The Odyssey dominates summer film discourse

moviesAug 1, 202635514

Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey has become the defining film of the summer, a smash epic now fast closing in on a billion dollars worldwide and already outgrossing Nolan’s previous hit Oppenheimer. Critics and academics are loudly split: the London Review of Books published a high-profile essay and translator Emily Wilson wrote a scathing critique of Nolan’s screenplay, while other reviewers praise the film’s jaw-dropping action, dark-magic sequences and even dolphin cameos. Early audiences skewed male in the first weekend but by the second weekend the gender split was closer to 50/50, and three quarters of viewers have been over 25, showing reach into older demographics. The film has generated widely shared memes, notably Matt Damon’s anguished face and a line from Robert Pattinson’s suitor, and provoked rightwing criticism that has not dented ticket sales. Industry observers note The Odyssey’s event status stands out amid a summer of underperforming superhero, remake and animation releases. The immediate consequence is a broad cultural conversation spanning thinkpieces, academic rebuttals and high-profile reviews that keeps The Odyssey central to summer box-office and literary-adaptation debates.

Quantian

@quantian.bsky.social

Zero stars for the Odyssey, unredeemable Nolanslop. They literally turned to the camera at the end and were like “I fear our Linear A writing system will never be deciphered due to my actions in this film, which is about how the gods don’t exist and are actually a figment of my guilty conscience”

7012h ago

Quantian45

Everyone involved in the making of this film should be locked in a room with Emily Wilson, who gets a bow and arrow

meltedbrain2000ad.bsky.social2

The gods clearly exist tho we see their monster spawn all over the place

Babadookakis1

Okay but Circe tho. She turned those boys into pigs

Louie Stowell

@louiestowell.bsky.social

Any time someone mentions the Odyssey film I am honour bound to remind everyone I WROTE the Odyssey. Well, as much as Homer did anyway. And at least I definitely exist.

454h ago

Alex von Tunzelmann

@alexvont.bsky.social

Look how much joy people have got out of arguing about The Odyssey this week. I have whole friendships based on the fact we loved the same books and TV shows. And it can be great and invigorating when you disagree. Why would I want something that’s just about me? Boring

562h ago

Alexander Clarkson11

On a political level this process of cultural atomisation that fragments shared bonds of understanding and trust between people is something authoritarian regimes want in order to prevent the emergence of mass collective action against them.

Anna Orridge7

Yes. And one of the great joys of literature is finding a passage that names an experience or emotion you've had - "Yes, yes, that's it! I've always thought/felt that, but I never would have been able to articulate it in that way." It's finding the nugget of gold while you're sifting through grit.

Ali, Coffee Hunter4

I don't think they can conceive of a world where they're not at the centre of it, and they want their media to be the same, and assume everyone else is as emotionally impoverished as they are.

Steven Sheil3

Conversations about personalised books/films/tv are going to be like people swapping descriptions of their dreams.

David KC2

Is it that they don't understand art, or that they don't understand having friends?

Sasquatch

@nerdysasquatch.bsky.social

Not gonna lie, I've been enjoying watching the chuds be wrong and crash out over The Odyssey. And I look forward to film nerds doing the same over Spider-Man and later Doomsday.

249h ago

Corey Atad

@coreyatad.com

this interview with Nolan from a Chinese outlet is the best i've heard on The Odyssey so far. really worth listening to. (lmao what is this link image?)

2410h ago

11th Hour with Ali Velshi

@11thhourmsnow.bsky.social

Classicist Emily Wilson is the first woman to translate Homer's epic "The Odyssey" into English. She says there is value in revisiting ancient texts to let "antiquity to challenge modernity." She gave Christopher Nolan's new film adaptation a scathing review and is "baffled" by the reaction to it.

256h ago

MaggieMae🦊1

Excellent! @emilyrcwilson.bsky.social is absolutely amazing! Love her work! 📘💙

Neil Vigdor

@gettingviggy.bsky.social

Wilson, whose 2017 translation of Homer’s Greek classic influenced the director Christopher Nolan, panned his screenplay for the movie version in an essay for The London Review of Books. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/31/a...

2412h ago

jswca.bsky.social4

Some of her criticisms were ridiculous. She’s a scholar in the Classics and a translator of classic literature. Most moviegoers do not read the classics nor do they care about her opinions. She also came across as an elite snob in her review.

