Christopher Nolan faces renewed fire from 'The Odyssey's' biggest critic

You can't say Christopher Nolan ever does things by halves, but even by his standards, the saga swirling round The Odyssey has been a bit much. The film smashed it at the global box office (cheers, Spider-Man: Brand New Day, for the assist), but what's followed has been one of the weirdest ongoing beefs I can remember—center stage is Emily Wilson, classicist, translator, and someone with Serious Feelings about Homer.

From 'Fun at the Movies' to 'Ashamed to Have Written It'

So, when Nolan's epic adaptation hit cinemas, Wilson started off sounding pretty balanced. The Telegraph even quoted her as saying she didn't want to come across as "snobby" but she did question Nolan's choices—apparently she found the messaging a bit "incoherent" and took issue with some omissions. Still, her verdict was basically 'grand spectacle, worth your popcorn money,' and she actively encouraged cinema-goers with: 'If you can see it on a big screen you should absolutely go.' She came across like someone who gets that a film isn't just a book with pictures, and that any adaptation's going to have to take a few liberties with Homer.

She went beyond that in an interview with Derek Thompson, giving Nolan credit as someone 'completely within his rights to reinvent in whatever way he sees fit.'

All very diplomatic—until, suddenly, it wasn't. Not long after release, Wilson did a full 180 with her review in the London Review of Books, and did not hold back. Among the more eyebrow-raising complaints: she says Nolan's Odyssey "lacks psychological, emotional, political and ethical depth," complains that "there are no sex scenes and the food looks horrible," and, in a move that got people talking, points to supporting characters as ticking the notorious "Black Best Friend" box. But the big one, the line people ran with, was Wilson announcing: "I would be ashamed to have written a word of this script."

Writers Weigh In and Round Two Begins

The review was so full-bore that it got heavyweight novelist Joyce Carol Oates to step in on X and publicly question Wilson's approach—Oates reckoned Wilson's take was weirdly adversarial, and stood up for Nolan's right to do his own thing with an old text. Here's what Oates had to say in her own words online:

within the world of translators this seems all the more surprising since all translations are, presumably, subjective & not equivalent to the original text. one would expect a translator, of all people, beholden to a text, in service to a text, to be just a wee bit more thoughtful & respectful of others who are acting in good faith just as (she would claim) she is.

Most of the time, after a spat like that, the critics go home, the dust settles, and the internet moves on. Only Wilson hasn't. Instead, she's gone back for another round, publishing yet another review, this time in The Atlantic. But here's the twist: this latest piece sounds nothing like the previous full-scale attack. Gone is the flame-throwing; now Wilson's in full analysis mode, breaking down Nolan's craft and her own reading of Homer—giving him credit where it's due but still sticking to her guns on what's missing.

She openly praises the Trojan Horse sequence as "an extraordinary feat of engineering" and singles out Elliot Page for delivering "a luminous, heartbreaking performance." Still, her major sticking point remains that Nolan, as ever, is so fascinated by mechanics and spectacle that he leaves the film a bit emotionally cold. She puts it like this: 'Verbally, we are told that people matter; visually, we are shown that they do not,' pointing out that while Nolan lets us inside the Trojan Horse, he never really lets us inside the characters themselves or their world. In Wilson's words, what you end up with is a "visually stunning, emotionally empty film."

Nolan's 'The Odyssey' is a visually stunning, emotionally empty film.

Why Can't Anyone Let This Go?

Normally, a big adaptation sparks a bit of academic chat, maybe a Twitter spat or two, and then everyone gets on with life. What makes The Odyssey's fallout so odd is just how long Wilson has kept circling back, each time with a fresh critique—sometimes furious, now more measured, but always driven by the sense that Nolan's film fundamentally doesn't reflect her own vision of Homer's original. Whether you side with her, Nolan, or just want everyone to move on, the whole thing's turned the film into a running argument over who really gets the last word on a classic—director, scholar, or anyone at all.

Christopher Nolan released 'The Odyssey' in 2026 to box office domination—and debate that just won't die.