him. His selfishness comes through far less than it should. Even his realization after the Trojan Horse, where we’re supposed to believe that he suddenly understands the brutality of what has happened, simply doesn’t work for me. Odysseus is the most intelligent and calculating figure in the entire poem, and yet we’re supposed to believe that after 10 years of war he somehow didn’t know what would happen once Greek soldiers poured out of that horse and into the city? It doesn’t make him more sympathetic. It makes him look unintelligent, and that is the one thing Odysseus simply cannot be.

Even when Nolan gives him moments that are supposed to generate sympathy, they fall flat. When he leaves Calypso’s island, we’re told Poseidon is going to punish him, but nothing really happens. There is no sustained sense of danger, no emotional weight, no feeling that he has survived something impossible. It just happens, and then we move on.

By sanding off all of those rough edges, Nolan doesn’t make Odysseus more human. He makes him less interesting.

What surprised me most is that the women aren’t rewritten so much as they’re diminished. They’re flatter, less engaging, they don’t really drive the story. They simply appear whenever Odysseus needs them to.

Circe is probably the best example. I did enjoy the Circe sequence, it was one of the more entertaining parts of the film, but it never becomes frightening enough. It never becomes magical enough. Circe should be unsettling. She should feel ancient, dangerous, unpredictable, the kind of woman who understands powers that ordinary mortals don’t. Instead, the whole sequence feels restrained. It’s almost as though Nolan is afraid of magic itself, and because of that, Circe loses the very thing that makes her extraordinary.

The same thing happens with Calypso. Rather than exploring the complexity of that relationship, everything once again becomes about poor Odysseus. His longing, his suffering, his desire to get home. The relationship feels simplified into another opportunity to make Odysseus more sympathetic instead of allowing us to wrestle with the complicated relationship between these two characters.

And then there’s Cassandra, or rather, there isn’t. One of the strangest omissions in the entire film is that Agamemnon returns home without any meaningful mention of Cassandra. She is absolutely central to understanding what happens when he reaches Mycenae. She isn’t just another captive woman, she’s a Trojan princess, a prophetess, a victim of war, and her being dragged into Agamemnon’s household as his war bounty explains so much about Clytemnestra’s rage and the tragedy that follows.

Even Odysseus’ supposed moral awakening after the Trojan Horse feels strangely selective. We’re asked to sympathize with his horror over what the Greeks have done, but the film still avoids showing us the real brutality inflicted upon women. There is no mention of the women captured from Troy that are shared among the soldiers, and probably in the bottom of Odysseus’ ships. As his soldiers die, and his ships are destroyed on the journey, there is no mention of the captured women also dying. There is also, conveniently, no mention of the ‘handmaidens’ Odysseus destroys along with all the suitors when he gets home.

That being said, “Athena” may be the biggest disappointment of all. I have nothing against Zendaya. my criticism isn’t directed at her performance because there is almost no role to perform. Athena appears a handful of times, says very little, and then disappears again. She never feels like Athena (and we are left with the implication that she might not actually be Athena). She never feels like the brilliant strategist, the goddess constantly guiding Odysseus, challenging him, protecting him, and shaping the entire journey. She’s reduced to little more than a narrative reminder that the gods exist.

What makes this especially frustrating is that the film has no problem mentioning Zeus over and over again. Zeus is constantly invoked, but the divine world itself feels almost completely absent. If you’re going to reduce the role of the gods, that’s certainly a creative choice. But when Athena, arguably the single most important divine figure in the Odyssey, becomes little more than a cameo, something essential has been lost.

By the end of the film, I couldn’t shake the feeling that Nolan simply isn’t very interested in the women of Greek mythology. They’re present because they have to be present, but they’re not allowed to be powerful, complicated, frightening, seductive, intelligent, or politically important. They exist largely to support Odysseus’ journey, and that’s a tremendous loss because Greek myth already gave us some of the richest female characters in world literature.

