Brothers Michael and Derek Haddad are trained in Greek and Latin studies. They know a thing or two about Homer’s Odyssey. Both enjoyed Christopher Nolan’s new film adaptation, the actors’ performances, and recommend seeing it, especially in IMAX. But is the blockbuster movie true to the text? Let’s find out, as they walk us through the good, the bad, and the ugly in the choices made to bring this classic to life.
Mike: Nolan had quite a task in front of him. How do you turn a densely packed, poetically rich, seminal work of literature into a three hour movie-going experience? I one-hundred percent accept the fact that cuts had to be made. And no artist would be satisfied with making a completely faithful reproduction of an existing story. They want to leave their mark on it, adapt some of its central themes to reflect the mores of the modern day. I praise Nolan for throwing in a line about the war really being over trade routes and the Trojans’ control of the Hellespont, which many scholars agree could be the historical truth behind the myth of the wars of that time.
Derek: Since the original poem was sung in ancient Greek, every modern version is both an adaptation and interpretation of the original, which is successful by making the story relevant to a contemporary audience. Ancient Greek playwrights in 5th century Athens, like Aeschylus and Sophocles, composed Greek tragedies that adapted Trojan War myths and retold the story in ways that felt relevant to Athenians in the 5th century BCE. Those Greek tragedians inserted Athens and democratic values into plays about the Bronze Age heroes and their kingdoms, which was anachronistic. It’s perfectly understandable that a modern filmmaker will create a work of art through a modern lens.
THE GOOD
Mike: Nolan’s film was the best of both worlds in a way that also kept true to the original story. The 2004 Troy film attempted to tell an Illiad-esque story that was meant to be the reality that the later epic became based on. So, the movie was devoid of any gods and any other mythical elements. In contrast, the nineties made for tv movie of the Odyssey, starring Armand Assante, kept all of the mythical elements and gods in the story. Nolan shows us the Cyclops, the Laestrygonians, Scylla, Charybdis, Circe, and the death of Hades. But, much like the Odyssey itself, all of the fantastical elements only exist in the recollection and retelling of Odysseus (in Homer with the Phaeacians, Nolan with Calypso). Odysseus is a known liar and trickster and, in this version, drug-addled for the last seven years by Kalypso feeding him lotus fruit. Plus, none of his crew survive so there is no one to confirm or deny his version of the story.
All of the scenes that happen in present time are grounded in reality with no mythical elements at all. Which brings me to an interesting omission of Nolan. While we see a lot of mythical monsters and figures, the gods are physically absent from the movie, which is a major departure from the book. Now, some of you are immediately going to point out that Athena is in the movie. She’s not. I know the credits have Zendaya listed as Athena and if you look it up on IMDB, it says she is playing Athena. Sorry, she’s not Athena. It’s actually really cool and I love what Nolan has done with this character. Zendaya is more closely connected to Cassandra, a Trojan priestess of Athena, who, although not killed at Troy as she is in the movie, is sexually assaulted by a Greek soldier during the sacking of the city. The reveal that this figure who keeps appearing to Odysseus is actually the guilt-ridden memory of a priestess of Athena being killed, because Odysseus tricked Trojans with the Trojan horse–that was a stroke of genius. Further proof of what Nolan is really doing: In the book, Athena appears to both Odysseus and Telemachus, guiding them both to each other. The film figure only appears to Odysseus. I will also add that I really enjoyed the touch of Telemachus saying to both Mentes and Mentor that they had Athena’s eyes. It was a beautifully subtle nod to the fact that in the book, Athena assumes the appearance of these two men to help guide Telemachus.
Derek: Most people incorrectly assume Poseidon, God of seas, caused Odysseus to go off course at the beginning of his journey home from Troy. But he was already lost when the cyclops gets Poseidon to raise the seas against his ships. In Greek myth, Athena cursed most Greeks from having a safe journey home, because they crossed the line and offended her. In this sense, Nolan’s film is very faithful to Greek mythical source material.
Mike: Cutting out Nestor and Pylos was totally justified. And I appreciated the way he had the recounting of his tales to Calypso, allowing Nolan to cut out the Phaeacians completely. The addition of the scene of Odysseus rescuing Telemachus in the temple was new and I didn’t dislike it. It felt a little like a Jason Bourne scene, but modern audiences appreciate it.
A growing trend in the last couple of years, is to show Odysseus as a figure haunted by his actions in Troy and ashamed to come home. Think Ralph Fiennes’s The Return and Kate Hamill’s recent stage adaptation of the Odyssey, and now here. It definitely puts a different perspective on Odysseus. Not better or worse, just different.
