A whirlwind of hype surrounds Christopher Nolan’s upcoming film—but in deciding to tackle one of the most influential and ancient works of Greek myth, the director has created his own obstacle-laden path to the premiere. Questions of historical accuracy, deviation and respect for the original poem abound, and as online discussion evolves into consistent furore, the film has called the very meaning of adaptation into question.
Space. Dreams. Batman. All classic Christopher Nolan subjects. An ancient Greek poem composed almost 3000 years ago? Perhaps not so much. And yet, since its announcement last December, the British-American director’s upcoming adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey (featuring a star-studded cast including Matt Damon, Tom Holland and Zendaya) has been the subject of intense hype, discussion and scrutiny online.
Originally sung by bards entertaining ancient Greek dinner parties, the Odyssey tells the story of Ithacan king Odysseus and his long journey home after ten years fighting in the Trojan War. Beset by vicious monsters, scheming witches and vendetta-bearing gods, the crafty, quick-witted hero must overcome various obstacles to finally return to his wife Penelope and son Telemachus.
Upon closer inspection, the work seems made for Nolan; the director is no stranger to complex plots, non-linear timelines and brooding male protagonists with strained familial relationships, after all. Following the success of Oppenheimer (and the larger ‘Barbenheimer’ phenomenon) in 2023, anticipation for the film has been growing by the day. In an unprecedented move for the film industry, tickets for IMAX 70MM showings went on sale at 5 am BST on Thursday last week and the majority of venues were sold out within an hour—an entire year before the film’s release.
However, this excitement is matched by criticism. Leaked set photos and promotional material are consistently igniting uproarious debate on social media. One photograph of a brooding Matt Damon as Odysseus was torn apart for flaunting anachronistic armour—“this is what alt right larpers [Live action role players] would wear”, X user @pyetheiia posted in dismay—while history enthusiasts expressed incredulity at a Viking boat being used for a film set in Bronze Age Greece.
These concerns may be nitpicky, but they are valid. While they won’t decide a film’s success, blatant deviations and visual blunders not only threaten immersion but hint at laziness and a lack of respect towards the source material.
Indeed, backlash hit a new high last week as the promotional slogan “Defy the Gods” was slammed with ridicule, with many pointing out that the principle message of the Odyssey is the exact opposite. While a marketing tagline is not the most reliable insight into a film’s core message—and Christopher Nolan himself has frequently presented hubris as a fatal flaw—the discourse and passion online highlights how sensitive this subject truly is. The Odyssey is a work many hold close to their hearts, and if he alienates this group, Nolan risks turning a significant portion of his audience against the feature.
Complaints of inaccuracy, though, have no obvious solutions due to the very nature of the epic. Many have critiqued the film’s apparent lack of Mycenaean Greek representation (the time period between 1600 and 1060 BC which reflects the culture and tradition depicted in Homer). And yet, the Odyssey is a folkloric epic poem; it existed within the oral tradition long before it was first written down in the 8th century BC. We cannot simply look up its publication date or ask Homer (who may not have existed at all) what historical time period Odysseus was in when he was dealing with inhospitable one-eyed giants. After all, we are dealing with a fantastical world of gods and monsters—one that can’t be relied on for accuracy.
It is also impossible, to a certain extent, to remove the modern lenses through which we perceive the classics today. This was the case also in ancient Greece, as @VeliteAquila argued in an X thread: “Many point to mentions of boar tusk helmets and chariots and insist adaptations of the Trojan war must stick to the Bronze age, but the Greeks loved to depict scenes of the war with equipment contemporary to their time”.
Today, popular perception of antiquity has been irretrievably influenced by previous interpretations throughout history. From Renaissance-era paintings to Shakespearean plays to 20th century sword-and-sandal films, the Classics we inherit have been shaped, altered and distorted by all the forms they have taken on over time. Greek myth, with its rich banquet of stories featuring complicated heroes, mystical sorceresses and malevolent creatures, has become a concrete staple of our collective imagination and language through centuries of regurgitation, dissemination and interpretation.
How to handle this nebulous concept of accuracy, then, for an adaptation of the Odyssey? If Nolan commits to a specific aesthetic, a group of people will always be dissatisfied. If he doesn’t, many will deem him disrespectful of the original work.
And it’s not just the historical accuracy question that impedes the text’s capacity for adaptation. Its convoluted narrative, sheer range of characters and ten-year time span makes for daunting source material, and its significance to the development of literature makes Nolan’s task akin to adapting the entire Christian Bible.
It is notoriously difficult to adapt any book of such length into a film without significant sacrifices. Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy (2004), a self-professed version of the Iliad, condensed 15,693 lines of bickering gods, eye-wateringly elaborate ship catalogues and entertaining display of human fallibility into 163 minutes of sword-and-sandal action.
Brad Pitt, bearing a somewhat Transatlantic accent, plays a rash yet stoic Achilles. The Olympian gods are omitted entirely; a drastic yet logical move to reduce the character count. As far as visual spectacle is concerned, the film is dripping in it. Ornate jewellery, bronzed armour and glinting weapons, the thousands of sand grains you can viscerally feel flying through the air; everything in this world seems gilded, a weather-beaten shade of gold.