I honestly don’t even know where to begin with Agamemnon because every time he walked onto the screen I almost burst out laughing. I know that sounds harsh, but I genuinely don’t understand what happened here. In some strange way I’m actually okay with Agamemnon being remembered as a bit of a joke because he isn’t exactly a character I have much sympathy for, but I don’t think that was the intention.

Let’s start with the costume because... what is that outfit?

What is with all the metal? Not just Agamemnon, but throughout the film there is so much metal that it starts to feel like the production couldn’t decide what period, or even what world, it wanted to depict. And then there’s that enormous brush on top of the helmet. I don’t understand why directors keep making this choice every time they make something set in the ancient world? I know where that image comes from, and I know later Roman helmets had crests, but at this point surely we can make them look like something other than a giant plastic broom stuck to someone’s head??

The bigger problem, though, is that Agamemnon feels less like the king of Mycenae and more like a Batman villain who has wandered into the wrong movie. Everything is exaggerated. Everything is theatrical. This film never feels grounded in the Bronze Age, or even in Greek myth. It feels like someone trying very hard to make an ancient king look intimidating without ever stopping to ask what actually made Agamemnon intimidating in the first place.

One of the few things I actually did find interesting was the decision to make Iphigenia appear to be a toddler. I still think it’s a very strange choice because it fundamentally changes the myth. Traditionally, Iphigenia is old enough to be promised in marriage to Achilles, and that matters because it shapes the tragedy of her sacrifice. (I will be writing a separate post at the end of the week on Artemis and Iphigenia at Aulis in which we will take a deeper dive into this impactful moment of sacrifice). I don’t necessarily think it’s a better choice or a worse choice. I just found myself wondering why is she a small child?

Unfortunately, that kind of question kept coming up throughout the film. Why this choice? Why remove that? Why simplify this relationship? Why change something that already works? Sometimes adaptations answer those questions with an exciting new interpretation. Here I was mostly left confused.

Interestingly, one of my favourite moments in the entire film comes from Menelaus. When Telemachus hears that Orestes killed Clytemnestra, he reacts exactly as someone raised by Penelope would react. “He killed his mother?” And Menelaus immediately replies, “He avenged his father.”

I actually loved that exchange because, for one brief moment, two completely different moral worlds collide. Telemachus hears matricide, Menelaus hears justice. There is genuine tension there. There is something to think about. I only wish the film had trusted moments like that more often instead of constantly explaining itself.

In the end, Agamemnon and Menelaus left me with exactly the same feeling. They aren’t interesting because they’re morally complicated, they’re simply exaggerated. One borders on cartoonish, the other borders on grotesque, and neither of them feels particularly Greek. They feel like modern ideas of ancient kings, dressed in too much metal, speaking dialogue that tells us who they are instead of allowing us to discover it ourselves.

One of the things I kept waiting for throughout the film was that feeling of wonder, fear, or even uncertainty that Homer creates so effortlessly, because the Odyssey is full of moments where the audience should feel as though the world has suddenly become dangerous, unpredictable, and entirely outside human control. That feeling never really arrived. Instead, every encounter with the supernatural felt strangely restrained, almost as though the film was constantly pulling back just before it became truly mythical.

The Cyclops sequence is probably the biggest disappointment because it should have been one of the most memorable moments in the entire film. This is supposed to be Odysseus at his absolute best, clever enough to outwit the ancient monster, and yet the whole sequence passes by without any real suspense or psychological tension. It should have been terrifying, claustrophobic, and exhilarating all at once, but it never managed to become any of those things.

Circe suffers from a similar problem, although I actually enjoyed her sequence far more than the Cyclops. Circe should feel ancient, dangerous, she is a woman who understands powers that ordinary mortals cannot even comprehend. And still, the film never quite lets her become that figure. The magic is present, but it feels more like how men imagine witches use magic, then the true complexity of Circe’s pharmakeia.

