Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of The Odyssey hit theaters last week in a big way, raking in $264.1 million globally and becoming Nolan’s biggest debut weekend ever.
The long-anticipated film features a star-studded cast with Matt Damon leading the charge as Odysseus, the mythical king of Ithaca whose journey home after winning the Trojan War may prove more perilous than the war itself. The film is based on a nearly 3,000-year-old poem by the Greek poet Homer and has been hugely influential on Western literature and civilization.
While the primary controversy leading into the film was its casting of Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy — which I wrote about previously — and Eliot Page as Sinon, most of that controversy seems to have shifted to Nolan’s departure from the source material. Liel Leibovitz, editor-at-large for Tablet magazine, places some of the blame on Nolan’s use of Emily Wilson’s recent translation for inspiration, calling it a “project dedicated entirely to making Homer’s heroes come across as a gang of preening, pathetic poseurs afflicted with terminal toxic masculinity.”
Building on the idea that Nolan/Wilson’s adaptation is anti-masculinity, Matt Walsh called Nolan’s departures from the traditional text “even worse” than the “DEI casting,” claiming Nolan turns Odysseus into “an anachronistic whiney, solemn shell of a man plagued by ‘trauma’ and guilt.”
Elon Musk went even further, affirming a claim that the film’s thematic departures are tantamount to destroying “Western civilization.” He also said he would give Mel Gibson $100 million to make a straight adaptation spoken in Homeric Greek and that Grok Imagine would make its own full-length version “true to the art of Homer.”
Nolan’s Odysseus | Homer’s Odysseus
As much as it pains me to admit it, Walsh and Musk have a point. Nolan’s Odysseus is much different than Homer’s Odysseus. That’s pretty much incontrovertible.
In Nolan’s The Odyssey, Odysseus is haunted by the events of the Trojan War. It was his idea to break the siege of Troy by hiding soldiers inside a wooden horse, presenting it as a gift left by a retreating army. The Trojans bring the horse inside the walls of the city, allowing Odysseus and his men to open the city gate from the inside and leading to destruction of Troy and the end of the war.
Nolan portrays this as a grave violation of Zeus’ Law, his term for the bedrock cultural idea of hospitality. The people of the city brought in this gift in good faith, only for it to get them killed. This is what haunts Odysseus. He has dissolved the glue that has held their civilization together.
Much like the main character from another of Nolan’s films, he comes to believe the thing he created in order to win a war will become the destruction of everything.
Matt Damon as Odysseus (Trailer screencap)
This is a stark contrast to Homer’s Odysseus, who has no such qualms. Homer repeatedly refers positively to Odysseus as a man “of many wiles” and has Zeus himself describe Odysseus as “godlike … beyond all mortals in wisdom.”
While Homer does allude to the emotional weight of Odysseus’ victory, portraying him as sobbing through a retelling of his exploits, it is not at all evident that his tears are of regret. This Odysseus is one David Mikics calls an “enthusiastic warrior” and “demonic destroyer” who “looked like the war god himself.”
Homer’s Odysseus — the one conservatives wanted and whose values they see as foundational to the West — is one who glories in violence and bloodshed, one who will go to any length to protect his people no matter what that means for others. When he returns home to Ithaca, his violence against those who have violated his home is absolute.
In Nolan’s version, Odysseus leaves Ithaca to avoid the wrath of those whom he’s killed. In Homer, Odysseus goes to war against them and is only stopped by the intervention of the gods.
Homer’s Odysseus is an ancient Greek of the Late Bronze Age, steeped in an honor/shame culture, meant to represent the very best of men, subject to the whims and machinations of the gods. Nolan’s Odysseus is a portrait of Western modernity; a deeply flawed hero saddled with even deeper doubts about what it even means to be human. One is an ancient look at what men could or should be; the other is a modern look at where embracing the ancient view has brought us.
Nolan’s Odyssey is primarily about the mythologies we make.
The mythologies we make ourselves
Nolan’s Odyssey is primarily about the mythologies we make. It is meta-narrative of sorts on the art of storytelling and how the stories we tell influence who we become.
This is clear from the very beginning of the film, where Nolan asks us to interrogate the nature of the world in which his film is set. It begins with the chyron “In a world of apparent magic,” then opens with a bard in palace at Ithaca retelling the sack of Troy and the heroics of Odysseus: “A man … a fleet … a war … a man … a thought … a trick … a trick to break the walls of Troy … and burn it screaming to the ground!”
From the outset, we are told to wonder if what we are hearing reflects reality.
For example, the mythological story of the Trojan War is that Helen of Sparta was stolen away from her husband, Menelaus, by Paris, prince of Troy. The safe return of Helen to her husband is the impetus for the war, which is led by Menelaus’ brother, Agamemnon. But in this telling, Helen’s kidnapping is only the opportunity Agamemnon needed to justify a war that would consolidate his power. Helen is not the most beautiful woman in the world, only the most useful pawn in male power.
