Feminist Odyssey translator slams Christopher Nolan’s movie for being too woke | Films | Entertainment

Praised by critics, but splitting opinions across social media and political spectrums, people cannot stop talking about Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. The new film adaptation has famously been accused of woke casting with a black Helen of Troy and a trans Greek warrior.

And it’s speculated that the writer-director drew on a 2017 translation of Homer’s epic by Emily Wilson, known for its feminist perspective and modern vocabulary. But now the classicist herself has slammed the film’s creative choices, which give Odysseus the empathetic ethics of a modern Westerner rather than those of a glory-seeking ancient king.

Nolan’s Odysseus regrets his invasion of Troy, for breaking Zeus’ law ie hospitality towards strangers. In a new interview, Wilson said: “I’m not sure if I see it as an entirely anti-war film. But it certainly presents us with an Odysseus who feels very bad about certain things that he’s done in war and is struggling to process them in a very modern psychiarised way.”

The feminist classist continued: “He seems to feel bad about being a warrior and we never get to see him doing very much warrioring, which I thought, in a way, was a bit of a shame. [Homer’s Odysseus] wants glory and he wants to get spoils from the sack of a city… I think it’s film that has some interest in shame but I don’t think it has any interest in glory.”

The Odyssey is out now in cinemas.