The Sirens were perhaps the most disappointing of Nolan’s “monsters”. I liked the decision not to let the audience hear their song because, in theory, it allows us to imagine something more beautiful than anything the film could possibly compose. At the same time, I couldn’t help wondering whether it was also an easy way out. How do you create a song so irresistible that men willingly sail toward death? Perhaps you don’t. What was frustrating was the fact that Nolan doesn’t let us see the sirens. They are engulfed in fog, but their shapes appear human rather than the fearsome half woman half bird depicted on ancient Greek artifacts. Even without the use of CGI (costumes are still a thing in film are they not?) Nolan could have given us at least the foggy shapes of these rare creatures, even if he didn’t let us hear their song.

Ironically, the sequence that worked best for me wasn’t a monster at all. It was the Underworld. For the first time, the film slowed down long enough to allow atmosphere to do some of the storytelling, and I found myself genuinely engaged by what I was watching. Elliot Page, in particular, gives one of the strongest performances in the film during these scenes, and there was finally a sense that we had entered a place fundamentally different from the world of ordinary human experience.

What struck me most by the end of the film, however, wasn’t any individual monster. It was the absence of the gods. Zeus is mentioned constantly, almost to the point where you expect the divine world to suddenly break through into the story, but it never really does. “Athena” appears so infrequently that she barely registers as the goddess who shapes almost every stage of Odysseus’ journey, and beyond a few brief appearances, the Olympians feel strangely distant from a poem that is, at its heart, built upon the constant interaction between gods and mortals.

When you remove the gods, soften the monsters, tone down the magic, and strip away the religious imagination that saturates Homer, you’re left with something that no longer feels particularly mythical. The Odyssey isn’t simply an adventure story about a man trying to get home. It is a story about a world where divine forces are real, monsters inhabit the edges of the sea, enchantresses can transform men into animals, and every island carries the possibility that the rules of ordinary life no longer apply.

By the end of the film, I realized that I had never once been afraid for Odysseus because nothing in Nolan’s world ever felt truly beyond human control. His monsters don’t inspire fear, his gods don’t inspire awe, and his magic never feels dangerous. They are all there, technically, but none of them ever completely comes alive.

There were a handful of performances and moments that genuinely worked for me, and they’re worth talking about because they also highlight what the rest of the film was missing. Ironically, the characters I connected with most were rarely the ones the film seemed most interested in.

Without question, my favourite performance was Tom Holland as Telemachus. I thought he was excellent from beginning to end, and in many ways he became the emotional centre of the film. There is a sincerity to his performance that never feels forced. He has vulnerability without becoming weak, curiosity without becoming naïve, and there are moments where I genuinely forgot I was watching Tom Holland because I simply believed him as Telemachus.

Another performance that stayed with me was Elliot Page, particularly during the Underworld sequence. That entire section of the film suddenly had a weight and atmosphere that much of the rest of the story struggled to find, and Elliot Page brought a quiet intensity that made those scenes among the most memorable in the film.

I also thought Penelope was... fine. That’s probably the best way I can describe it. I don’t have any major complaints about the performance itself, but I also never felt that Penelope became the extraordinary woman she has the potential to be. This isn’t really Anne Hathaway’s fault, like so many of the cast, she simply wasn’t given enough to do. Penelope is one of the most intelligent figures in the Odyssey. She survives 20 years of political pressure, manipulation, uncertainty, and constant negotiation while holding her household together through sheer intelligence and patience. Here, she mostly waits.

I wanted to leave Helen until the end because, out of all the women in the film, she’s the one who has generated the most discussion before anyone had even seen the movie. There was so much conversation about Lupita Nyong’o being cast as Helen of Troy that you would have thought she was one of the central figures in the film. And when I watched it, and I honestly couldn’t believe how little there was for her to do. She’s on screen for what feels like five minutes, she has very few lines, and almost everything that makes Helen one of the most fascinating women in ancient literature has disappeared.

The decision that troubled me most, was not Nolan’s casting choices, Helen was after after all born from an egg, but it was Nolan’s implication that Menelaus brutally injures Helen, leaving visible scars on her face. This is an enormous departure from Homer, and I kept asking myself why this choice was made. What does it add? What are we supposed to learn from it? Why does Helen need to carry physical evidence of punishment in order for the audience to understand that the Trojan War had consequences?

