Emily Wilson has delivered a blistering critique of Christopher Nolan’s film adaptation of The Odyssey, describing its writing as “abysmal” and arguing that the screenplay lacks psychological, emotional, political and ethical depth. Wilson, whose 2017 translation became a publishing phenomenon, described the film as a “family-friendly audiovisual spectacle” with little narrative or emotional weight, comparing it to an elaborate show rather than a meaningful retelling of the ancient epic.
She criticized Nolan’s characterization of Odysseus and other figures as underdeveloped and lacking convincing motivations, suggesting that the film stripped away too much of the poem’s moral complexity. Despite her critique, Wilson acknowledged the film’s entertainment value and praised Nolan for encouraging public interest in The Odyssey.
However, Wilson’s review has drawn scrutiny for its treatment of race. She argued that the film’s diverse casting was not genuinely progressive and claimed that Nolan cast most of the non-white actors, including Zendaya, Lupita Nyong’o, Himesh Patel, Corey Hawkins and Travis Scott, as variations of the “Black best friend” trope, existing mainly to support the white protagonist. Critics have strongly challenged that interpretation.
“The race-neutral casting of Nolan’s Odyssey was inevitably deplored in some quarters. But there is nothing progressive about it. Most of the non-white actors – Zendaya, Lupita Nyong’o, Himesh Patel, Corey Antonio Hawkins, Travis Scott – play versions of the Black best friend, whose only role in the drama is to provide aid to the white protagonist. Scott, as the Ithacan bard, Phemius, yells a few words and pounds a stick, but does not get to sing, tell a story or play the lyre: the most melodic note in the percussive soundtrack comes from the plucking of Odysseus’ bow (a beautiful sonic image of the archer as musician, borrowed from the poem).
Nyong’o’s double part as Helen and Clytemnestra is hugely underwritten; she is given only a few minutes of screen time to perform a set of brief tableaux of female victims (the outraged bereaved mother, the abused wife, the repentant adulteress.”
London Review of Books
Emily Wilson’s Racial Analysis Imprecise and Condescending
Emily Wilson’s criticism of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey becomes far less persuasive when she turns to race. Her attempt to describe several actors of colour as variations of the “Black best friend” trope is not merely imprecise. It is racially reductive, strangely patronising and built on a flattening of the very performances she claims to be defending.
First of all, Himesh Patel is not Black, and his Eurylochus is hardly a loyal sidekick who exists to cheer on Odysseus. He functions as a foil, a sceptical second-in-command and, eventually, a mutineer who repeatedly challenges his authority.
Secondly, not all characters perform the same narrative function. Zendaya’s Athena serves as a divine guide, Corey Hawkins plays an antagonist, and Travis Scott’s Phemius is an Ithacan bard. By grouping these distinct roles under a single modern racial trope, Wilson’s review flattens the characters in much the same way she accuses Nolan of doing.
There is something deeply uncomfortable about a white academic reducing a diverse group of performers to tokens while presenting that reduction as enlightened criticism. Black and brown actors do not need every supporting role interpreted as evidence of victimisation, particularly when their characters serve distinct narrative and thematic purposes. That kind of analysis can become its own form of condescension, with a white critic deciding on behalf of non-white audiences when representation is supposedly demeaning.
Embed from Getty ImagesWilson’s Broader Concerns Have Merit
At this point, Wilson’s review collapses under the weight of its own complaints. Her objections move from serious questions about adaptation to strangely trivial grievances, including the Trojan Horse not having wheels, the absence of sex scenes and the food looking unpleasant. The line about “no sex scenes and all the food looks horrible” is especially unserious and reads more like a list of personal annoyances than rigorous criticism. It is difficult to imagine Wilson accepting that kind of argument from one of her own students without demanding stronger evidence and analysis.
The review ultimately feels less like a measured assessment of Nolan’s film and more like a fan insisting that only one interpretation of the material is legitimate, which brings us to one of its few potentially valid concerns: Lupita Nyong’o’s limited material is worth discussing.
But Wilson’s arguments do not excuse careless racial analysis. In fact, this section damages Wilson’s credibility because it reveals how quickly academic language can reproduce the same assumptions it claims to expose. She criticises Nolan for flattening actors of colour, yet her own description erases the differences between their characters, relationships and functions within the story.
Translation and Filmmaking Are Different
Wilson is not the author of The Odyssey. She is an accomplished classicist and translator whose modern English version Nolan praised during the film’s promotion. Her expertise gives her interpretation weight, but it does not make her translation the final authority on a story shaped by oral tradition, disputed authorship and thousands of years of adaptation.
Nor was Nolan obligated to reproduce her version scene by scene. Translation and filmmaking are different disciplines. A translator may work to preserve rhythm, language and meaning, while a director must build a visual narrative for a broad audience within a limited running time. Nolan drew on the ancient tradition and reshaped it around his own preoccupations. That inevitably meant omission, reinvention and simplification.
Wilson is entitled to argue that the result lacks emotional, political or ethical depth. She is also entitled to dislike the screenplay. However, saying she would be “ashamed” to have written it feels needlessly hostile, especially when the film was never attempting to perform the same task as her translation.
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The Problem Is Bigger Than Fidelity
Wilson may be too immersed in classical scholarship to see the film as most audiences will experience it. Nolan did not make The Odyssey for specialists trained to recognise every ancient convention. He made it for a global audience that will encounter its ideas through modern cinematic language. That does not make the film intellectually empty. It means the themes of war, trauma, guilt and homecoming appear in forms a contemporary viewer can immediately understand.
This is where Wilson’s review feels trapped inside the academic world it comes from. Expertise should deepen interpretation, but it can also create an ivory-tower distance from ordinary viewers and from film as its own serious artistic medium. Classics departments have also historically treated Western civilisation as the centre of intellectual culture, so scholars working within that tradition should be especially careful when claiming authority over racial representation.
Wilson can dislike Nolan’s adaptation, but her discussion of the actors of colour is more troubling than the casting she criticises. Himesh Patel is not Black, and his Eurylochus challenges Odysseus rather than serving as a devoted sidekick. Corey Hawkins plays an antagonist, not Odysseus’s “Black best friend.” Grouping these performances beneath one racial trope erases their different functions and diminishes the actors’ work.
Perhaps Wilson intended to criticise how Nolan uses supporting characters around white leads. However, she expressed that argument so clumsily that she reproduced the flattening she accused him of creating. Her review ultimately reveals less about the film’s racial politics than it does about the limitations of criticism delivered from an academic position that assumes its own interpretation must be the most enlightened one.
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