The Odyssey was a big hit with critics and is performing incredibly well at the box office (more below), but not everyone was won over by Christopher Nolan's take on Homer's epic tale, and for some, it goes well beyond the "woke" casting decisions.
Emily Wilson, acclaimed academic and translator of The Iliad and The Odyssey, shared her review of the movie with the London Review of Books, and her write-up was pretty scathing.
“The film’s vision is too confused, its characters too underdeveloped, to deliver what it half-promises in terms of big ideas — although it is very good at conveying big bangs and big giants,” Wilson writes.
“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 neighbors. 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.
This next sentence has garnered a lot of attention on social media: "There are no sex scenes, and all the food looks horrible.”
This isn't the first time the film's detractors have accused Nolan of "dumbing down" the source material, but the filmmaker would be the first to admit that he set out to make the story more accessible to general audiences, and in that, he appears to have succeeded.
Domestic box office updates show that the movie finished $12.3M higher than studio estimates on Sunday, and actually passed $650M worldwide in its second weekend.
According to Deadline's latest update: "The Odyssey is expected to cross $330M+ on its 13th day of release, not only besting Oppenheimer but becoming Nolan’s third-highest-grossing movie at the domestic B.O. after The Dark Knight ($534.9M) and The Dark Knight Rises ($448.1M)."
With China, Japan and Korea still to come, The Odyssey is expected to pass $1.5 billion by the end of its theatrical run.
"Christopher Nolan’s next film The Odyssey is a mythic action epic shot across the world using brand-new IMAX film technology. The film brings Homer’s foundational saga to IMAX film screens for the first time and opens in theaters everywhere on July 17, 2026," said Universal Pictures in a statement when the project was announced.
The poem has been adapted (sometimes very loosely) a number of times before, starting with the 1911 silent film by Giuseppe de Liguoro, and followed by 1954’s Ulysses starring Kirk Douglas. The Cohen Brothers' O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) is also based on the epic adventure, as is 2024’s The Return starring Ralph Fiennes.
Anime fans may also recall the '80s Ulysses 31 series, which put a futuristic spin on the tale.