So, here I am defending Homer.

I expected to spend this review arguing that Homer had been unfair to women and that Nolan had found new ways to give them agency. Instead, I find myself defending the complexity that Homer actually gives Helen against a modern adaptation that, in my view, simplifies her into a woman defined primarily by suffering, remorse, and punishment.

What disappoints me most is that Helen is one of the most enduring and debated women in world literature precisely because she resists easy interpretation. Is she guilty? Is she manipulated? Is she a victim? Is she politically astute? Is she divinely compelled? Is she exercising agency? Ancient authors never completely agree, and that uncertainty is what makes her so compelling. Nolan replaces that ambiguity with something much simpler. His Helen apologizes. His Helen suffers. His Helen is punished.

For a film that repeatedly asks us to sympathize with Odysseus, I found it remarkable that it had so little interest in extending that same complexity to Helen. In the end, despite all of the discussion surrounding her casting, she becomes one more underwritten character in a film filled with underwritten characters, and I couldn’t help feeling that one of the most extraordinary women in Greek mythology deserved far, far better.

Over the past few days I’ve been sharing some of these thoughts online, and the response has been exactly what you would expect. There have been some wonderful conversations, some thoughtful disagreements, and of course, there have been the comments that are so completely unhinged that you simply have to laugh and move on.

One response, however, keeps coming up over and over again. People say, “Well, this will encourage audiences to go and read Homer.” Or they’ll say, “People will Google the Odyssey afterwards.” And yes, some absolutely will. Some people will pick up the poem for the very first time because of this film, and I genuinely hope they do.

But if we’re being honest, I don’t think that’s what the majority of Nolan’s audience do.

Most compare one adaptation to another. They compare Nolan’s Odyssey to Troy, or to Helen of Troy, or to whatever version they happen to have seen before. They don’t usually go back to Homer himself, and even when they do, reading Homer isn’t quite as straightforward as simply opening a book and working your way through it.

This is exactly why context matters.

Homer isn’t just telling a story. He’s composing poetry, song, entertainment, and he is writing within a religious, political, linguistic, and cultural world that would have been immediately recognizable to his audience and is often completely unfamiliar to ours. You can absolutely read Homer on your own, and I encourage everyone to do exactly that, but reading Homer in a vacuum isn’t the same thing as understanding Homer. Context, language, translation, oral tradition, ritual and the rhythm of poetry matters. Understanding why a particular epithet appears over and over again matters. Understanding why Athena intervenes when she does, why hospitality governs every encounter, why sacrifice structures relationships between mortals and gods, why a bow carries symbolic meaning, why Helen speaks the way she does, all of those things matter.

That’s why we have historians, classicists, archaeologists, linguists, literary scholars, and humanities professors. Our job has never simply been to tell people what Homer wrote. Our job is to help explain why he wrote it, how his audience understood it, and why, nearly three thousand years later, we’re still reading it.

What I find deeply ironic is that we’re living through a moment when universities continue to close or reduce humanities departments, history departments, classics programs, and language programs, while films based on the ancient world become enormous cultural events. Clearly people are interested. Clearly these stories still matter… so something isn’t connecting.

So yes, adaptations have value. They start conversations and introduce people to stories they might never have encountered otherwise. But this is what I keep coming back to: What is this particular film actually teaching us?

What does it tell us about ancient Greece? About Mycenaean culture? About Homeric poetry? About religion? About ritual? About heroism? About the complicated moral universe that makes the Odyssey one of the greatest works of literature ever composed?

For me, the answer is... almost nothing.

Not the visual world, the language, the monsters, the humour, and not the emotional contradictions that make these characters unforgettable.

Strip away the names, and this could almost have been any generic story about a soldier trying to get home.

That’s what disappoints me most.

Not so much that Christopher Nolan changed Homer, though that is upsetting. But ok, every generation changes Homer. It’s that, in changing him, this adaptation forgot what made him extraordinary in the first place.

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