That would be impossible.

The poem emerged from an oral storytelling tradition, contains stories nested inside other stories and has survived partly because every generation finds a different way to interpret it. Changing Homer is not some modern Hollywood offence. People have been reshaping Odysseus for thousands of years.

So my problem with Christopher Nolan’s adaptation is not that he changed the story.

My question is whether he changed its moral centre.

Emily Wilson’s criticism has become so explosive because Nolan previously highlighted the opening of her translation: “Tell me about a complicated man.” Wilson’s eventual verdict was that the film failed to deliver that complicated man. She viewed Nolan’s Odysseus as emotionally underdeveloped and the film as visually enormous but intellectually superficial.

I understand why Nolan fans reacted defensively. The film is a genuine cinematic event. Its landscapes, ocean sequences, monsters, sound design and large-format photography create the kind of physical spectacle that modern blockbusters increasingly fake inside digital environments. Nolan filmed across several countries, used actual ships and constructed much of the journey around real locations and practical production methods.

But spectacle was never the difficult part of adapting The Odyssey.

The difficult part was Odysseus himself.

This is a man who can be courageous, intelligent, loyal, deceitful, narcissistic, compassionate and monstrously violent—sometimes within the same episode. He survives because he understands that identity is flexible. He lies, performs, disguises himself and tells different versions of his life depending on what the moment requires.

Even his stories about his travels are filtered through him.

That means I am never entirely sure whether I am watching the real Odysseus or the version of Odysseus he wants his audience to remember.

Nolan understands the appeal of that idea. His entire filmography is filled with men who construct narratives around themselves because the truth is too difficult to inhabit. Leonard in Memento, Bruce Wayne in The Dark Knight trilogy, Cobb in Inception and Oppenheimer all exist partly inside stories they tell about their own guilt and importance.

Odysseus should therefore be a perfect Nolan protagonist.

Yet I think the movie gradually simplifies him by giving his violence a clearer moral and emotional framework.

The most obvious example arrives when Odysseus returns to Ithaca.

In Homer, the slaughter of the suitors is deliberately disturbing. Odysseus does not merely defeat worthy opponents in an honourable contest. He traps them, kills them and restores control through overwhelming violence. The scene can feel triumphant because the suitors have violated his household, but it also forces us to confront how quickly justice becomes extermination.

Nolan alters that balance.

The movie presents the confrontation more like a fair battle, with the suitors armed and capable of defending themselves. It remains violent, but it now resembles the climax of an action film: the rightful king reveals himself, confronts the corrupt invaders and retakes his home.

That change makes the sequence more conventionally exciting.

It also makes Odysseus easier to forgive.

Nolan surrounds the battle with memories of Troy and emphasizes the spiritual damage created by war. His Odysseus recognizes that deception and conquest have broken the bond between human beings. The massacre is therefore framed less as the return of a ruthless warrior and more as the final violent act of a traumatized man attempting to close the door on violence.

I find that interpretation emotionally coherent.

I am less convinced that it is morally complicated.

Nolan appears determined to give Odysseus an arc. He begins as the architect of the Trojan Horse, survives the consequences of his cunning and gradually understands the human cost of treating deceit as intelligence. His journey becomes a form of moral education.

Homer’s Odysseus is harder to contain within that structure.

He learns, but he does not transform neatly. He suffers, but suffering does not automatically purify him. He wants his home, status, wife and authority restored. Those desires are understandable, but they are not identical to redemption.

The film’s ending pushes him even further toward redemption. Rather than closing on another cycle of acquisition and conflict, Nolan sends Odysseus and Penelope westward to honour the men who died, while Telemachus remains behind to rule Ithaca. It is a more hopeful conclusion built around mourning, reconciliation and the possibility of finally leaving war behind.

It is also unmistakably Nolan.

Since Dunkirk and Oppenheimer, Nolan has become increasingly interested in men who accomplish historically enormous things and then discover that achievement does not free them from consequence. His Odysseus belongs beside Oppenheimer: both men use intellect to end a war, only to realize that their brilliant solution has released something morally destructive into the world.

That is a strong cinematic idea.

But it is Nolan’s idea.

The current argument becomes unproductive when people reduce it to a choice between respecting Homer and defending artistic freedom. Nolan had every right to reinvent the poem. Wilson had every right to argue that his reinvention stripped away what made the original profound.

A critic is not required to reward good intentions.

Joyce Carol Oates argued that Wilson should have been more respectful toward another artist’s interpretation, particularly because Nolan’s film had increased public interest in Wilson’s translation. But those are separate issues. A movie can increase book sales, revive classical literature and still be a poor interpretation of the themes that matter most to a particular scholar.

Wilson herself acknowledged the contradiction. She strongly disliked the film while celebrating its ability to bring audiences back into cinemas and push readers toward Homer and other classical literature.

That position makes sense to me.

An adaptation does not need to be faithful to be culturally valuable.

Nolan’s film may become the first encounter millions of viewers have with Odysseus, Penelope, Telemachus, Circe, Calypso and Athena. Some of those viewers will leave satisfied by the movie. Others will read the poem and discover that the ancient story is stranger, darker and less morally reassuring than the blockbuster built from it.

That difference is not necessarily a failure.

The failure would come from pretending there is no difference.

The movie’s defenders sometimes treat every objection as literary elitism, as though appreciating Homer requires rejecting popular cinema. Its harshest critics sometimes behave as though adaptation should function like an illustrated edition of the source.

Neither position interests me.

I can admire Nolan’s technical ambition while recognizing that technical ambition is not psychological depth. I can accept his reinterpretation while questioning what was lost in the process. I can believe that his Odysseus works as a Nolan protagonist without believing that he captures the full instability of Homer’s hero.

My conclusion is that Nolan did not misunderstand Odysseus.

He selected the version of Odysseus that suited the story he wanted to tell.

He chose the traumatized veteran over the unreliable storyteller.

He chose the repentant strategist over the dangerous opportunist.

He chose a man searching for moral restoration over a man determined to restore his property, family and authority.

Those choices produce a more emotionally accessible hero and a cleaner modern anti-war narrative. They also reduce the tension that makes Odysseus endure: the unsettling possibility that his intelligence cannot be separated from his selfishness, and that the qualities allowing him to return home are the same qualities that make his return terrifying.

Christopher Nolan gave me an immense journey across the ancient world.

I am still not convinced he gave me the complicated man at its centre.

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