Pronounced “Tim”2

Wait until she finds out Peter Jackson completely cut out Tom Bombadil from The Lord of the Rings!

pkhoury.bsky.social2

I enjoyed the film, but I took it for what it was, a creative adaptation of the Odyssey. I know that it glossed over much and changed some storylines. A thorough telling would have been 2 parts (or more) and might not have had the dramatic punch that this film had.

Steve2

Maybe not accept all the money she is getting now. Nah she will take that thanks to Nolan and his film

Two Little Gay Puppies1

Alas she’s no film critic nor a screenplay writer nor a film maker. But everyone gets an opinion and being name dropped by the director she owes a few spondoolies for increased sales. Plus extra for reheating the discourse as well.

wscottyj.bsky.social1

It's a movie, not the classics. Move on.

gita “the formalist” jackson

@xoxogossipgita.bsky.social

The Odyssey simply IS an action movie, a form that Nolan enjoys working in and has a lot of experience in. that doesn'y mean you have to like it, but it's frustrating to dismiss it on those grounds alone. aftermath.site/the-odyssey-...

“Without a tub of wax for my ears,” Wilson writes, “I was exposed to the full din of thumping sticks, staffs, swords and clashing armour, thunderbolts, crashing waves, grunts, screams, toppling palaces and burning temples.”

The paragraph goes on to explain that these sights and sounds did not inspire in Wilson “any agony of emotion,” which is fair enough. But one would expect an action movie based on The Odyssey to contain grunts, screams, crashing waves and thunderbolts, right? Was she opposed to the movie being loud?

Wilson appears opposed to spectacle in this film entirely. In the first paragraph she writes that the film is “a family-friendly audiovisual spectacle.” A few paragraphs later she writes, “Nolan’s spectacle threatens to drown out his story.” She compares the movie unfavorably to 2024’s The Return, which depicts only Odysseus’ return to Ithaca, writing that it has a “stylish sparseness” that Nolan’s film lacks. But choosing to be spare where another director would not is not a marker of quality.

3013h ago

noam

@noamchompers.bsky.social

You know, given that Christopher Nolan made an objectionably woke odyssey, Emily Wilson restored public trust in academia by panning it and therefore fighting back against the woke mind virus

2412h ago

Tam Tam @ Dashcon Guillothree 😈❤️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🐍

@tampire.bsky.social

Best film adaptation of The Odyssey - wrong answers only!

71h ago

Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan

@warringtonruncorn.com

Lots of people are criticising Christopher Nolan for not capturing the true spirit of Homer's The Odyssey. I have to say it was a considerable improvement on the definitive text I grew up with.

The book cover of The Usborne Book Of Legends.

1513h ago

mogadon

@mogadontrenchcoat.bsky.social

#nowseated with partner for the odyssey in imax. expectations are set at mid to high. i grew up with a beautiful kids illustrated book of the story, have since read a couple of versions, and i like early nolan, but not too fond of extravagant blockbusters. guess i'll soon see.

146h ago

Mark LaCroix 💾

@marklacroix.bsky.social

But also, this is pretty clear from the text of her review, too. A relevant quote: "The massacre of the suitors is probably the most enjoyable sequence in the film." She also says "Despite all this, The Odyssey is still an event to celebrate. ... this epic is bringing audiences back to cinemas."

1611h ago

Grant Stoner

@supercrip1994.bsky.social

This is the criticism I've been waiting for ever since the article came out. The Odyssey was EXACTLY how it should have been – an epic fable that's grand in scenery and drama and action and sound. Nolan did exactly that. He took it from strictly words to powerful visuals and imagery.

1410h ago

JS B

@jsburns.bsky.social

As I walked out of The Odyssey screening, I recognized how the film was a brilliant indictment of Donald Trump and the US right now by Nolan. An empire, lost, wanting to get back to what it was before but stuck in conflicts in foreign lands, and at home, an attempted coup by a draft dodger.

1212h ago

3 sources

theguardian.com‘A towering piece of monoculture’: how The Odyssey discourse has dominated this summer fika-media.comHomeros’un çevirmeninden Christopher Nolan’ın The Odyssey filmine sert eleştiri fxoxo.com🇮🇩 Friday July 31: Spider-Man Brand New Day passes 1.5 million admissions. As a comparison, The Odyssey made 1.4 million admissions in 2 weeks and Superman has 1.5 million admissions in the entire run. - F*XOXO

Spider-Man: Brand New Day premieres, credits scene hints at Tom Holland's futuremovies The Odyssey dominates summer film discoursemovies

The Odyssey dominates summer film discourse

Related