In the book, Odysseus is singularly focused on getting back to his home, his wife, and his son. Nature and the gods keep throwing obstacles in his path, but through all of the trials and the years, he never wavers in his desire to go home. The horror of what he witnessed at Troy, of what he himself took part in, and the unique feature to Nolan’s story, the realization that his great trick with the Trojan horse broke the code of guest-friendship/hospitality that their culture was built on—it all haunted Odysseus, keeping him from wanting to get home as fast as he can. That gives the character more humanity and relatedness, and Matt Damon gives a career-best performance full of pathos.
Derek: Nolan’s addition of weaving this theme into the story of the People from the Sea was another brilliant way to adapt the poem. I appreciate that modern audiences now have much more familiarity with Sea People pirates, the end of Bronze Age civilization, as well greater familiarity with Telemachus, Eumaeus, Commander Eurylochus, and lotus fruit. Those are all key elements of my own, yet-to-be-published novel, The Lost Bard of Ithaka. To be clear, I wrote my manuscript years before Nolan’s Odyssey film was made.
Mike: His scene leaving Calypso’s island also tied back to an original theme from the book. Odysseus’s greatest sin was pride. He believed he could think or talk his way out of anything, that he was the one in control. His troubles at sea arise in the book, not from wounding the cyclops Polyphemus, but from announcing his real name upon his escape, allowing Polyphemus to call upon his father Poseidon to curse him. Odysseus learns by the end of the epic that ultimately the gods are in control and he needs to learn to trust them, which he does…or at least Athena. Calypso tells him as much as he leaves her island. Lastly, from beginning to end, I really enjoyed what Nolan did with the Circe scene. Samantha Morton was perfect. And when Circe turns the pigs back into men, her line she whispered repeatedly like a chant, “Back to your disguises,” was chilling and perfectly matched the point she/Nolan made with the scene as a whole.
Derek: I absolutely agree how pitch perfect this film’s Circe is, and I will add the same for the rapper Travis Scott as the bard who opens and closes the film. A “rhapsode” (from the Greek rhaptein, meaning “to stitch,” and oide, meaning “song”) was a professional reciter of epic poetry in ancient Greece. These traveling performers earned their living by reciting the epics of Homer at festivals and competitions. Scholars have written academic books and articles comparing modern rappers to ancient Greek rhapsodes, since they use similar tools, like repetition and diss tracks, and making big claims about themselves as musicians. So, it makes sense to have a modern rapper play an ancient bard, or rhapsode, and Travis Scott set the tone for this film, alongside Ludwig Göransson’s brilliantly original score.
THE BAD
Mike: There were some things not in the film that I missed. The gut punch of seeing Odysseus’ mom, Anticlea, in the Underworld was a favorite moment of mine and really heaped the guilt of not only his leaving to go to war (though he was basically forced to do so) but also his lengthy journey home. Also, his interaction with the ghost of Achilles, who teaches Odysseus that glory means nothing to the dead and that living is what matters, is such a pivotal moment.
While we are in the Underworld, the one outlier to my theory is here, as well. If the memories he recounts to Calypso are in some way fantasy or exaggerations, it would make sense that he would not see his mother, since in reality there would be no way for him to know that she died. But, when he speaks to Agamemnon (more on him in a bit), he learns about Agamemnon’s murder at the hands of his wife, Clytemnestra. Now, this is true to the book, but if Nolan, as I suspect, was trying to suggest that the mythical elements were not real, there would be no way Odysseus would know that otherwise. Of course, you could say, “Maybe your theory is just wrong.” While I acknowledge that could be the case, this one moment is the one and only instance where Odysseus gains actual information from a mystical source. Everything else in his story (the story within the story that is) cannot be proven or verified by anyone as I mentioned above.
Not including Athena and the gods as personified beings, who interact in our world, fundamentally changes this story and meaning. Nolan also cut out Odysseus’ reunion with his father Laertes, which is just as important as his reunion with Telemachus and Penelope. This explains why the ending was changed to Odysseus being exiled rather than Athena and Zeus basically telling the rest of Ithaca to back off and accept Odysseus as the restored king of Ithaca.
The Cyclops was pretty cool. Nolan’s depiction of him eating Odysseus’s men gave me the exact feeling I had reading the story for the first time. But, the conversations between Odysseus and Polyphemus, the masterful trick of the pseudonym Nobody, is one of the most iconic moments in the story. It was sorely missed. Odysseus shooting an arrow at him upon escaping did not have the same impact as Odysseus shouting out his true name to the blinded cyclops in his pride, thus allowing himself to be cursed.