Aside from brazenly squeezing the decade-long Trojan war narrative into the span of a few weeks, Troy’s most glaring crime as an adaptation lies in its cavalier rewriting of the relationship between Achilles, Patroclus (Garrett Hedlund) and Briseis (Rose Bryne). What is widely accepted as romantic love between the two men is botched into an unexplored cousin bond and replaced by a Stockholm-syndrome romance between the “best of the Greeks” and his priestess-turned-captured-slave-girl Briseis. While the lack of gods and turbo pacing may be a little irksome, the complete overhaul of the plot’s emotional core is pretty much unforgivable.
Troy may well be remembered as an epic failure, but where Petersen faltered, others have found success. Based loosely on Homer’s Odyssey, O Brother Where Art Thou (2000), the Coen Brothers’ comedic romp through 1937 rural Mississippi, is both a gloriously inventive gamble and a masterclass in meaningful adaptation. As protagonist Ulysses Everett McGill leads two other escaped convicts on a haphazard, obstacle-laden quest to retrieve hidden treasure, what begins as a satirical slapstick comedy deepens into a poignant exploration of society, humanity and morality.
The genius of this film lies in the Coens’ approach to adaptation as more of an interwoven foundation, rather than a line-by-line recreation. They draw on Homer’s thematic and aesthetic components to elevate their own creation: singing sirens and cult-like lotus eaters add a touch of magical realism while the blind prophet—an allusion to Tiresias—reminds us of the fixed nature of destiny as he tells the three men: “fear not the obstacles in your path, for fate has vouched safe your reward”.
There may not be man-eating Cyclopes or giant Laestrygonians in this film, but monsters still lurk around every corner. Appearing initially as a charming Bible salesman, John Goodman’s hulking, one-eyed character “Big Dan” proceeds to beat and mug our beloved prison escapees and brutally squashes a toad—believed to be a transfigured version of Pete—between his fingers. While the Coens’ aren’t literally recreating Homer’s description of the Cyclops (“he seized and dashed two men to the ground like whelps, and their brains ran out and stained the earth”), the scene visually replicates this horror, its atrocity even more tangible due to the fact a real person is committing these deeds, rather than a mythical beast.
“Big Dan” doesn’t live alone in a cave, tend sheep, or viciously eat Ulysses’ companions, but he is presented with the same merciless savagery of Polyphemus. His monstrosity lies in his human cruelty—and duplicity. Not only is he a crook, but he is also revealed to be a member of the Ku Klux Klan, alongside governor candidate Homer Stokes (Wayne Duvall). Two-faced salesmen, corrupt politicians, and bigoted extremists; this Odyssey is not so fictional, and its monsters are very much real and recognisable to the modern-day viewer.
Though subtler, such engagement with Homer’s epic is both more creative, and more effective, than blockbuster remakes such as Troy. By taking the story into the realm of relatability for a modern audience, O Brother brings its enduring message of hubris, homecoming and perseverance closer and sharper into view.
That’s not to say more literal remakes can’t achieve this also; released earlier this year, The Return (2024) presented a painstakingly faithful recreation of the Odyssey’s second half. Aided by the acting chops of Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche, the film sensitively—and successfully—examines the agonising complexity of Odysseus’ reunion with Penelope after twenty long and scarring years.
The one major deviation Uberto Pasolini made in The Return was the omission of Odysseus and Telemachus (Charlie Plummer) killing twelve unfaithful slave girls at the epic’s conclusion. Deemed too immoral or abhorrent an act for the sympathetic Fiennes-Odysseus to commit, its absence marks yet another dilemma facing Nolan: the moral chaos of Greek myth, and its opposition to Hollywood box office success.
It’s an issue filmmakers have dealt with before. Although one is a dramatic historical war film and the other a colourful kids’ cartoon, both Troy (2004) and Disney’s Hercules (1997) transform Achilles and Hercules into stereotypical romantic heroes for this precise reason. By proving their heroism through acts of love, rather than brutal strength or a propensity for killing, the protagonists remain morally on side with modern audiences. While on a positive note, this allows for female characters such as Megara and Briseis to be further fleshed out, it also allows production companies to simply exploit Greek myth as a recognisably enticing backdrop. Look beyond the swords, sandals and sorcery and you’ll find a generic plot you’ve watched a hundred times.
Greek myth’s moral indeterminacy is part of what makes it feel psychologically rich. It doesn’t tell us who to root for. Instead, it asks us to sit with discomfort: to empathise with both the betrayed and the betrayer, to admire a hero’s brilliance even as we recoil from their cruelty. In myth, people can be noble and vile in the same breath. That complexity is something modern storytelling, with its hunger for redemption arcs, neat resolutions and profit-friendly mass appeal, often flattens out.
Will Nolan transform Odysseus into a stereotypical Hollywood hero or keep him as the brilliantly deceitful and violent man that he is? Is he going to capture the brutality of ancient Greek life or sanitise it for the scores of people already lining up to buy tickets? When the movie hits cinemas next year after 18 months of online hype, who is going to be disappointed?
Nolan stands at a crossroads: between faithfulness and freedom, spectacle and substance, and art and audience. To adapt a work as ever-changing and morally ambiguous as Homer’s is to enter into an age-old dialogue—not just with the text, but with the countless reinterpretations that have preceded it. Whether Nolan chooses to honour that legacy through imaginative reinvention or risks erasing its complexity in favour of mass-market appeal remains to be seen. But one thing is certain: like Odysseus himself, this film’s journey will be long, unpredictable—and closely watched by the gods of the internet.
Words by Elise Barry
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