{"id":7553,"date":"2026-07-22T18:09:23","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T16:09:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/?p=7553"},"modified":"2026-08-12T00:57:54","modified_gmt":"2026-08-11T22:57:54","slug":"the-odyssey-by-christopher-nolan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/2026\/07\/22\/the-odyssey-by-christopher-nolan\/","title":{"rendered":"The Odyssey<\/em> by Christopher Nolan"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2705 Clever screenplay moves and original motifs in a continuation of ancient storytelling traditions.<\/p>\n

\u2705 Greek Tragedy already reshaped characters, giving everybody from Odysseus to Orestes the boy howdy treatment at times.<\/p>\n

\u2705 The actors speak plain American English, not the conventional posh Greeklish bunk that would get them killed on sight by the Mycenaeans.<\/p>\n

The idea to create an \u201cauthentic\u201d Odyssey is an enormous vector space of not even wrong.<\/p>\n

Addendum<\/span>
\nJust read PZ Myer\u2019s review<\/a> which is lovely, so go read it (but only if you have already seen the movie). Oh, and the best of the lot so far: Leah Schnelbach\u2019s review<\/a>, with made me well up again several times.<\/p>\n

Addendum II<\/span>
\nI\u2019ve always been a fan not only of Wilson\u2019s translations of the Odyssey<\/em> and later the Iliad<\/em> but of her papers and interviews related to her profession in general, which I followed with great interest over the years. (While I can\u2019t call myself a classicist by a long shot, I do have a solid classical education with official certificates in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Classical Hebrew; follow the field; and like to read texts in their original languages.) So this absolutely atrocious \u201cfilm review\u201d<\/a> of hers came out of left field as a most unpleasant surprise. Many of her points can be discussed and are already being discussed, sustaining different arguments and different opinions (e.g., Leah Schnelbach\u2019s review referenced above). But Wilson\u2019s arguments are not made in good faith. As Ian Bogost aptly put it<\/a>, \u201cThe problem isn’t the opinion. The problem is that she\u2019s being an asshole.\u201d And Joyce Carol Oates<\/a> has also a point when she observes that Wilson isn\u2019t \u201cdisagreeing with interpretations of Homer in a collegial manner\u201d and that she should be \u201ca wee bit more thoughtful & respectful of others who are acting in good faith just as (she would claim) she is.\u201d Or historian Bret Devereaux<\/a>, who points out that it was completely unnecessary to adopt a pose which \u201cwill be read by the huge swath of people who really liked the movie as a snotty, I-know-better-than-you bit of condescension.\u201d (As of today, he has his own terrific review<\/a> up.) Finally, as various academics<\/a> have already elaborated on, she makes a number of ludicrous assertions in fields she\u2019s obviously not an expert in\u2014she\u2019s a classicist, not a historian, philosopher, or film critic. So, yeah, this was completely uncalled for<\/a> and only helpful in nurturing a certain public opinion that paints academia as a seething collection of insufferable arrogant asshats who need to be put in their place.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n

The Odyssey<\/em><\/a> by Christopher Nolan, 2026.
\nWatched at the Lichtburg movie palace on July 20, 2026, in 70mm analog format without intermission in its original language.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\ud83c\udfac The only spoiler being that I really enjoyed it.<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-archive","h-entry","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7553"}],"version-history":[{"count":32,"href":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7553\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7738,"href":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7553\/revisions\/7738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}