Derek: I’m annoyed Nolan cut out Piraeus and Theoclymenus from the film. Telemachus becomes close companions to Piraeus and Theoclymenus, while he’s on his journey to Sparta and back. Piraeus acts as a parallel to Commander Eurylochus. While Eurylochus serves as Odysseus’ second-in-command, Piraeus serves as Telemachus’ close companion who sails with him to the mainland and back to Ithaca. Theoclymenus bumps into Telemachus and begs to let him board his ship for Ithaca. Theoclymenus had unintentionally killed his cousin, and in his guilt, he fled home and turned deeper into religion. When Telemachus meets him, Theoclymenus is a religious seer, who later provides several ominous warnings and prophecies. It helps build tension towards the climax.
As much as I enjoyed the film scenes of Telemachus with Menelaus and Helen in Sparta, I do wish Nolan had kept a bit more of the juicy dialogue from the book. Menelaus even shares a tale about meeting the god Proteus, who told him Odysseus was alive and held captive on Calypso’s isle. In the book, Telemachus fights and strategically maneuvers his way through dangers to get home on his own, bearing some good news that his father is at least alive, even if he doesn’t know where. I do not like how the film depicts Odysseus turning into Jason Bourne and saving his son from danger, while Tom Holland returns home with no news or hope. Nolan’s writing choices did a disservice to Telemachus and aren’t justified in this instance.
Mike: I don’t really understand what Nolan was trying to say or accomplish with his depiction of Agamemnon. Throughout the movie, he is this dark, ominous figure, we never really get a good glimpse of. This gave the impression that Agamemnon was of more importance than he actually was. Sure, he was the king of kings and his actions had direct consequences on Odysseus, but Agamemnon is more vital a figure to the Iliad, not the Odyssey. If he did have some larger purpose for depicting Agamemnon in this way, he did not properly land that particular plane before the movie was done.
Derek: But as you say, Agamemnon is a minor figure in Homer’s Odyssey, a shadowy foil whose character and fate act as a foil to Odysseus.’ Odysseus looks through the mirror darkly at a royal family that looks like his own, but he does not want the same ending for himself, his wife, or his son.
Mike: I will relent on saving Antinous’s death for last when in actuality he was killed first. There was definitely satisfaction in both seeing his cowardly behavior during the fight, sending everyone else out while he hid, and Odysseus killing him last in the scene, relishing the moment. However, despite the cool picture of the remaining suitors bending the knee and banging out their approval of Odysseus, Homer’s ending is far more viscous. In fact, when a suitor throws down his weapon and kneels to Odysseus, begging for mercy, Homer shows Odysseus brutally slaying him. He leaves none of the suitors left alive (Only the bard Phemius, and Medon, who helped Telemachus and Penelope, live in Homer’s tale).
Homer’s description of Odysseus, standing in the middle of the room, surrounded by the dead suitors, caked from the neck down in their blood, like a mountain lion after a fresh kill, is one of the most horrifically potent descriptions in the book. Melanthios, who is captured by Eumaeus, has his nose and genitals cut off after the fight. Odysseus has the maids, who betrayed his family and lay with the suitors, clean the hall of the blood and guts of the men they had been carrying on with, and then has Telemachus take them out back and hangs the maids. Positively brutal. But, of course, that can make for a hero difficult to cheer for, even if he felt justified in his actions.
Derek: My minor omission that felt like bad writing was cutting out Odysseus’ stop at the land of the Lotus Eaters. That would’ve given some quick context about lotus fruit, which Calypso has been feeding to Odysseus – that is not book accurate, but it is an interesting choice. There was just no context in the film for where the lotus fruit came from. The Lotus Eaters are generally agreed to be a people who lived in modern Libya, North Africa. Since some people complained about Black people existing in this mythical poem set in the diverse Mediterranean world, the inclusion of an actual book-accurate Black tribe in Africa would have been great to include, along with reference to Ethiopians that the Homeric poem includes as blessed people cherished by the gods. Scholars and archaeologists have written numerous books and articles about how Homer’s Odyssey served as a colonizer’s myth. Nolan is getting tons of praise for depicting Odysseus and his men as the Sea People everyone was worried about, but I wish Nolan and fans would show respect to the brilliant scholars over the centuries, who already wrote about how Odysseus broke Zeus’ law of hospitality, acting like a pirate and violent colonizer.
Mike: And finally, the last thing of importance missing from this scene was the conversation between Penelope and Odysseus, where she tries to suss out if he is who he says he is by asking about moving their bed. It’s such an important moment in the story and shows once again that, just as with the unweaving trick, Penelope is Odysseus’s match for cleverness. On a positive note, I do think Nolan did a great job with Argus and the scene of Odysseus in disguise, stringing the bow. The jeering of the suitors as he examines the bow is right from Homer.