The Odyssey trailer screencap
Agamemnon, the commander of the Achaean army and king of Mycanae, is portrayed in hulking, angular armor. In nearly every shot he is in, he towers over both his own army and his enemies. He is a commanding and imposing presence.
But later in the film, we see Agamemnon back home after the war removing his armor and he looks just like a regular guy — just before he is murdered by his wife as revenge for his own murder of their daughter. Agamemnon projected a story of strength and power, but the reality was quite different.
Or take the character Antinous. As a child, he draws the lot to be drafted into the war but pawns it off on Sinon, promising his wealthy parents will pay for Sinon to take his place. Odysseus, seeing that Antinous would not be an honorable soldier and to avoid community shame being heaped on Antinous, asks that Antinous take care of Odysseus’ family. As an adult, Antinous has twisted that story, claiming Odysseus left him in charge and he should be first in line to marry Odysseus’ wife — and therefore inherit the throne. When Odysseus returns, he attempts to give Antinous the lot, making him admit that he should have been the one to go to war. But the story Antinous has told himself is too deep and he denies it.
The Odyssey trailer screencap
Then, of course, there is the Trojan Horse itself. In Virgil’s Aeneid (the full story of the Trojan Horse does not actually appear in Homer), Sinon tricks the Trojans into accepting the horse as a gift from Athena knowing full well Odysseus and the others are inside. In Nolan’s adaptation, the truth of the matter is hidden from him and he has no idea of his deceit. The story of a gift for the goddess Athena is, in reality, a trick that will lead to Troy’s undoing.
The biggest moment, however, is the truth behind the devastation of Troy. A key moment in the third act of Nolan’s film has Odysseus cutting through the mythology to explain. Up to this point, we have heard the sack of Troy told through song and story. We have heard the song of the bard and seen the perspectives of Helen and Menelaus. But now Odysseus tells the tale. The story he tells is not one of glory and honor, but one of regret and horror. Agamemnon’s army enters Troy, pillaging, plundering, killing, raping, looting — 10 years of pent-up fury unleashed on a mostly civilian populace.
In the film, as in the poem, Odysseus is led by the Greek goddess Athena — the only deity Nolan chooses to portray as physically manifest. Throughout, she has shown up as his muse and encourager, his comforter and intercessor. Nolan reveals that this, too, is a lie. What Odysseus perceives as Athena is the image of a young Trojan girl beheaded by his men. It is a world of apparent magic. What is not clear is if that is only a lie we tell ourselves to feel better about our own shortcomings.
Heroes of our own story
The story we tell ourselves is that we are the heroes. That is really the message Nolan is trying to convey. It’s a critique not just of Odysseus but of all mythology and of those who believe Odysseus is a man we should aspire to be like. If Nolan is right, we still create stories that transform fear into virtue, violence into necessity and power into righteousness. This is the story many in the West use to justify themselves.
The story we tell ourselves is that we are the heroes.
They tell a story of fearing for their lives to justify shooting into a vehicle and killing a 1-year-old child.
They tell a story of stolen elections, deep-state conspiracies and widespread voter fraud to justify an attempted insurrection against the federal government.
They tell a story of violent immigrant crime waves to justify ever more restrictive immigration policies, even though immigrants are not found to commit crimes at higher rates than native-born Americans.
They tell a story of teachers and librarians “grooming” children to justify book bans, curriculum restrictions, and the marginalization of LGBTQ people.
They tell a story of a fake pandemic to justify rejecting public-health measures and undermining trust in medical institutions.
They tell a story of replacement by immigrants to justify exclusionary and xenophobic immigration policies.
And they tell a story of how a film is an example of the downfall of Western civilization because it dares interrogate that mythology.
Sailing into the West
The most dangerous myths are not the ones about cyclopes or gods or wooden horses, but the stories we tell about ourselves. Homer’s Odysseus believed he was civilization’s defender. Nolan’s Odysseus slowly realizes he may also have become its destroyer. Neither is simply telling us what happened at Troy. They are telling us what kind of world they think we inhabit.
Nolan’s interpretation, with his emphasis on Zeus’s Law — which he interprets in Christian terms as “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” — challenges us to interrogate whether or not we are being truthful with our own stories. Scripture is full of people convinced they were the righteous heroes while the prophets insisted they were the villains in someone else’s story. Nolan might not even claim to be a Christian, but his movie’s message is prophetic: Shall we live truthfully or triumphantly?
Josh Olds is a public theologian and pastor for those disillusioned with institutional church. He is the creator of the small-group video series “Year on the Mountaintop” and a featured contributor to Fostering Hope: A Prayerbook for Fostering and Adoptive Parents. Follow his work on Facebook or at JoshOlds.com.