THE UGLY
Derek: There are only two choices Nolan made that we both found truly egregious. First, there’s Eumaeus the loyal swineherd, who was not blind in the myth. While Eumaeus the Ithacan swineherd gets a few wonderful scenes, Nolan completely cut out the chapter when Telemachus makes it back to Ithaca and immediately goes to Eumaeus’ farmhouse. Eumaeus has a beautiful moment hugging Telemachus and treating him like his son, which the disguised Odysseus notices from the shadows of the doorway.
The contrast between Eumaeus’ paternal warmth and Odysseus’ gruff standoffish behavior emphasize how much Odysseus’ lengthy absence has severed any bonds with his son. Eumaeus in the novel also tells stories to the disguised Odysseus about how he’d been kidnapped from his Syrian home and sold into slavery by pirates. Despite his enslavement, Eumaeus maintained his humanity and integrity, welcoming every stranger and beggar into his poor little farmhouse. Even though he had little food to offer guests, he gave as generously as he could, which is in marked contrast to the behavior of Penelope’s wealthy suitors. Nolan cut all this out, despite its significance to his film’s themes.
Instead, Nolan wasted screen time showing Eumaeus killing cute puppies, which never occurred in Homer, adds nothing to the film, and does Eumaeus dirty for no good reason. Nolan acted like 12th century BCE Greece was similar to 5th century Spartan culture, which is neither good historical accuracy nor good writing for this film. If it had served the film well, I could have forgiven the weird choice to kill puppies. But it doesn’t.
Mike: Secondly, we need justice for Sinon. Sinon’s character, marvelously played by Eliot Page, was bent so wildly out of shape, he was only recognizable by name. Nolan creates this version of Sinon as a youth from Ithaca, who followed Odysseus with blind loyalty, and died a heroic fool. Part of Nolan’s choice to do this was to create more layers of guilt for Odysseus when he speaks with Sinon in the Underworld and provide even greater satisfaction in the death of Antinous, whose place he took.
If Nolan wanted to create this dramatic tension, he has every right to do so, but not with Sinon. He could (or should) have just made up a name of this young soldier and had them die during the sacking of Troy. I still want Eliot Page to play Sinon, just the proper Sinon. Sinon does not actually appear in the Odyssey.
Sinon famously is introduced to us by Vergil in his Aeneid, inspired by Homer’s works. The one thing Nolan got right is that Sinon was the one Greek there to tell the Trojans about the horse. But he wasn’t some hapless patsy, some loyal fool, who volunteered for a suicide mission, not knowing the true endgame. Sinon was Odysseus’s equal in cleverness, deception, and speaking. Sinon is fully aware of the plan and knows that if someone isn’t there to convince the Trojans about the importance and value of the horse, they would be just as likely to burn it or throw it into the sea as bring it into their city. Sinon knows that there is a risk that they will kill him as soon as they see him, but the Trojans make the biggest mistake…they allow him to speak. Sinon weaves for them a tale, using a whole host of rhetorical tricks to gain the sympathy of the Trojans as well as their trust. In his story, he remarks that he was hated by many of the Greeks but especially Odysseus because he openly spoke out against the war. He tells them that the Greeks were tired and wanted to go home, but the gods demanded the horse and a blood sacrifice, since blood was spilt to bring them to Troy in the first place. Just as he gets to the height of his story about knowing that Odysseus would have the priest select him for sacrifice, he interrupts himself, telling his listeners that they don’t really care, they’re just going to kill him anyway because he is Greek (yep…he plays the race card), and that they’d actually be doing Agamemnon a favor. God, what a beautiful series of manipulations all in a row! And when the Trojans pick him up off of the beach, order his chains removed and tell him that he can live in Troy as one of them, with tears of gratitude in his eyes, Sinon tells them that he will now confess the secret of the horse: that those who possess it would gain Athena’s blessing and any who harm it will suffer her wrath. This is what ultimately convinces the Trojans to bring the horse into the city. And at night, it is Sinon, who removes the barriers on the door to the horse to let the men inside out. That’s the Sinon I would have loved to see Eliot Page play!
Derek: I agree, but it’s clear Sinon is playing two different characters, because Nolan cut out the minor character of Elpenor. Elpenor is the Homeric sailor, who was the youngest to serve under Odysseus and sail from Troy on his ships. In the myth, Elpenor drunkenly falls off Circe’s roof and dies. Nolan could’ve included Elpenor, but it’s understandable that he wanted to simplify the bulky epic narrative by merging Sinon with Elpenor into a single character. It’s not great to those familiar with mythology, but it does work for this film adaptation.
Michael Haddad has taught in the Lynn public schools for 23 years. He holds a BA in ancient Greek and Latin from Boston University with an English minor and an MA in education from UMass Boston. Involved in Boston’s community theater scene, he acts, directs, and writes for the stage. He is directing the Greek Tragedy, Iphigeneia, in Cambridge/Somerville, MA, through Theater at First in September and October 2026.
